D20 Modern: Evasion how I hate thee

[Crimson-Kobold]

From time to time, I get a hankering for a modern style game, and since my group is mostly familar with d20 systems, D20 Modern would seem to be a good fit.

But, time and again, the Fast Hero talents drives me nuts. All the other classes have decent talents that don't throw the balance of the game out of wack, and even the biggest bonuses (like 3 DR, or +3 to melee damage) takes until at least level 5 to attain.

Fast Heros? They can get Evasion. At level 1. Your typical frag grenade has a DC 15 to make a reflex save, so Fast Heros will be able to avoid damage with a roll of 10,11 or 12, depending on their stats (point buy, I would expect someone playing a fast hero to go 18 in dex, or randomly rolling to put their highest roll into it, which could easily be 14+)

And that's just at level 1.

The same DC is used for autofire rules, which doesn't take the skill of the shooter into account.

So the Fast Hero basically makes explosives and autofire useless, which is stupid for a modern setting. And since there's no real limit on multiclassing, nearly everyone could take it without any real downsides.

One thing I've been considering was running with the Call of Cthulhu rules, but tweak the feat progression to that of something like Star Wars saga, alternating from feat and talent, and using the talents from d20 Modern. But before I would think that will work, I need to resolve my issues with evasion.

Does anyone have suggestions on that? Maybe allowing the attackers bab to affect the DC? Or even making it a second roll if the first fails? Although it would be nice to make the attackers skill or attack roll be taken into account...

I think if I could get around this, I might actually be able to enjoy running a modern game for a change. As it is, my players abuse the hell out of evasion.

[Ismaels-Legacy]

You could make Evasion into a roll similar to "Luck" where you get two chances to make the save rather than just one.

[Crimson-Kobold]

I think that might be the best fix. Thematically, I really don't like the concept of someone in a non super type modern game being able to ignore explosive damage.

I also saw an interesting addition to the talent from another site:

In order to benefit from this talent, a character must not be wearing or using any clothing, gear or armour that has a Max Dexterity bonus of less than 4, and cannot be carrying a load greater than light.

which makes sense. But would that combined with the above be too much?

The same guy who suggested that also has some interesting ideas for Autofire and Burst attacks

Save DC is now equal to 10 + Number of bullets fired / 2 (rounded down, max 20 bullets, minimum 6 bullets) + Dexterity bonus. Each level of the Weapon Focus feat for the firing weapon increases the DC by 1. The Advanced Firearm Proficiency and Strafe feats each increase the DC by 1, reflecting the increase in Autofire proficiency gained with the acquisition of those feats.

For each increment of 5 that a character fails his Reflex save by, he takes an additional dice of damage up to the maximum number of shots fired. For example, if Bob rolls 10 against an Autofire Reflex save DC of 20 from a gun that does 2d6 damage, he suffers 2 additional dice of damage, or another 2d6; 20 minus 10 divided by 5 equals 2 increments of 5.

Characters can increase the length or width of the Autofire area by up to 5 feet per 5 bullets fired above 10, if they waive the DC bonus provided by those additional bullets. This increase in area is transferable to use of the Strafe feat, allowing a character using the feat to target a number of five foot squares in a straight line up to the number of five foot squares in the new Autofire area.

Players can now utilize all of the abilities granted by the Burst Fire feat, such as firing a burst of gunfire at an enemy. However, all penalties inflicted by the use of those abilities are doubled. For example, Bob would suffer a -8 penalty for attempting a basic Burst Fire on an opponent. If he attempted to utilize the Full-Auto ability, he'd suffer an additional -4 penalty to his attack for every additional damage dice added to it instead of the normal -2.

Three shot burst modes are specially calibrated to maximize accuracy while minimizing ammo consumption. The base attack roll penalty for using them in a Burst Fire attack is thus -3 instead of the normal -4 (-6 for users without the Burst Fire feat).

Players with the Burst Fire feat can attempt a new type of attack called Full-Auto:

Full-Auto: As part of a Burst Fire attack, characters may fire additional bullets by going full-auto. Every 3 additional bullets beyond the first 5 add +1 to an attack's damage dice, and -2 to hit (to a maximum of 15 additional bullets, or +5 damage dice, and -10 to hit). Controlled burst modes (such as the 3 shot burst mode) cannot fire additional bullets in this way, and weapons with such settings must be fired on full-auto in order to utilize this functionality.

Both of these are interesting, as it, in my eyes, makes automatic weapons a viable choice. No longer do you need a feat to do a burst fire attack (traditionally, if you didn't have the feat, you could only do the autofire attack on a 10 foot by 10 foot area, and the DC was static at 15), as well as autofire might actually threaten someone now.

Another concept I've seen, in a mini RPG supplement for a Wild West setting, was making firearms ranged touch attacks. Don't know if I'll go to that extent though, might be a bit much.

The person who came up with those house rules has a bunch posted here, if anyone is curious.

[Ismaels-Legacy]

I'm not sure about the burst fire count rules, but the Ranged Touch option is a good one. The only drawback is that armor would have to be converted to DR instead of AC.

I like the idea of adding in weight restrictions and mobility to the Evasion feat. It makes perfect sense. I would even go so far as "Nothing heavier than light or leather armor" and "Must be carrying a light load or less". That simplifies things quite a bit.

That said, I would either add in the weight/mobility restriction OR the re-roll option, but not both.

[Crimson-Kobold]

I'm not sure about the burst fire count rules, but the Ranged Touch option is a good one. The only drawback is that armor would have to be converted to DR instead of AC.

That sounds like fun times rather then a drawback

Going into way off topic land, it makes me think of something that D&D should have done.

Have the smaller weapons, like daggers, have bigger critical multiplyers. That way, a dagger can still be dangerous, but only in key situations (great for coup de graces, being a auto crit, which makes sense)

Anywho. Back to evasion.

Hmm, a dex based character would have, I would expect, somewhere from 8 to 14 str, depending on the stat generation. Light loads start from 26 lbs to 58 lbs. Thinking about it, I don't think that'll be enough to water down evasion. So if I were to pick between light load/light to no armor, verus rerolling reflex saves, I'd think I'd rather have the latter, since barring supernatural powers, there's no way a normal human can NOT be injured by an explosive that close.

Between shrapnel, and the impact shockwave of the explosion, it'll have an impact.

I don't think the weight/moblity would really be that large of an impact on a dex based character really. I doubt having both those rules in would be a problem. Heck, the most it'll do is prevent hoarding by the players lol.

In any case, now that grenades are actually a threat now with the reroll idea, I think that will go leaps and bounds about making the game functional for me again, along with the autofire (not necessarily the burst fire suggestion the guy had, but I like the idea of adding more bullets to the autofire ability)