Hello, this is my first post here. I shadowed this forum for a bit and it looked mature and helpful so i decided to join. :D
Anyway, i have already designed an RPG, the culmination of about 12 years of playing console RPGs and homebrew pnp RPGs with my friends and some strangers. I've tried to make the game, Amalgam (which explains my username) as easy to get into and simple to understand as possible, but i've met some individuals who still don't quite get it. So now i'm looking to create a second version of the game that is even simpler, while still nuanced enough that people who DO get it won't be bored.
The current released version can be found here in the Documents section.
http://www.scytherpg.webs.com/ (http://www.scytherpg.webs.com/)
The problem i'm coming up against now is that i'm afraid that endgame combat will take too long, as the Health of the Characters/Monsters grows at a rate much faster than Damage does.
So you don't have to read through the pdf to find it, here's how damage is calculated:
Attribute (Strength for example) + Weapon dice (1d10 for example) = Damage output.
Damage does get mitigated by Protection (armor and natural toughness) before being subtracted from Health (the total of Vitality and extra points spent each Level.)
I'm contemplating lowering the number of points players may spend on Health per Level, but i currently have that number of points being the same for every Level, including the starting level.
The consequence of this is that the last two games i ran had player characters collapsing in the first hit or two. This might seem realistic, but the game is supposed to have a cinematic hero feel to it; when heroes take damage it lowers their pain tolerance and endurance rather than actually injuring them. Heroes are supposed to be just a cut above your average Joe.
So, assuming a hero had above average Vitality (10) and above average Strength (10), but also had 5 points to divide between Endurance (Health) and Vigor (Spell points), assuming this were a strictly Melee character, he'd likely put all 5 points on Endurance giving a total of 15 Endurance.
This is all for Level 1.
So, assuming an average villain, also Level 1, has average everything (around 8 Vitality and Strength with 5 points on Endurance) using an ordinary Longsword (1d10 Dmg) would do anywhere between 9-18 Dmg. Even without a Critical Hit (damage multiplier) there is the potential to one-hit-kill the hero.
I don't have any kind of bestiary or monster manual, i make the enemies the same way i make the player characters because i find the method so quick.
Zoom forward to Level 10 (the cap).
Hero
Endurance 69 (5 points/level+Vit)
Vitality 19 (1 point/level past first level)
Strength 10
Longsword 1d10
Villain
Endurance 58
Vitality 8
Strength 17
Longsword 1d10 (18-27 Dmg) for an average of 22.5 Dmg per successful attack.
Assuming no damage mitigation: 69/22.5=3.06 hits to kill.
Does this seem too quick to anyone? I originally had it to where players had 20 points to play with between Health and Vigor per level. So assuming the same characters as above:
Hero Lv 1
Endurance 30
Villain Lv 1
Average Damage 13.5
Hits to kill: 2.2
Too quick?
-----------------------
Hero Lv 10
Endurance 269
Villain Lv 10
Average Damage 22.5
Hits to kill: 11.95 (if i'm doing my math right)
Does this seem to take too long? :huhsign:
Am i making sense? :duh:
Any advice would be much appreciated.
As an aside, i'm currently working on removing the current Skill System from the next iteration of the game. Many skills will work in relation to the core Attributes of the characters. This has lead to a few revisions with the Attributes as well. For instance, Eloquence is now tied to Mind, and Cunning is tied to Wisdom (formerly Will), Perception has replaced Dexterity as the Ranged Attack Attribute and doubles as an actual Perception skill. Agility is taken out and Dexterity is now the Melee Attack Attribute. Not that this is going to matter to anyone who hasn't already played it. :p
Quote from: Amalgam;570333Hello, this is my first post here. I shadowed this forum for a bit and it looked mature and helpful so i decided to join. :D
Anyway, i have already designed an RPG, the culmination of about 12 years of playing console RPGs and homebrew pnp RPGs with my friends and some strangers. I've tried to make the game, Amalgam (which explains my username) as easy to get into and simple to understand as possible, but i've met some individuals who still don't quite get it. So now i'm looking to create a second version of the game that is even simpler, while still nuanced enough that people who DO get it won't be bored.
The current released version can be found here in the Documents section.
http://www.scytherpg.webs.com/ (http://www.scytherpg.webs.com/)
The problem i'm coming up against now is that i'm afraid that endgame combat will take too long, as the Health of the Characters/Monsters grows at a rate much faster than Damage does.
So you don't have to read through the pdf to find it, here's how damage is calculated:
Attribute (Strength for example) + Weapon dice (1d10 for example) = Damage output.
Damage does get mitigated by Protection (armor and natural toughness) before being subtracted from Health (the total of Vitality and extra points spent each Level.)
I'm contemplating lowering the number of points players may spend on Health per Level, but i currently have that number of points being the same for every Level, including the starting level.
The consequence of this is that the last two games i ran had player characters collapsing in the first hit or two. This might seem realistic, but the game is supposed to have a cinematic hero feel to it; when heroes take damage it lowers their pain tolerance and endurance rather than actually injuring them. Heroes are supposed to be just a cut above your average Joe.
So, assuming a hero had above average Vitality (10) and above average Strength (10), but also had 5 points to divide between Endurance (Health) and Vigor (Spell points), assuming this were a strictly Melee character, he'd likely put all 5 points on Endurance giving a total of 15 Endurance.
This is all for Level 1.
So, assuming an average villain, also Level 1, has average everything (around 8 Vitality and Strength with 5 points on Endurance) using an ordinary Longsword (1d10 Dmg) would do anywhere between 9-18 Dmg. Even without a Critical Hit (damage multiplier) there is the potential to one-hit-kill the hero.
I don't have any kind of bestiary or monster manual, i make the enemies the same way i make the player characters because i find the method so quick.
Zoom forward to Level 10 (the cap).
Hero
Endurance 69 (5 points/level+Vit)
Vitality 19 (1 point/level past first level)
Strength 10
Longsword 1d10
Villain
Endurance 58
Vitality 8
Strength 17
Longsword 1d10 (18-27 Dmg) for an average of 22.5 Dmg per successful attack.
Assuming no damage mitigation: 69/22.5=3.06 hits to kill.
Does this seem too quick to anyone? I originally had it to where players had 20 points to play with between Health and Vigor per level. So assuming the same characters as above:
Hero Lv 1
Endurance 30
Villain Lv 1
Average Damage 13.5
Hits to kill: 2.2
Too quick?
-----------------------
Hero Lv 10
Endurance 269
Villain Lv 10
Average Damage 22.5
Hits to kill: 11.95 (if i'm doing my math right)
Does this seem to take too long? :huhsign:
Am i making sense? :duh:
Any advice would be much appreciated.
As an aside, i'm currently working on removing the current Skill System from the next iteration of the game. Many skills will work in relation to the core Attributes of the characters. This has lead to a few revisions with the Attributes as well. For instance, Eloquence is now tied to Mind, and Cunning is tied to Wisdom (formerly Will), Perception has replaced Dexterity as the Ranged Attack Attribute and doubles as an actual Perception skill. Agility is taken out and Dexterity is now the Melee Attack Attribute. Not that this is going to matter to anyone who hasn't already played it. :p
Without checking over your math or the rest of your system and just going by the results you have at the end I'd say 2.2 hits is not too fast depending on the percentage chance that someone hits. If its 50% that 2.2 to death occurence can turn into 5+ swings (more or less depending on how many swings in a turn you get). On the other hand close to 12 hits to take something down (at best) is way too long and unless lengthy higher end combats are your goal then you probably want to up damage or lower health.
Thanks!
Yes, these calculations were assuming 100% accuracy, which would never happen in a real game.
Accuracy is dependent on varying factors, of course changing by method of attack (melee, ranged, magic).
So, again assuming average Dexterity for melee (8):
Dex+Weapon Bonus (Longsword)+1d20
8+1+(1 to 20)=10 to 29 (avg. 19.5)
Melee evasion utilizes Dexterity as well
Dex+Shield Bonus (Buckler)+1d20
8+1+(1 to 20)+10 to 29 (19.5)
However the Attacker has a slight advantage, as a hit will be landed even if the totals are tied. Soooo.... about a 50.5% chance to hit? Not sure on that.
12+ hits sounds right for a bossfight, but not for an average fight.
The solution i'm looking at right now is to have the starting health be sufficient to sustain 2-3 hits, and then have the increase be lower per level after that.
