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Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

This post has been inspected and certified by the Dino-Sorcerer



Grimey Drawer

Splicer posted:

In that case I had misunderstood a bit! I thought it was three skills, three skill powers, three combat abilities and three luck points. In that case, three powers total seems a little anaemic (that's probably just personal preference though). Is there any way to get additional special actions, like do fire swords give you a special fire attack or anything?

e: Also, does taking a combat skill increase your to-hit the same as taking other skills improves their success rate?

I had been trying to go for simplicity because I have a tendency to overdesign if I don't stop myself so I thought I'd try and restrict myself this time around to keeping things simple. The goal was fast character creation & a half-page character sheet in total.

Its just 3 skills (which each have a single associated power and also give you all the general uses of that skill) & three seperate talents/powers (which are pretty varied and can range from special combat actions to innate abilities possessed by the character). If you have the Thief skill you don't need to tag, say Pick Locks, Sneak & Underworld Knowledge -- instead you get the Trap Disarm power & are assumed to be able to do anything Thief-y that a well trained Thief would know (like picking locks, sneaking & knowing all about fencing stolen goods & pricing loot as well as any other thing that the PC's with the skill can justify its use for).

You can get various items and such to give you special actions (throw bolas to trip a dude, huck a jar of greek-fire at a guy to make an AoE Fire effect that stays on the field for a while, etc.).

Taking a combat skill doesn't improve your to-hit with the weapon, just gives you a damage boost & a special weapon power. The game works with a simple Roll-Under mechanic based on your characters stats (3 of them, point-buy) - accuracy in combat being dependent on spending character resources seemed unnecessarily punishing since it leads to more wasted turns for characters who did not invest in an accuracy boosting power, so instead I thought having a boost in a characters damage-per-round and a new fun trick to do would be sufficient reason to invest.

In my playtest I've had some players who took nothing but 3 different weapon skills and were always using their weapons various special attacks & I've had others who took all non-combat skills but were still able to contribute in the fight with both standard attacks and use of their Talents/Powers.

AlphaDog posted:

I prefer to work stuff in groups of 4 if I want an even number or 5 if I want an odd number, but that's because 4 is a good low even number and 5 goes evenly into 10.

I can think of a lot of games that use triangles or pyramids in some mechanical way or in diagrams, so it must have something going for it.

Three is heavily used in various forms of mysticism, so maybe that's it?

I figured three would be good since it would also mean that there would be less chance of overlap between character powers/skills in general which gives the DM a chance to have more opportunities for individual characters to easily get some of the spotlight.

-----------------------EDIT---------------------------------------------------------

On a totally different note from this discussion I had been thinking for a while about the system that Castle Falkenstein had of having the players write in character journals to record their various adventures and such in place of character sheets and I thought it sounded like a very interesting idea.

Since my mess of a homebrew has more in common with D&D than it does with Falkenstien there would still be a sheet at the start detailing your Stats/Skills/Inventory, etc. , all the little things that you'll need to reference frequently while you play the game, but I think that having a resource to keep track of things like the names of important NPC's, significant events & new information would really be pretty essential for a long-running game (especially if the players create them themselves).

It would also tie in to the idea of learning new Seals (if I decide to go universal rather than having a single Arcane skill) by having a place to record them down, as well as new potion recipes and things like that.

I don't know, I'm a big goddamn nerd but I find things like that to be a pretty fun part of roleplaying games in general, having little props like maps & such really helps me get into a game and having the players more immersed in the characters as part of the rules might be a way to encourage that feeling for the kind of player who is into that. It can be entirely optional as well so that people who prefer to just go in hack-and-slash can stick with their one page sheet.

Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Jan 14, 2013

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Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

Bob Quixote posted:

I had been trying to go for simplicity because I have a tendency to overdesign if I don't stop myself so I thought I'd try and restrict myself this time around to keeping things simple. The goal was fast character creation & a half-page character sheet in total.

Its just 3 skills (which each have a single associated power and also give you all the general uses of that skill) & three seperate talents/powers (which are pretty varied and can range from special combat actions to innate abilities possessed by the character). If you have the Thief skill you don't need to tag, say Pick Locks, Sneak & Underworld Knowledge -- instead you get the Trap Disarm power & are assumed to be able to do anything Thief-y that a well trained Thief would know (like picking locks, sneaking & knowing all about fencing stolen goods & pricing loot as well as any other thing that the PC's with the skill can justify its use for).
I'm really confused.

So when making a character, you choose:

1) Three skills, which give you
a) a bonus to rolls that fall under this skill
and
b) an associated power, which may or may not be combat related
and
2) Three powers, which may or may not be combat related

for a total of 6 powers, all or none of which may be combat related, and three skill boosts?

Splicer fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Jan 14, 2013

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

This post has been inspected and certified by the Dino-Sorcerer



Grimey Drawer

Splicer posted:

I'm really confused.

So when making a character, you choose:

1) Three skills, which give you
a) a bonus to rolls that fall under this skill
and
b) an associated power, which may or may not be combat related
and
2) Three powers, which may or may not be combat related

for a total of 6 powers, all or none of which may be combat related, and three skill boosts?

Yes, that's pretty much it.

1) Three skills (which each give a single related skill power/ability as well as a bonus to any rolls/checks covered by the skill that come up in the course of the game). Naturally a good DM should take into account the PC's skillsets and allow for a variety of challenges that could use each of their talents well so that there are no "wasted" skill points spent.

2) Three completely separate and distinct Powers/Talents/Mutations (which can include things like Telekinesis, Extra Limb, Increased Toughness, At-Will Magic Missile, etc.)

So it totals out to around 6 powers & the three backgrounds provided by their skills. The players can select any combination of skills and powers that they wish.

My apologies if my explanations were all a bit clumsy though, I can see how my previous posts may have seemed confusing.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Getting back to that earlier post about the in-character journal idea from Castle Falkenstein it has set me on a train of thought where I've been considering mechanics that encourage roleplay & the mandated use of tools/props to enhance the game in general.

D&D and most of its derivative games use very similar tools in the form of dice, character sheets, etc. but I always thought that the combat grids, miniatures and maps functioned halfway between prop & tool. They both laid out the situation in combat and gave everyone an exact idea of the position of the combatants, the range/effect of spells and so on but they also help get everyone to have a better feel of the fight than mere description can. Knowing that the enemy are advancing on you, with your characters back to a wall and an ally down just a few feet away from them all laid out on the table can be pretty effective for bringing on tension.

I think if I ever compiled this game of mine into any sort of coherent document I'd have a big section for the DM equivalent on the creation of interesting visual aids to help get everyone more in the mood for the roleplaying aspect of the game.

Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Jan 16, 2013

ProfessorCurly
Mar 28, 2010
I'd like some help and opinions about my personal Fantasy Heartbreaker, if that's alright. I've mainly taken inspiration reading the Fatal and Friends thread and this one, but I'm starting to run into snags.

Resolution mechanic: 2d10, roll under a target number (TN).

Skills, buffs and other bonuses are added to the TN.

For opposed rolls it is ("Attacker" Skill - "Defender" Skill) + 10 = TN

Skills/abilities can be negative, especially for low level opponents. I'm considering shifting the whole system up to avoid this issue, but a skill/ability at 0 is a "heroic" start. You aren't Hercules, but you're already a step above everyone else.

