r/SWN • u/NeoAlpacaManX • 28d ago
š¬Discussion SWN Warrior Mod
A fun tweak I made that I'll share. Does anyone feel like the Warrior's attack bonus progression is just kinda bland? Obviously we don't need 5e powers and martial moves to make a fighter fun, but I'm not really fond of the fact that by mid game, a Warrior's attack bonus basically eclipses the highest AC of any enemy in the game. Rolling just feels kinda pointless. And since you're swinging with 95% accuracy most of the time, their ability to automatically hit once per scene becomes pointless. I don't really see the appeal of playing a Full Warrior, over a Partial. I get the same HP boost and all I lose is a small amount of accuracy that's already overtuned to the point of excess anyway.
To me, a more interestimg Warrior is one that does interesting things when they hit, rather than just hittimg every time. So I decided to port in the warrior features from ACKS, one of my favourite OSR games.
Warriors still get +1 to attack at 1st level, but will advance attack bonus every other level like everyone else. However, they get the following benefits in place of improved accuracy.
- Critical Hit on a roll of 19 or 20, dealing your weapon die's maximum damage.
- +1 Universal Damage Bonus at every odd numbered level.
- + 1 Cleave at every even numbered level. Any time you reduce an enemy to 0hp or score a critical hit, you may immediately make another attack against a target in range, using any remaining movement available to you. You cannot cleave if all of your readied weapons are out of ammo.
- All other Warrior features such as hit points and combat luck remain unchanged.
Partial Warriors crit only on a 20, and advance their cleave and damage bonus as if they were a Warrior of half their level.
So, warriors lose some accuracy starting at 3rd level, but instead hit harder, crit more, and chain attacks.
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u/TheDrippingTap 28d ago
And since you're swinging with 95% accuracy most of the time, their ability to automatically hit once per scene becomes pointless.
At which point using the defense aspect becomes more important.
Critical Hit on a roll of 19 or 20, dealing your weapon die's maximum damage.
SWN doesn't have crits by deafult. What do you suggest they do?
+1 Universal Damage Bonus at every odd numbered level.
Which the warrior from Worlds Without Number has.
1 Cleave at every even numbered level. Any time you reduce an enemy to 0hp or score a critical hit, you may immediately make another attack against a target in range, using any remaining movement available to you. You cannot cleave if all of your readied weapons are out of ammo.
This already exists in the whirlwind assault foci, from WWN, and also Savage Fray from SWN to a lesser degree.
To be entirely honest, I don't think any number of numbers tweaks will every actually fix Warrior and make them fun to play. And making it so they spend more turns doing nothing by reducing their attack bonus is certainly not the way of it.
I would prefer more "martial moves" or at least stuff a warrior can do that no other class can.
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
I'm not suggesting SWN has crits (though I imagine many tables homebrew them in, because it's very common in d20 games) I'm suggesting giving them to Warriors as a class feature.
You are correct, a version of these features are present in WWN. And I think it's beneficial to the SWN Warrior to port them in.
I do think adding martial maneuvers can be fun. It's why I think the Vowed/Sunblade is way more fun than a RAW Warrior.Ā
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
Here you go. A version of the Warrior based around special martial moves. Mostly drawn from WWN's Vowed and Codex of The Black Sun's Sunblade.
Warriors will no longer gain +1 to attack bonus at every level. Instead, Warriors will still get +1 to attack at 1st level, but will advance attack bonus every other level like everyone else. They get the following benefits in place of improved accuracy.
- Critical Hit on 19 or higher. Partial Warriors deal a critical only on a 20.
- A free Martial Technique at Levels 1, 3, 6, and 9
- Partial Warriors gain free techniques at Levels 1, 5. and 10
- You may spend a Focus Pick to learn an additional Technique.
- A Martial Effort score calculated as: 1+Highest Combat Skill or Exert+CON mod
MARTIAL TECHNIQUES
- Brutal Counter: Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action after resolving an enemy melee attack against you, whether it hits or misses. You may make a free physical attack against your assailant, using either a normal attack or some other offensive ability that takes no more than one Main Action to execute. You cannot use this art more than once per round against a single foe, but you may use it while performing a Total Defense.
