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Technician could also work as a name. For the second prowess: Some kind of bright-eyed newbie and/or one of the rank-and-file infantry?
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Apr 3, 2015 01:00
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| # ? May 3, 2024 22:23 |
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So, as subjective as the answer to this can be, I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions about dice pools. In particular, how many dice is too many? To give a more concrete example, I've been tinkering with a game system that uses d6 dice pools, where you get a "hit" on a 5 or 6 (ala Shadowrun 4/5). One hit is a Partial Success, and two hits are a Full Success. Particularly difficult tasks may have a 'Hit Threshold', which is subtracted from your total hits before you calculate your final result. Now, rather than have regular attributes or skills, characters have traits ranked at 2, 4, or 6 dice (examples of traits being 'Dextrous', 'Swashbuckler', 'Hacker', etc). To perform a task you roll 2d6 + any relevant traits. So if you were standing guard over a camp at night and had the 'Perceptive' Trait at 2d and the 'Night Watchman' Trait at 4d, you'd be rolling a total of 8 dice (2+2+4). Most of the time characters will be throwing around 4 to 10 dice, but there is the potential for a character to have 14/16+ dice in their area of specialty. My concern then is that letting dice pools get too high will be too unwieldy and/or turn people off the system. One idea I was thinking about was a dice pool cap, but I thought I'd ask in case anyone had any opinions or suggestions that might be helpful. Thanks! Melusine fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Apr 9, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 04:47
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That does sound pretty unwieldy. It looks like the factors pushing it towards large pools are the low probability of a hit and the hit threshold. For the first, as long as you don't mind the loss of probabilistic granularity (a fair amount of which you're not using by always adding dice in multiples of 2), you can just change from hitting on 5+ to 4+ or 3+ and reduce the number of dice players get accordingly. The second could be dealt with by converting the threshold into a penalty in the number of dice (maybe down to a minimum of 1). Lastly, depending on the tone of your game and how many rolls you expect a group to make when playing a session you could add a rule that if someone would roll a pool above a certain number of dice (taking into account the hit threshold, whatever its form), they automatically fully succeed. As an example, the probability of getting a full success when rolling 16 dice is close to 0.99, and of any kind of success is nearly 0.999 - rolling all those dice and checking for successes is almost a waste of time given how unlikely all but one of the outcomes are.
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Apr 9, 2015 16:52
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More thinking about the adv/disadv as more dice take min or max ...
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Apr 11, 2015 07:55
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I have been messing around with a hack of Into the Odd that would combine it with parts of that GURPS precursor game The Fantasy Trip. The two games already have a few things in common, namely the fact that both use a three stat system (STR, DEX, IQ/WILL) so stat blocks between the two would only require minor tweaking. The big appeal of ItO for me is the fact that it is very rules light: no classes, no skill lists & you only roll dice in situations where there are real consequences for failure, otherwise you are just assumed to succeed at possible tasks and fail impossible ones. I also love the way it handles aspects of combat, namely that all attack rolls automatically 'hit' but that players and monsters are only in real danger once HP runs out and they start taking damage to Strength and must Save against getting incapacitated. I do enjoy crunchier combat though, and the theater of the mind way of running fights never appealed to me compared with seeing it all laid out on a grid. I wanted to import some of the combat actions from TFT into the game to add more variety to the players available combat actions: Dodge: make a DEX check and prevent all damage from a single incoming enemy attack. Counterattack: make an immediate attack against an enemy that just attacked you instead of having to wait for your initiative. Parry: roll your own damage against an enemy attack and subtract it from their attack, if your roll is greater deal them the remainder in damage. Stunt: declare a secondary effect when making an attack (trip, shove, disarm,etc.), the enemy takes damage as normal and must make a save, if they fail the secondary effect happens too. All attacks can (and should) be made as stunts. Another aspect of ItO that is great is its magic system- all magic is derived from items called Arcana which each have one or two strange powers. I wanted to go along with the lame but fun trope of having a lot of the magic devices that players can recover from the ruins be pieces of ancient technology, like plasma pistols and the like. I thought it might be interesting to add in some simple malfunction rules for ancient devices- namely that one you roll a '1' when attacking with one that it would jam/fizzle/make-the-blue-smoke and you'd have to spend an action unjamming it. The reason for that idea is mostly thematic- swords are still useful in a world with salvaged ray guns because the guns are all centuries old and the only people who knew how to do maintenance on them are all dead. I also wanted to have some items have spectacular effects when max damage is rolled since the game lacks any sort of Critical Hit mechanic, and players do enjoy getting mechanical bonuses for lucky rolls. Am I missing the point of taking a simple game and then adding a bunch of mechanical crunch back into it? I have left the rest of its framework largely untouched but just really like the idea of having little options and tweaks for combat available beyond its default "roll for damage, wait for your next turn" setup.
