Santa Vaca - Playtesting

What happens when you actually playtest your game designs? You find things you'd never expect.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• john wick
• game design
• dungeons and dragons
• d20
• santa vaca

[anonincognitus]

Somewhat appealing...sometimes making characters that completely break the mold of what their class is supposed to be is fun... half my 'thieves/rogues' claimed they were bards or fighters who wore plate and just really sucked at fighting. It seemed to add to the role-playing aspects. A feat based selection process may result in alot of min-maxing by people who start taking a "base package" with fewer variations bettween them.. In the hands of good players I think your methods would be fun.

[LordStrange]

@anonincognitus "In the hands of good players..."

Why play with bad ones?

[Antiks72]

WToC should hire you, John. Not that you would accept, but maybe you could save them.  :)

[LeMayJoseph]

So this makes it now possible to have that character who's just really good at using swords, but couldn't use a polearm any better than the next guy.

[LeMayJoseph]

John, I realize I'm late to the party here, but wouldn't a more functional idea be to simply ditch the nonproficiency penaly (-4, since under the Santa Vaca rules, it takes dice away, whereas proficiency means zero dice) and replace it with the Weapon Focus feat (so you get a +1 for your feat instead). BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!! By utilizing the Weapon Group Feats system (Stolen rightoff the SRD, all legal-like), you can increase the granularity of proficiency and the variance between characters.

[androsh]

The feat system sounds really cool! I wish I had played DnD like this.

LordStrange, do you think you can upload somewhere a written feat list for the system change you discussed in this video, so that I and other fans don't have to make one from scratch? Pretty please?

Also, you didn't mention Attack Bonus. Is that a feat too, raising your BAB?

[Kharesh]

Wizards/sorcerers suck because they can access the largest and most flexible pool of character abilities in the entire game?

[itsatrapitsalways]

@ivanmontserrat I was going to suggest the same thing, break the schools of magic down a bit into feats. Otherwise, while the statement is that wizards and sorcerers "suck" reality is, my wiard has extra feats to buff him up with. hell, i can get those bonus hp and some weapons skills. or, just start out casting fourth level spells.

[titsubo]

@azirk83 shut up you fat fuck...

[azirk83]

@LordStrange You still have that false dichotomy? You should get that looked at.

And yeah, I'm just giving you crap because you're giving him crap.