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Gau posted:I always thought it would be much simpler to have a "lockdown" mechanic just say that the target can't move away. So a weaponmaster could base an archer and the archer could still shoot someone else, but couldn't escape to safety without shifting. The problem there is it just makes the fight last longer, extra or special damage ennds it sooner.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:00
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Choose a number of eligible enemies to "threaten" each turn. (Powers and class features determine eligibility.) Roll attacks against each of them on your turn, but don't announce the results. Instead, write them down and put the paper face-down. On the threatened enemies' turn, if they do the thing that would provoke the attack, turn it right-side up and see if it hits and if so how much damage is taken. This is an awful rule. Clean it up.
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Jul 7, 2014 00:23
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Error 404 posted:The problem there is it just makes the fight last longer, extra or special damage ennds it sooner. Then give bonus damage if the mark attacks someone else.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:34
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Gonna obviate all this by just making an aggro system 
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Jul 7, 2014 03:39
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Asymmetrikon posted:Gonna obviate all this by just making an aggro system But... my verisimilitude! But seriously, I'm interested in how you'll do this without a giant headache for the GM.
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Jul 7, 2014 03:46
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Asymmetrikon posted:Gonna obviate all this by just making an aggro system Can the Tank hold all of it? 
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Jul 7, 2014 03:48
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Bongo Bill posted:Choose a number of eligible enemies to "threaten" each turn. (Powers and class features determine eligibility.) Roll attacks against each of them on your turn, but don't announce the results. Instead, write them down and put the paper face-down. On the threatened enemies' turn, if they do the thing that would provoke the attack, turn it right-side up and see if it hits and if so how much damage is taken. Does this refer to my rule? Cause it's nothing like that.
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Jul 7, 2014 07:17
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Rexides posted:Does this refer to my rule? Cause it's nothing like that. No, the rule I came up with in that same post was the one that was awful and needed cleanup.
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Jul 7, 2014 08:23
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Bongo Bill posted:No, the rule I came up with in that same post was the one that was awful and needed cleanup. Yeah, I can't handle meta-posting. Maybe replacing the "roll and note down attacks" with drawing from a deck of cards could be a first step. I plan something similar for the Swashbuckler (rogue) that tries to emulate the shell game .
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Jul 7, 2014 09:07
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Bongo Bill posted:Choose a number of eligible enemies to "threaten" each turn. (Powers and class features determine eligibility.) Roll attacks against each of them on your turn, but don't announce the results. Instead, write them down and put the paper face-down. On the threatened enemies' turn, if they do the thing that would provoke the attack, turn it right-side up and see if it hits and if so how much damage is taken. Something I ask myself when writing a rule is: What goal am I trying to accomplish with this rule? I can sort of intuit the threatening portion of the rule, but I'm not sure what pre-rolling accomplishes. If you want to have a set of random but predetermined outcomes that can be fairly hidden, using a hand of playing cards seems like it'd be much faster. I'm going to throw my hat into the ring for this contest too. I'll go ahead and post a set of design goals when I get them polished up a bit.
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Jul 7, 2014 17:43
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Syka posted:But... my verisimilitude! I've always figured it'd be pretty easy. Highest damage attack becomes the High Score. By default, enemies attack the target who has the High Score. Tank characters receive a damage bonus when they aren't currently the High Score holder, and maybe have some abilities that allow them to reset the score to 0 or automatically take it over at a certain amount. Man I was sorta working on an entry based around Fire Emblem already, but maybe I'll throw together something really bare bones that centers around group aggro management in fights.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:18
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Misandu posted:I've always figured it'd be pretty easy. Highest damage attack becomes the High Score. By default, enemies attack the target who has the High Score. Tank characters receive a damage bonus when they aren't currently the High Score holder, and maybe have some abilities that allow them to reset the score to 0 or automatically take it over at a certain amount. That actually sounds really clever - simple and effective. I'm probably going to ignore it for my entry and stick with mechanics closer to basic 4e because I am a total hack. 
