Homebrew General /hbg/

I honestly didn't get how the D12 make it better/easier to make math calculations. I mean, obviously checking the min/max/avg values is of great relevance, but why is D12 better for that than any other dice? Also, I wouldn't choose the dice based on what is easier for my to do math on (specially considering I had sufficient math taught to me at school), but rather base my decision on what is better for the end users a.k.a. the players.

What sort of Stats you have in mind? "stats" is a really broad term.

>I honestly didn't get how the D12 make it better/easier to make math calculations
D12 is smaller and easily divisible, which makes for quick shortcuts. Shortcuts are, obviously, quick. And small numbers trend towards simplicity. You should ideally only use the minimum level of granularity required by the game. There's little point in using d% when d6 will suffice (outside of very specific, usually flavor related reasons).

>What sort of Stats you have in mind? "stats" is a really broad term.
And because I'm that same user;
My "stats" are better termed attributes, and they're as follows:
Power: Increases physical damage and number of actions per round (1-5)
Defense: Increases health and quality of armor worn (armor is DR)
Accuracy/Evasion: Contested roll that determines quality of hit (0%-50%-100%-200%)
Magic: Increases spell damage and mana pool (which determines spell complexity)
Magic Defense: Increases magic resistance, healing, and possibly affects mana pool (still undecided)
Speed: Determines movement speed, initiative (maybe), and replaces Accuracy/Evasion during an Opportunity Attack (reflexes over accuracy).

These 7 divisions hit some important points I wanted to represent. You have 3 offensive and 3 defensive stats, with a 7th that could be either. You can max out 2 stats, get 3-4 high, or have about 12/20 in all 7, but no matter what you choose you'll have strengths and weaknesses. When you choose a class archetype, you'll have one great attribute, 2 good, 3 average, and one poor. Between your archetype and your free points, you can customize your character by quite a bit by the end. And, because attributes are only relevant for combat, you don't ever sacrifice combat ability for non-combat ability. Those two are numerically unrelated.

>I honestly didn't get how the D12 make it better/easier to make math calculations
I still don't get it lol. But then, the only reason I recommended using other dices is really minor anyway, so I think we should just put this topic to rest and focus on other stuff ;)

>My "stats" are better termed attributes
As I put in , I think D&D stats and, more importantly, how they focus everything around them, is utterly shit. Your choice of stats, in the other hand, are quite interesting and nice, and it does make sense to have combat mechanics focused on those stats you described.

I have a few questions for you about them:
> Power: Increases physical damage and number of actions per round (1-5)
Why power increases the number of actions per round? That sounds like something speed-related would do. (also, I'm usually a bit against having a stats giving you additional actions per round)
> Defense: Increases health and quality of armor worn (armor is DR)
Please consider characters that rather use their ability to dodge/parry/block rather than a heavy armor (or any armor) to protect themselves. Some games focus too much on armor, while on reality dodging/parrying/blocking is a lot more effective.
> Magic Defense
"Inner Energy" is my suggestion for a name for that, specially if it interferes with Mana Pool. One thing you could also do is that Magic boost the mana pool, and Inner Energy boosts the mana regeneration. What you think about that?
> you don't ever sacrifice combat ability for non-combat ability.
That seems like a safe move.

Making a setting and system based around mass effect and halo coming together, what would be the best way to balance some of the pc races, starting with pic Turians?

Not sure why we needed to start another thread.

I think a part of the confusion is with the damage. Its binary, each die either does a point of damage, or it doesn't. Its for a skirmish game, where most models will take about 3 damage to remove.