Weapons can be tempered and reforged, magically imbued, or the moderator can just give players better weapons as the game goes on, but i'm trying to avoid the MMO/JRPG effect of weapon bloat.
Quote from: Amalgam;571403However the Attacker has a slight advantage, as a hit will be landed even if the totals are tied. Soooo.... about a 50.5% chance to hit? Not sure on that.
12+ hits sounds right for a bossfight, but not for an average fight.
The solution i'm looking at right now is to have the starting health be sufficient to sustain 2-3 hits, and then have the increase be lower per level after that.
Weapons can be tempered and reforged, magically imbued, or the moderator can just give players better weapons as the game goes on, but i'm trying to avoid the MMO/JRPG effect of weapon bloat.
If the attacker has advantage on a D20 positing even attack vs defense then attacker has a 55% chance. If you're going for 12 + hits for "boss fights" then you still want to adjust for the very high chance that you're going to have a 50%+ miss chance from the characters. If you want to avoid MMO/JRPG bloat I highly suggest that you limit the necessity of having "better weapons" to compete in the game. Please do not make the D&D mistake of making +1 swords.
Now I don't have time to read your document yet. It's the middle of the week and I like to spend my extra time working on my own project but this weekend I'll have time to give it a more serious look over.
No +1 swords... good to know there is actually a playerbase against that sort of thing, because it was the direction i was leaning toward.
Actually, while i haven't done that yet, i HAVE toyed with weapon enhancement in the form of magic stones with elemental properties, such as fire damage, HP drain, etc... and those properties would place extra damage onto the mundane damage of the weapon itself. But even that would have an upper limit, you can't mix different elements or have more stones on a weapon than the weapon has sockets for them, etc...
I suppose one way to avoid weapon bloat would be to avoid HP bloat as well. If HP doesn't go up per level, there's no need for fancy weaponry. But HP gain is part of the reward psychology of a game. So perhaps only a miniscule amount per level, instead of 10 or 5, make it 2 or 1. Characters would get tougher each level, but not insanely so.
Thanks again for taking the time.
Quote from: Amalgam;571847No +1 swords... good to know there is actually a playerbase against that sort of thing, because it was the direction i was leaning toward.
Actually, while i haven't done that yet, i HAVE toyed with weapon enhancement in the form of magic stones with elemental properties, such as fire damage, HP drain, etc... and those properties would place extra damage onto the mundane damage of the weapon itself. But even that would have an upper limit, you can't mix different elements or have more stones on a weapon than the weapon has sockets for them, etc...
I suppose one way to avoid weapon bloat would be to avoid HP bloat as well. If HP doesn't go up per level, there's no need for fancy weaponry. But HP gain is part of the reward psychology of a game. So perhaps only a miniscule amount per level, instead of 10 or 5, make it 2 or 1. Characters would get tougher each level, but not insanely so.
Thanks again for taking the time.
First off, no problem. I don't mind trying to share the knowledge I've picked up since I myself first embarked down the long and terrible road of making my own game. Take everything I say with a grain of salt though because I am not a professional that gets paid to make anything and because my data got fucked on my project I don't even have a ready thing to show off (though I'm trying to get together some help for the rewrite)
Anyways, having HP scale with level is fine as long as you have damage do to. Avoiding weapon bloat is super easy. There are at least two ways I can see you going about it. 1) Make them unnecessary, This should be important. A character should be effective with or without a flaming sword. 2) Make them rare. You can come up with a reason (I'm sure) why finding magic shit would be hard in your campaign. Both of these combined would make individual flaming swords much more cherished and worth being searched for while avoiding the "toss away the old sword for the new" kind of playstyle.
I still plan on reading your stuff more thoroughly this weekend but for now I'd ask why do you want to avoid "weapon bloat" and how exactly do "boss" enemies work (Shorthand please).
ouch, yeah, a friend of mine recently had several of his hard disks and backup drives corrupted suddenly, losing almost all of the game he had developed, except for the draft of a character sheet that i happened to have on my computer.
Ok, weapon bloat and bosses.
I want to avoid the bloat of weapons for a couple reasons.
-i think it'd be nice if the weapons one picks up at the beginning of the game will remain relevant and useful for at least half the levels, if not all the way to the level cap.
-i think it's realistic.
-i had started down the weapon bloat path early on and found it to be tedious and difficult to balance if players were able to buy anything from the list at a low level.
-it's annoying to have fancy weapons on a shopping list not available because of the starting coinage limit.
I did forget to mention, however, that there were previously some skills involved that increased a character's natural damage output in general, and weapon specific. Something i'm considering carrying over into the next edition.
Bosses are pretty much regular monsters with more health, unique strengths, and hidden weaknesses.
Regular monsters are created the same way as player characters, done so on purpose so i can crank out a new enemy in just a few seconds if need be.
If you want a mini-boss, make it a level or two above the party's average level, and if you want a real boss, give it some extra HPs.
Pretty simple i think. :)
EDIT: So far the only enhanced weapons i've put into play were part of plot progression of sorts, similar to the Zelda games. Search an abandoned temple and find a magic macguffin and note telling the party where to go next. Inevitably the macguffin they found will be useful when they get there.
Quote from: Amalgam;571904\
-i think it'd be nice if the weapons one picks up at the beginning of the game will remain relevant and useful for at least half the levels, if not all the way to the level cap.
Again that's something I can understand, It can be done best in the fashion I outlined. Make progression come 100% from something other than equipment and you're about there. I'd suggest tying it to level in whatever way is appropriate for your game. If you're going to make it a skill (I don't suggest it) then make multiple and point out how necessary they are.
Quote-i had started down the weapon bloat path early on and found it to be tedious and difficult to balance if players were able to buy anything from the list at a low level.
It's a common issue you would run into as long as wealth = power.
Quote-it's annoying to have fancy weapons on a shopping list not available because of the starting coinage limit.
I found it more annoying to have to cap wealth at all so that Players weren't trying to shake the trees for more wealth in order to try to get ahead.
QuoteI did forget to mention, however, that there were previously some skills involved that increased a character's natural damage output in general, and weapon specific. Something i'm considering carrying over into the next edition.
Again I don't suggest tying it to a skill or having it be weapon specific. Tying it to a skill makes that skill a tax, and depending on the bonuses/abilities tied to skills makes people try to make that skill blow up as early/as fast as possible disregarding other, more flavorable, skills in the process. If you tie it to a weapon you discourage changing weapons throughout the campaign and lock players into a specifc weapon/fighting style choice throughout the campaign. That's fine if you want to do that but I have a feeling you may want something a bit more freeform. Weapon specialization should be something you should be able to choose to have not have it be a necessity.
QuoteBosses are pretty much regular monsters with more health, unique strengths, and hidden weaknesses.
Regular monsters are created the same way as player characters, done so on purpose so i can crank out a new enemy in just a few seconds if need be.
If you want a mini-boss, make it a level or two above the party's average level, and if you want a real boss, give it some extra HPs.
Pretty simple i think. :)
This is about how I did it myself so depending on the actual results you came up with I potentially have nothing to add.
EDIT: So far the only enhanced weapons i've put into play were part of plot progression of sorts, similar to the Zelda games. Search an abandoned temple and find a magic macguffin and note telling the party where to go next. Inevitably the macguffin they found will be useful when they get there.[/QUOTE]
Hi Amalgam,
On the health issue I'd say about 3 hits to kill is a good number as well. (You can maintain the ratio with levelling up fairly easily e.g. if its +3 HP per level, add +1 damage per level). The only real problem with that is that if PCs and NPCs use the same system, they'll need multiple shots to take out as well, at least until level bonuses to damage catch up.
I'd say 12 to take out a villain at high level is definitely way too much (if the hit rate were down to 50% that would mean 24 to kill...and if armour is reducing damage that would I suppose increase it even further (and then throw in traits like Nigh Immortal...)
Did have a look at the whole RPG. Interesting since you rarely see a game that combines multiple core mechanics these days; even rarer to see combination d20/dice pool. I'm actually not morally opposed to that, though this sort of thing does seems to be out of fashion these days.
Anyway, on a readthrough I generally didn't have too much trouble understanding it and it was fairly fun to read (good art too). Various things I noticed on a quick readthrough:
*The section about calculating Endurance, Vigor and Vitality was a bit confusing on an initial read since these are all synonyms (and then a bit later there's a Toughness as well).