Taking a cue from this thread, there are 8 Mes, characteristics of Heroism that you then build your character with. You choose 2 to be Supremacies, 2 to be Distinctions, 2 to be Failings and 2 to be Faults. Where you put them determines how good/bad that particular part of your character is. The 8 Mes of Heroism:

Health - HP, general ability to take a hit.
Soul - MP, spent to improve rolls and power Techniques
Resolve - Mental HP, the strength of your convictions
Initiative - reaction time, combined acting speed in battle and Reflex save.
Offense - Comes in 3 flavors: Physical (Strike), Spiritual (Conviction), Social (Censure)
Defense - Corresponding 3 flavors: Physical (Guard), Spiritual (Faith), Social (Will)
Skills - Rope swinging, lock picking, sneaking and the whole host of things that aren't related to combat.
Techniques - Determines how many special abilities (Spells, "Berserker Rage," and all other host of things that go Beyond normal) you get.

These are then enhanced/modified with Feats, which give maneuvers and other special actions that are independent of Soul, with somewhat less inspiring effects but are what will hopefully give more color to what the character is and what they do. I'm working on doing Feats that benefit all 8 characteristics - Defense gets things to help tank/protect allies, Offense get additional attack options and styles and so forth.

And then of course I'm actually working on a "Build your Technique" system. It isn't easy! Currently there is a list of Effects and then the cost of the technique is determined by how fast it activates (Free, Move, Standard, Full Round, Ritual, for example), how long it lasts and how many people it affects. I'm hoping this can cover more or less the full range of buffs, spells and other actions you might take. WiP though.

What I have to ask you is this: Am I giving too many options? Would people even want to bother with this sort of character generation? Should I start working on 'archetype' characters and powers as examples then present the character builder options?

01011001
Dec 26, 2012

Let's go through the system as it is, first.

quote:

2 to be Supremacies, 2 to be Distinctions, 2 to be Failings and 2 to be Faults.

Ok. This is a relatively solid to go about things, in abstract, but let's look at the categories.

quote:

Health - HP, general ability to take a hit.
Resolve - Mental HP, the strength of your convictions

What separates these? Do they really need to be split up?

quote:

Offense - Comes in 3 flavors: Physical (Strike), Spiritual (Conviction), Social (Censure)
Defense - Corresponding 3 flavors: Physical (Guard), Spiritual (Faith), Social (Will)

Do you pick one of these three for each? Are they all the same (if so, why split them)? Isn't defense another flavor of Health/Resolve effectively? Again, how much of a split really needs to exist here?

quote:

Skills - Rope swinging, lock picking, sneaking and the whole host of things that aren't related to combat.
Techniques - Determines how many special abilities (Spells, "Berserker Rage," and all other host of things that go Beyond normal) you get.
Soul - MP, spent to improve rolls and power Techniques

Whoa now. "Not combat" is a pretty lacking metric for an entire category of things you can be good or bad at. In general it's best to make an attempt to avoid the 3.X fighter skill problem (I can do some physical stuff, and other than that I'll be asleep until initiative gets rolled) instead of embracing it wholeheartedly by making it a quaternary switch.

Techniques...you're setting someone up for disappointment here, I feel. The appeal of being able to set a sliding scale of wacky stuff for a player's taste is understandable, but leads to hard balancing problems. The fact that the thing that powers techniques is separate from the techniques themselves is kinda iffy too, it leads to situations where you have a large library and no fuel or all the fuel you'd ever need but a really limited selection of things, which vary wildly in usefulness.

Now let's consider how they fit into the 2/2/2/2 system you've put forward by making a combination.

Supreme:
-Health
-Resolve

Distinct:
-Defense
-Initiative

Failing:
-Techniques
-Soul

Fault:
-Offense
-Skills

As you've presented it, this is a person who can't do a drat thing except stand there and be impervious, and maybe pull out defensive stuff to protect people. Is this a fair representation of an average character in your system? Hardly. But ultimately if a ruleset is such that it's silly not to high-ball certain attributes over others, or pair attributes together up and down the chain, you should probably look to combining/deleting attributes and rebalancing them.

quote:

These are then enhanced/modified with Feats, which give maneuvers and other special actions that are independent of Soul, with somewhat less inspiring effects but are what will hopefully give more color to what the character is and what they do. I'm working on doing Feats that benefit all 8 characteristics - Defense gets things to help tank/protect allies, Offense get additional attack options and styles and so forth.

I suppose the question is why you have two distinct sets of special actions - doubly so when there's so much overlap and similarity (Health/Resolve/Defense, Techniques/Soul, etc). That and the design-a-technique suggest to me that you should really, really dial things back a bit. Design a system that stands on its own without the feats or techniques or whatever first - just using your core mechanic. Make sure it's possible to combine everything in such a way that there aren't characters who just straight up suck at life! From there, introduce special maneuvers as exceptional qualities.

This wasn't exactly what you asked for (at all, to be honest) but hopefully it helps.

syntaxfunction
Oct 27, 2010
I got pointed here from the board game thread (Who I got pointed to from the chat thread). Big repost I guess!

Basically, I've been developing the core mechanics and have slapped over a theme of a clichéd "zombie apocalypse", currently titled "Keep Calm! (And Survive the Apocalypse)" which some people love and others hate. My real intent is to make a futuristic sci-fi game with mutatable powers and stuff. Kinda like Rifts but not ridiculous and bad. But all the stuff I want to add in is basically just an extension and reskin of the core game. I slapped a zombie theme over it because everyone in my group loves zombies, even though I'm kinda meh about them. Is this an acceptable/common way to do things? The core rules are meant to be tweakable and easily adapted while being quick and easy to pick up, roll characters and play. Mainly because my group and I often have ideas we want to play with without having too many rules. We favour quick and simple games. There's probably already systems for this kind of thing (GURPS?)but gently caress it, why not hey?

So the core mechanics a pretty straight forward. You have stats rolled with dX depending on the game flavour (d6 for this version to keep it deadly). All non-attack actions are a simple dX+Stat vs DC. Attacks have a percent of how good you are at that weapon, starting around 25%. Roll under, hit, otherwise not. Stats don't increase except for a few exceptions, so you're in danger from the start to the end. Two skills, Engineering and Scavenging (Counterpoints to each other) also use the % system. This is because all skills can be levelled and ranked. Levels requires skill points (Given by the GM for accomplishing things) and ranks are given for doing well with your skill.

Then you have Jobs, which give starting bonuses (Paramedics start with a reusable healing kit, things like that) and "attributes" which are basically starting perks. Some Jobs have two, some have one, and some (The "hard mode" Jobs) have none. Perks are basically one off bonuses, as you'd expect.

The only other thing is that weapons can be modified to deal more damage, or be more accurate or whatever. But that's a late-level thing. There's also fortification rules, but that's basically "invest X materials for Y bonus against attacks".

Enemies are zombies (Standard "shufflers" and more L4D style guys) and looters. Zombies are dangerous in groups as they're normally considered untrained and stuff, looters have the same approximate (With changes on how hard the area/scenario is) equipment and training as the players so they usually end up more dangerous.

