d20 Modern Thoughts

Okay, I haven't posted for ages; it's just easier from the university, and a pain from the house. Still, best to get used to the new status quo...

For the past few weeks, I've been running "The Singularity Campaign", a d20 Mecha game based on the "Mecha Crusade" mini-game from Dungeon Magazine, and the d20 Modern game. And, having experienced d20 Modern in actual play, I have a few thoughts. (I also have a few thoughts on Star Wars starship combat, d20 combat in general, and a few other things, but these will wait for a later post.)

Ability Scores

When creating a D&D combat character, three attributes are vital: Strength, Dexterity and Constitution. It is possible to build a useful character without one of these being high, but you really need at least two to be good, and the third to be no worse than average. It is also true to say that Strength is probably the most necessary of the three, since it affects most of your attack and damage rolls.

In d20 Modern, Dexterity is the king of the attributes. It affects both the majority of attack rolls AND your ability to defend yourself. In fact, unless your GM can be bothered tracking encumberance, you can probably manage with even a below-average Strength score.

Worse still, Dexterity also affects Reflex saves, which seem to be the most common sort of save in d20 Modern. Grenades and autofire both allow Reflex saves to reduce or avoid the damage, and these are very common forms of attack.

Evasion

(This point applies equally to D&D)

Speaking of reflex saves, it occurs to me that the Evasion talent available to Fast Heroes is rather too good. Allowing a character to avoid all greande damage on a successful save (and on their best save, too, AND the save tied to their dominant ability score) is a little too good. To compensate, the GM is forced to bump up the DCs on these saves, which is a problem for the rest of the group.

When considering balance, there are two questions that should be asked of powers: "Is this so good that everyone will want it?" and "Is this so weak that no-one will be interested?" In my opinion, evasion fails the first of these. The fact that, out of the current group, five of the six PCs have levels in Fast Hero and the Evasion talent would appear to indicate that my players agree with me. (I should mention, however, that I created Andy's character for him, so it really should be four out of five.)

To better balance the power, may I suggest the following:

Evasion

If the Fast hero is exposed to any effect that normally allows a character to attempt a Reflex saving throw for half damage (such as getting caught in a grenade blast), the Fast hero reduces the damage taken by one quarter, regardless of the result. That is, the Fast Hero suffers one quarter of the normal damage on a successful save, or three quarters if the save is failed.

Example: A Fast hero is caught in a grenade blast that does 60 hit points of damage. The character suffers only 15 hit points of damage if the saving throw is successful, or 45 hit points of damage if the save is failed.

Classes

I really don't like the class-based nature of d20 Modern. In my opinion, it should be modified to use a point-based system, similar to that seen in Mutants and Masterminds. This would allow a much wider range of possible characters.

The main advantage of the class system is that it allows the quick construction of iconic character types. However, whereas "the powerful wizard" and "the holy paladin" both mean something, "the fast hero" does not. Therefore, it's as well simply to ditch this system.

Autofire

In general, I like how autofire works (I didn't like it at first, but it's grown on me). However, the DC to avoid it is too easy. I recommend increasing the DC to at least 25, but doubling the effects of cover in making this save (or just in general, actually). This argument was brought on by the sight of Kurge mechs dodging autofire in a region where they had absolutely no cover at all. This was not on occasional occurance, either - they needed a 10 or better on d20 to do so - and these were only 5th level characters!