H1: Levelless Star Wars Saga

H1: Levelless Star Wars Saga

This is an edit of a previous work I did, that we bashed out on the Giant in the Playground message boards. I’m attempting to edit it for cleanliness and ease of use.

In theory, this will work for anyone using the classed version as well, but I'm going to assume you start with my classless system. You also keep the XP system as-is, but instead of saving it to buy levels, which carry inherent increases in defenses, HP, and the opportunity for feats, talents, and other improvements, you get a bonus feat, talent, or class feature every Z XP; the default is around 5000xp, but someone in the mood for a faster-gaining gameplay might set it as low as 1000xp; I wouldn't suggest going much over 5000xp, because that will lead to a seriously slow game. A happy medium might be 2000xp or so, but experiment with it. Some ambitious soul might want to assign varying values to different feats, talents, and other such things, but that's beyond my patience; they are generally equal in value in SAGA, and so can remain equal in value in H1.

There are some very OBVIOUS problems with this, and it goes back to the source of almost all SAGA problems: The Use the Force skill. If you leave it a skill, force-users simply walk all over the game, and it gets even worse when you stick everyone at level 1 defenses (plus whatever they get from feats). The simplest solution to this is to make it so Use the Force is not a skill... it is instead treated similarly to a weapon, wielded with Charisma. Someone with the Force Sensitivity feat is counted as proficient in that weapon, and may use it as outlined in the skills section as if trained in the skill. Someone without the Force Sensitivity feat may spend a force point to use the "Search Your Feelings" or "Sense Surroundings" uses of the skill (representing a momentary connection to the force). A new feat exists, "Force Focus", which gives you a +1 to Force checks; Greater Force Focus, to give another +1 isn't out of line, either.

Force points might be better addressed using my replacement rules, which give 2 blue "force points" per session, and 1 red "dark side point", with Force Boon giving you an additional point per session. If you don't like those rules, it will greatly hurt my feelings, but you might consider having Force Points refill every time a new feat/feature/talent is gained.

Some other things need to be addressed as well, but they're relatively minor. Toughness is changed from +1HP/Level to a flat +4 HP... about 1/6 the average person's 24 HP. Many feats have a Base Attack Bonus requirement; that's obviously eliminated, and I'm not seeing too many feats in the base book that are broken by that. I would also add some new feats; Ability Training and Ability Advancement from E6, for example, and I don't think Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, and Iron Will from the d20 SRD would be terribly unbalancing, especially if you allow Greater Weapon Focus to help counterbalance them. Most things that refresh with level (such as Force Points done not-my-way, or money from the Wealth Noble talent should be moved to a "when you get a feat" time scale. If they reference the character's level, instead use number of talents in a given tree, or number of bonus feats, whichever makes more sense.

In combat, it’s important to reexamine the Armor tree; armor becomes a lot more valuable when you don’t have a level-based bonus to defense for it to replace, and the mechanics of Armored Defense and Improved Armored defense become irrelevant. I would suggest making it so Armored Defense gives you a +1 to Reflex (above what is granted by the armor), Second skin gives you a +1 to Fortitude (again, above what is granted by the armor), and Improved Armored Defense gives you a +1 to Reflex for every trait you have in the Armor tree (replacing the bonus from Armored Defense).

The main balancing feature here is prerequisites, combined with a bit of opportunity cost. While BAB and level prereqs are obviously gone, other prereqs, such as specific feats or class features, are not. It should also be noted that monsters become a LOT nastier in this system... a 138 HP Rancor is nothing to sneeze at in base SAGA; in H1, it's going to eat you for lunch unless you can crush it with an pneumatic door.

Coalition Psychics

The Coalition States of Rifts Earth has in place a program by which they register and monitor psychics within their territory. While the CS is a Nazi-themed, human supremacist nation with ambitions towards genocide, this fairly reasonable step hasn't been explicitly taken by other nations. But something occurred to me in considering this... while it will let the CS adequately track "mutants" who have psychic powers, it can also serve as a registry of those who may give useful psychic information... be it those who can be conscripted for specific tasks, or hints of what is to come.

CS: Civil Society

An indeterminate number of years ago... not as much as ten, but more than four (based on the age of the notebook)... I wrote a lot of notes about the civilian society of Rifts Coalition States. While we know a lot about their military machine, life as a civilian is not well described. So, I wrote a lot of notes, with the idea of writing a longer article, or even a book. Since I'm not planning on doing much more with Rifts, I thought I'd share what I have.

This is very rough; it's simply outline notes for work I was going to do later. Perhaps I'll expand it, one day.

D6 and the Blaster-Proof Wookie [d6 Star Wars]

So, D6, the WEG system used to run their excellent Star Wars game, and later exported to a generic D6 system (the latter is available through Drivethru RPG, but they're down for maintenance as I write this, confound it) had a problem: damage and damage resistance.

In the 1e version of the game, any hit resulted in a stun, no matter how insignificant the hit. If you got stunned, you got knocked prone, and unable to act for the rest of the round. You could easily stun-lock the rancor with a weak weapon, just standing out of it's range and plinking it every time it tried to stand up.

In the 2e version of the game, you ran into another problem: The Blaster-Proof Wookie. Every time you were hit, you rolled your Strength to reduce the damage. If you rolled higher than the damage, you had no effect. This wasn't too bad, until you got to wookies, who could have a 6D Strength.... while the average blaster did 4D. Chances are, your wookie wasn't taking any damage at all.