That's basically the game. I've already done a test run and the current stats and stuff work well, with players dying quickly if outnumbered/gunned but surviving long enough to have a good game. This isn't an "everyone wins" game, more a "see how long you survive" one. My players wanted actual scenarios though, which I've made now, as last playtest was just randomly rolled encounters and loot to make sure the numbers work.

Anyway, I have the player's handbook if anyone wants to look at it. It's not very well defined as I wrote it for my players and me so terms like "GM" and "d6" are not defined. I'm not looking to sell this game or anything like that.

Blasphemeral
Jul 26, 2012

Three mongrel men in exchange for a party member? I found that one in the Faustian Bargain Bin.

syntaxfunction posted:

I got pointed here from the board game thread (Who I got pointed to from the chat thread). Big repost I guess!

:words:

I'm not looking to sell this game or anything like that.

Ok.
So, if you were looking to sell this project of yours, what would your selling points be? What are, say, your top six phrases that could go in a big starburst on your cover that would grab peoples' attention and make them consider buying your product? What are the unique things you feel that you've accomplished? Why would someone want to try your game over another one that they might already have? What should get their attention long enough to open the cover and fall in love with your spectacular workings contained within?

syntaxfunction
Oct 27, 2010
I don't know if I have six selling points! I was actually wondering if anyone had any neat twists or whatever to add!

But anyway, I guess the selling points would be:
- Quick to play
- Easy to learn
- Easy to reskin (Is this even a plus to most players?)
- Universal rules
- Dangerous! (Which is a plus in a zombie game I'd say)

So, four things that give it an up on, say, a reskinned D&D campaign. The expanded sci-fi game is basically those, minus "dangerous" and plus "mutatable and branching powers".

We've played it and it's a fun game, I was just wondering if anyone had suggestions for mechanics and stuff that I may have missed because it's kind of plain and simple right now. Not that simple's bad, it's what I'm going for.

Edit: Also, sorry for the words. Just wanted to summarise the gist of the game and got kinda carried away.

syntaxfunction fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Jan 24, 2013

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

This post has been inspected and certified by the Dino-Sorcerer



Grimey Drawer
In general for a combat heavy RPG is it better to have a very basic mechanic for performing "standard" actions in combat & using character specific abilities & GM rulings to adjudicate the results of special actions or is it better to have a broader system of available actions at the expense of increasing the length/complexity of the game rules?

In the first example you have the benefit of players learning the rules a lot faster since they have less information to keep track of, but it comes at the cost of confusion and potential inconsistency during the game itself when a player wants to attempt something outside the norm.

In the second example you have a greater number of available and ready to execute options in a given situation, but you could end up with something like 3.5's Grapple/Trip/Disarm,etc. rules that were incredibly complex, confusingly worded & just generally so much of a pain in the rear end that everyone mostly resorted to full attacking or casting spells rather than using them. I think I can only remember grappling an enemy one time & the DM had to break out the rulebooks and pause the fight so he could read up on how the whole affair worked again.

I've been messing around with the combat to my fantasy heartbreaker and have been trying to choose between the two setups above. When I started out I was firmly in the option one camp: combat was incredibly simple, you make an attack and it does damage or you spend your action defending and enemies have a harder time hitting you. I had put in rules for tripping, grappling, shoving enemies around, etc. but they were all tied in with specific skills/weapons that you had to have before you could attempt them. Only someone who put one of their skill slots into "unarmed combat" was able to start wrestling an enemy, only someone skilled with a whip could trip someone, etc.

Now that I think about it though it seems like that would be far too limiting for a game where fighting is a pretty big deal and just having to say to a player "no you can't shove the guy, you don't know how" seems pretty arbitrary/stupid. If I include some rules for expanded combat options would this be a net positive for the game or should I just forget it and go back to simpler, more abstract combat?

P.d0t
Dec 27, 2007
I released my finger from the trigger, and then it was over...
So I have a sort of weird, vague-yet-specific genre question.

I am designing Generic Fantasy Heartbreaker #6347 and I have 6 core classes in mind; basically the "four core classes" of D&D, plus "dark mage" and "ranger/hunter"

So far I have designed Rangers towards the typical dual-wield or archery builds, whereas Fighters are kinda meant to be sword-and-board or two-hander tank class.

I am thinking of swapping it around a bit, so that Rangers are archery or single-weapon, and Fighters do sword-and-board or two-weapon-parrying. Mostly, this has to do with fluff-based weapon proficiencies; I'm kinda picturing my Ranger class as a hunter, woodsman, tracker, outdoorsy guy. So they would have:
- daggers (for skinning)
- one-handed swords (machetes for clearing brush/jungle, could be two-handed I guess)
- one-handed axes (hatchets for splitting wood into kindling)
- two-handed axes (for cutting down trees and chopping up logs)
- bows and crossbows (for hunting wild game)

In the context of this lineup of "tools as weapons," dual wielding doesn't make a ton of sense, and also since doing it right requires more-specialized training (which I think lends itself more to a Fighter).

Another consideration is that the Rogue/Thief/Assassin class I've designed is built around being awesome at parrying, so I kind of want to make a wider class distinction. I also want to have Clerics that can be built to use two-handers (in the style of the Warcraft3 paladins) or sword-and-board, which would completely overlap with the current Fighter setup.

I guess I should end this with a question, so uh... does the change sound like a good move?
Is any of this overtly stupid and I just can't see the forest for the trees?

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib
I've started working on a story-gamy sort of RPG designed to emulate old-school sci-fi, and I've run into an issue. The basic setup I've got going is that players have a couple stats which they add to a d6 roll. They also have two other sets of traits, one of which is more flexible than the other. They can choose to escalate a contest, by using another stat or one of their other traits with appropriate description (e.g. if they have the trait "Microwave Blaster", they can use it to escalate a contest by pulling it on somebody) but in return they risk consequences that are added to their character and can be used to interfere with their actions (e.g. they get the consequence "Limited Ammo", which the GM can use to stop them from intimidating people with the Blaster, or stop them from shooting with it, etc.).

So I'm thinking about whether there should be a FATE Point-style currency that's needed to invoke traits. On the one hand, it would prevent the issue of piling boosts on top of another, (and the basic idea is that there's some overarching external problem the PCs have to solve, so their power should be somewhat limited, I think) but there are other ways to do that by increasing the stakes, or limiting the amount of things that can be invoked at any one time. The main disadvantage is that it's more things to track and seems almost redundant in a way, especially since positive and negative aspects are already split up. So what do you think?

01011001
Dec 26, 2012

P.d0t posted:

I am thinking of swapping it around a bit, so that Rangers are archery or single-weapon, and Fighters do sword-and-board or two-weapon-parrying. Mostly, this has to do with fluff-based weapon proficiencies; I'm kinda picturing my Ranger class as a hunter, woodsman, tracker, outdoorsy guy. So they would have:
- one-handed swords (machetes for clearing brush/jungle, could be two-handed I guess)
- daggers (for skinning)
- two-handed axes (for cutting down trees and chopping up logs)

I suppose my question is why they have daggers (typical offhand weapons) and two-handed axes as prominent if you're steering them toward one-handers and archery. It would also help if you went into more detail about the distinction between sword-and-board (maybe blocking if not just a hard bonus to AC or whatever), parrying (which apparently both one fighter build and also the rogue are supposed to be excellent at?), and whatever two-handers get in exchange for not those things.

