5th Edition Ruleset
Aquadrizzt
Member Posts: 1,069
A while back, I acquired copies of the 5th Edition rulebooks and immediately wondered how much of the system could be translated into the Infinity Engine. I've been passively experimenting with various implementations of features from 5th Edition, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how much of the system can be approximated (if not fully implemented) within the Enhanced Infinity Engine.
A brief overview of the important mechanics is provided below:
Advantage and Disadvantage
One of the biggest systems in 5th Edition is the concept of advantage and disadvantage. For those unfamiliar, whenever you make a check that has factors in your favor (granting "advantage"), you roll two dice and take the higher number; conversely, if you make a check in unfavorable conditions (imposing "disadvantage"), you roll two dice and take the lower number. If you have both advantage and disadvantage, they cancel each other out and you simply roll a single die. After this, you add whatever numerical modifiers you may have to the roll, and that produces the final result.
As the engine does not (and likely will never) support this "roll 2 dice, take higher/lower" functionality, I instead looked at probability and examined the average increase or decrease that advantage or disadvantage caused. Advantage, on average, is about the same as adding +3.2 to your roll, and disadvantage is about the same as applying a -3.2 penalty to your roll.
Within the context of this mod, I have made advantage count as a non-stacking +4 bonus to a given d20 roll, and disadvantage counts as a non-stacking -4 penalty on the given d20 roll. As rogue skills function on a percentile basis, advantage and disadvantage give a +20% or -20% bonus, respectively.
(From an internal mechanics standpoint, all player controlled characters, summoned monsters, and enemy NPCs that can see a player character have an effect that applies appropriate advantage/disadvantage bonuses once per second.)
Resistance, Vulnerability, and Immunity
Much like its approach to situational modifiers to checks, 5th Edition also simplified how damage type resistances behaved. For each damage type, a character can either be immune (meaning they don't take any damage), resistant (half-damage), vulnerable (double damage), or none of the above (normal damage). Immunity negates vulnerability, and resistance and vulnerability cancel each other out.
Bounded Accuracy
Another significant change that 5th Edition uses is that there is a much tighter restriction on numerical bonuses to rolls. Characters may add an amount to rolls on which they are "proficient" that typically varies between +2 and +6, plus whatever the appropriate ability modifier is (which is capped at +5 except in certain circumstances). Thus, a fighter with 16 Strength at 1st level has an attack bonus of +5, while a 20th level fighter with 20 Strength has a +11 bonus, for a total change of +6 across 20 levels of experience. Conversely, in 2nd Edition, a 1st level fighter with 16 Strength has a +0 bonus to hit, while a 20th level fighter with 20 strength has a +22 bonus to the same roll (and this is before you count magic items and specialization bonuses and a host of other benefits.)
This allows content that is not exactly at the characters' level to not be annoyingly trivial or impossibly difficult, and offers a decent amount of consistency with difficulty checks (e.g. a DC 20 roll is nearly impossible for someone untrained, but a max level character trained in that will still only succeed about 50% of the time).
Reduced Magic
Tying into bounded accuracy, 5th Edition tries quite hard to bring non-magical characters up to par with their spell-slinging counterparts. The main way it does that is simply reducing how absurdly well casters scale into upper levels, mainly by requiring them to expend higher level spell slots to make their spells more powerful. Magic Missile, cast as a 1st level spell, will always make 3 missiles, regardless of your caster level; if you want more unblockable magic damage, you need to spend a higher level spell slot (e.g. a 3rd level Magic Missiles would have 5 missiles). Spellcasters also receive much fewer high level spell slots (e.g. at maximum level, a full caster such as a Sorcerer will have a single 9th level spell slot).
The other side of this reduction in magic potential is that magic items are both rarer and less powerful. Weapon enchantment bonuses cap out at +3 (even for artifacts like the Holy Avenger). The Hammer of Thunderbolts is a +1 weapon in 5th Edition. That is the kind of low magic campaign we're talking about.
