Potestas: a D&D3E supplement

Chapter Eight: Combat

Base Defence Bonus: A character's class and level grant an innate bonus to Defence. This bonus measures the character's combat savvy and applies in all situations, even when the character is flat-footed or would otherwise lose their Dexterity bonus (if any), unless the character is helpless. Base Defence Bonus progresses as follows.

Creatures with the dragon, fey and outsider types have good Base Defence Bonus progression, constructs and undead have poor progression, and other creature types have average progression.

Two-Weapon Fighting: Characters using two weapons can perform a full iterative attack sequence with both weapons.

Injury and Death: Hit points measure how hard it is to injure or kill a character. Characters are not adversely affected by losing hit points until they reach 0 hit points or below. At that point, the character is staggered, and can only perform a partial action each round. When a character's hit points equal negative Con (that is, -12 for a character with Con 12), the character is disabled: they can only perform a partial action each round, and if the action is strenuous they lose 1 hit point and pass out. A character who has fewer hit points than negative Con is unconscious and dying: characters die when their hit points equal two times negative Con (that is, -24 for a character with Con 12).

Healing from Damage: Characters on positive hit points regain 1 + Con bonus (minimum 1) hit point per character level per hour. Characters on 0 or less hit points regain 1 + Con bonus (minimum 1) hit point per day of rest.

Lethal and Non-Lethal Damage: Characters can use a weapon that usually does lethal damage to do no-lethal damage, and vice versa, by taking a -4 penalty to hit. If the attack roll misses the target but would have hit the target if this penalty had not been applied, the weapon hits and does its usual type of damage.

Turn Arcane (Su): Characters with the Turn Arcane feat can use a standard action to drive away or destroy arcane creatures like dragons, fey, giants and undead. All arcane creatures within 60 feet of the character attempting to turn arcane must make a Will save against the character's turning DC (10 + level/2 + Cha bonus), and if they fail the saving throw they must flee or cower. Undead (but not dragons, fey, or giants) that fail the saving throw by 10 or more are destroyed. Characters with one or more non-mystic levels have a -1 DC modifier when determining their turning DC. Once turned, the character does not have to concentrate for the effects to persist on any affected arcane creatures.

Hold Off Arcane (Su): Characters with the Devout Belief feat can use a standard action to hold off arcane creatures. Characters with non-mystic levels do not have a modifier to their effective level, but characters with one or more mystic levels have a +1 DC modifier. There is no limit to the number of times a day characters can hold off arcane creatures: all arcane creatures within sixty feet that fail a Will save against the character's turning DC (10 + level/2 + Cha bonus) are affected, and cannot face the character or approach within ten feet for as long as the character continues to concentrate (that is, use a standard action) on holding them off.

Falling Damage: Falling causes 1d6 damage for every 5 feet of velocity when the character hits the ground, to a maximum of 36d6 for 360 feet of velocity. It takes one round (six seconds) to reach that velocity, and the character will actually fall 630 feet in that time. The following table matches the dice of damage to the minimum distance fallen.

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