If you want to keep that kind of proficiency setup (which seems reasonable from a fluff standpoint, though I'd also add things like spears for animal hunting - personally I think of empty handed fighting also as fencer/duelist stuff more than hunter/ranger, but that's just me) and still aim for one-handed focus, what you could do is bake some bonuses to fighting with an empty left hand into the class - maybe add some slight damage and moderate evasion to make it more offensive than either two-weapon or sword-and-board setups but more defensive than two-handing.

As for whether it's a good move, what you've said so far is:
-Rangers are einhander and/or archery. No idea what you had in mind for the former (as said above) but the latter usually denotes striking at range with no retribution, albeit maybe some short-range vulnerability.
-Fighters are S+B and/or two-handed with parry focus. Sounds defensive.
-Rogues have a parry focus and no idea what else.
-Clerics are two-handed or S+B. So they can swap between offensive and defensive?

It doesn't seem like each has a clear role. It would probably be wise to determine what you want each to do mechanically, then tailor what the range of options do around that.

P.d0t
Dec 27, 2007
I released my finger from the trigger, and then it was over...

01011001 posted:

I suppose my question is why they have daggers (typical offhand weapons) and two-handed axes as prominent if you're steering them toward one-handers and archery.

I specifically said "single-weapon", to mean "not dual wielding". I didn't mean it at all to imply they would be favouring one-handed weapons over two-handers. I just want to shift them off of dual-wielding.

01011001 posted:

It would also help if you went into more detail about the distinction between sword-and-board (maybe blocking if not just a hard bonus to AC or whatever), parrying (which apparently both one fighter build and also the rogue are supposed to be excellent at?), and whatever two-handers get in exchange for not those things.

Basically the "Rogue" is supposed to lean more towards the Monk/Assasin side of things, so they get abilites to parry projectile weapons and spells; the Fighter gets similar abilities, but tailored to using a shield or blocking. A two-weapon Fighter would be more of a "DPS" build (with free offhand attacks and such) whereas a S+B would be a tank.

01011001 posted:

If you want to keep that kind of proficiency setup (which seems reasonable from a fluff standpoint, though I'd also add things like spears for animal hunting - personally I think of empty handed fighting also as fencer/duelist stuff more than hunter/ranger, but that's just me) and still aim for one-handed focus, what you could do is bake some bonuses to fighting with an empty left hand into the class - maybe add some slight damage and moderate evasion to make it more offensive than either two-weapon or sword-and-board setups but more defensive than two-handing.
The setup I had in mind for all classes (in melee combat) is this:
If you have a shield, you can block.
If you have a two-hander or are dual-wielding, you can parry.
If you are using a one-hander with no shield, or a ranged weapon, you can dodge. (Ranger goes here)
Also, each type of defense keys off of a different Attribute Score; blocking and weapon damage use the same one, in the current setup.

01011001 posted:

As for whether it's a good move, what you've said so far is:
-Rangers are einhander and/or archery. No idea what you had in mind for the former (as said above) but the latter usually denotes striking at range with no retribution, albeit maybe some short-range vulnerability.
-Fighters are S+B and/or two-handed with parry focus. Sounds defensive.
-Rogues have a parry focus and no idea what else.
-Clerics are two-handed or S+B. So they can swap between offensive and defensive?

It doesn't seem like each has a clear role. It would probably be wise to determine what you want each to do mechanically, then tailor what the range of options do around that.

Basically the idea is that each class gets some basic proficiencies, and then can specialize into one of two Super-Obvious builds. One example that I haven't touched on yet would be the cleric, who can specialize into "Blessings" (defensive/support) or "Curses" (offensive/debuffing).

Each class has 3 "flavour trees" of abilities, and they can basically specialize in 2. The "full spellcasters" are more all over the map, but these 4 classes in particular roughly each have a "Use Weapons" tree, a "Combat/Offensive/damage" tree, and a "defensive/passive" tree.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

This post has been inspected and certified by the Dino-Sorcerer



Grimey Drawer
Combat has started barreling out of my control the longer I work on the game. At first it was as basic as could be, with simple attack rolls & damage, with all special actions or abilities coming purely from player specific abilities that they selected at character creation. Now though I've started adding in more general combat actions and its getting closer and closer to the dreadful 3.5 model of including Grappling/Tripping/Dual Wielding, etc.

In keeping with the spirit of simplicity that I'm trying to go for with the game none of these special actions require any new subsystems or anything like that, they are integrated into the normal Attack/Action mechanic framework and I've tried to clearly outline the rules for them as best as I can. Here's an example:

Basic Attack: Roll 1d20 against your Dexterity, on a success you hit your target and roll damage. *Critical Hit Result: Your attack deals double damage. *Critical Failure Result: You drop the weapon you were attacking with at your feet.

Disarm: Roll 2d20 against your Dexterity and keep the worse result of the two, on a success you can take an item from your opponents hand and either equip it or drop it into an adjacent space of your choice. *Critical Hit Result: You may roll an immediate basic attack against your target with the weapon you just took from them. *Critical Failure Result: Your target may make an immediate basic attack against you.

*As a side note I know the odds of rolling a critical success while at disadvantage are something like 1 in 400, but all players are able to spend a Luck point to upgrade any Miss/Failure they roll into a Success OR to upgrade any Success they roll into a Critical Success, so the Critical Hit bonuses on special actions are mostly for Luck point use.

I've also expanded the number and variety of abilities granted by weapon skill (because I'm just a huge goddamned fan of the BECMI D&D weapon mastery system that I thought I needed to have my own version of it for this game):

Spear: +1 Damage with all attacks made with the Spear
Reach - If you are not currently in melee with an enemy and one moves into one of your adjacent spaces you may make an immediate basic attack against them that resolves before their action completes.
Versatility - If you are using the Spear in one hand you may treat it as a Throwing weapon.
Impale - If you are using the Spear in two hands you may choose to make an attack at Disadvantage (roll 2d20 and keep the worse result). On a hit this attack deals normal damage and you can choose to leave the spear stuck in the opponent. While they are impaled they lose 1 point of Strength at the start of each round, removing the spear uses up their action for the round and deals them 1d4 points of Strength damage.

At the same time though I've tweaked the mechanics to the point where now each individual instance of combat is deadlier for all participants, including the PC's. Trying to fight opponents fairly in one-on-one battle is asking to be seriously injured and your best options are to use ambushes, various tools & controlling the battlefield to come out on top rather than a simple hack-n-slash. Is it misleading to have a robust combat system that also is very risky to engage in?

Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jan 30, 2013

ZenMasterBullshit
Nov 2, 2011

Restaurant de Nouvelles "À Table" Proudly Presents:
A Climactic Encounter Ending on 1 Negate and a Dream
So for my game about super-human teams/gangs of eccentric weirdos Rollerblade racing around a neon lit city I've been writing (in fluff) that names are rather important to Runners (it's what the racers are called). I came up with the idea that at your first meeting you'd go around you would explain your character and their Style (Style being something similar to 13th Age's One Unique thing as it serves as a thematic center point for your character and a guideline to fluff tricks to suit your character.) and the player to your left gives your character a Nickname based on what you tell them.

