Free Form d20 - *Updated* 3/30/08

I have undergone a huge mission. To bring a game like DnD into the chat world. I am working on a D20 System that will nearly change how many people classify a game like DnD.

If you have any questions about what I am doing with certain things. Please feel free to ask. Let me know what you think of my idea. As I work on this, I will update you. You will be with me every step of the way as I create this system. Which means I have your direct input on how things should be fixed or changed from my original idea.

Let’s face it. It’s you who matters when it comes to role playing. I plan to bring the role playing and battling back to your hands, while providing the ability to use dice as a medium for battle and encounters.





Base Stats

Strength (Str) This is your characters base strength. This is important for stronger characters.
Dexterity (Dex) This is how agile and nimble your character is. This is important for fast characters.
Fortitude (Fort) This is how strong your body and mind are together. This is important for your health and making certain saves.
Will (Will) This is your characters will power. This can be used for making certain saves. It is more important for spell casters.


You have 8 points to spend on these four stats. Each must have at least 1 point. None of them can have more than 3 points. As most of you are used to modifiers. There will be no such thing in this game. Only boosts to the actual abilities themselves. The base stats are used as dice modifiers.

Example of how to determine a strong characters stats.

Str- *** 3
Dex- ** 2
Fort- ** 2
Will- * 1

This character would be strong and would get +3 on all rolls that require his Str. His Dex and Fort are average, getting +2 on their rolls. His will is weak, only getting +1 on his rolls.

Changing Stats
Health (HP) This is how many times you can be hit.
Stamina (Sta) This is always a base of 3 points for new characters. This is your characters energy/mana/consumable form of using feats and spells. You gain 1 point every time you rank up.
Fame (Fame) This is always a base of 0 for new characters. This can go up or down depending on what you do or do not do.
Ranks This is what rank you are in your main and secondary job categories.
Experience (XP) This helps you keep track of when you will rank up next.
Alignment (Aln) Good/Neutral/Evil Lawful/Neutral/Unlawful
This means you must choose on from each side. That means Good Lawful, or Neutral Lawful, perhaps Evil Lawful. Good Neutral and Evil mean that you act respectively to those. Lawful is determined by your characters beliefs. For example:
If your character is Evil, but lawful. That means your character is Evil, yet he follows the way of some sort of law, be it a masters law; perhaps some religion he or she may have.
This is able to be changed throughout the actions that you take.
Senses (Sen) This determines how well your character is tuned to their 5 senses. It is used for most checks. Sense always starts at 3. An example of this is:

Player-Gahlor places his head against the steel door, trying to hear anything inside.
GM- Roll a Sense check.
Player rolls a 1d20 + Sen and gets 16
Gm- You hear metal scraping against metal.

Logic (Log) This is how logical your character thinks. This can provide assistance in tight spots, such as some puzzles you cannot solve. Logic always starts at 3
Example:

Player- I cannot solve this on paper…I didn’t take enough notes to do so, er missed something.
GM- Make a logic check.
Player rolls 1d20 + Log and gets 15
GM- Your character makes a logical conclusion that the word Loveds was actually an anagram for Solved.
Player- OH! That makes sense, I’ll solve the puzzle now.
Basically the GM is allowed to give out certain information regarding the puzzle or anything else that would require logic. This is a fail safe for players who forget to take notes, or aren’t quite able to get by in the situation.

The reason Logic and Senses are in changing stats is because things can affect logic and senses. A few examples would be:
You’ve lived all your life with a partner who dies in combat. Your logic would suffer a penalty, because this was someone really important to you.
If a heavy fog filled the room you were in, your senses would be effected, you wouldn’t be able to spot things so easily.
This does not mean the base stats cannot change for the same reasons. It means that Sense and Logic are affected before all others are affected. All stats can end up changing for a multitude of reasons.

With sense checks and logic checks. If there is enough time allotted, you are allowed to take ten. That means, you take 10 + your sen or log score. Taking ten means you take about 10 minutes time (In Game) to give a good check of the area or thought for logic.

Jobs
I call this jobs instead of classes because, it is nothing like classes. Instead of classes, your character does different jobs. You are able to rank up in every job type. Every time you gain a rank in a job, you earn points from that job category. Ranking up is basically the same as leveling.

To gain a rank in a job you must earn enough experience. Every few ranks you get, you are given a point to spend on a base stat. Each job is different on the points they award, so please pick your main job very carefully.

The thing about jobs, is you can only take on two jobs. No character can ever have three. You are allowed to be Smart and Fast for example; that means you can never be strong. Or, you can be Strong and Fast, but never smart. That doesn’t mean your character is dumb, it just lets you know; that’s not your strongest point.

