Feats

Dodge -- You apply the bonus to all melee combatants threatening you, or you may choose 1 ranged opponent. As normal, you choose on your turn, and it is effective immediately.

Weapon Finesse -- You take this feat once and it applies to all applicable weapons.

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Basic Classes

Fast Hero -- Fast Hero's class Defense Bonus has been changed as shown in the following table. You end up after 10 levels with the same bonus but it isn't so darn front-loaded (it still has the highest bonus at all levels).

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Skills

Skill Synergies -- This isn't so much a house rule as a rule clarification. There are no set synergies in d20M like there are in D&D. If you have 5 or more ranks in a skill you think should provide a bonus to another skill, let me know when you make a skill check. If I agree that it should provide a synergy, I will add a +2 bonus to your related check.

Spot and Listen -- Your training in The Company has given you sharp eyes and ears. These are now class skills for all heroic classes.

Climb, Jump, and Swim -- These are now class skills for all heroic and ordinary classes.

Knowledge (Any) -- These can now be used untrained. If you have 0 ranks in a knowledge skill, you can make a check for that skill, but you roll 1d10+int instead of 1d20+ranks+int. You can not take 10 on this check. (Note that this doesn't apply to using Knowledge (Tactics) to gain a tactical advantage).

Knowledge (Tactics) -- because an online game is less visual, it can be a lot harder to for characters to realize how to gain tactical advantage without me simply listing everything you can use for cover, or using pages of text to describe every room. To counteract this, I have created a new use for the Knowledge (Tactics) skill, as described below:

Once per round as a move action (or as a free action with the use of an action point) a character may attempt to gain a tactical advantage. To do this, first make a Knowledge (Tactics) check (unlike other knowledge skills, you can roll 1d20 for this type of check even if you have no ranks). If you succeed on a DC 15 you spot the closest object that you can use to gain cover or concealment. For every 5 points by which you exceed this check, you spot one more cover opportunity. Note that this feat does not create cover or concealment, it only allows you to find some that wasn't described, or wasn't obvious. It can not help you hide in the middle of an empty room.

Changed skill -- The Diplomacy skill has been changed. Ignore the entry in the SRD and instead use the following description. (For an explanation of why it is changed, see here.)

Speak Language -- it still takes 2 skill points to become fluent in a language, but fluency is no longer broken up into Speak and Read/Write. Instead, your first point gives you basic proficiency in a language. You can discuss basic topics, but it is obvious that you are not a native speaker. More complicated subjects require an intelligence check to properly convey. Spending two points in a language provides complete proficiency in the language. Except for accent, it sounds like you have been speaking the language from birth.

You start the game knowing one language fluently. For every 1 point of intelligence bonus, you gain 1 point that can be spent to learn new languages. If you have 2 or more points, you can spend multiple points in one language, or 1 point in multiple languages.

Diplomacy -- this skill is completely rewritten. Replace the text in the book and SRD with the following:

Diplomacy (Cha)

Use this skill to ask the local mayor for assistance, to convince a band of thugs not to attack you, or to talk your way into someplace you aren't supposed to be.

Check -- You can propose a trade or agreement to another person with your words; a Diplomacy check can then persuade them that accepting it is a good idea. Either side of the deal may involve physical goods, money, services, promises, or abstract concepts like "satisfaction." The DC for the Diplomacy check is based on three factors: who the target is, the relationship between the target and the character making the check, and the risk vs. reward factor of the deal proposed.

The Target -- The base DC for any Diplomacy check is equal to the 15 + level of the highest-level character in the group that you are trying to influence + the Wisdom modifier of the character in the group with the highest Wisdom. High-level characters are more committed to their views and are less likely to be swayed; high Wisdom characters are more likely to perceive the speaker's real motives and aims. By applying the highest modifiers in any group, a powerful president (for example) might gain benefit from a very wise advisor who counsels him. For this purpose, a number of characters is only a "group" if they are committed to all following the same course of action. Either one NPC is in charge, or they agree to act by consensus. If each member is going to make up their mind on their own, roll separate Diplomacy checks against each.