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Jul 7, 2014 20:03
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The Goals: No one should have to wonder what their current bonus is. Nearly any common fantasy character type should be buildable, without worry of traps. Deal with all the fiddly bonuses. Have character creation that does not require computer assistance. Improve on what worked in 4e: math that just works, simple for DM to prep encounters, and easy to improvise. The Specifics: Character Creation and Powers -Fewer, but broader classes. The game doesn’t need 7 martial strikers. -Players will pick options from a series of menus of balanced options. -Re-jigger ability scores, Str/Con, Dex/Int, Wis/Chr, are inconsistent, weird, imbalanced and need to go. I don’t know if that means getting rid of all ability scores, or changing the current ones. -Standardize and combine Themes and Backgrounds. -Character class should provide a broad base of competence and Theme / Paragon Path / Epic Destiny provide specialization. -Powers all improve by tier. No need to replace powers. -Either make better use of tags/keywords or drop them. Combat and Action Scenes -Switch to modified popcorn style initiative. -Streamline effect durations. -Unify summons/hirelings/companions. -Expand the losing/wining conditions for encounters so that “everyone dies” isn’t the default anymore. -General simplification and clarification. Exploration and Interaction -Silo combat and non-combat character choices so they don’t interfere with each other. -Unify utility powers, rituals, martial practices, and single use items. -Expand and deepen the skill list. -Equalize out-of-combat utility across classes. -Add degrees of success to skill checks. General -Replace economic and treasure system. -Better Leveling and XP system. Pie in the Sky Ideas: Different play styles achievable with simple and small rules tweaks. Organization and domain management rules. It seems like the first step is deciding how ability scores work and then building character classes.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:12
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Bongo Bill posted:Choose a number of eligible enemies to "threaten" each turn. (Powers and class features determine eligibility.) Roll attacks against each of them on your turn, but don't announce the results. Instead, write them down and put the paper face-down. On the threatened enemies' turn, if they do the thing that would provoke the attack, turn it right-side up and see if it hits and if so how much damage is taken. Why not just make it flat damage? Breaking a tank class's "rule" (moving away from me, attacking allies when you're marked, whatever) costs you 5xLevel HP, period.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:58
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megane posted:Why not just make it flat damage? Breaking a tank class's "rule" (moving away from me, attacking allies when you're marked, whatever) costs you 5xLevel HP, period. This is my favorite idea for handling this. As an added bonus, it is super easy to expand. Say you want to hinder them in some other way, you might have a class or option that adds status effects instead of damage (or reduced damage). Sure it removes the gamble of "Well, he might miss if I ignore the 'rule'... here goes NOTHING!", but most of the time you just followed that rule regardless. Maybe have options that let you ignore the tank class's 'rule' in given situations? See, this is so crazy easy to expand. Megane is on to something here.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:29
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megane posted:Why not just make it flat damage? Breaking a tank class's "rule" (moving away from me, attacking allies when you're marked, whatever) costs you 5xLevel HP, period. You know what 4th Edition really needed? More letters in brackets to denote variables. I vote/use [L] for the user's level, which would make that 5[L] damage.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:15
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But for real though High Score = Aggro, Tank gets a bonus, is loving brilliant.
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Jul 8, 2014 00:43
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MM3 on a bussiness card is a blessing — is there a similar kind of "spine" that describes player character math (expected values to hit, damage, defenses, etc)? I was planing to keep things compatible with existing 4e material (mainly monsters, to be honest) — the plan would be to simplify stuff on the players side (DTAS, no feats, smaller number of available powers, maybe fewer levels like 13th Age and Gamma World)
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Jul 8, 2014 00:54
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Error 404 posted:But for real though High Score = Aggro, Tank gets a bonus, is loving brilliant. But that changes from tracking one HP total for a monster to tracking one, plus one more for every member of the party. Are you sure this is an improvement over marking?
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Jul 8, 2014 01:11
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To elaborate on my previous single declarative sentence in which I said I'm making Stars Without Number for 4e: By default, the PCs in this game are independent contractors for the Hostile Worlds Department of the Ministry of Frontier Space. Your job is to drop onto worlds that would be too dangerous for a standard, lightly-armed scientific team. This does not mean that your job is entirely combat, though; you're well-trained, highly-skilled scientists in your own right. First Contact and archaeological missions will be just as likely (and challenging) as a slog through a death jungle. Instead of a race, each character will choose a specialty (like biology or xenoanthropology) which bestows a skill package and a power. I'm working on five classes: Scout, Technician, Commander, Gunner, Sniper. Major design goals:
Gau fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 01:52
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Are you going to keep all 6 stats though?