Now, your actual job is up to you. You can pick a main job, and at rank 5 you can pick a secondary job. However, that doesn’t mean you say on your character sheet; I’m a strong and fast job character. No, you would say. I’m an Elite Guard of the Imperial Dragoons (Str/Dex) or (Strong/Fast). For smart you could use Will or Smart. Remember this game is designed for any era, so that means you could be a Computer Hacking Freelancer as well (Dex/Will).

Strong Jobs- These jobs are the fighter and warrior type jobs. Every time you rank up in this job, you gain your fortitudes worth of hit points. Every four ranks in this job gives you 1 point to add to your base stats. That means one to add to any one of the stats. Not one to all of these. You may only increase one stat. For ever time you rank up, you also receive one point in Sta. Your job starts you with 4 hp.

Fast Jobs- These jobs are for the faster type characters, rogues and rangers. Every time you rank up in this job, you gain your fortitudes worth of hit points. Every four ranks in this job gives you 1 point to add to your base stats. That means one to add to any one of the stats. Not one to all of these. You may only increase one stat. For ever time you rank up, you also receive one point in Sta. Your job starts you with 3 hp.

Smart Jobs- These jobs are for those who are spell casters and technical types. Every time you rank up in this job, you gain your fortitudes worth of hit points. Every four ranks in this job gives you 1 point to add to your base stats. That means one to add to any one of the stats. Not one to all of these. You may only increase one stat. For ever time you rank up, you also receive one point in Sta. Your job starts you with 2 hp.

Every job ranks up separately. This means, when you rank up, you rank up in 1 job only. If you were rank 6 in strong and rank 2 in fast. That means overall you are a rank 8 character. You ranked up in strong 6 times, and ranked up 2 times in fast.

How to rank up.

Experience is a characters’ best friend. How do you get it? There are tons of ways, but it all comes from the GM. You get it for good role playing, slaying monsters, completing quests and jobs; you get it from nearly everything you do. There is a large change in how it works though, as far as the amount. Not much is given now, not much is needed.

Here is a ranking chart. It is separated by rank on the left, experience needed on the right.

1-0
2-10
3-20
4-40 +1 Base stat point at this rank.
5-80
6-160
7-320
8-640 +1 Base stat point at this rank.
9-1280
10-2560

To determine ranks past 10, all you have to do is take the previous amount of xp and double it. Literally, to get rank 11 it is 2560 x 2 = 5120. Remember every 4 ranks, you get 1 base stat point to add.

As I said about taking multiple jobs. For the first 5 ranks you can only have 1 job. After that you can take your secondary job. This means:
If your character starts out in a strong job. Once he hits rank five he can pick a smart or fast job. Lets say he picks fast. That means he will be a rank 4 Strong and Rank 1 Fast.


Races
This is probably one of the most fun parts of character creation. All races are created by the role player. This means you can have multiple types of elves, demons, anything you can think of. How you create races goes along with what type of game your GM is making. There are multiple tiers of points allowed to spend on a race.

How the points work.
For every positive point you take, you must also take a negative point. This means, if your race gives you +2 to senses you would have to take away 2 in the changing stats. Guess what that means? You can only take away from Stamina, HP, or Logic to suffice for that plus two. If you add 1 to str, you must take one from dex, will, or fort.

Tiers of points.
Elite Tier- In this tier you are only given one point allowance. This means one to give, one to take.
Hard Tier- You are allowed two points to give, two points to take.
Intermediate Tier- Three point allowance.
Easy Tier- Four point allowance.
Novice Tier- Five point allowance.

Keep in mind, you will want to make the race suit you as best as possible. So, if you want to play in some futuristic game; where your character is a hacking engineer. You'll want to improve your speed and logic to solve puzzles.

So in an intermediate tier game it'd be best to give yourself two points of dexterity and one point of logic. Then probably take a hit on HP and Str. You may never increase your HP this way, only decrease. You are allowed to increase stamina.

Items
This runs off of a maximum point system. Every character may only take a certain amount of points in equipment. This means, if you find equipment along the way, and it exceeds the amount of points you are allowed. You will not be able to use that equipment, unless you put something else up. Another thing in this system, weight. Weight is turned into slots. Every item you have is considered to take up one slot. All characters are assumed to have a means of carrying items, via pouches or backpacks. It does not matter exactly what. It simply means you will always be able to hold something as long as you have open slots.