*For the skill system I'm not sure I grasp how 'sets' work i.e. on level up are you meant to choose just one ability from the new level's skills? The main critiques I would have of the system would be
-ability scores provide no bonus to skills.
-the way critical successes/failures are calculated has fairly wonky probabilities, since extra dice increase both # of 10s and # of 1s.
Chance of a critical failure is 10% regardless of difficulty with 1d, anywhere from 1% to 17% for 2d (depending on difficulty), from .1% to 27% at 3d, and that was as far as I'd worked it out.
Chance of critical success is 10% at 1d, 17% at 2d, 22% at 3d and peaks at at about 7d (28%) then decreases again slowly if I'm calculating it correctly - its chance of 10 on N dice, multiplied by the chance of not rolling a 1 on the remaining [N-1] dice, since one of the dice can be assumed to be a 10 and so not a 1 i.e. =(1-(0.9^N))*((0.9^[N-1])).
(Anyway, sorry about the detour into math).
-I wasn't quite sure how opposed rolls (e.g. Eloquence vs. Cunning) are supposed to work; compare highest single dice roll for both sides? If it ties, would you compare 2nd highest rolls, and would a critical success win against a normal success?
*Other minor nitpicks here would be the bashing weapons ignoring armour, and don't really like Dex adding to ranged weapon damage (It works, but I prefer Str to modify base damage and then the to-hit roll to modify damage somehow). Levelling also looks like it takes awhile since the amounts go up double each level. Oh also, the Dragon race Tri-blast power (pg 23) doesn't have a listed damage.
Anyway, hope this helps - not to discourage, do keep in mind that I'm very very nitpicky with regard to game mechanics and given half a chance will rant at length about the flaws of any game system you could care to name.
@MGuy
thanks for the input, i'll have to tinker with some ideas for increasing damage per level, but i want to avoid anything resembling BAB (i know it's attack and not damage) as much as possible.
That being said, i might go for a 2 point increase per level for damage output, which could be divided between Melee/Ranged/Magic however the player chooses. This would be on top of whatever Attribute serves as the Base Dmg, and the weapon.
So for example, i just leveled up, i get to increase my Endurance and Vigor (Health and Spell points), and can choose to put 2 points on Melee Dmg, or 1 on Melee and 1 on Ranged (or magic if i were a spell caster)
This is something else, the points spent to increase Endurance per level are the same points spent on Vigor, so there is a trade off, and not everyone will likely allot their points the exact same.
So maybe 4 points for End/Vig, and 2 points for Mel/Rng/Mag? On top of the 1 point per level for Vit/Str/Dex/Per/Min/Wis.
The thing here is that you can increase your Endurance with Vitality because Vit is the base for Endurance (and Wisdom is the base for Vigor), but only 1 point per level, and if you do, you sacrifice raising another Attribute, such as accuracy or damage, etc... Also, the difference between Endurance and Vitality is that Vitality is similar to Constitution (more to the point, they are the same) as it is your poison/disease/survival stat, so not raising it can bite you in the long run.
@BSJohnson
Wow! thanks for reading it. Did it take long to get through? I know it's shorter than most RPG manuals i've seen...
Glad you liked the art, i designed it myself.
Some of the problems you've outlined i've already seen myself, and are part of the reason i'm working on a second edition.
In the new edition the Attributes are changed some:
Vit - same
Str - same
Dex - Melee accuracy instead of ranged accuracy and dmg. Also stealth related.
Perception - ranged accuracy and dmg. also searching related/anti stealth.
Mind - same, but now also Eloquence related.
Wisdom - same as Will, but now Cunning related/anti Eloquence.
As you can see, Agility is gone.
The problem of confusion between Endurance/Vigor/Vitality is something i'm hoping to rectify in the next edition. Vigor was originally Spirit, but someone pointed out that their natural assumption about Spirit wasn't what it actually was intended for.
With Skill Sets, you get everything at the rank you earn. Everything! :D
This is also something i'm thinking of changing however, going back to the practice of single Skill learning, but based on a mechanic vastly different from point buy, and hopefully more flexible.
In the next edition i'm thinking of having Skills be addons to the Attributes for specific tasks. For example, anyone can make a Dex check to sneak, but people who have trained a Sneak Skill get a bonus to their Dex check when sneaking.
lol! you lost me with the math for crit fails/passes, but i'll take your word for it. I'm planning on doing away with that entire mechanic in the next version.
With opposed rolls, the "person-whose-turn-it-is" (otherwise known as the attacker) always wins ties. So, if it's your turn and you are using Eloquence (attack) and you tie with someone's Cunning (defense) then you succeed (but optionally play it as though they believe you, but barely). But if you are using Cunning as a means to solve a riddle or puzzle in a dungeon that is not part of an opposed roll, then you win on a tie against the Difficulty Rating then as well.
Bashing only ignores what could be considered Flexible Armor. Basically your chainmail, scale armor, leather armor, etc... are designed, historically, to deflect blades and points, but due to their flexible nature will buckle under a crushing blow. As such, Partial and Full Plate armors resist Bashing weapons because they have no flex or weave.
I could probably turn down the exp requirement per level, but i had left it high because i only have 10 levels at the moment. I had originally planned 20 levels, but ran out of ideas for traits... (maybe it shows)
Good eye on spotting the Tri Blast. I think the assumption when i wrote that was that it would be identical to the Gas Sac from Level 6 (1d6Fire Dmg/turn). Something that needs to be stated specifically in no uncertain terms.
I understand being nitpicky (that's why i don't just play D&D), and thanks for the constructive criticism. That's what i was hoping for. :)
So, was there a particular race that you liked? Anything seem unbalanced? And what did you think of the Goblin towns in the Swamp? (pg. 6)
I've also uploaded two adventure modules featuring towns on the map. They are like 2nd or 3rd drafts, so they are a bit rough and lacking in detail, but should be playable. I have a third, but it is balanced for an even earlier version of the rules and needs to be updated before it is playable. All of these are good for Level 1-3 characters in a party size of about 3-5.
http://scytherpg.webs.com/apps/documents/documents
I've made a few charts i hope will help.
First, the key:
End: Endurance
Vig: Vigor (given only to show that it doesn't grow with this particular point allotment)
Vit: Vitality, base Endurance
Str: Strength, base Damage
Hits to kill: assuming 100% accuracy, this is about how many hits it would take to kill an identical character.
50% to hit: a rough estimate of the actual accuracy a fighter would have, and how many attacks it would take to kill someone, assuming half of them actually hit.
5% x2 Dmg: On a d20, you have exactly 5% of rolling a natural 20, at which point the attack is automatically a hit, and damage is multiplied by 2.
Hits to kill: how many Critical Hits it takes to kill an identical fighter.
The chart can be found here: http://amalgamroleplaysystem.webs.com/apps/documents/
EDIT: I took out the damage reduction before multiplying for Critical Damage, which is wrong, but the i don't think the end result would be much different.
I'm beginning to think damage multipliers may be too much, perhaps?
Maybe if Crit damage were a second weapon dice roll, cumulative to the first one...
EDIT: Thanks, MGuy, for what you said about Damage Increase Skills versus Flavorful Skills. That makes sense. I may still incorporate one or two such skills, but having them done in such a way that their selection becomes a matter of flavor as well as a mechanical boost.
Something along these lines:
"Weapon Master~ You've dedicated yourself to the study of a specific weapon, and when using that weapon you gain +X bonus to Damage and Accuracy. You simply cannot get better than this. Rank 5, costs 50 Coins to purchase the skill, and has a Difficulty of 5 to learn"
Learning a skill would require that you pass a Mind check (1d20 equal to or under Mind Score)
Difficulty of 5 means that 5 points are deducted from your Mind Score during the check (25% more likely to fail)
You only get one chance per day to learn a skill, and for a fighter type with "average" Mind, his starting score would only be 7 or so. With a difficulty of 5 subtracted from that, it only leaves you with a 10% chance of actually learning the skill.
The exception to this would be if the skill were chosen at character creation, at which point all Mind checks are assumed as automatically passed. But then, the Coin cost (50) would be taken out of your character's initial wealth (200 Coins for Level 1).
Does this sound balanced enough?
QuoteWow! thanks for reading it. Did it take long to get through? I know it's shorter than most RPG manuals i've seen...
Glad you liked the art, i designed it myself.
Some of the problems you've outlined i've already seen myself, and are part of the reason i'm working on a second edition.