Spellcasting Progressions
Oh and while we're on the subject of magic, spellcasters all behave like Sorcerers now. Memorization-based spellcasters (such as the Wizard) still choose a subset of spells from either the spells they know or their spell list (although they can swap which spells they are considered to have memorized each day), and spontaneous spellcasters simply have access to all spells they know. The flip side of this is that you can use your higher level spell slots to cast spells you have prepared for lower levels.
____
Yes, yes Aqua, this is all great, so what have you actually implemented?
Well, a lot of stuff.
I have racial bonuses, as listed here:
Racial Bonuses
Human: +1 to all ability scores
Half-Elf: +2 Charisma, +1 to two other ability scores, advantage against charm effects, immunity to magical sleep effects, +1 bonus to movement speed, infravision
Elf: +2 Dexterity, +1 Intelligence, advantage on Perception checks, proficiency with light blades and bows, advantage against charm effects, immunity to magical sleep effects, +1 bonus to movement speed, infravision
Dwarf: +2 Constitution, +1 Wisdom, advantage against poison effects, resistance to poison damage, proficiency with axes and blunt weapons, +1 hit point per level, -1 penalty to movement speed, infravision
Gnome: +2 Intelligence, +1 Constitution, +2 bonus to speed factor, advantage against magic, +1 lore per level, -1 movement speed, disadvantage with heavy weapons, infravision
Halfling: +2 Dexterity, +1 Charisma, +2 bonus to speed factor, +1 luck bonus, advantage against fear effects, advantage on Stealth checks, -1 movement speed, disadvantage with heavy weapons
Half-Orc: +2 Strength, +1 to two other ability scores, proficiency with heavy blades and spiked weapons, critical hits deal an additional die of damage, infravision
I have a mostly functional advantage/disadvantage system implemented that can be accessed through setting various splstates.
I have a revamped weapon proficiency system that groups weapons into 10 martial weapon classes. This system also allows spellcasters to get bonuses to their makes spell attacks (such as Shocking Grasp). Furthermore, this system leaves about a dozen open proficiency slots that could be used to introduce new weapons or weapon groups.
I have a couple classes and kits from PnP 5th edition converted to 2nd Edition, as listed here:
Fighter
Hit Die: d10
Armor: Any
Shields: Any
Weapons: Any
Saving Throws: Strength and Constitution
Kits: Champion, Eldritch Knight
Fighting Style: Pick one of several fighting styles, gaining benefits such as +1 AC, a bonus to damage with ranged weapons, or bonuses from various modified weapon styles.
Second Wind: Once per day, regain hit points equal to d10 + your level.
Action Surge: Once per day at 2nd level, you may act for an additional round while others remain frozen in time. An additional use is gained at 17th level.
Extra Attack: At 5th level, you may make two weapon attacks per round. This improves to three attacks at 11th level, and four attacks at 20th level.
Indomitable: Once per day at 9th level, gain advantage on all saving throws for 1 round. Additional uses are gained at 13th and 17th levels.
Champion [Kit]
Improved Critical Chance: At 3rd level, gain a +5% bonus to critical hit chance. This improves to +10% at 15th level.
Remarkable Athlete: At 7th level, you may add half your Strength modifier to your movement speed.
Additional Fighting Style: At 10th level, you may select a second Fighting Style.
Survivor: At 18th level, you regain hit points equal to 5 + your Constitution modifier each round while you have less than half of your hit points left.
Eldritch Knight [Kit]
Arcane Spellcasting: At 3rd level, you are able to cast a small amount of Abjuration and Evocation spells, as well as several Wizard cantrips of your choice. Your spellcasting improves as your Fighter level increases.
War Magic: At 7th level, whenever you use a cantrip, you gain +1 Attack per Round for 1 round.
Eldritch Strike: At 10th level, your successful attacks impose disadvantage against spells for 1 round to the target.