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Apr 18, 2015 01:54
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Bob Quixote posted:Am I missing the point of taking a simple game and then adding a bunch of mechanical crunch back into it? I have left the rest of its framework largely untouched but just really like the idea of having little options and tweaks for combat available beyond its default "roll for damage, wait for your next turn" setup. Short answer: Yes. A terrible idea. Long answer: How badly is it going to hurt to try it out? It could be worth a shot. It's just that ItO strips combat so bare, because the game isn't about tactical combat in any way.
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Apr 18, 2015 20:14
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DalaranJ posted:Short answer: Yes. A terrible idea. I think I ended up here because I started out working on a hack of old style D&D trying to remove a lot of the excess bookkeeping, cruft and the endless hard to track subsystems and then after I found ItO I felt the work had all been done. A game where you could explore a whole trap and monster filled dungeon in one session with minimal die rolling/book consultation was already there. The thing is that ItO is more like tabletop survival horror and my group still favors more of the heroic fantasy kind of deal, so I thought beefing up the combat system might be a good fix. I suppose something like this would probably only have a really niche appeal though.
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Apr 18, 2015 21:18
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Is what you want a rules light heroic fantasy dungeon crawl, or is it rules light heroic fantasy tactical combat? Either would be worth discussing.
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Apr 18, 2015 21:31
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DalaranJ posted:Is what you want a rules light heroic fantasy dungeon crawl, or is it rules light heroic fantasy tactical combat? Either would be worth discussing. I was trying to shoot for a rules light crawler with slightly heavier combat. Not to the point where individual fights take a long time to resolve, but ones that reward teamwork and clever tactical thinking. Exploration is a really fun part of these sorts of games but I think if you weigh it down with too many mechanics, or at least too many BAD mechanics, then it can be kind of discouraging. If there's a secret door that leads to more cool poo poo in the dungeon then why make players roll to see if they discover it? I make the exception for fights though because these are a situation where every decision has risk and consequence to it, so giving the players a greater number of options seemed like a way to give them slightly more control over the outcomes.
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Apr 18, 2015 21:46
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Bob Quixote posted:I was trying to shoot for a rules light crawler with slightly heavier combat. Not to the point where individual fights take a long time to resolve, but ones that reward teamwork and clever tactical thinking. Okay. Here is what I would do. Bare in mind that this system is no longer classless. Initiative, The 'leader' rolls once for the entire team at the beginning of combat. Anyone who has a equal or lower dexterity to the roll has "good" initiative. Turn Order: "Good" Initiative PCs, Fast Monsters, "Bad" Initiative PCs, Slow Monsters Delaying: Any player may skip their action to switch to the other initiative category. Base Damage: "Base damage" is equal to half the stated dice's maximum rounded down. e.g. d6, base damage is 3 Monsters don't roll when attacking. They always deal base damage. They may, of course, induce a save if their attack causes an additional effect. (Note: This makes armor significantly better.) Fumble rating: Weapons and arcana have a fumble rating based on how unwieldy they are, how old they are, how well made they are (and how hilariously powerful the arcana turns out to be). This is a number between 1 (never fumbles) and 7 (fumbles 30% of the time) Full Effect Rating: Characters have a full effect rating based on their level. This starts at 16 (15?), and goes down 1 each level to 12 (11? You'd get full effect every time you hit if this were the case.) "To Hit" roll: (This is loosely based off of the core roll from Strike!) Roll a d20, if the value is less than the fumble result of your weapon or arcana you deal 0 damage and have to deal with some mishap. If the value is less than less then 11, you deal base damage. If the value is less than your full effect rating, choose whether to deal base damage and your effect, or deal 2*base damage. If the value is equal to our greater than your full effect rating you apply the effect of your attack and deal 2*base damage. Full effects could be based off of Basic's weapon master abilities and everyone will golf bag, or they could be power based more like 4th e or Strike!, as below... Each player can choose one 'class' card for their character: (Class powers never stack with themselves) Bulwark: Characters adjacent to you may make a strength save to half the damage they take from an attack. You must be wearing armor to use this ability. Inspiring: At the end of each turn each character adjacent to you gains 2 HP. Vanguard: Whenever you are not adjacent to any ally, you deal an additional d6 damage whenever you attacks hit. Hunter: When you are adjacent to an enemy, the hit value for that enemy is reduced from 11 to 9. Each character gets effort tokens: 2 at first