In the new edition the Attributes are changed some:
Vit - same
Str - same
Dex - Melee accuracy instead of ranged accuracy and dmg. Also stealth related.
Perception - ranged accuracy and dmg. also searching related/anti stealth.
Mind - same, but now also Eloquence related.
Wisdom - same as Will, but now Cunning related/anti Eloquence.
As you can see, Agility is gone.
The problem of confusion between Endurance/Vigor/Vitality is something i'm hoping to rectify in the next edition. Vigor was originally Spirit, but someone pointed out that their natural assumption about Spirit wasn't what it actually was intended for.
With Skill Sets, you get everything at the rank you earn. Everything!
This is also something i'm thinking of changing however, going back to the practice of single Skill learning, but based on a mechanic vastly different from point buy, and hopefully more flexible.
In the next edition i'm thinking of having Skills be addons to the Attributes for specific tasks. For example, anyone can make a Dex check to sneak, but people who have trained a Sneak Skill get a bonus to their Dex check when sneaking.
lol! you lost me with the math for crit fails/passes, but i'll take your word for it. I'm planning on doing away with that entire mechanic in the next version.
With opposed rolls, the "person-whose-turn-it-is" (otherwise known as the attacker) always wins ties. So, if it's your turn and you are using Eloquence (attack) and you tie with someone's Cunning (defense) then you succeed (but optionally play it as though they believe you, but barely). But if you are using Cunning as a means to solve a riddle or puzzle in a dungeon that is not part of an opposed roll, then you win on a tie against the Difficulty Rating then as well.
Bashing only ignores what could be considered Flexible Armor. Basically your chainmail, scale armor, leather armor, etc... are designed, historically, to deflect blades and points, but due to their flexible nature will buckle under a crushing blow. As such, Partial and Full Plate armors resist Bashing weapons because they have no flex or weave.
I could probably turn down the exp requirement per level, but i had left it high because i only have 10 levels at the moment. I had originally planned 20 levels, but ran out of ideas for traits... (maybe it shows)
Good eye on spotting the Tri Blast. I think the assumption when i wrote that was that it would be identical to the Gas Sac from Level 6 (1d6Fire Dmg/turn). Something that needs to be stated specifically in no uncertain terms.
I understand being nitpicky (that's why i don't just play D&D), and thanks for the constructive criticism. That's what i was hoping for.
So, was there a particular race that you liked? Anything seem unbalanced? And what did you think of the Goblin towns in the Swamp? (pg. 6)
NP. An hour or so maybe, not too long? - plus another 20 mins or so in Excel fiddling around with numbers on the critical %s to satisfy my curiousity with that.
On the criticals doesn't matter much if you're ditching it, the problem was that the chance of getting 1s increase the more dice you roll. It was as I say interesting, I've tried doing combination dice pool/d20 games before except with a sort of two-tier system where you would e.g. roll d20 to see if you succeed, then roll dice pool and count successes for how well.
The changes you're proposing around skills adding to attribute checks sound good, and thanks for the clarifications re. opposed rolls and armour and skill sets (
Everything! Bwa ha ha! ). Revised attributes also sound OK.
I can understand reducing the effects of armour on bashing weapons - something I do like fiddling around with is armour piercing factors for different weapons. I'm not really an expert in the area but I'd expect armour to provide
some protection from bashing weapons, just not as much - a mace for instance may be spiked so while its mostly crushing, any sort of armour will at least mean you're less likely to be bleeding (externally, anyway); and chain and stuff will usually have a quilted underlayer (gambeson?) that I'd expect would absorb some of the impact. A system that handles this really well is perhaps going to get messy, though; so what you're done isn't unreasonable.
On balance and stuff: I like the trait system in principle - no prerequisites unlike say 3.5 D&D, so you're guaranteed to get something level-appropriate off the list instead of going back to get something balanced for 1st level when you finish climbing your feat tree. I was surprised to see teleport at 1st level, although I think the cost was also fairly high - it may be OK, its not a direct combat spell so much as changing how PCs fit into the world.
I suspect think the +1/level attribute raises may lead to problematic characters who have a single massive attribute (Str-guy or End-guy) unless you add incentives to spread raises around, or prohibit them; at higher levels since it favours offensive characters pumping up their damaging stat, and characters go from competent all-rounders at L1, to just being Melee-only, Ranged-only or Magic-only at higher levels, and losing or winning opposed checks automatically based on whether its a key-stat vs. key-stat contest.
No particular favourites with races - I'm always a dwarf guy so I liked the dwarves. (I think I approve of rolling gnomes into dwarves). World wise I don't mind the goblin towns particularly but didn't like Atlantis as a place, since its an Earth location (if an imaginery one) and so didn't quite fit in IMHO. Campaign world design isn't really my area, though.
An hour to read? That's not bad i guess. Not sure how long it would take me to read it if i hadn't written it.
You may have understood this perfectly, but i feel i should clarify, When you spend points on the skill sets, you get everything for the skill set you spend points on, not everything in every skill set in the game :p
So, for example, Sorcery Rank 1 gives you Jolt, Spark, and Synergy all at once.
I felt this was best to provide players with a large toolkit to work with, without a ridiculous point cost. Previously i had each skill bought separate and realized that most people would only have a few good skills by endgame.
Gambeson sounds right, without looking it up. You could tinker with the armor/weapon relationship to get the feel you want, but i personally was trying to avoid taking into account every bleeding cut imaginable, saving actual bleeds for special attacks. Part of this has to do with the design ethos of mimicking heroic combat in movies and TV, where the heroes get beaten black and blue and yet still seem capable of handling themselves, and any actual bleeds are minor or in the designated "good guy" zone. A bit of a trope.
This is one of the things i'm afraid of losing by lowering the Endurance in the revision.
As you say, Teleport is not a combat skill really, though it could be used tactically, that would require several laborious steps. The Conjurer would have to successfully memorize the location he wants to go to, thus forgetting any previous locations, costing Vigor and time, and erasing the one quick escape to a safe haven he might have had (at rank 1 you only get to memorize 1 location at a time). Then he has to successfully teleport there, costing more vigor and time, and once teleported, he can't do anything till next turn. Next turn the Conjurer can attack or cast another spell, but likely all element of surprise is lost and he can't teleport back to safety. So teleporting in combat is risky business. ;)
The +1/level attribute raise is actually waaaaaayyyy toned down! Originally it was 12 points/level to distribute, then 10, then 5, then 1. For now i'm staying at 1 ;)
What you said about winning or losing opposed stat contests based on key stats is kinda the incentive for not specializing, as it does place you at a disadvantage against any opponent that is strong in an area you are weak at, but with some of the skills i could see how that specialization could get way out of hand. At the same time, if you generalize across all the attributes and then take the specialized skills, you won't be as powerful in one area, but fair enough in the others to survive... maybe.
I keep tinkering with the idea of using various defenses against magic. For example, a mind control spell is purely mental, so no amount of dodging will help you evade it, you must use your will, but a jolt spell could be evaded as it is a physical emanation of magic, or it could be resisted with one's "ambient magical aura" or somesuch thing. I had tried to write in all the possible counters to a spell in the spell description, but for the next edition i'm thinking of not doing that, and just letting players defend themselves any way they can think of. (i.e. Shield bonus if you stand and block, 5 foot shift if you jump out of the way, use Wisdom instead of Dexterity if you use ambient aura, cast Magic Barrier as a counter spell, etc...) Hopefully that wouldn't become too chaotic, i'm hoping it will bring some narrative play back into combat that hasn't been there before.
I understand your feelings on Atlantis, i guess it could have been named something different (more different than Atlantica), but it was actually intended as a red herring of sorts.
Spoiler
Atlantica flies, not sinks.
The goblin towns were named as a crude joke really, but also to try and capture the cultural taste of the species.
Spoiler
they grow from plant pods actually, and are the cause of the swampland.
Sorry I'll break this up for clarity since otherwise it reads badly.
Quote from: Amalgam;572436You may have understood this perfectly, but i feel i should clarify, When you spend points on the skill sets, you get everything for the skill set you spend points on, not everything in every skill set in the game :p
So, for example, Sorcery Rank 1 gives you Jolt, Spark, and Synergy all at once.
I felt this was best to provide players with a large toolkit to work with, without a ridiculous point cost. Previously i had each skill bought separate and realized that most people would only have a few good skills by endgame.
