Friday, June 22, 2012

Fixing the Elf: The Alfar

Somewhere in my list of projects if a heavily/horribly tweaked D&D set of rules.  I dump classes that aren't really needed (Paladin, Assassin) and make it a little weirder and darker like my Uod setting.  The core stuff is there - dwarfs, spell-castings, hit points, levels, AC, etc, but I drop any idea of meeting expectations of players used to AD&D or BECMI.

So here's my bullet point notes on the Alfar rules, my replacements for Elves.  Once I finalize things, I'll post a pdf.

Alfar

  • -1 to Constitution (NO bonus to dexterity)
  • Ephemeral: Alfar can not be Raised from Dead or Resurrected through any spell or item short of divine intervention.
  • Immune to Charm, MORE susceptible to Sleep (not sure how to work that yet)
  • Natural Archers: Characters proficient with a long or short bow, alfar characters gain a bonus of + 1 on their die rolls "to hit" with those weapons.
  • Infravision 60'
  • Taller - 5'6" to 6'6"
  • Crazy eye and hair colors.
  • Secret Doors: double chances of finding, but only when searching.

You'll see I've dropped the dexterity bonus, which I think is a big attraction for a lot of players.  With these rules, I'd feel better about dropping Racial Level Limits, which are a bad solution to a legitimate issue.

I'm also thinking about replacing ability score bonuses with a free "swap", in the event you're rolling ability scores in order.  In this case, Elves would be able to swap any rolled ability score with Dexterity.

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