Alliance, Faultline and d20 Modern

I want to talk about the Modern Magic Unearthed Arcana. I've got two projects that are based around modern times: Faultline and Alliance.  Faultline is going to be a sequel to overland set over 5,000 years into the future, so I'm not going to work on it until I get Overland finished. Alliance is a modern city being invaded by monsters, where an eccentric billionaire hires people to keep the magic away from the common public (and then other groups get involved and hijinks ensue).

Now, in the 3.5 days, Wizards released d20 Modern, using the D&D rules in a normal setting.  I loved the game and its "road to a hero" design.  Characters had to start with one of the basic classes, which are generic classes with talent trees.  They had to multiclass into Advanced Classes, which are more like the D&D classes. Alliance was built more from the d20 Modern idea of normal people slowly trying to understand the supernatural world around them.

The current d20 Modern articles we're getting for 5e is a "D&D in the present day" rules.  I like them, but I don't think I'll use the class options for Alliance.  Use the spells for Alliance, yes. Use the options for Faultline, yes. I can't see having a 1st level mage or warlock in Alliance.

I want to use the class options, but that's what Faultline is for.  With some of these articles, they could try to make a d20 Modern book for 5e D&D. If they do, I want them to have both the "D&D in the present" as much as "Normal world invaded by magic." I think they're going to need some more magic-less, psionic-less, classes to pull it off, though. On the other hand, I don't think they're going to make a d20 Modern book until they work out the kinks with psionics.

Then again, I could use the Steve Jobs method and wait until people start releasing their own modern ruleset and then see what I can use and what I can improve on.

I HAVE OPINIONS - Vitality from Unearthed Arcana

(The "I Have Opinions" feature is when I talk about other people's custom work. Unearthed Arcana, other people's work, etc. This time I give an aid to an old Unearthed Arcana article on Variant rules, specifically to make the Vitality rules a lot easier.)

One of the reasons that I preferred 4th edition over 3.X/PF is temporary ability damage. I really didn't like Con damage, because one could lose 1 point and lose their level in hit points, and another could lose 1 point and be roughly fine. Also, I didn't like the shortcut of going down to a minimum of 1 hit point per level. If I rolled hit points, and I got 6 hit point for my first level and 1 hit point for the next level, losing 1 to my Con modifier shouldn't drop my hp by 2.

Well, the people at Wizards, with their Unearthed Arcana playtest rules, indirectly introduced Con damage again. Basically, you have vitality that takes damage when you're taking 10 or more damage or a critical hit. You calculate your hit points off of vitality instead of Constitution, and you're supposed to recalculate your hit points based off of your vitality in the middle of a fight.

Now, I could call this not-for-me, but I want to give this a fair shake. I made a chart for people to try it out without the annoying recalculations or the bad shortcuts. I set the chart with instructions on Dropbox and Google Drive so people can try it out.

Anyway, there are still some ability-damage effects out there, but they're an exception, not the rule. If I run one, I'm probably going to replace it with a penalty on the ability modifier.