Arcane Charge: At 15th level, while you are using Action Surge, your movement speed is doubled.
Improved War Magic: At 18th level, whenever you cast a spell, you gain +1 Attack per Round for 1 round.
will add more soon...
Is this a mod that people would be interested in (or would like to assist with)? Are there features you would like to see? How do you feel about what I've shown above? Opinions? Comments? Criticism? Ideas?
See also the thread on gibberlings3, available here.
A brief overview of the important mechanics is provided below:
Advantage and Disadvantage
One of the biggest systems in 5th Edition is the concept of advantage and disadvantage. For those unfamiliar, whenever you make a check that has factors in your favor (granting "advantage"), you roll two dice and take the higher number; conversely, if you make a check in unfavorable conditions (imposing "disadvantage"), you roll two dice and take the lower number. If you have both advantage and disadvantage, they cancel each other out and you simply roll a single die. After this, you add whatever numerical modifiers you may have to the roll, and that produces the final result.
As the engine does not (and likely will never) support this "roll 2 dice, take higher/lower" functionality, I instead looked at probability and examined the average increase or decrease that advantage or disadvantage caused. Advantage, on average, is about the same as adding +3.2 to your roll, and disadvantage is about the same as applying a -3.2 penalty to your roll.
Within the context of this mod, I have made advantage count as a non-stacking +4 bonus to a given d20 roll, and disadvantage counts as a non-stacking -4 penalty on the given d20 roll. As rogue skills function on a percentile basis, advantage and disadvantage give a +20% or -20% bonus, respectively.
(From an internal mechanics standpoint, all player controlled characters, summoned monsters, and enemy NPCs that can see a player character have an effect that applies appropriate advantage/disadvantage bonuses once per second.)
Resistance, Vulnerability, and Immunity
Much like its approach to situational modifiers to checks, 5th Edition also simplified how damage type resistances behaved. For each damage type, a character can either be immune (meaning they don't take any damage), resistant (half-damage), vulnerable (double damage), or none of the above (normal damage). Immunity negates vulnerability, and resistance and vulnerability cancel each other out.
Bounded Accuracy
Another significant change that 5th Edition uses is that there is a much tighter restriction on numerical bonuses to rolls. Characters may add an amount to rolls on which they are "proficient" that typically varies between +2 and +6, plus whatever the appropriate ability modifier is (which is capped at +5 except in certain circumstances). Thus, a fighter with 16 Strength at 1st level has an attack bonus of +5, while a 20th level fighter with 20 Strength has a +11 bonus, for a total change of +6 across 20 levels of experience. Conversely, in 2nd Edition, a 1st level fighter with 16 Strength has a +0 bonus to hit, while a 20th level fighter with 20 strength has a +22 bonus to the same roll (and this is before you count magic items and specialization bonuses and a host of other benefits.)
This allows content that is not exactly at the characters' level to not be annoyingly trivial or impossibly difficult, and offers a decent amount of consistency with difficulty checks (e.g. a DC 20 roll is nearly impossible for someone untrained, but a max level character trained in that will still only succeed about 50% of the time).
Reduced Magic
Tying into bounded accuracy, 5th Edition tries quite hard to bring non-magical characters up to par with their spell-slinging counterparts. The main way it does that is simply reducing how absurdly well casters scale into upper levels, mainly by requiring them to expend higher level spell slots to make their spells more powerful. Magic Missile, cast as a 1st level spell, will always make 3 missiles, regardless of your caster level; if you want more unblockable magic damage, you need to spend a higher level spell slot (e.g. a 3rd level Magic Missiles would have 5 missiles). Spellcasters also receive much fewer high level spell slots (e.g. at maximum level, a full caster such as a Sorcerer will have a single 9th level spell slot).