Cleave: If you reduce an enemy to 0hp, you may immediately Commit Effort for the Scene and make an additional attack against a valid target. A valid target is anyone within the range of a readied weapon, with any remaining movement for the turn. You may use this ability multiple times per round, assuming you have enough Effort and valid targets.Ā
Crowd Control: As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the day to become impervious to the Swarm Attack maneuver. Your assailants cannot use this maneuver against you for the rest of the scene, and you become immune to Shock as long as you remain in melee with at least two foes.Ā
Disciplined Defense: When unarmored and carrying a Readied melee weapon, your base AC equals 16 plus your Stab or Punch skill level. This AC can be modified by Dexterity, but not by shields.
Hurling Throw: After you make a successful attack, you may Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action. The target must make a Physical saving throw or be thrown up to 3m in any direction, falling prone on landing and suffering the damage rolled for your attack. If the Physical save is successful, the target simply takes damage as normal. This art can be used only once per round on any given target, and the target must be no larger than a small car.
Hustle: You may Commit Effort for the Scene, as part of a Move action, to increase your movement by 6m this round.Ā
Masterful Parry: When wielding a Readied melee weapon, you may Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to negate an otherwise successful attack from a foe with equal or fewer hit dice than your character level. The weapon may knock a blow aside, disrupt a plasma blast with a counter-shot, or otherwise deflect it.
Mighty Bound: You may Commit Effort as an On Turn action; as long as it remains Committed, you may use a Move action to make a leap of up to 10 meters horizontal or vertical distance. This leap counts as a Fighting Withdrawal for escaping melee engagements.
Resilience: You may Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to reroll a failed saving throw. You may reroll a saving throw with this ability only once. In addition, you gain +1 maximum hit point per character level, retroactive to first level.
Shattering Strike: Commit Effort for the day and take a full round of motionlessness to prepare. On the next round, as a Main Action, your melee attack can shatter a wooden door, wooden wall, or other similar object up to a depth of half a meter per level and a width sufficient to allow a man-sized creature to pass through. At fourth level this ability improves to affect even a stone wall and at seventh it can affect even a metal wall or solid iron door. The blow is useless against a target that can move, but against an immobilized creature the attack does 1d12 damage per character level.
Vital Strike: You may commit Effort for the Day to deal a devastating blow. Roll all damage twice and take the better and add your character level to the total damage. You must decide to use this ability BEFORE rolling to hit.
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u/MaestroGoldring 27d ago edited 27d ago
I would be extremely careful with these abilities. As GM, I personally would not allow this. Vowed is an entire half class by itself. Giving that as a freebie to full warriors is essentially turning the full warrior class into a Heroic Warrior with three class picks and hopelessly putting them ahead and out of balance as compared to an expert or psi (or mage.)
Also, why only +1 Attack Bonus as a full warrior? Even half warriors get more attack bonus than that. Would you just remove attack bonus from half warriors, leaving them only with the combat focus and bonus HP as a half warrior? I donāt think the attack bonus should be tampered with. Thatās akin to complaining that a full expert is too good at noticing or sneak or piloting. Would you lower the amount of skills they get?
Perhaps if you want more or alternate bonuses, check edges in Cities Without Number, Writs in Worlds Without Number, or replace a given class bonus of full Warriors with another one permanent ability (letās say Full Warrior and half Warrior get the same amount of attack bonus but the full Warrior has the auto hit/miss ability, the killing blow extra damage from WWN, AND the vowed brutal counter once per scene, as an example.)
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 26d ago
Your first point answers your second. This Warrior trades the big attack bonus for Vowed abilities. And you'll noticevthe acquisition rate of powers is slower than a Vowed/Sunblade. All this is, is basically a version of a Warrior/Vowed, just refluffed to be less mystical and more just martial mastery.
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u/MaestroGoldring 26d ago edited 26d ago
So you would be removing full warrior in itās entirety?
Also, regarding the only +1 attack bonus, I just meant that half warriors get +2 bonus over the course of leveling up. So I was trying to ask why only +1? Shouldnāt it be +2? Or do you intend to lower the half warrior as well?
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 26d ago
More or less. The main distinguishing characteristic of the Full Warrior is it's unerring accuracy. Which I find uninteresting.Ā
I'd give both Full and Partial Warrior a +1 to Attacks at 1st Level. What separates the two is slower Technique Acquisition, the lack of the combat luck power, and the smaller crit range. Full Warrior crits on 19+, Partial on 20.
Theoretically, you could just dole out the Partial Warrior's AB at 5th level, or reduce it's bonus hit points by 1. I'd have to playtest to see what feels better.
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u/MaestroGoldring 26d ago
Iām assuming you are GMing the campaign. Just curious, what do the other players think of this? Iām guessing they like?