Assumed that's what you meant on the skill sets yep :) Having high level characters that aren't just one-trick-ponies is good. Another way to do it with less mechanics, could be to design each of the skills themselves to work in as wide a range of circumstances as possible?
QuoteGambeson sounds right, without looking it up. You could tinker with the armor/weapon relationship to get the feel you want, but i personally was trying to avoid taking into account every bleeding cut imaginable, saving actual bleeds for special attacks. Part of this has to do with the design ethos of mimicking heroic combat in movies and TV, where the heroes get beaten black and blue and yet still seem capable of handling themselves, and any actual bleeds are minor or in the designated "good guy" zone. A bit of a trope.
This is one of the things i'm afraid of losing by lowering the Endurance in the revision.
With armour as with all things, there's usually a tradeoff between playability on the one hand, and realism on the other.
On lowering the endurance: Player preferences seem to vary alot as to how much damage they want PCs to take. In one of the groups I've been in we did Savage Worlds for awhile, a game where all the PCs basically have 4 hit points, and one of them loved the lethality while the other wanted his massive HP total back. Also a factor in the Edition Wars and the occasional Runequest-vs.-D&D battle. So do whatever you like and some people will like it and some will hate it.
QuoteAs you say, Teleport is not a combat skill really, though it could be used tactically, that would require several laborious steps. The Conjurer would have to successfully memorize the location he wants to go to, thus forgetting any previous locations, costing Vigor and time, and erasing the one quick escape to a safe haven he might have had (at rank 1 you only get to memorize 1 location at a time). Then he has to successfully teleport there, costing more vigor and time, and once teleported, he can't do anything till next turn. Next turn the Conjurer can attack or cast another spell, but likely all element of surprise is lost and he can't teleport back to safety. So teleporting in combat is risky business. ;)
Ah, OK and teleport is much more limited than I'd thought with the memorization - since at level 1 if you go somewhere, its one-way since that's your memorized location.
QuoteI keep tinkering with the idea of using various defenses against magic. For example, a mind control spell is purely mental, so no amount of dodging will help you evade it, you must use your will, but a jolt spell could be evaded as it is a physical emanation of magic, or it could be resisted with one's "ambient magical aura" or somesuch thing. I had tried to write in all the possible counters to a spell in the spell description, but for the next edition i'm thinking of not doing that, and just letting players defend themselves any way they can think of. (i.e. Shield bonus if you stand and block, 5 foot shift if you jump out of the way, use Wisdom instead of Dexterity if you use ambient aura, cast Magic Barrier as a counter spell, etc...) Hopefully that wouldn't become too chaotic, i'm hoping it will bring some narrative play back into combat that hasn't been there before.
A few games just assume that the PC will use whatever works best and so assign the separate Will, Reflex, or Fortitude defenses or whatever against a spell, sometimes with specific abilities that characters can learn as interrupts (shield giving a + to a given defense that a spell also targets, counter spells, etc.).
Goblin towns: when I saw the map I immediately thought "Spleen?!" but then guessed they were orc towns and checked the text - I think it fits, if a little bit silly. If you wanted to class it up you could rename them to [some sort of gutteral goblin word with lots of g's and u's and z's] and note that it means spleen in the text, I guess.
Spoiler
Flying is good.
Ok read it. Nice site. If I weren't so lazy I'd make my own but I'm no good at art at all so it wouldn't be interesting. Now I'm only going to point out major problems I had with it.There are a bunch of minor things but that'd take a few more readings to make sure so I'm only gonna cover the problems that jump out at me. If any of these were already covered feel free to ignore it. Also I skipped the chapters for GM advice and basics for role playing.
Anyways here's the major problems in the order I found them.
1)Agility/Dex, Mind/Will might as well be the same thing. The way you describe them they could cover everything the other does. Agility/Dexterity is the major offender mind and will are less so. I find that mind almost seems just like concentration and seems like more of a skill then an attribute really.
2) Attacks of Opportunity being optional is not good. Since your game doesn't get far off the ground in terms of what you can do this is an important tactical option. It should be either present or not because it's a big deal.
3)Bash is the only regular damage type that's advantageous. Unless slashing and piercing are going to get special considerations I might as well get a hammer for every combat with a dagger for cutting stuff in the rare occasion that I'd want to do that.
4)XP through combat is never good ever. It encourages farming and makes murder lead to rewards directly which is not a good thing. If you need me to expand on this I can.
5) Endurance/Vitality/Vigor thing seems a bit convoluted.
6) Knapsack? Why call it that? Seems a bit gimmicky. This is a comparatively minor complaint compared to the rest but it kinda got me.
7) The racial abilities seem to drop any attempt to be balanced at level 10. Some of the level 10 ones are just fucking awesome compared to others. The humans are the best until I get to revenants which seem to have all the most interesting abilities.
8) Skills. First thing I have to say is Combat Skills should NOT be on the same list as outof combat skills. It's not good, and only produces bad results. If you need me to go into detail as to why I can but trust me it isn't good for your game.
9) I'm confused by innate skills. There are a lot of things people can attempt to do innately. The innate skill list should be the biggest because anybody and his cat can attempt to hide, sneak, climb, etc. First Aid is actually something that you would have to train to do.
10)Eloquence covers a lot. While lying and persuasion are close enough to be the same skill intimidation is far too different to be covered by it.
11) Surgery under survival?
12) Crafting, blacksmithing, alchemy are all one action?
13) I kind of glossed over the combat skills. Some seemed like they are way better than others but it would take me another few reads to nail them. I kid of see that you were trying to encourage different fighting styles here but from what I can tell ranged attacking is the best option.
14) Spells aren't exactly balanced. Some of the effects are oddly specific and their usefulness questionable. I think illussion magic should be a bit more freeform.
15) Summoning is straight up titties. I can't think of a reason to not shoot for them.
16) Enhancement spells are more questionable. I can see their use but their durations are short but hp scales too quickly and damage not as quickly. They give static bonuses to compensate but they don't move me to want them. The fact that they only give moar numbahs makes them kind of boring as well.
17) Exorcism feels like a yes/no button vs undead, homunculi/curses as if you have it and those things are screwed or you don't have it (though I don't know how tough that makes them without).
18) Healing completely eliminates the need for first aid.
19) Synergy is possibly game breaking.
20)weapon wise the weapon selection isn't very inspiring.
The game is in it's infancy and I'd need another few read throughs to crack down more on it but again, these are the things I caught through the first go through.
Webs.com is pretty easy to use. it comes with preset designs and artwork you can choose from and change at any time. I actually migrated there from a Yahoo Groups page because YG was too bland and awkward to manage.
Yeah, the GM advice and RP basics was for "noobs", but you might give it a read over to check for misinformation/bad advise, if you feel like it.
1)Attribute overlap and lack of utility outside combat are among the top reasons i'm reworking the system.
Not sure what you meant when you said Mind seems like more of a skill.
2)When a rule is optional, that pretty much means it sounds like a good idea to have but i haven't worked out all the ins and outs yet. I've seen a little of D&D's Attack of Opportunity, i'm not clear on all the details surrounding it, and i've heard some complaints regarding when AoO can be done or not. At the same time, i have played with some people who prefer not to get attacked when they run away from combat, so if i do implement AoO, it may just be as a reaction to a 1 rolled during Attack.
3)I had contemplated making more than just two tiers of Armor because of this. The first tier would be effective against unarmed only, the next tier would be effective against unarmed and slashing, the next tier would be effective against unarmed/slashing/piercing, and the final tier would be effective against all weapon types. This still puts bashing as the most favorable weapon type though.
I'm considering any of the following:
-lowering the amount of damage Blunt weapons can do
-making their Str requirement higher (enforcing Requirements as core, not optional)
-Making them strictly 2 handed
-Negating extra attack actions (some skills allow multiple attacks/turn, and hammers would be heavier, restricting their use to once/turn)
-making it so all armor types are 100% effective (of their current values) against all weapons
-changing some of the lower armors to have out of combat utility, such as stealth or something. (or invert it so that the higher armors have penalties to stealth and maybe spell casting)
The problem with trying to make heavy armor penalize spell casting is that i can think of no rationale for doing so. Spells in my system do not have "components" such as somatic or verbal. Wearing clumsy armor won't affect one's ability to cast a spell, because no spell requires fluidity of motion. There are a few that are cast with Dexterity, but i think it possibly unlikely that a dedicated spell caster would have very high Dex to begin with.