Now, the generic D6 version introduced a new rule. Instead of basing your hand to hand weapon damage on your raw Strength, it was based on half your strength, or half your Lifting skill (which was based on Strength). The default rules are that you removed the pips (so 3D+2 was considered just 3D), cut the number of dice in half and rounded up (so 3D+2 Lifting became 2D melee damage). Personally, I tend to count the pips and divide by 2, with a full die counting as a pip itself (so the aforementioned 3D+2 would be 11 pips... 1D is 3 pips, 2D is 6, 3D is 9, plus 2), and that works out to 5 pips in DR, or 1D+2; it makes every increase potentially meaningful.

Somehow, I also reached the conclusion that this applied to damage reduction as well, but through the Stamina skill, not Lifting. I cannot, for the life of me, find where this might be, and suspect it might be a house rule that we cooked up. But it neatly deals with the problem of the Blaster-Proof Wookie.

A Wookie with 6D Strength and no improvement in Stamina has a 3D damage resistance roll. Still sizable, and he's likely to resist most of a 4D blaster shot... but he's also wise to take cover. If he ups his Stamina to 8D,  he's likely to resist all of the 4D blaster (4D v. 4D), but he's still likely to want to take cover, just to be sure.

Now, you may be trying to tie this back to my just-posted rules for improving skills in D6 through use. Which you should. But, using Stamina (or Lifting, for melee damage) in this way is unlikely to increase your skill, because of the very high thresholds involved; you still base your threshold off the base skill, not the reduced skill. So the average human, with a 2D Stamina, has 1D Damage Resistance, but getting XP for Stamina requires passing a 10 Difficulty check... between the Wild Die, character points, and Force/Fate points, it's certainly POSSIBLE to hit a 10 Difficulty with 1D... but it's going to be rare, and you might be better off just spending the CP necessary to flat out improve your Stamina when you get a chance.

Use-based Improvement [d6]

So, an argument on Dragonsfoot lead to me spending some time on my Star Wars and D6 Space books this week, and then another discussion on Giant in the Playground lead to me working out a system for auto-improving skills in D6... skills that, like skills in the Elder Scrolls games, automatically increase as you use them more.

Set a threshold, and any difficulties above that threshold are added together, and once you achieve a certain amount of "XP" in a given skill, then it goes up by a pip, and then you start your XP over. Using WEG's D6, I might go with something like

Skill/Threshold/XP
1D/5/20
2D/10/40
3D/15/60
4D/20/80
...usw

So it would work out that 4 very hard checks (average of 5 or better on your D6s) would improve you by 1 pip. It would take 12 such checks to improve you by a die (4D->4D+1->4D+2->5D). You could achieve it faster by doing harder things, but those things would be VERY hard for someone of your skill. You don't get any XP for doing easy things repeatedly, and this only applies to skills, not the attributes themselves.

Now, this would mean you reduce the awarding of Character Points (since mundane advancement is taken care of), but it also means that they and Fate/Force points play into advancing skills and abilities, since adding a +1, a die, or doubling the dice on important and difficult rolls makes it more likely that you'll succeed, and thus gain XP in that ability. You can also include them as a "training system"... so the pip-increases from use happen automatically, but if you want to improve your blaster skill and haven't been taking enough really hard shots (once you hit 5D in blaster, you either have to be facing an excellent dodger, a jedi who is trying to deflect your shots, or making extreme long range shots through cover), you spend CP like normal.

Now, this is going to run into problems with attributes and force skills. I tend to treat Force "skills" as being more akin to attributes, with force "powers" being treated like skills... if you have a 3D Control and learn a Control power, you have that power at 3D, and can improve it independently of your Control Skill. As such, I'd lump Force Skills and Attributes into the same category as only being able to improve through active training... pretty much any time you're using an attribute, you're actually using a skill under that attribute.

Savage Lance

So, a bit of a wrist-off that I did in early 2014, just defining some ground rules for using Savage Worlds with the Dragonlance Setting. Someone had honestly been posting a message every six months for three years, asking if someone was going to get back to them on some conversions they'd done.

I took an hour and wrote a bit down, covering some of the more unique races and the three Orders of Magic:

Minotaur:
+3 Begin with d8 in Strength; can increase to d12+4 through Edges
+2 Size +1 (Includes a +1 to Toughness)
-1 -2 to Charisma
-2 Major Personality Hindrance; Arrogant, Bloodthirsty, Code of Honor, or Vengeful

Kender
-2 Curious Hindrance
-1 Small (compared to humans)
-1 Pace 5
+2 Brave (no Spirit requirement)
+2 Fortunate (extra benny; may combine with luck and Great Luck)
+1 Free d6 Taunt
+1 Free d6 Stealth

Gully Dwarf
-3 Smarts can never go above d6
-1 Pace 5
-1 Outsider
+1 +4 to resist disease
+1 +4 to resist poison
+1 Low light vision
+2 Free d6 in Vigor
+1 Free d6 Survival

Gnome
-1 Pace 5
-1 Small (size -1)
+2 McGyver Edge
+1 Free d6 Repair
+1 Low Light Vision

Magic in Dragonlance

Spells allowed by order:

White Robes
All except: Greater Healing, Healing, Succor, Zombie, Disguise

Red Robes
All except: Greater Healing, Healing, Succor, Zombie, Slumber

Black Robes
All except: Greater Healing, Healing, Succor, Disguise, Slumber

Three Ranger Limit

For those not familiar with 1st edition AD&D, there was a rule that you could only have 3 rangers in one party. There's not a big reason given for this, and so the whys of it aren't exactly clear, but since three rangers can do some fairly hefty damage to an army of humanoids or giants (adding their level to damage with each attack), it may be a balance issue. Since rangers have high ability score requirements, they are kinda rare, so it's hard to reach the "Three Ranger Limit". However, it also sounds like the name of a card game. Thus, from Deeper Pulleditoutofmyassistan, I bring you the game "Three Ranger Limit".