Everything is better with space dinosaurs edition.
Previous thread: A thread dedicated to discussion and feedback of games and homebrews made by Veeky Forums regarding anything from minor elements to entire systems, as well as inviting people to playtest your games online. While the thread's main focus is mechanics, you're always welcome to share tidbits about your setting.
Try to keep discussion as civilized as possible, avoid non-constructive criticism, and try not to drop your entire PDF unless you're asking for specifics, it's near completion or you're asked to.
So I'm thinking of ideas for a progression system for warbands of about 6-8 models in general. I'm trying to avoid straight stat increases, mostly equipment and skills. What kind of pacing would keep people interested? I can't go too quickly, since the lack of filler like stat increases would unbalance it, but if it takes too long for your models to gain levels, you don't feel like you are progressing.
Would something like 1 or 2 level ups in the warband per solid game feel appropriate? Gear is a different story, I've got ideas for that, so it comes down to gaining skills. There also comes into play how to stagger the levels out on each model, to prevent a model from snowballing once it starts picking up skills.
Landon Gutierrez
So, I know about PTU and PTA, but I didn't like them.So, I decided to translate Pokemon game mechanics to tabletop. I'd like to know if: a) The rules seem alright as far as a translation goes b) if these are sufficient for a bare-bones playtest of "Play your own version of Pokemon the game: The RPG". If not, what else might I need?
Ultimately I'm going to go back over these and convert them to a system that's more suited for tabletop. Until then, I just wanted to see if I could develop a way to play pokemon with dice using information from the games themselves.
Jaxon Flores
The math makes sense, which is one of the nice things about Pokemon. Its always been a crunchy game, so the gameplay is easy to adapt.
Sebastian Nelson
Been writing this system off and on when I have time for a few months now. The text is still super rough, but I decided to throw a random page into InDesign and see what I came up with. I haven't really used InDesign before, so I thought I should practice.
What do you think? How does it look, and is the text too confusing? The very next page is devoted to examples, but I want to make sure this text can at least kind of stand on its own.
Charles Gray
bump
Evan Lewis
So I was wondering what you folks think of this for a action economy/initiative system.
The amount of actions in a turn is movement, attack, interact with environment, reactions, etc. If you're familiar with 5e, it's more or less the same general ideas.
The initiative works as follows. Players and enemies can choose to declare reactions. When declaring a reaction, a player has to specify a trigger for it, something that they'll predict and react to. Spells always have to be declared in this phase.
Then initiative is rolled. A 1d6. On a 1-3, the players all take their turn and on a 4-6, enemies take their turn. Anyone on a side can take their actions in any order they wish, splitting them around as they want and in any order. On the enemies turn, a side can take reactions. If the trigger for a declared reaction occurs, the player rolls opposed reflex. On a win, they get to make an action(it can be any type of one action they could make normally in a turn) before the opponent completes their action or rolls effects for it. On a loss, the player acts right after that opponent takes their action. A player can take a reaction without declaring it but it's always counted as a loss on reflex. Essentially, the player or gm has to straight interrupt the narration and declare "Fuck that, I make an action."
After both sides have gone, initiative is rolled again. If more than half the combatants on a side are incapacitated in one round, then the other side gets an extra 1 width on the die. So say, acting first on a 1-4 rather than a 1-3.
I've playtested the combat system a few times and I think the system works well. I usually have 6-9 players and this seems to help with a lot of problems with combat I've been having. The players are all acting at once so everyone is engaged during their turn, and on enemy turns; they have the opportunity to make an action so staying engaged helps them. This really cuts down on "Sitting around twiddling thumbs and waiting on your turn."
Ian Cox
Action economies make me think of fallout's SPECIAL. Not that I know it too well or anything.
I haven't used a system like this myself. It might be easier to find help if you described something you needed help with. We haven't played your system, and dont know what the kinks are. Surely you've discovered flaws in it.
Sebastian Sanders
I want to say it seems straightforward, but there are no examples of body skills or the significance of "one two and three" in those kinds of skills.
Oliver Smith
Thanks. Like I said, the next page is dedicated to examples and the page actually about the stats comes before this. Here are a few quick examples, let me know if they make it clearer:
>Body 5 >My grandfather's spear never fails (III), +3D on all checks related to that spear, ie using it in combat, hunting, etc >The river is my home (II), +2D when swimming or navigating rivers
>Mind 2 >I was an apprentice blacksmith (II), +2D related to metals, smithing, etc.
>Heart 3 >My face is a mask, my tongue a dagger (III) +3D to resist emotional reactions or provoke others
>Dream 3 >Bison (I) - All Body actions cost 1 less AP. >Ocean (II) - There is always wind in your sails.