At the moment this system is not tied to anything mechanically. It's just there to help players and the party as a whole more invested the characters and give the DJ more things to use for the opponent racers.

My question is, is that enough to validate this mechanics existence? Is it okay to have something that's basically just fluff or is should I either find a way to make it into a hard mechanic or strip it out?

I guess I'm just wondering at what point does this type of thing become excessive.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

ZenMasterBullshit posted:

So for my game about super-human teams/gangs of eccentric weirdos Rollerblade racing around a neon lit city I've been writing (in fluff) that names are rather important to Runners (it's what the racers are called). I came up with the idea that at your first meeting you'd go around you would explain your character and their Style (Style being something similar to 13th Age's One Unique thing as it serves as a thematic center point for your character and a guideline to fluff tricks to suit your character.) and the player to your left gives your character a Nickname based on what you tell them.

At the moment this system is not tied to anything mechanically. It's just there to help players and the party as a whole more invested the characters and give the DJ more things to use for the opponent racers.

My question is, is that enough to validate this mechanics existence? Is it okay to have something that's basically just fluff or is should I either find a way to make it into a hard mechanic or strip it out?

I guess I'm just wondering at what point does this type of thing become excessive.

Fluff mechanics can be interesting, and they can really help with the roleplaying aspect if the entire group works together to create their characters instead of going with the old fashioned model of just rolling a guy up solo and bringing him to any table like a detached Lego brick.

The Dresden Files RPG has a thing where you pass your character sheet to another player and they write in a section about how their character relates to yours and past adventures they may have shared.

ZenMasterBullshit
Nov 2, 2011

Restaurant de Nouvelles "À Table" Proudly Presents:
A Climactic Encounter Ending on 1 Negate and a Dream

Bob Quixote posted:

Fluff mechanics can be interesting, and they can really help with the roleplaying aspect if the entire group works together to create their characters instead of going with the old fashioned model of just rolling a guy up solo and bringing him to any table like a detached Lego brick.

The Dresden Files RPG has a thing where you pass your character sheet to another player and they write in a section about how their character relates to yours and past adventures they may have shared.

This is actually a bit I've been struggling with. Do I design this with the idea that the team of PC's would already be together, and include rules for deciding/settling who is the leader/what the team name is/how it started/etc. or should I leave it more open and leave these kind of guidelines as an option thing and focus less on developing them?

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

ZenMasterBullshit posted:

This is actually a bit I've been struggling with. Do I design this with the idea that the team of PC's would already be together, and include rules for deciding/settling who is the leader/what the team name is/how it started/etc. or should I leave it more open and leave these kind of guidelines as an option thing and focus less on developing them?

Well that leads right back into the fluff side of the game since whether the focus of the game is on the antics of a team of friends/allies working together for a similar goal, or whether the focus is on exploration of the game world and the adventure scenarios themselves.

Having advanced character/personality mechanics in something like 1st Edition D&D would be useless since the game was a meat grinder and most characters died at extremely low levels, but if your games focus is more on character interaction (especially if the PC's can use the game mechanics tied with their relationships with other characters to influence things in the game world itself) then having these sorts of things is a pretty good idea.

*EDIT*

Plus, I don't know about you but most character introduction scenes in games I've played in have been really forced and awkward seeming so I tend to prefer having prior character histories myself, so my opinions may reflect these prejudices.

ZenMasterBullshit
Nov 2, 2011

Restaurant de Nouvelles "À Table" Proudly Presents:
A Climactic Encounter Ending on 1 Negate and a Dream

Bob Quixote posted:

Well that leads right back into the fluff side of the game since whether the focus of the game is on the antics of a team of friends/allies working together for a similar goal, or whether the focus is on exploration of the game world and the adventure scenarios themselves.

Having advanced character/personality mechanics in something like 1st Edition D&D would be useless since the game was a meat grinder and most characters died at extremely low levels, but if your games focus is more on character interaction (especially if the PC's can use the game mechanics tied with their relationships with other characters to influence things in the game world itself) then having these sorts of things is a pretty good idea.

*EDIT*

Plus, I don't know about you but most character introduction scenes in games I've played in have been really forced and awkward seeming so I tend to prefer having prior character histories myself, so my opinions may reflect these prejudices.

No no no, you're giving really solid advice and it's actually really helped me out. I've decided to do a bit of a compromise. I'll have the base assumptions run with prior meeting/relationships being assumed, but not that they've formed a team and include a set of rules for helping the table decide on a name and/or leader if they want to start off with a team already formed. That way if the DJ wants to start his game off with complete rookies it's just pick up and go and anyone who wants start off a bit further ahead can just use the team creation rules before the first session like they would the Nickname stuff.

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
Have two nicknames. One's the one the character tries to get people to use, the one he likes (the player makes this one up). The other's the one that sometimes other people use, and maybe it irritates him (this is the one the other player picks; they're encouraged to make up nicknames that are simultaneously catchy and accurate and also mildly insulting). Then have a "diss" subsystem, for smack-talk and reputation, and the nicknames can be part of that.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

ZenMasterBullshit posted:

No no no, you're giving really solid advice and it's actually really helped me out. I've decided to do a bit of a compromise. I'll have the base assumptions run with prior meeting/relationships being assumed, but not that they've formed a team and include a set of rules for helping the table decide on a name and/or leader if they want to start off with a team already formed. That way if the DJ wants to start his game off with complete rookies it's just pick up and go and anyone who wants start off a bit further ahead can just use the team creation rules before the first session like they would the Nickname stuff.

Sounds like a great balance, it gives the players & GM options for the kind of game they want to play/run.

My game has taken a sort of schizophrenic tone since I want to include lots of fun roleplay-encouraging mechanics, but at the same time I've increased the lethality of combat actions dramatically to the point where 9 times out of 10 its smarter to not get into a fight at all (or to stack the odds so high in your favor that every fight you get into should be a curbstomp situation if you can arrange it).

I had been thinking of that section from some RPG (I forget which one) that was put before the combat rules that pretty much explained violence as being something which had heavy consequences and it stuck in my head. My game has started to shift from semi-heroic to more gritty (though definitely not realistic).

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Bob Quixote posted:

I had been thinking of that section from some RPG (I forget which one) that was put before the combat rules that pretty much explained violence as being something which had heavy consequences and it stuck in my head. My game has started to shift from semi-heroic to more gritty (though definitely not realistic).
Unknown Armies?

Mikan
Sep 5, 2007

by Radium

Bob Quixote posted:

I had been thinking of that section from some RPG (I forget which one) that was put before the combat rules that pretty much explained violence as being something which had heavy consequences and it stuck in my head. My game has started to shift from semi-heroic to more gritty (though definitely not realistic).

Unknown Armies 2e, pg 47

Somewhere out there is someone who had loving parents, watched clouds on a summer's day, fell in love, lost a friend, is kind to small animals, and knows how to say "please" and "thank you," and yet somehow the two of you are going to end up in a dirty little room with one knife between you and you are going to have to kill that human being.