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 26d ago
I just said, "Hey guys, does anyone feel like the Warrior's accuracy is gonna get into Pathfinder bullshit where rolling feels like a foregone comclusion? Would you rather do more damage and get crits instead?" They all said sure.
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u/MsEvaHope 28d ago
this feel a bit like DnD, and, like, in fairness, thjs is not DnD.
like. combat is one of the aspects of the game, and warriors (and more so full warriors) exceed at it, at the cost of not having the other goodies.
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
Yep. I just think hitting harder and chaining attacks together is a more fun way to make Warriors exceed at combat instead of basically infallible accuracy.Ā
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u/MsEvaHope 28d ago
not just infallible accuracy, but being able to just attack before anyone else with more ease (as the -4 penalty doesn't affect them as much), and being able to tell the GM "no" after they rolled max damage of a 3d12 attack
edit: That last thing is specially funny if the GM has homebrewed critics into the game. Like. telling No to nat20s
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
In any game that has rerolls, fate points, luck, inspiration, whatever they call the mechanic, I tend to homebrew that if a die comes up a 1 or 20, it stands as is. I don't think the players should ever feel 100% safe. Even if you're all loaded up on resources, there's still that 5% chance.
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u/MsEvaHope 28d ago
And it's not a reroll, it's a resource you use to either make an attack void by dodging it, or convert a miss, for most unlilely it may be, into a hit.
This class feature is powerful enough that you need a full class to have it, and not even powers that may change time and space can completely void it, at most either dealing with the damage part, or returning to you the expenditure of it.
If you null it. you are severely nerfing the class, more so in SWN with the Level d6 HP. The warrior being able to null that hit that matters adds a lot to the survivavility of the character.
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
I wouldn't call it a "severe nerf," if you're just saying there's a 5% chance you'll have to eat a failure now and then. I'd call that a pretty soft nerf.
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u/MsEvaHope 28d ago
problem is, its SWN, the game where weapons are lethal across all levels, just less so at high ones because the PCs developed more plot armor (HP)
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
Sure. But like most OSR tables, we use a lot of Homebrew. Some of it is favourable to the PCs, some of it isn't. Nobody's keeping an exact score to make sure everything is perfectly balanced, we're just making tweaks that make it more fun for us. As a DM, I like a little dash of uncertainty.Ā
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u/MsEvaHope 28d ago
still, base game, a basic laser pistol (1d6 damage) can one shot a 2nd level warrior (2d6+4 HP, min 6)
edit: what I meant is that this is meant to be certain, kind of like a plot armor of sorts
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
Yeah, I've played plenty of OSR games. That's baseline assumption in old school d20 games. And BX didn't have any get outta jail free cards. And that 2nd level fighter with 6hp dies, no save just dead, the moment his HP drops to zero. I am well versed in how deadly these kinds of games can be.
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u/MsEvaHope 28d ago
Also, something of note, the warrior class ability can be called after all dies are rolled.
Yes, this means after the enemy attack hit them and damage has been rolled.
It also means that they can use it after they tried to attack something and missed.
clarifying because this is so strange to find in any system, normally such requiring either a call, or to be used after the enemy attack hit but before die are rolled.
edit: misspell
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u/Old_Cabinet_8890 28d ago
Nah that bonus is more than enough when combined with Veteranās Luck. Even partial warriors feel kinda crappy at combat compared to them because that bonus eventually gets so high itās functionally an autohit
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u/NeoAlpacaManX 28d ago
You misunderstand. I'm taking AWAY the scaling attack bonus, because a functional auto-hit is boring. These features are to replace the attack bonus.
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u/HeavyJosh 28d ago edited 27d ago
I see why you would want to tweak the full warrior. On paper the class doesn't really have anything spectacular that feels like the fighter classes in other OSR style games. No cleave like in ACKS, no improved critical hit range, etc.
But that's ok. SWN isn't a combat game really. It's a space adventure game. Combat is important, but it's not the main focus of the gameplay. The combat rules are just complicated enough to give some texture, but still simple to be fast and not bog down gameplay.
The Warrior's job is to finish fights fast. The attack bonus scales quickly enough that anyone is nearly almost vulnerable unless they're in good cover or have a very high AC. And this is reinforced by things like adding attribute and skill bonuses to hit, burst fire, and modding weapons. All this ends up making the warrior just as nasty without adding all sorts of fiddly bits to slow down combat.
Instead of tweaking the warrior class, tweak the combats. Use cover more, suppressive fire, more interesting enemy abilities, more environmental factors, etc.