The other side of this reduction in magic potential is that magic items are both rarer and less powerful. Weapon enchantment bonuses cap out at +3 (even for artifacts like the Holy Avenger). The Hammer of Thunderbolts is a +1 weapon in 5th Edition. That is the kind of low magic campaign we're talking about.
Spellcasting Progressions
Oh and while we're on the subject of magic, spellcasters all behave like Sorcerers now. Memorization-based spellcasters (such as the Wizard) still choose a subset of spells from either the spells they know or their spell list (although they can swap which spells they are considered to have memorized each day), and spontaneous spellcasters simply have access to all spells they know. The flip side of this is that you can use your higher level spell slots to cast spells you have prepared for lower levels.
____
Yes, yes Aqua, this is all great, so what have you actually implemented?
Well, a lot of stuff.
I have racial bonuses, as listed here:
Racial Bonuses
Human: +1 to all ability scores
Half-Elf: +2 Charisma, +1 to two other ability scores, advantage against charm effects, immunity to magical sleep effects, +1 bonus to movement speed, infravision
Elf: +2 Dexterity, +1 Intelligence, advantage on Perception checks, proficiency with light blades and bows, advantage against charm effects, immunity to magical sleep effects, +1 bonus to movement speed, infravision
Dwarf: +2 Constitution, +1 Wisdom, advantage against poison effects, resistance to poison damage, proficiency with axes and blunt weapons, +1 hit point per level, -1 penalty to movement speed, infravision
Gnome: +2 Intelligence, +1 Constitution, +2 bonus to speed factor, advantage against magic, +1 lore per level, -1 movement speed, disadvantage with heavy weapons, infravision
Halfling: +2 Dexterity, +1 Charisma, +2 bonus to speed factor, +1 luck bonus, advantage against fear effects, advantage on Stealth checks, -1 movement speed, disadvantage with heavy weapons
Half-Orc: +2 Strength, +1 to two other ability scores, proficiency with heavy blades and spiked weapons, critical hits deal an additional die of damage, infravision
I have a mostly functional advantage/disadvantage system implemented that can be accessed through setting various splstates.
I have a revamped weapon proficiency system that groups weapons into 10 martial weapon classes. This system also allows spellcasters to get bonuses to their makes spell attacks (such as Shocking Grasp). Furthermore, this system leaves about a dozen open proficiency slots that could be used to introduce new weapons or weapon groups.
I have a couple classes and kits from PnP 5th edition converted to 2nd Edition, as listed here:
Fighter
Hit Die: d10
Armor: Any
Shields: Any
Weapons: Any
Saving Throws: Strength and Constitution
Kits: Champion, Eldritch Knight
Fighting Style: Pick one of several fighting styles, gaining benefits such as +1 AC, a bonus to damage with ranged weapons, or bonuses from various modified weapon styles.
Second Wind: Once per day, regain hit points equal to d10 + your level.
Action Surge: Once per day at 2nd level, you may act for an additional round while others remain frozen in time. An additional use is gained at 17th level.
Extra Attack: At 5th level, you may make two weapon attacks per round. This improves to three attacks at 11th level, and four attacks at 20th level.
Indomitable: Once per day at 9th level, gain advantage on all saving throws for 1 round. Additional uses are gained at 13th and 17th levels.
Champion [Kit]
Improved Critical Chance: At 3rd level, gain a +5% bonus to critical hit chance. This improves to +10% at 15th level.
Remarkable Athlete: At 7th level, you may add half your Strength modifier to your movement speed.
Additional Fighting Style: At 10th level, you may select a second Fighting Style.
Survivor: At 18th level, you regain hit points equal to 5 + your Constitution modifier each round while you have less than half of your hit points left.
Eldritch Knight [Kit]
Arcane Spellcasting: At 3rd level, you are able to cast a small amount of Abjuration and Evocation spells, as well as several Wizard cantrips of your choice. Your spellcasting improves as your Fighter level increases.