It's a terrible thing. Not just because he's come to the same realization and wants to survive just as much as you do, meaning he's going to try and puncture your internal organs to set off a cascading trauma effect that ends with you voiding your bowels, dying alone and removed from everything you've ever loved. No, it's a terrible thing because somewhere along the way you could have made a different choice. You could have avoided that knife, that room, and maybe even found some kind of common ground between the two of you. Or at least, you might have divvied up some turf and left each other alone. That would've been a lot smarter, wouldn't it? Even dogs are smart enough to do that. Now you're staring into the eyes of a fellow human and in a couple minutes one of you is going to be vomiting to the rhythm of a fading heartbeat. The survivor is going to remember this night for the rest of his or her life.

Six Ways To Stop A Fight

So before you make a grab for that knife, you should maybe think about a few things. This moment is frozen in time. You can still make better choices.

Surrender. Is your pride really worth a human life? Drop your weapon, put up your hands, and tell them you're ready to cut a deal. You walk, and in exchange you give them something they need. Sidestep the current agenda. Offer them something unrelated to your dispute, and negotiate to find a solution.

Disarm. Knife on the table? Throw it out the window. Opponent with a gun? Dodge until he's out of bullets. Deescalate the situation to fists, if possible. You can settle your differences with some brawling and still walk away, plus neither one of you has to face a murder charge or a criminal investigation.

Rechannel. So you have a conflict. Settle it in a smarter way. Arm wrestle, play cards, have a scavenger hunt, a drinking contest, anything that lets you establish a winner and a loser. Smart gamblers bet nothing they aren't willing to lose. Why put your life on the line?

Pass the Buck. Is there somebody more powerful then either one of you who is going to be angry that you two are coming to blows? Pretend you're all in the mafia and you can't just kill each other without kicking your dispute upstairs first. Let that symbolic superior make a decision. You both gain clout for not spilling blood.

Call the Cops. If you've got a grievance against somebody, let the police do your dirty work. File charges. Get a restraining order. Sue him in civil court for wrongful harm. You can beat him down without throwing a punch.

Run Away. The hell with it. Who needs this kind of heat? Blow town, get a job some place else, build a new power base. Is the world really too small for the both of you? It's a big planet out there.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

Mikan posted:

Unknown Armies 2e, pg 47

Somewhere out there is someone who had loving parents, watched clouds on a summer's day, fell in love, lost a friend, is kind to small animals, and knows how to say "please" and "thank you," and yet somehow the two of you are going to end up in a dirty little room with one knife between you and you are going to have to kill that human being.

It's a terrible thing. Not just because he's come to the same realization and wants to survive just as much as you do, meaning he's going to try and puncture your internal organs to set off a cascading trauma effect that ends with you voiding your bowels, dying alone and removed from everything you've ever loved. No, it's a terrible thing because somewhere along the way you could have made a different choice. You could have avoided that knife, that room, and maybe even found some kind of common ground between the two of you. Or at least, you might have divvied up some turf and left each other alone. That would've been a lot smarter, wouldn't it? Even dogs are smart enough to do that. Now you're staring into the eyes of a fellow human and in a couple minutes one of you is going to be vomiting to the rhythm of a fading heartbeat. The survivor is going to remember this night for the rest of his or her life.

Six Ways To Stop A Fight

So before you make a grab for that knife, you should maybe think about a few things. This moment is frozen in time. You can still make better choices.

Surrender. Is your pride really worth a human life? Drop your weapon, put up your hands, and tell them you're ready to cut a deal. You walk, and in exchange you give them something they need. Sidestep the current agenda. Offer them something unrelated to your dispute, and negotiate to find a solution.

Disarm. Knife on the table? Throw it out the window. Opponent with a gun? Dodge until he's out of bullets. Deescalate the situation to fists, if possible. You can settle your differences with some brawling and still walk away, plus neither one of you has to face a murder charge or a criminal investigation.

Rechannel. So you have a conflict. Settle it in a smarter way. Arm wrestle, play cards, have a scavenger hunt, a drinking contest, anything that lets you establish a winner and a loser. Smart gamblers bet nothing they aren't willing to lose. Why put your life on the line?

Pass the Buck. Is there somebody more powerful then either one of you who is going to be angry that you two are coming to blows? Pretend you're all in the mafia and you can't just kill each other without kicking your dispute upstairs first. Let that symbolic superior make a decision. You both gain clout for not spilling blood.

Call the Cops. If you've got a grievance against somebody, let the police do your dirty work. File charges. Get a restraining order. Sue him in civil court for wrongful harm. You can beat him down without throwing a punch.

Run Away. The hell with it. Who needs this kind of heat? Blow town, get a job some place else, build a new power base. Is the world really too small for the both of you? It's a big planet out there.

Thank you! That was the section I'd been thinking of. I'd read it a long while back on these forums but had forgotten where it was from and it had stuck in my head.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



I just had a cool idea about a narrative mechanic. I was reading back over some previous parts of this thread, and a while ago I said "notionally start your game at season 2, episode 1".

Just now, I thought about that a bit and ended up with "why season two?" Instead, start it at a point where the party has been together for a long while and are already Big Heroes.

Every so often, you get some Flashback Points. These are a narrative resource, that lets you cash in on a thing that you have done in a "previous episode". Your characters already know the backstory, but the players build the backstory as they go.

You get two levels of Flashback Points: Small and Large. Large points let you describe a significant part of the backstory. Small points can be used if the players have already played through a similar situation, or if the situation is similar to one in an existing part of the backstory (ie, it has been mentioned in a Large Flashback before).

Both give you different levels of control over the plot/situation. Small stuff could be "the bartender is the brother of the girl we saved from the Lizard King, I bet he'll help us!" and Large stuff could be "Remember when we defeated the Lizard King and the Baron gave us one favor we could call in?"

You'd get an extra bonus if you were referring to something that's been Flashbacked in the past, for example if the War Of The Lizard King has been mentioned before, the bartender is not only willing to put you up for free, he has contacts in the thieves' guild who can help you. If the War Of The Lizard King has been an ongoing theme (mentioned more than X times), the bonus increases. Once you've Flashbacked an "episode" a certain number of times, it's played out and you can't mention it again, and have to start up a new episode to flash back to.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer
I've been reading a lot of grogs.txt lately and the discussion had come to some of 3.5's more bumbleheaded mechanics, among them was the fact that if you were playing a Fighter you would probably end up sinking tons of your character resources (both metagame mechanics like Feat slots & in-game resources like gold) into specializing in a specific weapon & then acquiring a really kick-rear end example of said weapon to maximize both your hit chance & damage output to something above pathetic.

While the theory behind this was that you'd be an unstoppable juggernaut with your specialized weapon what it mostly meant was that you lived in fear of anything destroying that weapon, your DM not granting you appropriate upgrades to your weapon in order to keep pace with the monster math & being forced to sit out fights when your weapon of choice wasn't one of the ones approved for fighting Monster X and was thus gimped in damage.

Since my own game is following the same sort of hack-n-slashy dungeoncrawling goals as D&D I want to try and avoid that problem as best I can while still allowing for flavorful weapon-mastery type shenanigans since I'm totally into that poo poo.

I think I MIGHT have the problem under control but if anyone can help me by pointing out flaws that I'm missing or giving me options that I haven't considered I'd be pretty grateful.

