Raven Blackwell said:
Optional Rule variant
Fate play no favourites, but I can take the pain
In an effort to make the game seem less like a video game with a number of ‘extra lives’ in the form of Fate points, the following rules can be used. No creature, PC or NPC, possesses or can make use of Fate Points. To balance this change, the death by Massive Damage rule no longer applies. No matter the amount of damage suffered in an attack, no Fortitude saving throw is required to avoid dying. This returns the game back to the old D&D feel where if you wanted something very large dead, you had to beat it to a bloody pulp- which is more satisfying in my opinion. 8)
Optionally, you can set the threshold of amount of damage needed to provoke a Fortitude save higher- 30 or 40 perhaps. In this case the DC of the Massive Damage check would be a DC equal to the damage suffered minus the minimum threshold. Thus if the threshold is set to 30, an attack dealing 44 points of damage would only require a Fortitude save of 14 [44 points of damage dealt – minimum threshold of 30] to prevent sudden death.
I think if you're gonna drop the Massive Damage rule, you may as well just play D&D. It's not really "returning to a D&D flavor" to not use it, because you may as well not use Dodge or Parry - it's just not
Conan without the ability to get a lucky shot it and drop a werewolf in a single lucky blow.
That said, the "threshold" bit was something I discussed some time back in some ancient thread or another. Search ""Massive Damage threshold" or something. It's a really old discussion, before AE even. One thing I had noticed (and this is all me vaguely recalling stuff from way-back-when, so bear with me if it seems off a tad) creatures sometimes had erroneously high FORT saves in some cases in spite of thier CON scores. What I reccomended at the time was simply to add the FORT save (I think) to the normal 20 point threshold.
I'll see if I can locate the thread myself too. Most of these ideas seem nice; I particularly like the improvements to water movement.
For the trident, I'd make it a single handed weapon (like a short spear) but with a 19-20 threat range, x2 crit and the ability to add bonus to disarm and trip attacks. Tridents were used to stab folks, obviously, but a common practice was to snag an opponent's weapon in the prongs, give a twist to the trident, and yank the offending weapon out of the opponent's hand. The barbs aided in this, as with snaging ankles, straps, belts, etc. and forcing opponents' to buckle at the knee. They were'primarily a defensive weapon with offensive capailities, doubly difficult to fight against when the trident wielder was armed with another defensive weapon like a spiked gauntlet or, as is most anecdotally common, a weighted metal net.