War Magic: At 7th level, whenever you use a cantrip, you gain +1 Attack per Round for 1 round.
Eldritch Strike: At 10th level, your successful attacks impose disadvantage against spells for 1 round to the target.
Arcane Charge: At 15th level, while you are using Action Surge, your movement speed is doubled.
Improved War Magic: At 18th level, whenever you cast a spell, you gain +1 Attack per Round for 1 round.
will add more soon...
Is this a mod that people would be interested in (or would like to assist with)? Are there features you would like to see? How do you feel about what I've shown above? Opinions? Comments? Criticism? Ideas?
See also the thread on gibberlings3, available here.
Post edited by Aquadrizzt on
3
Comments
As you know, I like creating spells. What is the plan for cantrips? My next project after bringing in all iwd arcane spells into the bgees is to create a "zero level cantrip" thing for all casters so they can do their thing all day long. Unlike the first level cantrips component of tnb, regular spells will not be touched ( and if it ends up in tnb, it'll have to be either/or with that component).
Anyway, I've already started working on this and I'm already looking to 5e for some inspiration, so I'm happy to take on 5e cantrips--reusing some work I'm already doing, but modified as appropriate-- for this project, as well as create extra higher level spells.
Here's an update for what is currently implemented:
- An advantage/disadvantage system (non-stacking situational bonuses to all important checks)
- Extensive racial bonuses, with an easily extensible system for subraces.
- Better ability score bonuses
- An armor proficiency system with maximum Dexterity bonus enforcement.
- Finesse and Heavy weapons, with an easy path for using alternative ability scores for attack/damage bonuses
- Champion (Fighter) and Battleguard (Cleric) kits, with many other kits sketched out
- A handful of monsters with their 5e stats (Goblins and variants, Orcs and variants, Ogres, and Wolves)
- A Death Saving Throw system
To expand upon the last one, Death Saving Throws are one of 5E's ways of lowering the chance of character death. Whenever a character is reduced to 1 HP, they are knocked unconscious and make a Constitution saving throw once per round. If they have 3 successes before 3 fails, they stabilize; 3 fails before 3 successes results in actual death. Every time the character takes damage, they gain an additional failure (no save).
Basically, once a character has been downed, you have about 3 rounds to heal them or otherwise stabilize them before you have to go through the much more difficult/costly path of resurrecting them. I think this (and several of the other mechanics I've implemented) have potential to be adapted for normal mod setups (not just my own 5E-style system). I'd love to know if there is any interest in some of these components without the more wide-sweeping changes made by the rest of the mod.
Also, while I am quite happy to come up with creative ways to implement complex systems in the rather limited Infinity Engine, I really don't enjoy programming active abilities in any quantity. If you are a modder who does enjoy coding spells/abilities and wants to help with this project, please contact me via forum messages.
Right now i'm just trying to make a demo which would include everything up to your arrival in Kuldahar. (Levels 1-4 ish). So I only need 3 tiers of spells and 6 valid kits as a proof of concept.
The current "test party" plan is:
- Champion [Fighter]
- Battleguard [Cleric of War]
- Skald [Bard of Valor]
- Bladesinger [Wizard]
- Thief [Rogue]
Of these, the Champion kit is finished, the Battleguard kit is finished except for it's activated abilities (Turn/Destroy Undead is an absolute nightmare to implement in this engine due to how it scales), and the rest have their mechanics written out but not implemented. After the classes themselves are finished, then I need to turn to generating their cantrips and 1st and 2nd level spells (the demo only goes to 4th level for the sake of this argument).
Among these equipment state checks include proficiency checks, Finesse checks, and a live updating AC bonus that counteracts Dexterity bonus in excess of the armor's maximum (E.g. if you have 16 Dex (+3 mod) and are wearing medium armor, the effect will apply a -1 penalty to AC to bring you back down to where you "should" be.) Finesse works the same way by adding THAC0 for each difference in your Str/Dex modifiers.