In general body represents combat and athleticism, mind is skills or acuity and heart is social abilities. All three of these types of situations trigger a turn-by-turn breakdown of events called a "pressure", as opposed to a simple check to ie break down a door or something. Dream of course is supernatural powers that can be used any time.
The goal for BMH skills isn't to make sure everything is strictly balanced but to let players get creative and reward that creativity. The GM chapter has some text talking about this and encouraging acceptance of oddball skills and discouraging stacking combat skills.
Dream skills offer magic with more narrative oomph as opposed to mechanical Vancian magic. The examples above are off the cuff as I haven't written out the dreams yet, but I wanted to move away from "I cast fireball, I cast levitate, etc." and more into mythical territory, ie Sigurd turning into a wolf in Volsunga or Odin's spells in Havamal.
Chase Ramirez
Also I should note that players wouldn't write out the "+xD to..." parts. I would let them apply their skills in any situation they argued it would be relevant (for example intimidating someone with their spear), even if it wasn't anticipated.
Gabriel Adams
Biggest flaw I can find is that players used to rolling and then going in a set order can be hesitant or confused at the idea of "Fuck it, you guys act in any order you want." Another thing I notice is that sometimes players seem to have trouble with remembering how many actions and what kinds they have left or are able to do in a turn. Main upside, like I said, is that it handles large amounts of people well. I had 3-4 games with 12 people and that's when I started having to seriously re-work initiative since I was using standard 3.x/4e/5e initiative.
Caleb Green
Also, with having turn order change round to round and having an entire side go at once; it makes surprise more important and incentivizes ending a fight quickly as a side could end up with two turns in a row.
Joseph Taylor
Thinking about redoing a project to make it more like the source material.
Im looking for some feedback for a 5e shadowcaster port. Any input would be appreciated. Progression table is as follows.
lvl 1 Fundamentals of shadow, Mysteries Daily lvl 2 Umbral Adaptation (darkvision 30ft) lvl 3 Manifestation of Shadow lvl 4 Bonus Fundamental, Ability Score Improvement lvl 5 Umbral Adaptation (eat meal 1/week) lvl 6 lvl 7 Mysteries gain additional use per long rest, Enigmas Daily lvl 8 Umbral Adaptation (Sleep 1hr/day), Ability Score Improvement lvl 9 lvl 10 Bonus Fundamental lvl 11 Umbral Adaptation (Darkvision 60ft) lvl 12 Ability Score Improvement lvl 13 Mysteries gain additional use per short rest, Enigmas gain additional use per long rest, Secrets Daily lvl 14 Umbral Adaptation (immune to poison/disease) lvl 15 lvl 16 Ability Score Improvement lvl 17 Umbral Adaptation (no need to breathe, eat, or sleep) lvl 18 lvl 19 Ability Score Improvement lvl 20 Umbral Adaptation (gain Hide in Plain sight, darkvision 120ft)
I need assistance coming up with a third manifestation. So far i have two: Book of Shadows, and Arsenal of Shadows. Book of shadows works similarly to the warlocks pact of the tome, with the caveat that it also grants additional Mysteries per day or the ability to copy spells from the wizard spell list. Arsenal of Shadows grants proficiency in weapons, armors, and shields, eventually being able to stealth in armor with advantage. Any thoughts/feedback for what ive got so far?
Josiah Cooper
I guess it depends on how good the source material is.
Brandon Turner
Don't know if it's been mentioned already, or if your familiar with it, but Dogs in the Vineyard has a fairly similar mechanic. It could be used for some inspiration.
Julian Cox
Roadside Picnic.
Caleb Stewart
Bampu
Asher White
I have doubts on the move system using dices. That increases the random factor, which means that on a bad day, you could make more damage with a Tackle than with an Hyper beam.
That would feel lame.
For something to feel more powerful on any tabletop you should increase a static number like a modifier not the random factor.
Jacob Hall
So, I'm currently in the process of designing a "fighting" game based RPG, and I've decided to go the non-linear route for combat, meaning anyone can do anything at any time, and it's roughly determined by Agility rating as to who goes first. I'm kind of at a cross-roads in terms of functionality for more than 2 people at a time.
Right now it functions as action and reaction for those involved in combat, and for those outside of the direct combat, they can act freely (for instance, if two characters are fighting on top of a moving vehicle, that driver is capable of acting freely regardless of the action sequence of the two fighting and can effect the fight thusly.
Also, there are no "base movement speeds" and your movement is determined by your agility rating, and I'm still trying to figure that out exactly, since I have the basics down for changing distancing in combat, but I'm still not sure how to make it function in terms of if you're running to escape. I could just make it so that "higher agility is faster than lower agility", but then you'd have lower agility always being outrun and having enemies essentially being able to escape freely.