My idea is that all characters are able to use any weapon at basic competency (able to attack with it without penalty & do regular damage when using it) automatically. A player can invest one (or more) of their 3 starting Skill slots to become Skilled in a particular weapon(s) (which grants a slight damage bonus with that weapon as well as allowing the player to use that particular weapons special attacks and abilities). So if Joe Everyman picks up a spear he can stab a guy for 1d8 damage (1d10 2 handed), but if Joe Spearmaster picks up a spear he can stab with a +1 damage bonus, throw it, use its reach to strike someone moving up close to him or impale a guy with it so that they slowly bleed out from the bigass spear jammed in them. Investment in a weapon skill increases your available range of combat tactics but does not greatly alter your damage output to the point where using a different type of weapon could be considered crippling.

I'm hoping that since there are no level-up mechanics and that there isn't an Enemy Treadmill that upgrades to equipment won't be an essential thing in the game. A magic sword would be a big deal one-of-a-kind artifact with its own name and poo poo rather than something that you pick up at the Waterdeep 7-11 and abandon a week later once you've outgrown it.

I was considering abandoning the idea of having gaining Skill in a weapon taking up a whole Skill slot since players only get 3 of them at character creation and no more ever again. Maybe replacing it with a Warrior skill that grants them aptitude with 2 weapons and some other little perk to go along with it, so you can have a guy who is a masterful Sword-n-Board fighter at the cost of a single skill slot instead of 2/3 of that particular resource.

EDIT

And also be able to take the Warrior skill multiple times if you were interested in just focusing on becoming the master of many different weapons rather than learning Alchemy or Medicine or one of the other available skills.

Bob Quixote fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Feb 15, 2013

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Bob Quixote posted:

Weapon skills

Is The Riddle Of Steel RPG the thing you're looking for? I've only really skimmed it, but it's very detailed on the weapon skill thing.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

AlphaDog posted:

Is The Riddle Of Steel RPG the thing you're looking for? I've only really skimmed it, but it's very detailed on the weapon skill thing.

I was drawing more from the BECMI D&D weapon-mastery rules where characters would put proficiency slots into weapons as they leveled up which would grant them tons of new abilities and bonus damage with a given weapon, but simplifying it down to a simple process of selecting a weapon to be skilled in and gaining all of its particular abilities at once.

I've also skimmed Riddle of Steel myself but honestly I thought it looked WAY too complex for my goals of fast character creation and ease of play. Plus half the fun of this whole ordeal has been trying to balance the game and come up with rules that sync well and support the systems goals.

Speleothing
May 6, 2008

Spare batteries are pretty key.
One way to do that would be to have each special weapon move move (or spell!) be a buy-in skill. You take one of your eight starting skill points, and buy Polearm Disarm, another for Polearm Reaching, and a third for Heavy Thrown Weapon. Something like Impale might cost 2 skill points. Have each weapon/category have a list of four or so abilities, and maybe another 8 or 9 general, but weaker, abilities.

--

What I've been thinking about for a while, and would like advice on, is a way to do semi-random dungeon & challenge generation without needing a specific DM - the team of adventurers keeps going into the cavern until their HP/morale/resources run out (or they find an impassible obstacle and need to get a longer rope).

Rexides
Jul 25, 2011

Bob Quixote posted:

My idea is that all characters are able to use any weapon at basic competency (able to attack with it without penalty & do regular damage when using it) automatically. A player can invest one (or more) of their 3 starting Skill slots to become Skilled in a particular weapon(s) (which grants a slight damage bonus with that weapon as well as allowing the player to use that particular weapons special attacks and abilities). So if Joe Everyman picks up a spear he can stab a guy for 1d8 damage (1d10 2 handed), but if Joe Spearmaster picks up a spear he can stab with a +1 damage bonus, throw it, use its reach to strike someone moving up close to him or impale a guy with it so that they slowly bleed out from the bigass spear jammed in them. Investment in a weapon skill increases your available range of combat tactics but does not greatly alter your damage output to the point where using a different type of weapon could be considered crippling.

But you are still better when wielding your signature weapon than when you are not, even when the benefits are not just a direct bonus to damage. Reach means that you can potentially deal your damage during a round when not having a spear would have denied that, and a bleeding effect translates in more damage over a few rounds. Other possible effects, like disarming an enemy or dazing them do not translate in more damage, but even then they are still desirable effects whose loss will affect the performance of the character.

What if the character options that give you the specialisation also give you metagame mechanics that can provide you with the weapons you need? If you are an axe master, then axes you hold are more resistant to damage because axe masters are not supposed to break their axes. If you find yourself axeless, you have a specific chance to find an axe in every treasure pile. If you are unarmed and you see an enemy hold an axe, you can grab it and split his head open with a standard action.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Then just become Johnny 2 axes.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸
We're basically looking at trying to reconcile two goals here:
1) Become better at using a specific signature weapon/weapon type.
2) Remain equally mechanically effective when not using said signature weapon.

The only way I can see this working is if specialising only gives you more options rather than an actual power increase. Couple of ways to do this:

A FATE-style signature-weapon-as-aspect thing. So narratively speaking YOU BROKE MY FATHERS SWORD, mechanically speaking you just have one less Aspect for a little bit but your actual skills/FATE point totals are unaffected.

A mechanical trade-off system. So specialising in Maces, for example, lets you trade a couple of dice of damage to prone your target. Having to use a Sword for a while just means you have to default to the (roughly) mechanically equivalent "Just stab him for a lot of damage".

Similar to the last one (and assuming a 4E-style encounter power system), specialising gives you a weapon-specific ability that you can use instead of another one. So if you have 3 encounter powers and then specialise into Axes you get an additional encounter power saying "Do fucktons of damage to a prone target", but can still only use 3 total per combat.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Splicer posted:

We're basically looking at trying to reconcile two goals here:
1) Become better at using a specific signature weapon/weapon type.
2) Remain equally mechanically effective when not using said signature weapon.

The only way I can see this working is if specialising only gives you more options rather than an actual power increase.

Fantasy Craft does something similar to this - weapon feats give you a small power increase, but also grant a trick or a stance. Stances are persistent effects that take an action to initiate but you can have one at a time, tricks are special actions, but you can only use one per action. Since there are stances and tricks that aren't weapon-specific, and stances have a small action cost to begin with, it's possible to have weapon-specialist warrior that isn't helpless when their weapon is yanked away. This is especially true because there are cheap generic tricks available to all character types. I've been playing a warrior that is immensely effective in an ongoing Fantasy Craft game without ever specializing in any particular weapon beyond basic competence.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

This post has been inspected and certified by the Dino-Sorcerer



Grimey Drawer

Speleothing posted:

One way to do that would be to have each special weapon move move (or spell!) be a buy-in skill. You take one of your eight starting skill points, and buy Polearm Disarm, another for Polearm Reaching, and a third for Heavy Thrown Weapon. Something like Impale might cost 2 skill points. Have each weapon/category have a list of four or so abilities, and maybe another 8 or 9 general, but weaker, abilities.

That isn't a bad idea, and I could see that it would allow for players to take one or two small tricks with a number of different weapons instead of spending 1/3 of their resources to focus solely on one.