4)lol! I've seen The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising. "how much experience for the peasant?" Though, in my defense, i believe it was stated in the rules that one does not need to actually kill anyone to gain Exp. Successful diplomacy, distraction, seduction, intimidation, persuasion, and other means of manipulation that end in removing a person or persons from being obstacles will result in the exact same amount of Exp reward.
Take an example from the text:
"Distraction Example
Player: Since Vivian could not seduce the guard, Bardoz creates an illusion of a charging bull in the street to cause a panic in the guard's direction. (rolls for spell check)
Moderator: (Rolls for guard's perception) The guard sees the charging bull and, (rolls for morale) panics and runs!"
This scenario would result in an Exp reward for the entire party, since they removed the guard from their path, even though they didn't kill him.
Even so, i would want to keep notes on how much exp to award per level of monster for GMs so that they may give an appropriate amount at the end of a quest or event. How much Exp is saving a princess worth? Donno. How much Exp is killing the level 10 evil dragon who took the princess worth? 100. That isn't to say that the Exp Reward must be related to kills, the GM could wait till the princess is safely home with the king before granting Exp, and the players would likely relate that to having completed a quest, but the amount of Exp for that quest would be decided by how many monsters of what level were slain/otherwise defeated or routed.
5)Convoluted in naming convention or convoluted in mechanic? I think BSJohnson also noted that Endurance/Vigor/Vitality seem to be synonyms, and to an extent that is what they are in practice, but different naming conventions would be clearer. I'm thinking of changing Vigor to Mana (or something along those lines, it used to be Spirit) Endurance used to be Health, and i'm really resisting changing Vitality because the only other word i can think of is Constitution... and i really don't want to have it look too much like the d20 system of WOTC, which it is starting to already... (it would be nice if i could sell the finished product as a PDF or something, and it would be nice if i didn't get sued...)
6)lol! hmmm... i think i named it that because i wanted to invoke the understanding that the characters actually had a knapsack to carry things in, but it could easily be renamed Inventory or Possessions.
7)That humans are best is likely no mere coincidence. They were the first race i completed, and thus i hadn't run out of ideas yet. Which ones seem particularly unbalanced? (bearing in mind i'm almost thinking of ruling out Traits in the next edition, unless people think they really add something to the system in which case i'll keep them in, but toned down)
8)yeah, if you could go into a bit more detail that would be helpful. I hadn't intentionally put combat skills in the common skill list. Are you referring to Athletics and Inspiration?
9)Innate skills are going away soon, they will be tied directly into the revised Attribute list. All the things you mention will be an Attribute check. First Aid was probably the wrong name. It's really nothing more than putting a band-aid on a kid's boo-boo. It's no substitute for actual medical attention and requires no formal training. My assumption was that any intelligent charater would know to bandage a bleed.
10)Again, poor naming. The thought behind it was that Eloquence was situational, and the kind of Eloquence one used would be dependent on the situation one was in. When going to see the King you'd need to behave respectfully and with civilized manners. When going to see a Barbarian Chieftain you'd need to behave stoic and respond to insult with insult, but balance it so you ignite their amusement and not their ire. Any suggestions on what to call this would be welcome.
11)meh heheh. Didn't know where else to put it.
12)no, you have to learn them separately, they each have their own Ranks.
13)Yes, i was trying to get all the basics for melee: Unarmed Monk Style, Brute Strength Rager, Defensive Sword & Board, Whirling Dual Wielder, Stealthy Back Stabber, Improvisational "why carry a sword when i can let my enemy carry it for me?" Kevin Sorbo style. Marksman was tacked on so rangers wouldn't feel left out. Funny you find it the best option. What made it seem so?
14)Illusion was the last group of spells to have been added, as such it is pathetically limited.
15)i'm assuming "titties" is good?
16)Agreed, Enchantment does seem to be pathetically short lived. I'm thinking of extending their duration to an hour/several hours/a day/etc... For the final Ranks maybe even allowing some kind of Permanence spell to cement the enchantment effects.
17)pretty much true. I've only run or played a couple games with undead, most of which happened before Exorcism made the list. It also works against "evil outsiders" which i have yet to introduce to my players. Also, some creatures, such as Skeletal Guards, are not classified as undead, rather they are magical automatons similar in nature to Golems. The difference between the two can be a nasty trick to play on your clerical types.
There was one session i ran where the Healing Paladin and Exorcist Cleric spent some time casting spells on a sleeping guy who wouldn't wake up, trying to determine if he was suffering from poison or disease. Neither spell worked, so they concluded it was a curse, but neither one had the ability to remove a curse yet.
18)But not everyone can use magic (1:1000 people can use magic, a statistic i may change to allow more freedom.) And if you don't pick up at least one magic rank at Level 1, it is assumed your character is a "muggle". Additionally, if you should happen to be in a party without a Healer (nobody made one, the healer left, he died, ran out of Vigor) then First Aid becomes useful in a pinch.
19)How so?
20)What would make it more inspiring?
Thanks again for taking the time to go over it! :D
i copied and pasted my post from earlier, the other one may still be awaiting moderator approval, so if it shows up here as a double post i'll delete it.
Webs.com is pretty easy to use. it comes with preset designs and artwork you can choose from and change at any time. I actually migrated there from a Yahoo Groups page because YG was too bland and awkward to manage.
Yeah, the GM advice and RP basics was for "noobs", but you might give it a read over to check for misinformation/bad advise, if you feel like it.
1)Attribute overlap and lack of utility outside combat are among the top reasons i'm reworking the system.
Not sure what you meant when you said Mind seems like more of a skill.
2)When a rule is optional, that pretty much means it sounds like a good idea to have but i haven't worked out all the ins and outs yet. I've seen a little of D&D's Attack of Opportunity, i'm not clear on all the details surrounding it, and i've heard some complaints regarding when AoO can be done or not. At the same time, i have played with some people who prefer not to get attacked when they run away from combat, so if i do implement AoO, it may just be as a reaction to a 1 rolled during Attack.
3)I had contemplated making more than just two tiers of Armor because of this. The first tier would be effective against unarmed only, the next tier would be effective against unarmed and slashing, the next tier would be effective against unarmed/slashing/piercing, and the final tier would be effective against all weapon types. This still puts bashing as the most favorable weapon type though.
I'm considering any of the following:
-lowering the amount of damage Blunt weapons can do
-making their Str requirement higher (enforcing Requirements as core, not optional)
-Making them strictly 2 handed
-Negating extra attack actions (some skills allow multiple attacks/turn, and hammers would be heavier, restricting their use to once/turn)
-making it so all armor types are 100% effective (of their current values) against all weapons
-changing some of the lower armors to have out of combat utility, such as stealth or something. (or invert it so that the higher armors have penalties to stealth and maybe spell casting)
The problem with trying to make heavy armor penalize spell casting is that i can think of no rationale for doing so. Spells in my system do not have "components" such as somatic or verbal. Wearing clumsy armor won't affect one's ability to cast a spell, because no spell requires fluidity of motion. There are a few that are cast with Dexterity, but i think it possibly unlikely that a dedicated spell caster would have very high Dex to begin with.
4)lol! I've seen The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising. "how much experience for the peasant?" Though, in my defense, i believe it was stated in the rules that one does not need to actually kill anyone to gain Exp. Successful diplomacy, distraction, seduction, intimidation, persuasion, and other means of manipulation that end in removing a person or persons from being obstacles will result in the exact same amount of Exp reward.
Take an example from the text:
"Distraction Example
Player: Since Vivian could not seduce the guard, Bardoz creates an illusion of a charging bull in the street to cause a panic in the guard’s direction. (rolls for spell check)
Moderator: (Rolls for guard’s perception) The guard sees the charging bull and, (rolls for morale) panics and runs!"
This scenario would result in an Exp reward for the entire party, since they removed the guard from their path, even though they didn't kill him.
Even so, i would want to keep notes on how much exp to award per level of monster for GMs so that they may give an appropriate amount at the end of a quest or event. How much Exp is saving a princess worth? Donno. How much Exp is killing the level 10 evil dragon who took the princess worth? 100. That isn't to say that the Exp Reward must be related to kills, the GM could wait till the princess is safely home with the king before granting Exp, and the players would likely relate that to having completed a quest, but the amount of Exp for that quest would be decided by how many monsters of what level were slain/otherwise defeated or routed.