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Jul 8, 2014 02:12
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Aggro chat: Keeping track of specific per-player per-monster damage number relationships seems like a lot of extra work. I might simplify it into each time a PC does damage greater than X, with X equaling some fraction of the monsters HP, that PC gets an aggro token. If you wanted you could expand that out to things like PCs that use healing wordalikes, or use a daily attack, get an aggro token too. Monster's then pick targets based on whatever combo of availability and aggro tokens you like. Second Wind might also reduce or reset your aggro token count. The closest I've come to a player math spine are the calculations for companion characters in the DMG2. It might actually be easier to start with the monster stats, and fill in the PC stats from there. If you know what monster HP and defenses are at a given level, you just need to decide how accurate the PC are and how many hits you want it to take to bring a monster down. http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1074-4-Elements-at-the-Core-of-4e#.U7tNvfldXmd this goes into some basic detail about the very very core 4e math. wallawallawingwang fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 02:33
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Whenever you damage [group of monsters, or an individual monster that is part of a group] you get a colored or numbered token, where the color or number is tied to that particular group of monsters (for similar monsters all acting at the same time) or individually significant monsters like solos or w/e. Defenders can 'mark' that particular monster or group of monsters in order to gain an extra token for every marked monster. AoE attacks gain you a number of tokens equal to the number of damaged monsters + 1 for each group of monsters. When it's a monsters turn to activate, that monster/group of monsters attempts to attack the person who has the highest number of associated tokens. You can include specialist monsters that ignore aggro and go after whoever the DM wishes, but in order to do so, on that monsters activation, one of the PCs at the table gets to give up at least one of his aggro tokens. S.J. fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 02:37
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Mystic Mongol posted:But that changes from tracking one HP total for a monster to tracking one, plus one more for every member of the party. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it's more like one more thing to keep track of (which isn't good, I grant you) but that this is more like Marking but for everyone Round 1 Tank auto aggros because no one's attacked yet and they have bonus. Round 2 Ranger or Wizard roll really hot for damage, so now everyone's focused on them unless the tank can 'hold' the aggro with their bonus.
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Jul 8, 2014 02:46
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S.J. posted:Are you going to keep all 6 stats though? I'm not entirely certain; I was thinking of futzing with them for a bit and then I wondered what was to gain by doing so. I was thinking that I could do something like "Choose INT or DEX to be your primary stat, set it at 18. Choose any stat to be your secondary stat, set at 16." and then roll the rest in a manner similar to Gamma World.
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Jul 8, 2014 03:18
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Gau posted:I'm not entirely certain; I was thinking of futzing with them for a bit and then I wondered what was to gain by doing so. I was thinking that I could do something like "Choose INT or DEX to be your primary stat, set it at 18. Choose any stat to be your secondary stat, set at 16." and then roll the rest in a manner similar to Gamma World. Any particular reason you wouldn't just reduce them to their modifier, rather than keeping the 12/14/16/etc? I'm asking because a sci-fi 4e is basically my dream game, so I might be doing this more
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Jul 8, 2014 03:35
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S.J. posted:Any particular reason you wouldn't just reduce them to their modifier, rather than keeping the 12/14/16/etc? Absolutely no reason not to do that; I misunderstood your question (I thought you were asking if I was keeping the existing six abilities). Please ask questions so that I don't let something stupid slip through and retard my entire game. I have wanted sci-fi 4E for years, ever since I thought about bringing Saga Edition Star Wars up to the 4E standard. My initial picture for this game was "what if the Enterprise took a company of Colonial Marines to explore Pandora?"
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Jul 8, 2014 03:44
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Gau posted:Absolutely no reason not to do that; I misunderstood your question (I thought you were asking if I was keeping the existing six abilities). Please ask questions so that I don't let something stupid slip through and retard my entire game. No you're fine - the first question was more of a question about whether or not you would keep the 6 abilities or reduce it to 3/4, the second question was separate.
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Jul 8, 2014 04:38
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I'm doing a thing. FINAL FANTASY 14een
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Jul 8, 2014 08:52
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Anyone who is attempting an aggro mechanic for this contest should go all the way and try to make a DM-less system.
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Jul 8, 2014 09:04
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Rules question: I already have Trifold 4E as a base (there are minor rule changes from ordinary 4E). But I've no classes with it; I'm thinking of something like either (a) DW style playbooks or (b) Magical Girl or Super Sentai (or possibly (c) Tag Team Wrestling).
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Jul 8, 2014 12:45
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neonchameleon posted:Rules question: I already have Trifold 4E as a base (there are minor rule changes from ordinary 4E). But I've no classes with it; I'm thinking of something like either (a) DW style playbooks or (b) Magical Girl or Super Sentai (or possibly (c) Tag Team Wrestling). (d) All of the above. Color-coded 5-man tag-team magical-girl wresting squads. Each color is a playbook.
