Unearthed Arcana presents Scales of Balance: a post-hac tweak pack

[Endarire]

This system reminds me of 3.x and Pathfinder 1e in terms of greater customization.

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Endarire said:

This system reminds me of 3.x and Pathfinder 1e in terms of greater customization.

A bit of a melange. The basic idea of spending proficiency points on combat skills that are not simply weapons proficiencies comes straight out of For Gold and Glory, the recent reboot/restatement of the 2E ruleset. (Which you can download for free!)

But yeah the Gold and Glory combat skills system is a bit limited in what you can spend points on, so I have folded in a bunch of 3E-style feats. The basic aim is the same as for the Might & Guile feat system, which is: spellcasters can do all sorts of supernatural things and can adapt their memorized spells each day; let's make non-casters more interesting by giving players the opportunity to make more decisions about how to shape their growth.

[subtledoctor]

Well this is just about fully baked! Lots of good stuff here, unifying the proficiency system and the feats system. And a bunch of other stuff was improved in the course of making this:

- The special-purpose macro to allow the choice of proficiencies by dialogue used in NPC_EE has been expanded into a general-purpose tool: it can be used by NPC_EE to grant missing 1st-level proficiencies, or zero out all proficiencies and let you choose them all anew, regardless of your level (how it is used for joinable NPCs here), or make single-duty one-off abilities to improve just one proficiency (now used to choose a MnG Bladesinger's 'weapon of focus').

- The 'semi-spontaneous' suite of functions has a new addition, which allows the creation of groups of innate abilities that can be used like a sorcerer's spells. Here, it allows thieves to learn up to seven illusion spells and cast them like a sorcerer. But the function is portable, so if someone wanted to, say, give monks a set of abilities in a 'Ki Pool' governed by Ki points? Just set a few variables, run the function, and it will spit out your Ki Pool.

Just adding a bit of polish and running some last tests, but this should be ready soon. If anyone is feeling brave and wants to kick the tires, let me know.  I can upload a pre-release version soon.  There are a few compatibility issues - I'll need to update and test Might & Guile and NPC_EE as well (to make use of the above improved functions). I want to push them all out at the same time so players can stay in sync.

Edited October 6, 2022 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

Screenshots!

Feats I mean combat skills seamlessly part of the proficiency menus:

Spoiler

For these pics I created a kitless fighter/thief at the beginning of SoA. He gets 8 proficiency points at level 1, plus one more at levels 2, 4, and 6. For 11 total. Proficiencies are organized:

• At the top are the 15 basic weapon proficiencies
• Then the six improvable combat skills (Attack Speed, Dodge, Backstab, Set Snares, Ranged Accuracy, Hurled Weapons)
• Then the four weapon styles
• Then the four groups of skills obtainable by dialogue

Each point spent on the dialogue skills gives you an innate abilitie: blue for combat postures, green for physical fitness, gray for miscellaneous, and purple for magic.

Spoiler

Final result after choosing  various abilities:

Spoiler

After the DUHM Bhaal power you can see I have learned Reflected Image, Blur, and Luck,  and I have three spell points shared among them. Next are the 'Smoke Bomb' and 'Grease Jar' abilities, and the 'Flaming Weapon' ability, followed by the Quickstride toggleable speed boost. Finally the 'Fighting Dirty' and 'Spell Evasion' postures, of which only one can be used at a time.

(Most of the skills are actually passive bonuses with no outward manifestation - like the DEX bonus in the last picture. I just choose a lot of granted innate abilities here for demonstration purposes.)

Edited October 7, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Endarire]

What's this about 'grappling' and 'flaming weapon?'

[subtledoctor]

13 hours ago, Endarire said:

What's this about 'grappling' and 'flaming weapon?'

They are skills you can learn. Grappling is a 'posture' - instead of taking a defensive parrying stance, you can lean in and continually try to disadvantage your opponents with your off-hand between  weapon attacks. Once per round, the nearest enemy attacking you will have to save vs. breath; if they fail the save they are grappled. Both your and their movement rate is set to zero for three seconds, and the opponent is Slowed (half APR, half movement, slower spellcasting, 4-point penalty to to thac0 and AC) for six seconds.

(Pro tip:  get your fighter to the enemies' back row and try to grapple their mage! Stoneskin/PfMW don't stop them from being manhandled!)

Flaming Weapon is the ability to, once per day, gather ingredients to coat the surface of a weapon with viscous oil or tar. You can set it alight and do an extra 1d4 fire damage with all melee attacks, until the flame goes out after two turns.

Beware: enemies may use these abilities against you!

Edited October 7, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Chitown Willie]

omg - can't wait to try this out on my next run.

Thank you Subtledoctor!

[subtledoctor]

This is one of those things where, in the course of making it I had to update a bunch of functions and  stuff (some of which described above), and then those updates filter out to different components of the mod, and even to different mods.

For example, the Revised Ability Score Bonuses component give bonus proficiency points for high INT scores as you level up, and it operates via a dialogue. This dialogue was static and different from the proficiency dialogues in e.g. NPC_EE and Might & Guile. And it only worked with the vanilla weapon proficiencies. Now this dialogue it unified with those other mods, and with the new Combat Skills system, and it works with any proficiencies (including other proficiency systems like those in CDTweaks or  Morpheus & Grammarsalad's 'Skills and Abilities').

But, all this work in other components, as part of finishing this one new component, means  that there is a lot more testing to do than usual. Which is the only reason I haven't put this up for download yet. Soon, though...

[Endarire]

You can't see my grinning from across the Internet and from behind my facial covering, but it's there.  That's up, doc!

[southfla79]

Suggestion on naming - Thrown Weapons instead of Hurled Weapons. Hurled Weapons just looks funny to the eye.

[morpheus562]

Yeeting Things

[subtledoctor]

Was gonna call it “Hurling” but…

[Quester]

This all sounds very spiffy. May have to try it out on the next run.

[subtledoctor]

Sigh. Everything has been working wonderfully in testing, except a late-appearing bug that has major consequences, and I simply cannot figure out and seems to be something hard-coded in the engine?

Which means I need to make serious changes , shuffling some things around and probably removing one of the proficiencies...

On 10/7/2022 at 9:44 PM, morpheus562 said:

Yeeting Things

I think this is the first one on the chopping block.  It was always a bit underwhelming... even though I think it made for a really nice little bonus for halflings and provided a bit of balancing for berserkers/kensai/cavaliers. But it's either remove one, or combine more weapons. I think removing the Yeeting Things proficiency is the least-bad option at this point...

So back to do more work on this, and then more testing.

Edited October 9, 2022 by subtledoctor

[morpheus562]

That's like the best one