5)Convoluted in naming convention or convoluted in mechanic? I think BSJohnson also noted that Endurance/Vigor/Vitality seem to be synonyms, and to an extent that is what they are in practice, but different naming conventions would be clearer. I'm thinking of changing Vigor to Mana (or something along those lines, it used to be Spirit) Endurance used to be Health, and i'm really resisting changing Vitality because the only other word i can think of is Constitution... and i really don't want to have it look too much like the d20 system of WOTC, which it is starting to already... (it would be nice if i could sell the finished product as a PDF or something, and it would be nice if i didn't get sued...)
6)lol! hmmm... i think i named it that because i wanted to invoke the understanding that the characters actually had a knapsack to carry things in, but it could easily be renamed Inventory or Possessions.
7)That humans are best is likely no mere coincidence. They were the first race i completed, and thus i hadn't run out of ideas yet. Which ones seem particularly unbalanced? (bearing in mind i'm almost thinking of ruling out Traits in the next edition, unless people think they really add something to the system in which case i'll keep them in, but toned down)
8)yeah, if you could go into a bit more detail that would be helpful. I hadn't intentionally put combat skills in the common skill list. Are you referring to Athletics and Inspiration?
9)Innate skills are going away soon, they will be tied directly into the revised Attribute list. All the things you mention will be an Attribute check. First Aid was probably the wrong name. It's really nothing more than putting a band-aid on a kid's boo-boo. It's no substitute for actual medical attention and requires no formal training. My assumption was that any intelligent charater would know to bandage a bleed.
10)Again, poor naming. The thought behind it was that Eloquence was situational, and the kind of Eloquence one used would be dependent on the situation one was in. When going to see the King you'd need to behave respectfully and with civilized manners. When going to see a Barbarian Chieftain you'd need to behave stoic and respond to insult with insult, but balance it so you ignite their amusement and not their ire. Any suggestions on what to call this would be welcome.
11)meh heheh. Didn't know where else to put it.
12)no, you have to learn them separately, they each have their own Ranks.
13)Yes, i was trying to get all the basics for melee: Unarmed Monk Style, Brute Strength Rager, Defensive Sword & Board, Whirling Dual Wielder, Stealthy Back Stabber, Improvisational "why carry a sword when i can let my enemy carry it for me?" Kevin Sorbo style. Marksman was tacked on so rangers wouldn't feel left out. Funny you find it the best option. What made it seem so?
14)Illusion was the last group of spells to have been added, as such it is pathetically limited.
15)i'm assuming "titties" is good?
16)Agreed, Enchantment does seem to be pathetically short lived. I'm thinking of extending their duration to an hour/several hours/a day/etc... For the final Ranks maybe even allowing some kind of Permanence spell to cement the enchantment effects.
17)pretty much true. I've only run or played a couple games with undead, most of which happened before Exorcism made the list. It also works against "evil outsiders" which i have yet to introduce to my players. Also, some creatures, such as Skeletal Guards, are not classified as undead, rather they are magical automatons similar in nature to Golems. The difference between the two can be a nasty trick to play on your clerical types.
There was one session i ran where the Healing Paladin and Exorcist Cleric spent some time casting spells on a sleeping guy who wouldn't wake up, trying to determine if he was suffering from poison or disease. Neither spell worked, so they concluded it was a curse, but neither one had the ability to remove a curse yet.
18)But not everyone can use magic (1:1000 people can use magic, a statistic i may change to allow more freedom.) And if you don't pick up at least one magic rank at Level 1, it is assumed your character is a "muggle". Additionally, if you should happen to be in a party without a Healer (nobody made one, the healer left, he died, ran out of Vigor) then First Aid becomes useful in a pinch.
19)How so?
20)What would make it more inspiring?
Thanks again for taking the time to go over it! :D
1) If I recall Mind is your attribute for focusing on one thing and blocking out distractions. That's like 3e's concentration skill.
5) In naming. It felt like you listed the same thing 3 times and then assigned them different meanings.
18) Rareness does not effect your adventurers. Rareness of magic in the setting may be interesting but 1/1000 considering people rank in the billions population wise isn't all that rare of a trait on the grand scheme of things. What's more is it doesn't effect players who are all special snowflakes unless magic is strait jacketed by the rules from them.
19) Synergy allows you to cast the same spell as an ally. If the entire group has synergy then that means that different people in the group can ascend different ranks in various magic fields and synergize to gain the benefits. Because summoning is such sweet sweet titties in this game I can zerg rush any enemy troop with my team of synchronized casters.
20) I'd like (and I realize this doesn't actually happen in most games) different weapons to have different "feels". The list "feels" barren like there could be more. It may just be my imagination but that's the feeling I walked away with.
Since you're changing a bunch of stuff I'll wait to see the next edition and give it another read.
1) aaahhhh, gotcha. It also works as the primary spell casting/potency modifier though, so it doesn't serve a single purpose. That being said i've yet to actually see someone use it for concentration. That's more my fault, as i've not put any PC in that situation.
5) gotcha. I'm thinking of keeping Endurance, but i was also thinking of taking out the innate Toughness traits and using that label for the character's health, as it represents the kind of health i'm trying to convey. It isn't blood, life, health, or fatigue; it's pain tolerance. Vitality may keep. Vigor may be replaced with Spirit or Mana or Fervor... Inner Flame?
18) this is true, it doesn't have much of an effect on the players/adventurers. However, humans rank in the billions on Earth, that is not necessarily true of Terrabia. Here, we are the dominant species. There, we are just one of 5 (not counting Revenants and Halfbreeds) species vying for dominance. Bring into play any cataclysm that might wipe out 1/3-1/2 of the human populous... But it is as you said, it's not a very drastic ratio depending on the human population size, something that hasn't been stated previously as i hadn't worked it out yet. So far there's only been one semi-explored continent revealed, and that is more of a frontier land, so there are fewer humans than might be normally expected.
19) aaaahhhhhh, gotcha. However, i think you missed one important factor.
"Cast the same spell as an ally once per round, during your ally's turn at the same target. If either of you succeed, the effect of the spells are combined. You must know the spell, regardless of rank, in order to synergize."
I see this may not have been written clearly, some wording i'll have to revise. What it means is that you have to know the same spell that your ally is casting, not just Synergy. So, if you are casting a fireball spell, and i have Synergy AND Fireball, we can cast together. If i have Synergy but NOT Fireball, we cannot synergize our casting.
The theory being that to have picked up Sorcery Rank 1 to get the Synergy spell you would have used a Skill point that could have been used elsewhere.
Perhaps Synergy should be pushed back to Rank 3 or 4. This way the cost of getting Synergy would be more pronounced and "zerg rushing" would be a thing of advanced spell casters, not something a group of novices would be able to pull off. By the time a group of advanced spell casters got into a situation where mass conjuring would be actually useful and not just overkill would likely be in the midst of a heated battle, likely a war, not a small adventure or scuffle that novices might get into. Furthermore, the world's flavor has wizards compared to nuclear warheads. Not a fair comparison till you take Synergy into consideration.
But i do concede this is too OP for Rank 1, and may need to be pushed back, even as far as Rank 5.
20) Interesting. I did try to give them different feels, perhaps i'm not reading you correctly. To me swords were the weapon of choice if you want a finely honed blade designed for accuracy, axes are designed for raw power (Crit multipliers stack like crazy), and hammers are designed to ignore armor, thus being more consistent. Though, within these groups is a decided lack of variety. I think Swords have the best variety, with most other weapons just being "this weapon does more than that weapon".
Part of what contributed to the barren feeling may be the small size of the weapon list. I've seen D&D's list, and CRPG's and MMORPG's weapon lists, they are generally huge and varied, if in name only. My general thought, though it hasn't yet been stated, was that what was included in that list were general basics that could be applied to any weapon type of similar characteristics. One character might have a European feel while another has an Asian feel, they might even have weapons with different names (Longsword/Katana), but so long as the general size and use of the weapon are the same or comparable, they would share the same stats (1d10 Dmg, +1 Atk, may be held with one or two hands, may be dual wielded).
I did have a wider variety of weapon names (Cinquedea, Bastard Sword, Executioner's Axe) but found them to be nothing more than weapon bloat in practice, so i paired down and decided to let things that were similar enough just fall into general categories.
I can see how that might come across as bland.
The second edition is nowhere near ready for release. In fact, there are some technical computer issues that need resolving before i can produce any kind of pdf (i've uninstalled some software, to be reinstalled pending a hard drive formatting). If i did release anything, it would have to be Word documents, or wiki pages...
