I've been reading Novus over and I'm enjoying it. Coming from someone who's played buckets of d20 and before that MERP and Rolemaster, it does seem to hit a lot of the right notes.
On the d20 side, there is a plethora of associations in terminology and basic structures that are present. However, the game isn't run with the "keyword" type of system that you'll see in 3e and beyond D&D. You don't have rules that have a kind of cascading effect of "if... then..." situations with the rules. That's a refreshing change.
In that way the game does feel old school. How it is written and even the examples basically place it in the old paradigm where the players describe what they want to do, and then the GM processes it and then outputs what happens from their own interpretation. The GM is the "physics engine" of the world that the players have to act through.
One the MERP/Rolemaster end you have a lot more detail in terms of effects, the key element being the Boons and Snags, which are generally equivalent to the Crit Tables which was the raison d'etre of playing MERP/RM. In a new-school twist, the players get a bit of narrative control by being able to choose what it is that they do when they roll well or poorly.
The great thing, something that I've been hunting for awhile, is that the Boon and Snag options are generally more on the mild and flavorful side of things. You'd have to roll really well to deliver a killing blow outright, instead most of the effects give little bits of detail and flavor as the core mechanic, hit points, gets chewed away. That's what I've wanted... flavorful crits, but not show stoppers for the most part.
Combat
In terms of the general scope of combat, you've got hit points that start at 1st level with 20+Con Score. Thus, generally you're starting with 30+ hit points. After that each level you only get a small amount more. A Fighter only gains an additional 3+Con. In relation to d20 games, you get a lot of hit points to start, but then per level afterwards is below what you'd be getting in D&D or Pathfinder.
On the back end, you die anywhere from -11 to -20+ hit points depending on your Con score. So at 1st level you've got this spread of around 30+ to start, and go down to -20+ to die. Thus, roughly a 50 point spread right from the start.
Crucially, from -1 to -10 you're still conscious, but just barely. You can stumble about and try and patch yourself up.
Why you have so many hit points right from the beginning is for a couple of reasons from what I see. Weapons just have a damage rating, you don't roll for damage (I like this) and so a broadsword does 8 points every time it hits. In d20 terms, each weapon is basically doing the maximum damage that you'd find in D&D.
Damage doesn't stop there. You have options in the game, some that are like feats, others from Boons, that allow you to add more damage to your hits. Much of this is dependent on how well you roll. So the variation in damage is based on the result of your to hit roll. Typical damage for weapons seems to hover around 8. So a first level character is likely to be able to absorb around four or five hits before collapsing, but it could be less with nasty Boon fueled blows.
In terms of old school flavor, there is no mention of a battle grid. Movement amounts to a single paragraph, mentioning speed scores for characters and that's about it. The game gives you a metric that the GM can then use however they want. You could pull out the battlemat just to get relative positions worked out, or not.
Tactics seem to completely rely on choosing probabilities and dealing with resources. You can have feat like effects, similar to either Power Attack in 3eD&D or the OB/DB variation from MERP/RM. You also have Fate points that allow for extra rolls to be made or other elements to be pumped up.
There is no mention of flanking or facing in Novus. Thus, it's even removed another step from the battlegrid than even AD&D, which did have bonuses for flanking and rear attacks. I found this just a little surprising. Novus does have lots of lots of modifiers spread through the rules. Something that definitely feels like it's MERP/RM roots. However all of the modifiers relate to player choice in terms of how they will perform an action, modifying percentatges or other effects. Aside from range increment penalties, there doesn't seem to be any positional modifiers, such as flanks and rear attacks. Unless I missed them. I'd think, from the vary broad way that flanks/rear attacks were used in AD&D, they could fit in here without moving towards 3E+ battlegrid realities.
Actions are done through action points, which I like. It gives a lot of flexibility in what you want to do and gets you away from 3E's move/standard/full categories that are rather stifling.
One thing that I wasn't completely compelled by is how combat moves are handled. You basically have a listing of combat moves, which gives a healthy spectrum of various ways of attacking someone. However, some of them are basic ones that anyone can do, while other ones are more akin to "feats" that have to be purchased by characters. I guess the issue that I'm finding with this mixture is that these combat moves are separated off from the other "feats" in the game, namely Talents. It's one of those moments where old school rules layout emerges (the bad kind) in that you have this other excepted category. It's basically another exception to the rules, which when you start to add up, makes you wish it was all more centralized.
Then you find there are Combat Styles, which is yet another category. All of this seems like it could be more easily navigated, at least in character creation, with 3E type feat trees, along with a summary listing of how it all fits together. Giving a nice visual table of how all of these sub-systems link together would be very handy.
Magic
It all seems to have a general unified system. You just pick a school and can cast from it. You can even "multi-class" to a degree and cast from two different schools. It uses spell points, which is great, and you roll your spellcraft to see how well you do. All very strait forward meat and potato approaches that I find superior to 3E stuff.
What I also really like is that anyone can cast spells. Just spend your points and a Fighter can dabble in some magic, casting universal spells, albeit, very inefficiently.
On the flip side, spell caster classes can wear armor. You just take penalties to casting. It's been present in 3E for quite awhile, but I think how the penalties are used here is one of just resource management. You have to spend more spell points to cast a spell, rather than a percentage chance of the whole thing fizzling on you. Putting the choice within the resource management end of things feels much more empowering to a player, rather than having to hope against random fate.
Stuff I was iffy about....
I've never really been a big fan of exploding and imploding dice. MERP/RM had them, and I've seen them in plenty of action with the 40K RPGs. I guess I just dislike how it can take a bit of time for a player to resolve one action. Dice keep getting picked up, things keep getting added together, and you don't really know what is going on, save for the person rolling. It's not a deal breaker, and I see how it is being carefully used here to make the Boon/Snag system to work.
There are lots and lots of modifiers for all sorts of things in the rules. Invariably they are buried in text. It's just my preference... I am a visual learner, and having to read through so much text to get at mechanics is something that hampers the chance of the rules getting used. Some people may scream about tables, though I think they dislike tables where you have to cross reference to get results, but having more summary tables would be helpful. Being able to just glance at a page for the key mechanics really goes a long way to grabbing the system and running with it.
One thing that I didn't quite get the design decision around is of declaring actions for everyone before acting them out. I guess its just decades of playing games where you wait for your turn, but I don't quite get understand what the declaration round really achieves. Maybe it is superior, but it just seems like it would be more efficient for people to have some downtime to think about what they are going to do while others are acting.
Overall
I like what I'm seeing. A nice middle ground between old-school/new-school and rules-light/rules-heavy. The biggest things for me come down to presentation. Having consolidated charts, or a GM screen, or something where the bulk of the game can be condensed down into just a couple of sheets of paper that merely have to be glanced at is what I really crave to see. I have no problem with lots of modifiers and sub-systems here and there, the key thing is just having quick access to them. I think with Rolemaster I ignored 98% of the rules, simply because slogging through the books for this or that game element wasn't worth it.
