• All attacks are 1d20+your level+proficiency if you have it+miscellaneous bonuses; everyone's defenses are reduced by 4 to reflect the fact that you don't add your ability modifier to this stuff anymore; ability score bonuses, stat increases by level, the usual half-level bonuses, Weaplement Expertise, and the magic weapon treadmill all vanish like farts in the wind.
  
• Damage bonuses and anything that would depend on your secondary attributes are all now just [3+something that vaguely reflects the rate at which your secondary attributes are normally expected to scale]. This rule will require me to reduce monster HP by a little, and by more at high levels, because damage bonuses normally scale faster than your secondary attributes do; at some point I'll go do the math and figure out how much and what that scaling factor actually is.
  
• Feats that used to require certain ability scores now don't require poo poo.
  
• Classes/builds that would have had a higher-than-normal initiative because of their Dex now just get that as a class feature.
  
• Same thing with your defenses. If your build would have had high ones, you get high ones. If not, you don't. At some point I'll go look at the math and figure out how fast they should scale for each build given their usual attributes and just give people that scaling factor as a class feature.
  
• Ditto hit points.
  
• Apropos of nothing, do I really need to keep the thing where, like, some powers have unlockable build-specific riders that make them pretty good if you're part of that build and kind of lovely if you're not? I really want to rewrite poo poo to just have those riders as ordinary parts of the power, so you don't have to be Fey Pact to unlock the good part of Nypacian Serpents or whatever, but I'm okay with reconsidering if y'all are of the opinion that those powers are usually good even without the riders, or that making them available to anybody would unlock some vast array of cataclysmic charop combos to ruin the balance of everything forever.
  

• I'm gonna cut like two thousand feats.
  

• New skill: Muscle, which does what raw Strength checks used to do. Lifting. Pushing. Smashing. Throwing people. Whatever.
  
• Fold Athletics and the non-escape-artist bits of Acrobatics into one skill, tentatively named Parkour because why the hell not. There was always a big overlap between what I'd allow out of those two and I can't really think of any character concept where being good at one but bad at the other would actually matter, except for Acrobatics' escape artist bits.
  
• The escape artist bits of Acrobatics get folded into Thievery, which also retains all its usual capabilities.
  
• Rename Bluff to Deception, it's more syllables but it makes it clearer that you can use it for poo poo like disguises and forgery.
  
• Fold Diplomacy and Intimidate into one skill, tentatively named Charisma because that word's not taken anymore. These two are very close to being the exact same skill described two different ways and there's no real reason this game needs both of them. Roll Charisma and just tell me if you're being scary or inspirational or affable or whatever.
  
• Endurance is fine the way it is and I intend to make a point of giving people plenty of opportunities to show off with it, because I feel like it doesn't get enough play.
  
• Insight and Perception are fine the way they are.
  
• Stealth is fine the way it is.
  
• Arcana retains its ability to analyze, identify, and mess around with existing spells and magical effects. It can also be used to identify spellcasters. On the other hand, if you want to know about one of the monsters that used to be in Arcana's purview, you want a new skill called Spirit Lore. Or maybe I should call it just Spirits? I'll tentatively stick with "Spirit Lore" for now. Spirit Lore can also be used to do things like, say, identify and let you talk to the spirit of a river you need to cross (although you'd need to use other skills, or possibly your fists, to actually persuade that spirit to help you out). In addition, I see myself using a fair number of spirits to explain things that would usually be magical effects: random guy X isn't Dominated, he's possessed; there isn't a Corrupt Food spell on the larders, someone invoked a pestilence demon.
  
• I'm tempted to have a new skill -- Engineering? -- for making equipment, constructing poo poo, and analyzing equipment and buildings. Like, you want to look at a skeleton warrior's sword and see if it came from an ancestral tomb (and if so which one), or an armory somewhere (and if so which one)? Use this skill. You want to find secret doors, traps, points where the floor is falling apart? Use Perception or this skill. You want to pick a lock, or do that thing in Pirates of the Caribbean where the guy lifted the jail cell door out of place? Use Thievery or this skill. I dunno, is there too much overlap here?
  
• I feel like I should roll the underdark-survival bits of Dungeoneering into Nature (which keeps all its normal stuff besides), put the dungeon-analyzing parts into Engineering, and put the Far-Realm-creature parts into Spirit Lore. I mean, kind of like Dungeoneering as it is, but this plan feels more advisable somehow? I dunno.
  
• Does Heal even need to exist? I'm... really not sure either way. Maybe beef up the "I can tell undead creatures from living ones" part and give it, like, the ability to analyze creatures' overall health and anatomy and poo poo? Play up the fact that you've got to know your medicines to be a healer and give it some potionmaking abilities and some overlap with other skills re: identifying herbs and poisons and stuff? Hmm.
  
• I'm not really sure why, but I feel like Religion is... lacking? Not sure how to help it out, or if I should roll it into something else, or if I should steal some other skills' capabilities and put them here, or what.
  
• History has serious problems. What the heck do you get to know if you have this? No one loving knows, it's all up to the DM's whim. I don't know what I should do about this one but it really needs some kind of reform, or possibly to be removed from the list entirely.
  
• Streetwise is... ok as it is, I guess. I dunno. Hmm.
  

Iny fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Feb 10, 2015