level, +1 per level. Effort tokens are spent to activate daily effects. Effort tokens are regained after a full rest (or short rest if you want to be even more heroic) Each player gets to choose 2 action/effect options. They gain an additional option at each level up. Arcana will also each come with one tied to using the arcana. Choices can be changed at any full rest. Here are some quickly drawn examples, Effect: Allies ignore the enemies armor rating until after the enemy next acts. Effect: The enemy takes additional damage equal to the attacker's base damage until they next act. (Effort) Effect: Spend an effort token. Deal damage to every creature adjacent to you. Effect: Spend an effort token. The enemies armor rating becomes 0. (Special actions replace attacks) Special Action: Everyone adjacent to you moves with you when you move this turn. Special Action: One ally you touch gains 1d6 HP and is no longer critically damaged. Special Action: Choose an ally to make an attack. They may not spend effort or use an arcana in this attack.
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Apr 19, 2015 18:55
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Out of curiosity, what are people's feelings these days about Dungeon World? I've been thinking about running a campaign for it over the summer, but I'm not particularly plugged into the tabletop world, so if the consensus is that it blows or there are better rules light fantasy games out there I'd be curious. One thing I'd be curious about is small tweaks to make combat a little more tactical, since my players would be coming off of 5e (our first rpg) and I think that would help make them more receptive, like adding in initiative or something. Obviously within reason, I'm interested in DW specifically because you aren't likely to get bogged down in endless swingy tactical combat.
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Apr 19, 2015 19:13
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The chat thread for this month would be a better place to ask, you'll get more answers. I think the general consensus is that it's not the best *world game, but probably the best Dungeon* game.
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Apr 19, 2015 20:03
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DalaranJ posted:Okay. Here is what I would do. Bare in mind that this system is no longer classless. Wow, that's quite the overhaul there. There's a lot of good/interesting things in the post (the delay/hold action is a good tactical choice, and many of the abilities you mentioned sounded fun), but its such a huge change from the previous setup. I had kind of liked the basic way ItO handled the Attack action by itself (roll damage, subtract target Armor, done), especially since it did away with arbitrary target numbers and inflationary math. Effort tokens also kind of hearken back to the sort of bookkeeping that I was trying to avoid- not as bad as spells per day, but still more character sheet management in addition to HP tracking.
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Apr 19, 2015 20:32
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Bob Quixote posted:Wow, that's quite the overhaul there. Sorry, I may have been trying to purge a previously failed project from my brain there. That's why it ended up with way more content than needed. The main goal of switching the damage roll over to a 'hit' roll was to standardize the amount of damage done. ItO combat is intentionally swingy damage-wise which makes it difficult to reconcile with the goals of making the system more tactical. As for, erm, 'daily' powers, if, for some reason, you wanted to retain this concept while remaining within the design space of ItO, you could change the cost to be stats or HP. Which sounds a lot like ability usage in Call of Cthulhu or Numenera. So, what can we come up with to expand teamwork and tactics while minimizing bloat for the system? Your malfunction rule sounds good, although you might want to expand the malfunction range based on arcana power (because otherwise a d4 attack is 3 times more likely to malfunction than a d12). I suppose you could make a d8 how broken is this arcana chart and have increasingly bad effects if the arcana is used after multiple malfunctions without repair. As to TFTs reactions, I dislike them because it expands the action economy (the action market?), we could make them a part of your attack action though? Parry: Your attack this round is impaired. Choose one enemy, increase your armor towards this enemy by 2 this turn. Now for stunts, we know the average save of a monster should by 50% so we can use a 13th age dice trick to obviate the save like, Stunt: Declare a stunt and roll for damage. If your roll was odd the stunt also succeeds. Here I would add an HP cost based on how awesome the stunt was and make a list of the costs of various effects and what they do mechanically and oh god I'm going overboard again. But you don't have to add a cost if you want it to be more like Dungeon Crawl Classics. Or if all the stunts were relatively low key, the cost could be a set 1. Finally, we have 'teamwork' which was the reason for adding class differentiation to my previous post. But this is ItO where all Setup attack: When you perform a melee attack declare a 'setup attack' and roll for damage. If your roll was odd than the next attack made against this creature does maximum damage or is enhanced maybe? Maximum damage prevents the followup from being a stunt though, which I like. Setup attack shouldn't usually be better than a stunt, I think, so hopefully I haven't done that.