I'm starting to lean more toward the Warrior Skill idea from earlier though where taking it would grant you 3 "Combat Proficiencies/Masteries/etc." which would allow you to specialize in up to 3 weapons (or unarmed/shield/armor) skills at the cost of only 1/3 of your 3 Skill slots. Since there are plenty of weapons to choose from you'd be able to see a large variety in the PC's (heavy armor/shield/sword user vs. bow/unarmed/dagger user, would each have completely different options and fighting styles in combat).

It would also tie more into how the skills in the game work since each one is more like a profession (Thief, Alchemist, Woodsman, Doctor, etc.) which grants general skill roll bonuses at various tasks and certain skill specific abilities in non-combat situations.

Speleothing posted:

What I've been thinking about for a while, and would like advice on, is a way to do semi-random dungeon & challenge generation without needing a specific DM - the team of adventurers keeps going into the cavern until their HP/morale/resources run out (or they find an impassible obstacle and need to get a longer rope).

That's pretty do-able and sounds a bit like a board-game that I did during the summer except that yours would be co-operative instead of competitive. Having them go through a randomly pre-generated dungeon (or does it generate as they move through?) and only turning back when they feel they can't go further works, but how do you do things like determining enemy targeting, is it also random?

Would you have something like a monster action chart, or do the different enemies come "programmed" to only perform specific actions/attacks at specific times in combat?


Splicer posted:

A mechanical trade-off system. So specialising in Maces, for example, lets you trade a couple of dice of damage to prone your target. Having to use a Sword for a while just means you have to default to the (roughly) mechanically equivalent "Just stab him for a lot of damage".

Similar to the last one (and assuming a 4E-style encounter power system), specialising gives you a weapon-specific ability that you can use instead of another one. So if you have 3 encounter powers and then specialise into Axes you get an additional encounter power saying "Do fucktons of damage to a prone target", but can still only use 3 total per combat.

Quite a few of the weapons special attacks do sort of work on a trade-off between Basic Attack for decent damage vs. perform a more difficult special maneuver or regular difficulty non-damaging action. Some of the bonus abilities are passive though and trigger automatically, so they are a bit harder to balance overall with the idea but I do like it a lot.

Error 404
Jul 17, 2009


MAGE CURES PLOT

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I've been playing a warrior that is immensely effective in an ongoing Fantasy Craft game without ever specializing in any particular weapon beyond basic competence.

I'd argue that this is the kind of gold standard we should generally shoot for. Assume that no one will or should specialize, and THEN figure out what, if any, cool things specializing gives you.

Though I am a fan of weapon as fluff though, with a little creativity you can describe nearly any weapon doing any thing.

Fighty guy doing a maneuver where he quickly takes a knee and swings his greatsword/axe/whatever at a target's legs? That's as good a trip attack as anything a whip or spiked chain can do.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

Error 404 posted:

I'd argue that this is the kind of gold standard we should generally shoot for. Assume that no one will or should specialize, and THEN figure out what, if any, cool things specializing gives you.

Though I am a fan of weapon as fluff though, with a little creativity you can describe nearly any weapon doing any thing.

Fighty guy doing a maneuver where he quickly takes a knee and swings his greatsword/axe/whatever at a target's legs? That's as good a trip attack as anything a whip or spiked chain can do.

I'd been trying to aim for that myself with the whole "anyone can use anything, specializing just gives you neat moves" thing but I suppose I need to put some more work in it if its still seen as sort of cumbersome.

I like weapon as fluff also, otherwise I'd not bother with this whole rigamarole but I do think that having differences in weapons isn't a bad thing. Spears would probably be more likely to give you a long reach on your attacks as opposed to a dagger, but its harder to imagine someone using a big two-handed spear while grappling with a guy to plunge in the joints between his armor and bleed him out like you would with a dagger.

For something like that I'd probably just have a generic "weapon" and "ranged weapon" that do identical damage and you declare it is whatever you want it to be from sword or mace to frying pan or a stick studded in human teeth. Nothing wrong with that and it works out well enough in practice too, but I like things a bit crunchier because I'm a big nerd.

P.d0t
Dec 27, 2007
I released my finger from the trigger, and then it was over...
For what it's worth, I'm strongly in favour of paring down the layers of your "kit"

Right now, in 4e, we have:
    - Race
    - Class
    - Powers
    - Feats
    - Themes
    - Backgrounds
    - Items

I think having the "+5 Frosty Spike Chain of Maiming" be a mandatory character mechanism is probably the worst of that list; having it be "my character is good because he has this bitchin' weapon" seems like exactly the wrong direction, even worse so if it's "math-necessary"

Keep 1 layer that broadly determines your non-combat capability and another 1 for your combat capability. Anything else can be optional fluff, imho.

Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

P.d0t posted:

For what it's worth, I'm strongly in favour of paring down the layers of your "kit"

Right now, in 4e, we have:
    - Race
    - Class
    - Powers
    - Feats
    - Themes
    - Backgrounds
    - Items

I think having the "+5 Frosty Spike Chain of Maiming" be a mandatory character mechanism is probably the worst of that list; having it be "my character is good because he has this bitchin' weapon" seems like exactly the wrong direction, even worse so if it's "math-necessary"

Keep 1 layer that broadly determines your non-combat capability and another 1 for your combat capability. Anything else can be optional fluff, imho.

Currently in my game the character creation section is:
    -Spread your Stat points (STR/DEX/INT which determine your HP/Speed/Initiative)
    -Pick 3 Skills (Alchemist, Doctor, Warrior, etc.)
    -Pick 3 Powers (Telekinesis, Natural Weapon, Animal Magnetism, etc.)
    -Items (you can carry 10 max and pick them from a list at the start of the game)

I'm trying to avoid that particular problem myself, there aren't any magical weapons to speak of in the game & there are no "Level Up" mechanisms that make having a weapon of a minimum bonus necessary to keep playing the game. Selecting Warrior skill & getting the 3 weapon proficiencies it grants is completely optional since they provide extra actions in combat but don't otherwise impact the game much.

Its not the specific weapon, its the fact that the character is good with that particular type of weapon and can still do more amazing things with a rusty and poorly made version of it than an amateur could do with a masterfully crafted one covered in poison and buffed to hell and back with spells.

Speleothing
May 6, 2008

Spare batteries are pretty key.

Bob Quixote posted:


That's pretty do-able and sounds a bit like a board-game that I did during the summer except that yours would be co-operative instead of competitive. Having them go through a randomly pre-generated dungeon (or does it generate as they move through?) and only turning back when they feel they can't go further works, but how do you do things like determining enemy targeting, is it also random?

Would you have something like a monster action chart, or do the different enemies come "programmed" to only perform specific actions/attacks at specific times in combat?


It would have to generate as you move through - the players can't know what's around the corner until they map it. Enemy action would mostly be skill challenges - the opponent or obstacle needs a certain combined skill from the players and they roll overcome it or pay non-renewable resources to add to their skill so they can. Big fights would have sequential skill challenges or multiple required skills (can't overcome the 200 foot pit without rope skill & climbing skill).

Edit: This is primarily going to be a cave-exploration game, maybe adding Fight the Mole-Men or Stop the Cultists modules later.

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Bob Quixote
Jul 7, 2006

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Grimey Drawer

Speleothing posted:

This is primarily going to be a cave-exploration game, maybe adding Fight the Mole-Men or Stop the Cultists modules later.

I would play the everloving poo poo out of a game called Fight the Mole-Men.

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