The Relationship -- Whether they love, hate, or have never met each other, the relationship between two people always influences any request. A reputation check has the capability of moving someone from Just Met to Acquaintance (either Positive or Negative, depending on your reputation).
-10 Intimate: Someone who with whom you have an implicit trust. Example: A lover or spouse.
-7 Friend: Someone with whom you have a regularly positive personal relationship. Example: A long-time buddy or a sibling.
-5 Ally: Someone on the same team, but with whom you have no personal relationship. Example: A priest of the same religion or a soldier serving the same country.
-2 Acquaintance (Positive): Someone you have met several times with no particularly negative experiences. Example: The black market dealer that buys your looted equipment regularly.
+0 Just Met: No relationship whatsoever. Example: A bouncer at a nightclub or a traveler on a road.
+2 Acquaintance (Negative): Someone you have met several times with no particularly positive experiences. Example: A police officer that has arrested you for drunkenness once or twice.
+5 Enemy: Someone on an opposed team, with whom you have no personal relationship. Example: A bandit who is robbing you.
+7 Personal Foe: Someone with whom you have a regularly antagonistic personal relationship. Example: An evil warlord whom you are attempting to thwart, or a bounty hunter who is tracking you down for your crimes.
+10 Nemesis: Someone who has sworn to do you, personally, harm. Example: The brother of a man you murdered in cold blood. Shame on you.

Risk vs. Reward Judgement: The amount of personal benefit must always be weighed against the potential risks for any deal proposed. It is important to remember to consider this adjustment from the point of view of the NPC themselves and what they might value; while 10 bucks might be chump change to an adventurer, it may represent the first hot meal in several months for a homeless man. Likewise, a radical terrorist is unlikely to be persuaded from his tenets for any amount of money, though he might be convinced that a greater good is served by the proposed deal. When dealing with multiple people at once, always consider the benefits to the person who is in clear command, if any hierarchy exists within the group.

Every person has an amount of money which they require to do a certain action. For some this is DC 0 (such as a cop you are bribing to arrest a known purse snatcher) while others will be higher (trying to get the same police officer to look away if you are the purse snatcher would be more like a DC 10). The GM will secretly set the DC for this check. If you succeed you get a +2 to your Diplomacy check, and if you fail you get -2, for a maximum of +10 or minimum of -10 (see example). For every 5 points you are over or under you add or subract 1 point to the DC of the diplomacy check. You can take 10, but not 20, on this check. Some people require a bribe (and you will get a penalty on your Diplomacy check as if you rolled a 0 on your Wealth Check), and others will be offended if you offer them a bribe (they are treated as having a very high Wealth Check DC, but there is no penalty if you do not offer them a bribe; they may also alert the authorities, if applicible).

Success or Failure -- If the Diplomacy check beats the DC, the subject accepts the proposal, with no changes or with minor (mostly idiosyncratic) changes. If the check fails by 5 or less, the subject does not accept the deal but may, at the GM's option, offer different terms. The character who made the Diplomacy check can simply accept the counter-offer, if they choose; no further check will be required. If the check fails by 10 or more, the Diplomacy is over; the subject will entertain no further deals, and may become hostile or take other steps to end the conversation.

Action -- Making a request or proposing a deal generally requires at least 1 full minute. In many situations, this time requirement may greatly increase.

Try Again -- If you alter the parameters of the deal you are proposing, you may try to convince the subject that this new deal is even better than the last one. This is essentially how people haggle. As long as you never roll 10 or less than the DC on your Diplomacy check, you can continue to offer deals.

Note: not all examples have to involve bribing (indeed, many won't) but that is probably the most complicated part about this system. Here are three different examples for how bribing works. Your Wealth Bonus does not actually go down if you suceed on a bribe.