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Apr 19, 2015 21:40
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DalaranJ posted:Sorry, I may have been trying to purge a previously failed project from my brain there. That's why it ended up with way more content than needed. I won't deny that ItO's damage rolls are more swingy than a flat damage system - though they are a good deal less swingy than standard D&D derivative games which use the separate "roll to hit -> IF HIT: Roll Damage" setup. I've never really run a setup that used non-random damage though, so this could certainly be something for me to try. DalaranJ posted:So, what can we come up with to expand teamwork and tactics while minimizing bloat for the system? I think I would probably only add a malfunction rating to certain items in order to prevent the d4 25% malfunction chance problem - I think it would really only make sense with certain items anyway. A scavenged plasma rifle is probably more likely to jam and misfire than a huge plutonium sword that has an aliens soul trapped inside it (though I guess poor rolls in that case could result in mutation or possession?) DalaranJ posted:As to TFTs reactions, I dislike them because it expands the action economy (the action market?), we could make them a part of your attack action though? I hadn't considered the idea that it would be expanding the action economy too far. I was still going along with the thought that in combat situations characters would only get a single Action or Reaction that they could take during their round and while a Dodge might look like a poor choice tactically speaking as compared to dealing damage it might be nice to have available as an option if the incoming enemy attack would almost certainly kill you. A Dodge isn't so much 'giving up' your action as choosing to use your action to save your characters life instead of mutely accepting damage that would have been otherwise unavoidable in a setup where no such option existed and hopefully give your team-mates time to come to your aid. It could just be that I'm too attached to Dodges though - I always thought they were sort of a nifty mechanic. I really like your version of Parry much better than the one I came up with. DalaranJ posted:Now for stunts, we know the average save of a monster should by 50% so we can use a 13th age dice trick to obviate the save like, I like this idea of Odd numbers triggering stunt effects a lot - it still leaves it to the element of chance but it condenses it into a single roll that is entirely in the players hands instead of player roll vs. DM/Monster reaction roll. I did want to go with the DCC version of stunts though since I thought that was one of the coolest things that system had going, especially since it essentially gave the Fighter type classes interesting narrative powers in combat. DalaranJ posted:Finally, we have 'teamwork' which was the reason for adding class differentiation to my previous post. But this is ItO where all I had been playing around with different ideas for 'teamwork' things myself. The usual way that gets done in D&D-alikes is having a bonus to the To-Hit roll, but since that doesn't exist here then it would make sense to have it work as a buff to damage. One of my earlier ideas had been a Team Attack idea where if two players held their actions in order to act on the same initiative and attacked a monster together their damage rolls would be combined - which doesn't really sound all that different from rolling separate attacks at first, but since Armor value reduces the damage taken this could turn two or more low damage attacks that might not have been able to actually pierce the creatures armor at all (deal damage) and combines them into a single attack that would go through the armor and deal some damage. My worry with that though is that if such an option existed then the most mechanically efficient way of doing ANYTHING would almost always be a Team Attack unless there were swarms of enemies preventing players from being able to focus effectively on single targets. Maybe I'm just not thinking of this creatively enough though, there might be some way to make such an idea work. Your 'teamwork' idea reminds me a bit of the 'Aid Another' action in 5e, where one player can act in a way to grant another players character Advantage to their next action (including attack rolls) - its a good setup.
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Apr 20, 2015 04:41
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| # ? May 3, 2024 22:23 |
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Your teamwork move sounds pretty good. The key to a generic teamwork maneuver is that it has to be a move that player's want to do sometimes but not all the time which is harder than it sounds. It sounds like you have a pretty good handle on what you want to do now. Use whichever ideas you think will work best for you, because it's your game. I'd love to see a trip report in the retro game thread when you've run it.
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Apr 21, 2015 14:25
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