How do you determine how many slots do you have?
That is determined by your character's strength. For every point you have in strength, you get five slots. Armor does not count as any slots. Clothing does not count either. Items, weapons, anything else does.

What about characters that do not rely on strength?
That is where you will have to use the point system to create items that will give you extra slots.

How to determine points for items.
This system is run on a sentence system. This means, for every sentence you use for the items description, you use a certain amount of points. All sentences cost five points. To describe a weapon, you must:
Tell us what the weapon is. Tell us what it's effects are. Explain what the effects do. Give the stats of what the effects are. You may never us the words, and, also, or however.. This basically means no commas in the sentences.

How does this work?
Lets say you want a big sword with speed.

This sword is a heavy claymore.
It has been been imbued with a weight reducing spell.
This spell allows the caster to be faster than normal when it is held in hand.
This gives the user +1 to dexterity.

That means this speedy claymore is 20 points.
Characters with a main rank of one can never have a weapon or item that exceeds 10 points. That means no really special stuff till rank two. This assures that new players learn how to play the game before going out and over doing it with weapons and items.

For those of you who wish to make extra slot items. This is how you would do so: (For every one slot you take up you get 5 more. For every one slot you take up you eat Ten points.)

This is a newly engineered satchel. 5 pts
It has been created to increase what it can hold. 5 pts
It works by increasing the amount its user can hold. 5 pts
This takes one slot to give five more slots. 10 pts.

25 point total. If you wanted it to give you ten slots, you'd have to take up two slots. This would become a 35 point satchel.

What of armor?
Armor is fairly simple 10 points are allowed for every 1 point you have in Str.
Descriptions work just like normal items. However, every +1 you add to armor costs 5 points. Armor is it's own stat, that means the +1 is only applied to an armor value. This is the stat that you add to 10 after a defense roll.

What about items like potions?
They work exactly like weapons. However, they do have restrictions. If you are increasing or restoring stats, you use up 10 points for every one point you increase. With health restoration it's 10 points for every 1d4 you use to heal.

This is a healing potion 5 pts
It restores the health of the user. 5pts
1d4 points worth of health are restored. 10 pts

How do I know how many points I am allowed? Easy, for every rank you obtain, you are allowed 10 points. Per item. That is restricted to slots, so for every slot at rank one; you have 10 points. At rank two each slot may have 20 points. Every time you rank up you gain ten points.


Spells and Feats
Much like items, we work off of a point and sentence system. Characters are allowed to have a maximum amount of points worth of spells and feats.

You are only allowed to have one spell or feat per stamina point that you have. That means, rank ones all have 3 spells or feats at most. Remember, you gain an extra point in stamina every time you rank up.

Each point of stamina holds ten points worth of a feat or spell. It is best to try and max out your points, since you can only have one spell or feat per stamina point. If you wish to have a spell with 20 or thirty points, you must eat up your stamina points. That means, if your spell even goes to 15 points, you have already used up 2 points of stamina.

Every time you cast a spell you actually use those stamina points up. Once you have zero stamina you need to rest or eat. Do something to rest up that stamina. Every point would normally require about an hour of rest with no other activity. Eating speeds up that process to 30 minutes.

How to make spells/feats. (They are considered the same thing.)
You must simply explain what the spell does. As well as what stats it effects or damage it does. For every 1d2 of health you affect you use up 5 points. For every base stat point you affect, you use up 5 points.
Spells/Feats don't always hit. Instead you use your will to hit. (Remember, no: and, however, also, or commas).

Example of a fire spell:
This spell inflicts fire damage on its target. 5 pts
It deals 1d2 damage to it's target. 5 pts

This spell uses 10 points, that means it's 1 stamina point.

Lets say I want a spell that raises dead: Ten points for every hit they can take.
This spell animates the dead. 5 points
The dead can only withstand one hit. 10 points

15 points = 2 stamina points to cast.

What's so hard about this spell, to keep this thing alive, you must constantly keep control over it. That means you must make a will check every time you make an action in battle. These never last longer than an hour.

To make a feat type move, like a furious punch. You would simply follow the same rules for creating a spell.
(If anyone wishes to create a comprehensive spell/feat book with me, please PM me. You can also reach me on the instant messengers.)

Full character example
By now you should be able to make a full character. I will make one as an example to you all.
I am going to make a fast character.

Stats:
Str-**
Dex-***
Will-*
Fort-**

HP:3
Sta:***
Rank: Fast 1(Hunter)
XP:0
Fame:0
Log:***
Sen:***
Aln:NN

Now to make my race. Intermediate tier.