Example 1: Trying to convince a dirty cop to look the other way for a couple minutes (Wealth DC 10, not required, not refused).
 Since the cop does not know you (+0) the DC for a Diplomacy check is 16 (15 base, one character level, no wisdom bonus). If your Diplomacy modifier is +4 you can succeed with a 12 or more (45% chance).
 If you decide to bribe the cop you have to succeed on a Wealth Check DC 10 (though you will not know the number). If your Wealth bonus is +7, you only need a 3 or more to succeed, which gives +2 to your diplomacy check. If you roll a 20 (for a total of 27) this is 17 points over the DC, so you get an additional +3 to your Diplomacy check (+9 total). You can now succeed by rolling a 7 or more (70% chance).

Example 2: Trying to convince a court official to push through your gun application faster (DC 10, bribe required).
  Say the official has the same Diplomacy DC and you have the same Diplomacy modifier. This time if you do not offer him a bribe it is as if you failed a Wealth Check with a result of 0. This is a -2 penalty for failing, with another -2 for failing by ten points (+0 Diplomacy modifier). You now have to roll a 16 or better to succeed (25% chance).
  Bribing the official is the same result as bribing the cop (up to 70% chance of success).

Example 3: Trying to convince a priest not to turn you in for bribing cops and court officials (DC 20, bribe refused).
  Same modifiers as last time. Attempting a Diplomacy check without a bribe is the same as before (45% of success).
  In this case the priest specifically does not want a bribe (though everyone has his price). If you try to bribe him and roll a 12 or less (60% chance) you will get some penalty to your Diplomacy check.

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Action Points -- The premise behind They Hide In Shadow is that alternate universes exist, and can influence our own. (For a more detailed description, see the Setting thread.) To make this idea more integrated into the game, I have decided to change the use of action points: now instead of representing an expenditure of energy or an extra amount of heroic luck, they represent a hero's ability to force himself onto a more advantageous universal path. Manipulating multiple universes is a difficult task, however, as a small change in the present can have unforseen consequences in the future. The following text replaces that in the core rulebook and the SRD (bold changes are those that are different from the SRD)

When a character spends 1 action point to improve a d20 roll, add 2d6 to the d20 roll to help meet or exceed the target number. A character can declare the use of 1 action point to alter a d20 roll after the roll is made—but only before the GM reveals the result of that roll (whether the attack or check or saving throw suc­ceeded or failed). (Note: Since this is an online game, there will be some leeway in adjudicating this part of the rule.) A character can’t use an action point on a skill check or ability check when he or she is taking 10 or taking 20.

Backlash: whenever a character uses an action point to add to their die roll they suffer a backlash. On the next d20 roll they make under pressure (this generally means any d20 roll where you can't take 10 or 20), after you have used an action point, roll 1d6 and subtract it from your total. Unlike other subtraction, this can make your total result negative. (Note: If the I rule that you have made a "throwaway roll" to negate the penalty, that roll won't count. The characters are supposed to suffer from every use of an action point.)

Characters are better at manipulating the future as they gain in levels:


This message was last edited by the GM at 16:25, Fri 09 Apr 2010.

General

As much as possible, I want this to be a character-driven game. I will provide you with plot hooks and important details, but it's the characters' job to decide what to do from there.

Posting

Posting rate -- I expect every character to post 2-3 times a week minimum, spread over the week or weekends. If a character does not post for 7 days, I will send a Private Message warning and start NPCing the character. If the player does not respond for another 7 days I will seek out a replacement character.

I will not punish a player for having vacations, RL issues, etc. where they can't post. If these sorts of things happen to you please let me know. I will be happy to NPC your character or find an in-game reason for him to be absent.

Posting Conventions (Non-Combat) -- I don't have any conventions that are that different than what you find in other games. I prefer descriptive text in third person present (i.e. "Max walks up to the door, gun ready. With a nod to Moses he kicks it open and runs through, on the lookout for Dr. Evil.") Thoughts or other narration should be in italics, and speech should be in a different color for each character. GM characters will use dark green. Any OOC comments or rolls should be at the top or bottom of the post, in orange. I don't have any problem with extensive OOC comments, but if they get too long, I prefer that you make the text small so that it takes up less space.

