Castles & Crusades: My First Crunchy Bits

There’s a really odd thing I had realized. The last time I ran a Dungeons & Dragons game or any of its kindred was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Sure, I’ve played each edition since then but I haven’t ran it. I’ve been running all sorts of other games but not D&D. The good thing about this is that it’s going to give me a chance to try somethings that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
I’ve had this crazy idea to generate ability scores for a long time and I think this is great system to test it with. I have no idea if anybody else has throw out anything like this but here it goes. It sort of combines the old school, take whatever you roll approach and the more modern player choice methods. I call the 6+d6+d6 method.
Step One: Each ability score is assigned a value of 6. The player rolls 6d6 and assigns each die’s value to the ability of his choosing.
Step Two: Choose Race and Class. Make any adjustments to ability scores.
Step Three: Roll 1d6 for each ability in order and add that to get you final ability score.
That’s it. A combination of choice and chance. Heck, you could have a fighter who is smarter than he is tough but still probably viable and fun to play.
The other idea I have is that content problem that 1st level characters are really fragile. I’m planning on topping out the campaign at 10th level so that means characters are going to progress rather slowly. So why not give them a little bit of a break. Hit Points for first level characters would be maximum roll on their Hit Die x 1.5 plus their Constitution Modifier. At best, this would give a character like a barbarian an extra 6 HP at first level. And remember there aren’t any feats so nobody even has the option to take Toughness. I think it will keep the danger level there but still give the PC’s a decent chance to survive a fight.
And lastly, the infamous 15 minute adventuring day. I hate it and pretty sure that everybody else does too. In Pathfinder, there’s the Channel Positive Energy trick. Plus healing spells are a little more potent in Pathfinder than they are in C&C, for example a Cure Light Spell just heals 1d8. That’s it. Plus if you look at the rules for C&C, healing can take a long time so that 15 minute adventuring day could turn into a 15 minute adventuring month. So I decided to throw in a Second Wind mechanic. After a combat scene, conscious characters get to take a Second Wind roll. So if you’re out, tough luck. If a character is at negative HP then tough luck too. Those are considered Wounds (That’ll make sense in a moment.) This is just recovering from shock, bandaging up minor wounds and stuff like that. Each character has a Second Wind Die, this basically on die step down from their Hit Die. (Remember I adjusted HD to Pathfinder). So a fighter’s SWD would be a d8. Roll a SWD per level. You get back that many HP for a Second Wind. Any left damage is consider to “Wounds” and needs to heal naturally or magically. It’s only a minor bit of extra book keeping for the players but it keeps them in the action longer and the characters may actually refer to the cleric as something besides Heal-Bot.
I know these things aren’t RAW but hell that’s fun of it. Doing those little things that a game special at your table.
So that’s it folks. My Week of Castles and Crusades. But that isn’t going to be it. I got plenty of more ideas and thoughts for Castles and Crusades and those will be showing up in the future.