I’ll add two to Dex, and one to sense. I will take away 1 from logic, one away from str and fort. I will be a fast human hunter.

My new stats look like this;
Stats:
Str-*
Dex-*****
Will-*
Fort-*

HP:3
Sta:***
Rank: Fast 1(Hunter)
XP:0
Fame:0
Log:**
Sen:****
Aln:NN

My str leaves me with 5 slots worth of equipment. Armor doesn’t count. At rank one I can only use 10 points in armor, since my str is low. Dexterity boosts my defenses though.

Armor.

My character wears leather armor. 5pts
It gives him +1 bonus to armor saves. 5pts

My dexterity is 5 so, if they make it past that, I can be hit rather easily.

Items:
(1,2)Long Sword: 5 pts
It is a long sword. 5 pts
(3,4,5)Bread:
This restores 1 stamina in 30 minutes. 10 pts
The GM is has every right not to allow an item like bread, since it doesn’t have multiple lines for it’s description. But, it also doesn’t break any rules.. This is where good character making comes into play.

You may not understand the armor or defense just yet. That is next chapter. This is just an example character.


Movement and Combat
Combat is a very large change from other d20 based games out there. It will rely mostly on what you say your character does. Movement has been changed entirely.

Range
Range is key word of movement and attacking. There are four areas of range; Close, Strike, Attack, and Extended.

Extended range is an extreme distance to any target you may have. It is nearly impossible to strike someone with a spell or ranged weapon from so far. It gives you a -10 on attack rolls.

Attack range is within range of most spells and ranged weapons. However, it is not within ranged to get into melee combat. You must move into strike range for that.

Strike range is where melee combat is held. If you are within strike range and you attempt to move out, your enemies get an opportunity to attack you. It also gives them +2 on their attack roll.

Close range at this range, there are no defenses for you or your enemy. This means you have to kill them on this hit, or get out fast. To get out you suffer the same penalties as moving out of strike range. However you do not have any defenses. To move into this close of range. You must hit the opponent at least once, and declare that you move within close range and make a second defense check against your opponent. If you fail this check they gain an attack on you.

What can you do in one turn?
You have three points of stamina to begin with. That means you can use all of them in one turn. You only gain one back per turn though. Why does your stamina come back so fast in battle? Adrenaline, it pumps through your veins giving you energy every turn.

How do you use the stamina?
Every time you move one range to another, you use one point. Every time you attack, you use one point. Using spells or feat cost their respective amounts in points as well.

Example:
GM> You spot a lone orc in extended range of you.
PC> I move into strike range and attack him.

Moving into attack cost 1 pt.
Moving into strike cost 1 pt.
Attacking cost 1 pt.

Next turn, if he survives the attack, he gains one stamina point. If you defend, (You do nothing) you will not use any energy, yet you will be prepared against your opponent. This means you will get your stamina restored up to 2 next turn.

How do you fight?
This is built on a hit based system. Those of you who play war hammer/war hammer 40k might understand it better than those familiar to the standard combat.

To hit your opponent, and visa versa, you must make a successful attack roll and a successful damage roll. These are done with a d20

To determine your defense against the attack roll, look at your dex ability points and add them to 10. That is what the opponent must roll to hit you, at least that much or higher.

To determine your defense against the damage roll, look at what your armor gives you and add that to 10. This works like a defense roll.

How do you gain bonuses against your opponent? You must add your str to melee attack rolls, dex to ranged attacks, will to magical attacks.

To determine who or what is going first. It takes a sense check in some cases, that is if the opponent doesn't know you are there. If they don't that means you do not have to roll a defense role. Other than that, it is as simple as who has the highest Dex score, if someone is tied, roll the dice for the highest number.

Example of combat:
PC> I attack the orc with my longsword. (Rolls a 1d20 and has 3 in str. He gets a 12. 12+3 is 15)
The orcs defense is 13, so he breaks the defense of the orc.
GM> Roll for damage.
PC> Rolls a 1d20 + 3 for str. He rolls a 10. 10 + 3 is 13
The orcs armor only gives him +2. So only a 12. The orc also only has 1 hp. Remember, hit points mean how many times you can be hit.
GM>The sword slices through the neck of the orc, blood oozes out from the orcs wound. It falls over, dead.

This is how it works for all combat. Remember, magic uses will, ranged weapons use dexterity.

What happens if I roll a natural 20? Well, that means you got lucky and you get to skip rolling for damage. If you make a natural 20 on a damage roll, you deal a hit as powerful as double what you normally do. (Typically two hits worth of damage, 2 hp)

If you roll a natural 1, it's up to the GM to apply a critical failure.