Posting Conventions (Combat) -- Combat posting follows the same style-guidelines as normal posting. Instead of posting in straight initiative order, we will instead in a semi-first-come-first-served basis. All characters who beat GM character initiative can post their actions first, in any order, and the actions take place in the order that the players announce them. Thus, during combat times it is advantageous to check the game more often, so that you effectively get higher initiative. After those players go, I will post a summary of the player's effects on the GM character, then post my actions. Next, the people who lost initiative will post, in any order, followed by a GM summary.

It is best during combat to provide options for your characters. For instance, you might describe your character as shooting Baddie number 1, but at the bottom you might say "if baddie number 1 is already down, I will instead shoot baddie number 2" or "if baddie number 1 is already down, I will disable the bomb attached to the hostage <applicable rolls here>". If you do not provide options and your character's actions are negated by those of a character who went before you, I will choose an action that I think your character would reasonably perform. If I'm unsure, I will send you a PM and ask you to edit your post.

Every combat post should contain the following: Your Defense score (including touch, flat-footed, and any modifiers), your HP, and how much ammo you have left in your weapon (if applicable). Additionally, in your OOC section you should copy/paste your applicable rolls, and post in plain words what your character did.

See the example combat post below to hopefully clarify what I am looking for in combat (note that I copy/pasted this from another game that had some different house rules):

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Jack ducks and rolls to the right so that he is surrounded by zombies. He blasts three shots into the neighboring squares to clear them of oncomers.

You guys need to take a shower.



A lead shower.

HP: 21 Def: +7 Ammo: 4/7
[Free] 5 foot step to [J7]
[Full] Attack zombies in [J6], [I6], [I7] with shotgun

12:42, Today: Jack 'Beefy' Meathook rolled 20,8,13 using 1d20+1,1d20+1,1d20+1. attack (benelli, PBS, 2 extra shots).
12:46, Today: Jack 'Beefy' Meathook rolled 5,8,10 using 2d8+1,2d8+1,2d8+1. damage (benelli, PBS, 2 extra shots).

I provoke AoO's three times. Assuming zombies don't have combat reflexes, here are three defense rolls:
12:49, Today: Jack 'Beefy' Meathook rolled 25,27 [nat'l 20],16 using 1d20+7,1d20+7,1d20+7. defense (three attacks).

If on the off chance my natural 20 defense roll provokes an AoO, I will attack with the butt of the shotgun. I like rolling dice :)
12:54, Today: Jack 'Beefy' Meathook rolled 11,7 using 1d20+3,1d6+2. attack, damage (rifle butt).

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Saves and Checks

While you can always make preemptive saves or active skill checks, in many cases I will make these rolls for you. I've found that this greatly increases the speed of combat in online games, and avoids relying on any one character to continue the story further.

Gather Information

You guys have all been doing a great job at roleplaying conversations, but since a few of you have invested ranks in Gather Information, you are actually hurting your character by your good roleplaying, which should never be the case. As a house rule, you can make "speedy" Gather Information checks whenever you are trying to get general information out of another character. This check is at a -5 penalty, but you gain a secret bonus based on your prior conversation with the character and your overall roleplaying of the questioning.

To find out specific information, you will still need to roleplay it as you have been doing.

Hitting a Grappling Creature

Per RAW (Rules as Written), there is a chance that you will accidentally hit the wrong opponent of a grapple when using a ranged weapon. However, this chance is never clearly defined in the books, so instead use the following table. If you miss your intended target, you hit one of the other participants in the grapple (selected randomly with even odds) if your initial roll would have hit the targets lowered Defense.

|-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Distance	Miss Chance
	Two Grapplers	Three Grapplers	Four Grapplers	Five Grapplers
-----------	---------------	-----------------	----------------	----------------
5	10%	13%	15%	16%
6-15	20%	27%	30%	32%
16-30	30%	40%	45%	48%
31-50	40%	53%	60%	64%
50+	50%	67%	75%	80%
-----------	---------------	-----------------	----------------	----------------

Precise Shot cuts the percentages in half (round up).

Action Points

I've decided to get rid of the backlash portion of action points. I like the idea of it, but practically, I don't like rolling the penalty :) You still roll 2d6, though.