Jacob Smith
That's very true, and something I considered. Pokemon does have a randomization factor, but looking through the damage formulas, its 15% of a section of damage. That would be rather difficult to do, and I felt using the dice as the randomization would be fine. I could instead devise a way to use multiples of d6 or something instead so that you'd at least get better minimum damage. I'd have to look into better ways to reconcile pokemon stats with their attacks.
Levi Mitchell
I'm kind of digging Fate Core right now, but the system itself is mechanically lackluster. Nothing is really inspiring it's so generic, and the 4dF thing is meh overall.
I'm thinking of modifying it just a touch and using 1d6 - 1d6 to generate the numbers. Easy tasks do best of 2d6 - 1d6 and hard tasks do 1d6 - best of 2d6. Rather than adding a +2 like normal skill specialization does, specialization allows you to roll 1d6 - 1d3. Mostly just to prevent RNG fuckery.
Thoughts?
Michael Butler
Bump, I guess.
Ethan Wood
Several things:
>Pathfinder I'm remaking elves into a small race with a pair of thumb claws (elf hands have four thumbs and six fingers now). Should I give them 2 claw attacks that do 1d3 each or just one claw attack that does 1d4? I don't want them getting too high and mighty.
>Beginnings of a general system I'd like to create a roll-under system based around rolling d12s. I have a basic layout in my head; it'll have point-allocation, 4 attributes, and several player-made descriptors (doctor, rotund, parrots, etc.) distributed across the atts that grant bonuses to varying degrees. But now I'm having doubts regarding the dice. Should I go with a single d12? 2d12? 3d12? Or a mixture of d8 and d12 for shits and tiggers?
Aaron Stewart
I experimented with using a static damage for abilities and using Fudge dice to add or subtract from it - this gives a really concise syntax for damage (b±v such as 12±4 or ATK±5 indicating v dice rolled) and allows things to be really easily judged for their effectiveness. Obviously that requires fudge dice, but you can fudge those (hurr) easily with a block of d6 if you need to (1-2 minus, 5-6 plus).
I feel like it'd be an okay fit for Pokemon, though it could get really out of hand for high variance (if you're looking at shit like 157 base and 25 variance).
Another thought is a percentile roll-under system that adds the difference to the damage - so if you hit by a wider margin you hit better. It makes your probability very intuitive, since it's literally percentages - 70% means roll at or under 70 to hit.
Landon Green
1D3 attack per unoccupied hand?
Gavin Nguyen
Those are both some decent ideas. You're right that things could get out of hand, though, because even by trying to get things into smaller and more friendly numbers, you can still hit an effective 376 in a stat (after +6, full EVs, etc, not even any items), and then you'd have to deal with an attack that might have a base power of 120+. I might have to do something completely different entirely.
For accuracy, percentile dice made tons of sense, but I initially wanted to use as little different dice as possible so I reconverted it for d20. I also want to keep the same roll-over/roll-under idea throughout. Then again, it is much more intuitive to not convert anything. I might consider reworking everything so that it runs the same way.
Jacob Howard
Reposting some ideas for a re-write of a wargame called Hellsgate. Basic resolution attached. Modifiers are a bit reversed, '-' is good, '+' is bad, since it effects the roll equal to or over of stats.
The basic framework for this version of the game is models would have 2 action points to spend each activation. Player's use alternating activations, taking turns of activating one model at a time. Basic actions would be: >Move - 1 AP >Attack - 1 AP Shooting or Melee >Charge - 2 AP, combination of move with an increased speed and a melee attack with a bonus >Aim - 1 AP, next shooting attack has increased range >Overwatch - 2 AP, able to shoot at a model that moves through line of sight when they activate, at a lower to hit >Counter-charge - 2 AP, able to charge a model that ends a movement in line of sight >Shoulder Check - 2 AP, a charge action, but instead of dealing damage with its melee attack, the targeted model is knocked down >Cast - 1 AP, use a magic spell the model has
Range on Shooting attacks is not a magical fall-off point, instead Range on the weapon determines how often you suffer a penalty to hit; i.e. a gun with a range of '8' suffers +1 to attack skill.
Morale is a increasing stat as the battle goes on. The more things go south; models take damage, objectives are stolen by the enemy, friends die, model's take a stacking penalty when forced to test morale.
Damage resolution is generally when taking an attack test, for every success, multiple it by the Power of the weapon and compare to the Resilience of the enemy model, every time the Resilience is met, take a point of damage. So a Power 2 weapon with 2 successes does 4 hits. Against a Resilience 2 model, that means 2 damage, while against a Resilience 3 model it means 1 damage. Leftover hits are discarded.