Right now i'm focusing on revising the absolute core mechanics of the system to their absolute simplest form. Primary reasons for this are the 6 Attributes serving more than combat functionality, and friends and family of mine who, for one reason or another, are not able to fully comprehend the system in its current state.
I'll try to see if i can put up a rules-light version of the 2nd edition somewhere by tomorrow maybe. But it will be very light...
19) I did miss that part. I uess it's back to doing circle magic for big effects.
20It's just a minor thing. I've seen it so much in games (both video and Table Top) that I'm really used to +1s and minor abilities being the only difference between weapons. I uess that combined with the small list just "felt" wrong to me, I don't know.
In either case I'm sure that everythin will change when you're ready to release the second one, so none of the points I brought up are set in stone. In the various iterations of my game I've cut a lot of shit out such that I cannot use the document I do have from 7 months ago because the game I'm making has changed so much. I would not be surprised to see everythin revamped before I get another look.
#2: attacks of opportunity - D&D 1E/2E gave a free attack if you break off from melee with someone, unless you move at 1/3 speed, although this free attack isn't explicitly named. D&D 3E gives AoOs any time you leave a square within the reach of an attacker, which means ever running past someone provokes such an attack and exact positioning is fairly critical; it also gives these free attacks on someone who leaves an opening due to using a missile weapon, casting a spell - unless they 'Combat Cast', making a Concentration skill check - sheathe a weapon, reload a crossbow, perform a coup de grace, or use a trip, grapple, disarm, sunder or unarmed attack without the appropriate feat.
#3: lowering damage for blunt is probably feasible. STR requirements being higher still leaves the blunt weapon better. Reducing extra-attacks for these also makes some sense, I think. Another thing you could do was reduce accuracy for them e.g. no DEX modifier if you're using a club.
#5: part of my problem was not being able to remember which was the CON and which was the hit points, particularly with 2 of the 3 being V-words...
if you're going to have big stat increases with level anyway, perhaps you could just remove the Endurance stat and just keep the Vitality.
@MGuy
Thanks for your input all the same. It helps me not make the same mistakes in the next version.
I know what you mean, it feels like i'm changing my game once every 6 months or so, for the past 6 years...
@BSJohnson
2)Oy!... :jaw-dropping:That's too much. Think i'll keep it to Crit misses for my game, and maybe leaving melee.
3)Hm? Having a higher Str Requirement leaves blunt better? It would mean you'd have to be capable of dealing more damage, but if i did that AND lowered the random damage for Blunt it might even out with the other weapons and made them less usable by weaker characters. I'll have to think on this.
5)Exactly, which is why i'm rethinking the names. 2 out of 3 similar things both starting with Vi is not good.
I have thought off and on about just leaving the Endurance increase as the Vitality, but i ran into several problems with it, mostly balancing issues.
It's similar to Hit Points/Constitution. Damage is dealt to your HP, but Con gives a little boost. Also, Con is for poison, disease, etc...
If Vitality is allowed to get too high it could break the mechanic (which is based on d20, not d100) If i were doing d100, stats could get much higher, "but d100 is for pretentious gas bags!!!:rant::nono::jaw-dropping::idunno::rolleyes::huhsign::banghead:"
lol, i dunno, just don't like d100 mechanics that i've seen, and i've probably not seen enough of them.
But i'm not going with big stat increases per level, as you said. Just 1 point per level to put where you want. If you start out with 7 Vitality, by the time you reach Level 10 you'll only have 16 Vit, and have been getting slaughtered the entire way if there were no other boosts, so i separate them some.
hmm... Nobody's commented on the relationship between End/Vig/Skill.
I too hate d100s! I thought I was the only one :) Hard to get margins of success and the modifiers are fiddly.
By blunt being better, I mean that if someone has the STR anyway, the blunt would still be the best choice. In your system with its ready stat raises, you may have people throwing away their swords after levelling up to take up the Way of the Hammer :)
lol, the Way of the Hammer!
I should almost make that a philosophy or guild in game.
Anyway, i haven't quite gotten all the rules up as i had hoped to have by today, but it IS in a wiki, so i can add easily as i go.
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/amalgam-rps-2nd-ed/wikis/main-page
I need to see if my webs account supports wiki building like OP does, because i find it so easy to use.
UPDATE: I've got most of the rules for Character Creation, Attributes, Races, Backstory, Traits, Skills, Spells, and Combat up.
It's written a bit hastily, but hopefully i don't contradict myself too much.
In the combat skill section i have marked out a few things, rather than deleting them. This way people can see what i had there and decide if they should be in or not. My reasons for wanting them out were because most of the combat skills had to do with special attacks and "burst" damage (doing lots of damage all at once, an MMO thing), and i'm trying to tear down the walls between "Special" attacks and "Ordinary" attacks so that players can do whatever they want in combat whether there's a skill that outlines the details of it or not.
Some things i did leave in that i felt would be the result of training, and therefore a reasonable skill to expect, rather than some special effect.
hey, it's been a while since i last posted, i was taking a hiatus to enjoy Guild Wars 2 and we're in the middle of a move/job transition.
I'm currently working on ideas for the Attributes and their interaction with specific skills.
Rather than have a list of skills arbitrarily assigned to an Attribute, i thought it might be good to actually show a comprehensive list of skills on the character sheet below the Attribute it is related to.
Problem is i've kinda run out of ideas for some, and keep running into variations on a theme, particularly with Perception.
Here's how it looks so far:
Vitality Disease Resistance, Poison Resistance, Exposure Resistance (hot deserts, frozen wastes), Recovery (from near death or regeneration from resting/spells/potions), and Toughness. Because i'm trying to pair down the amount of number crunching, i'm thinking of making Toughness be additional Endurance or something...
Strength Lift, Swim, Climb, Smithing, Intimidate.
Dexterity Dodge (may take that one out), Grapple, Stealth (rename to Concealment because i want to include hiding items as well as general sneakiness), Crafting (bows, clothes, houses, baskets), Balance.
Perception I want each one to have a list of 5 skills, but right now the best i have are: Search, Read (recognizing difficult handwriting, reading from a distance, etc.) and ESP (detect magic essentially).
Mind Persuasion, Focus, Learning (ease with which your character learns new talents), Solving (riddles, puzzles, translations), Design (like smithing and crafting, but with pen and ink, for spell crafting or blueprints, mapping, etc.)
Wisdom Wits (replacing Cunning), Morale (so you don't go running like a mad man at the first sign of monsters), Soothe (because HP is really just Endurance, and Damage is really just pain. Replaces First Aid.), Composure (for impressing people), Intuition (to detect someone's motives, sense a possible ambush, etc.)
As you may see, some things overlap, and i don't want this to happen, so i'm looking for any insight or good ideas to add to the list, and pair down from there.
Do you think 5 skills per Attribute is too much? How about 3?
Vitality Constitution (Poison/Disease/Exposure), Toughness (bonus Endurance), Recovery.
Strength Athletics (swim/climb/lift), Smithing, Intimidate.
Dexterity Subtlety (balance/stealth), Grapple, Crafting.
Perception Search, Read, ESP.
Mind Persuasion, Learning, Focus. (leave actual solving and design up to the player).
Wisdom Wits, Composure (morale/soothing), Intuition.
This seems rather complete and all encompassing.
Now, how it would work is, you use the Attribute as the base score for anything you do, but depending on what you do, you add your skill to it.
If i want to search a room for clues, i'd use Perception+Search, roll = or < for success.
If i want to rally my allies against an undead assault, i'd use Wisdom+Composure.
If i want to craft an item, i'd use Dexterity+Crafting, roll+Difficulty of the recipe/instructions = or < my score.
Lifting a heavy boulder that covers our only escape means: Strength+Athletics, roll+Difficulty by weight (some arbitrary number).
EDIT: The one problem i have with it now, is that i didn't want any of these derivative skills to be directly related to combat, and Toughness seems to be. Any suggestions for a replacement?
EDIT: Something that occurred to me is that unhealthy people generally are not very attractive. Skin disorders, pallid flesh, sunken cheeks, hair like straw, glazed eyes, very ill looking. They may not actually be ill, but their lack of a healthy lifestyle will show. So, perhaps instead of Toughness, Attraction (like charisma, but only physical) might be a "skill" of sorts, or perhaps call it Charm.