Game Masters

Game masters, without them there is no game. It’s always tough for a group of players to shun someone forward and make them a game master. It’s even harder to want to play and be forced into this role. A GM is someone who is a natural leader, someone who can put forth rules and dictate. They gain a lot of power, their decisions are final.

What is one thing that makes free form role playing so different from table top? Normally, there is no GM. Sure someone typically acts as one, but there isn’t always one. A group of players collaborates and does what is best for a great story.

In this system, there can be one GM, or you can run a collaborative game. I will explain both. Let’s start with the most well known of the two.

As a GM…

It is up to you to make the final decisions of character creation. The easiest part of the job is creating a world and pitting a ton of monsters against players. For you, you can make items and creatures, give them points how you see fit, and move right on. The hard part is maintaining the game and the players in the game.

This system is designed for every setting someone could possibly think of, which is why there is so much freedom in what is done. As a GM you have the final say about items, races and monsters. As a GM you can say, here are my races for this world, here are my items for this world, and here are my monsters for this world. Then allow the players to pick from those and buy as they wish.

The reason I have not implemented any currency into this system, is because there could be thousands of currencies for you to use, that is something for you to come up with as well. Remember, this system leaves the GM and Players in complete control over everything. It is merely a guide. GM has the ultimate power though. They say what goes and doesn’t.

Just remember, follow the same general rules for creating anything. NPC’s and monsters follow character creation rules. Items follow the same basic rules, as do spells and feats. You are free to change them as you see fit, just be fair about them.

Remember, if players do not think you are fair, you loose them; for good.

As collaborative GM’s…

You all decide things together.. This is hard when it comes to a story, so I have devised a way for you to get the story going in different directions.

You may all get together and create a world of items, spells, monsters.. You name it and you can make it. However, no game is worth playing without some sort of story or point. So how do you make a story with multiple people that everyone can agree on? What about puzzles and problems?

Leave it up to the luck of the dice. Everyone gather together, make several stories, several puzzles… Make it so everything can be random.

Example:

Three players each make three beginnings to a mission, three middles, three endings, three puzzles.

Number them, roll a d4 for each, and that determines the order of things. What about players who’ve made puzzles? They’ll know the answers right? Yes, they will. That is when that player takes course of the GM. They are not allowed to play their character to solve the puzzle, their character becomes an NPC for the duration of the puzzle. They are there only to provide support, not solve. That player will take the actions of a GM. Setting traps, triggering events.

What about story? Well, the same works there. If someone’s story was rolled, for the duration of that story, they must GM, until that part ends. It is hard to explain so I will show you with an example:

There are three players, Jack, Jill and John.

They decide one night to meet up and have a game. Well, Jack decides he won’t be GM this time around, Jill and John won’t either. Typically this is Game Over for everyone. Not here.

They all get together and write a beginning story, they leave room for puzzles in the beginning, as well as write in some encounters of their own. Jack looks over at the other two and says, lets have at least 2 puzzle encounters in our stories. They agree.

They number their stories 1-3. They number their puzzles 1-6. They have already written the combat encounters into their stories. No point to randomize those.

Jill wrote story 1 and puzzles 5,6
Jack wrote 2 and puzzles 3,4
John wrote 3 and puzzles 1,2

They decide on someone to roll 1d4 for the stories, if it hits 4 they will re-roll. Jack will roll the d4.

He rolls a 3, this leaves John to DM the beginning of the story. Once he hit’s a spot in his story that says puzzle encounter, he will roll a 1d6 and that will let him know who takes over to GM for that Puzzle only. This entire beginning is under his control, except for the puzzle.

Now there still has to be a middle and end. Typically, if you want a fast game, it’d be best to have two people write beginning middle and end. With maybe 2 puzzles all together. However, the puzzle locations are up to the story writers.. One may have it in the beginning, one might be in the middle. You might luck out and not get anything to solve. All puzzles do is leave some way for a change up. Keep in mind, you can take out puzzles all together and just compile random stories. Just agree on a single theme and characters.

Sometimes it’s just easier to bite the coin, and randomly pick a GM too. I created this as a guide for people to collaboratively play and gm together. It really makes for a different style of play!



Now everyone, the moment you have been waiting for. Play testing this. I would love to start ASAP! PM me, or let me know in chat if you want to try this system out. Try it with your friends as well! Try it anywhere you can play! Skip a D&D, or Warhammer session one night and play this in it’s place. Let me know what you think of the system, where you had problems; what you would like to see improved! Let me know!