[Dthclaw]

Heh. I have no idea how I would go about doing that, but that could prove interesting.

On that note, I've written up a basic listing of the Maji abilities thus far with some alpha-concrete numbers.

(Don't mind the lone letter 'a' at the end - it's there as a placeholder for the format as-is)

Attached File(s)

•  maji_abilities_v0.1.pdf (70.78K)
  Number of downloads: 2

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Interesting stuff, but what do you consider an extreme success or extreme failure? And why do I need a book to tell me what to do when someone royally screws up?

[Dthclaw]

Extreme success will be beating the DC by 10 or more, while extreme failure will be missing the DC by 10 or more.

Listing the results of such checks is there for the people who, like me, are too lazy to come up with spectacular results on the fly You can use and ignore them as you will, but they're going to be there.

[Dthclaw]

All right, I've let this topic sit still for too long...

I think I've come up with a decent mechanic for both allowing the proposed use of ability scores to function and keeping durability in line with the large damage values compared to D&D...

Keep the direct add of Strength to melee and ranged damage rolls. (Agility will affect melee attack rolls, Perception will factor into ranged attack... composite weapons won't be necessary for adding Str to ranged damage, generally)

Keep the direct add of Constitution to hp.

However, when one rolls for hp, roll two dice of the purchased size. Level and HD are used as different functions - HD will only be used for determining hit points, while level will be used for everything else (note - this means level adjustments don't hurt as much, because effectively there won't be level adjustments... every creature has a level, which is identical in use regardless of status as PC or NPC... CR/LA/ECL is out and replaced with special levels).

Anyway, effectively, characters will have a comparable durability to D&D characters. They take more damage per hit, certainly, but they've also got comparably larger quantities of hp.

Ex: Multiverse Warrior L1 has 15 Str and a weapon that deals 1d10 damage. This means that, per swing, the Warrior deals between 16-25 damage. A L1 character that has purchased d6 HD with 10 Con has 22 hp. The character will go down in one or two swings.

Conversely, a D&D Fighter L1 has 15 Str and a weapon that deals 1d10 damage. This means that, per swing, the Fighter deals between 3-12 damage. A L1 Rogue or Bard with 10 Con has 6 hp. The character will go down in one or two swings.

Extrapolating further, the Warrior gets to L10 where they have 20 Str and still using the 1d10 weapon (probably with a +3 bonus by now), dealing between 24-33 damage. A L10 character with nothing but d6 HD and 10 Con has (on average) about 190 hp. The character will go down in 6-8 hits.

The D&D fighter at L10 with 20 Str and still using a 1d10+3 weapon is dealing somewhere around 9-18 damage. A L10 character with nothing but d6 HD and 10 Con has (on average) about 47 hp. The character goes down in 3-6 hits.

So, Multiverse characters basically get somewhat tougher over time compared to their D&D counterparts (note that this example didn't take into account abilities gained by classes, bonus damage from spells, equipment, etc - Multiverse Warriors have greatly upped damage potential when factoring in class abilities). However, the one-round combat is pretty much going to be gone, so it's not necessarily a bad thing...