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Jul 8, 2014 14:24
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neonchameleon posted:(a) DW style playbooks 
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Jul 8, 2014 14:45
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Mystic Mongol posted:But that changes from tracking one HP total for a monster to tracking one, plus one more for every member of the party. I think you misunderstood a bit! You only ever track one extra thing which is the current High Score. Write that down, when someone breaks it you change it to the new High Score and they get all the aggro. The idea is supposed to be that when a group of enemies see the Fighter roll up and just CRUNCH their buddy's arm, they think oh poo poo we gotta take that guy out FAST. Then later when the Wizard drops a ton of napalm all over the battlefield they reassess. It's also worth noting that I'm rebuilding the game around this concept for my entry. Currently setting a new High Score gives you the Spotlight, meaning all attention is on you. Enemies might also have a Spotlight, but I haven't decided yet. Characters who are not currently in the Spotlight are considered in the Cast. Fighters are all about grabbing the spotlight and holding onto it tightly. They have a variety of active mitigation that they use to survive under the focus of the enemy forces, can build their High Score up with consecutive attacks, and receive massive bonuses to damage while in the Cast. You can try to ignore the Fighter, but you'll pay for it. Wizards crave the spotlight, but don't have the tools to survive in it. Their powers are all based around getting everyone's attention while in the Cast, then dealing huge amounts of damage while they're (hopefully briefly) in the Spotlight. Rogues live in the shadows of the fight, doing their best to stay out of the Spotlight as long as possible. The longer Rogues remain in the Cast the more damage they do, so Rogues need to be careful not to draw too much attention too quickly in a battle. When a Rogue finally does get the Spotlight, the resources that allowed them to deal extra damage can be used to avoid attacks and lessen incoming damage allowing them to serve as a sort of 'off-tank.' Bards are something of the Directors of the battle, they serve as the party leader and help manipulate who is getting attention when. Bards rarely enter the Spotlight themselves, but when they do they command your attention.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:08
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Misandu posted:I think you misunderstood a bit! You only ever track one extra thing which is the current High Score. Write that down, when someone breaks it you change it to the new High Score and they get all the aggro. The idea is supposed to be that when a group of enemies see the Fighter roll up and just CRUNCH their buddy's arm, they think oh poo poo we gotta take that guy out FAST. Then later when the Wizard drops a ton of napalm all over the battlefield they reassess. Ok, so I did understand what you meant, I was just poo poo at explaining it back again adequately. I will reiterate, this is awesome and loving inspired. Though you may wish to broaden your categories to the roles (Striker, Defender, Controller, etc) rather than specific classes, but it's no big deal.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:25
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Replacing Clerics with Bards in a fantasy game is my favorite swap. Bards kick so much rear end.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:26
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Ok, here is what I currently have in mind for my system: The players take their turns in any order they want. During a player’s turn, she can take a certain number of actions (standard, move and maaaaaybe minor seems right). Actions have certain main effects (“Move” will take you somewhere else, “Murder” will kill something etc), and most of them have a side effect of generating something called Risk for the player when taken in certain situations. Risk more or less takes the place of Hit Points, a way to abstract what’s happening during a heated battle. Since Risk is more abstract than hit points, it’s easier for it to go up and down in the course of a fight. You can also think of risk as “karma”, but that’s a bit of a loaded word. Now, I mentioned that actions can generate risk as a side effect. Here are some examples:
When all the players have taken their turns, they end up with varying amounts of Risk on them, and it’s now the DM’s turn. The DM can use the Risk that the players generated to ruin their day. Here are some examples of what he could do:
So the main idea is that small fiddly actions like having a minion take an OA at you as you move past should be abstracted into Risk, and have the DM roll for significant actions that can dramatically alter the battle by using Risk. As for the players killing monsters, I am thinking of something similar in the way of “Momentum” or “Pressure”. Haven’t thought about it that much, but I don’t want it to be like Hit Points either.
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Jul 8, 2014 19:53
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I'm interested in doing something for the contest, but I'm just curious on what you are going to be judging the entries on? Are you looking for something that modified 4e's mechanics the best, did the wildest thing to reskin 4e, or is just "the coolest thing?" Just wondering what direction I should be looking at. Thanks!
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Jul 8, 2014 20:34
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Anyone revamping Skills / Skill Challenges so they aren't so binary? A skill challenge should preferably be as interesting as combat, or be able to take the position of an opponent in combat, requiring an equivalent level of effort (so you could have minion/standard/elite/solo skill obstacles). But what could replace the tactical aspects of movement and positioning from combat into a skill challenge? How can a skill challenge "scatter" to avoid "AOE"? Or have an equivalent element that is entirely different but as interesting? Is this even a reasonable thing to ask of a skill system?
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Jul 8, 2014 20:58
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I'm including a vaguely Mouse Guard-esque conflict system that will utilize the skill system to a greater degree than 4E does, mostly for use for scientific and social challenges. I don't think slavishly recreating a "tactical" challenge is the best way to go about it; instead, the skill minigame should be at least in the same category of interested as the combat minigame.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:11
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