>Power
I wanted to be careful balancing magic and martial. I had considered a lot of speed based mechanics for extra actions, and in other projects I might use them, but I eventually decided that Power would be what determines extra actions in addition to physical damage. In hindsight, Power is kinda close to 3.5's Base Attack Bonus. What specifically happens is every character gets 1 action per turn regardless of Power score. At 5, 10, 15, and 20, you get an extra action, for a total of 5 actions at 20 Power. You can use those actions to make extra attacks (and deal more damage), or you could instead use those actions to perform battlefield maneuvers (Trip, Disarm, Parry, Dash, etc). You could also take other actions, like casting multiple spells or performing whatever the equivalent of a heal check might be. The actions are very open, and it allows martials to have a lot of combat utility compared to a magician's spell complexity. The traditional Mage archetype only gets to cast 1 spell a turn, but they get to use all of their mana since mana fully regenerates each turn. This also means that if you invest in both Power and Magic, you can cast 5 spells in a turn, but you'll have to divide your mana between all 5. There's incentive to get every attribute no matter what kind of class you are, and allows for an interesting take on the Spellsword or Gish archetype. They have a lot of versatility, but investing so much in both offensive attributes means you're going to have exploitable weaknesses somewhere.

>Defense
Dodge is covered by the Evasion stat and will likely be a combat action. Parrying/Blocking will also be combat actions. Defense is designed to the premier stat for soaking damage as it increases both hit points and your ability to resist physical damage by way of better armor. Magical Defense will add magical DR, and offers healing as a counterpoint to Defense's increased hp. Speaking of Mag Def, I'll find a better name eventually.

Oh, before I should elaborate on some key differences to shit like dnd:

>stats are Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Constitution, Technical and Intelligence (making a clear devide between wis and int by having wis be how good a character is with technology and operating things like machines and starships, as opposed to being grounded to how smart they are and their surroundings)
>no good/evil alignment. Instead you swing towards your preferred faction (covenant, alliance, raider ect) and go chaotic/lawful from there
>ships can be used in combat with rules regarding shielding vs all out attack, as well as good positioning, and different classes of ships having different strengths and weaknesses (small and maneuverable vs big and hard hitting)
>a few thematic classes based on things like soldiers, engineers, infiltrators, battle suit pilots and medics
>biotics are a sub class to most core classes, but not all (eg a soldier takes a Str penalty, but gets cool biotic powers as a trade off)
>other things I've yet to decide on

Since everyone is talking about their ideas, here are my ideas about stats: originally, my Homebrew (regular fantasy roleplaying) had only 2 stats.
- Combat -> how good your character is when it comes to fighting with weapons and shit
- Magic -> how good your character is when it comes to do magical shit

Players then have 4 points to divide between these two. That is it really.

Oh, okay. That changes everything then.

Hmmm, on a second look, your stats seems odd. I think maybe you could get a better result having only a total of 5 stats (as in merging some of them together). That said, the division of Evasion and Defense is interesting but I fear that it might give room for players to make immortal tanker characters (that never takes damage, and when they do, they reduce most of it anyway, which ends up being nothing compared to their high amount of hit points).

>stats are Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Constitution, Technical and Intelligence
I don't know anything about Halo, and all I know about Mass Effect is that this girl that I nailed once used to like it. However, I've spent about 60%+ of my life on submersed on D&D and I gotta tell you that I'm 101% against stats like these (besides Technical) of course. Considering I don't know shit about these games, I would recommend things like this:
- Aim/Shoot
- Technical
- Meele
- Shit like that

Sure, they could invest as much as they could into Defense and Evasion, but then they'd deal no damage have a weakness to magical attacks. If they then tried to also invest in Magical Defense, they'd have to lower both Defense and/or Evasion, and then still have a weakness in Speed. Speed (via movement speed) is what gets you out of ongoing AoE effects and Evasion won't save you from standing in a fire. Its not possible to build the ultimate tank. You'll either have a weakness or you won't have max attributes. Same goes for offense. It's impossible to make the Unstoppable Force. You're going to have a weakness somewhere.

For reference, pic related is both the list of archetypes that you start with, and the growth of attributes as you level. You get you level's worth of attribute points that you can freely add, so by 20th level a Warrior archetype would have:
Power - 16
Defense - 12
Accuracy - 8
Evasion - 8
Magic - 4
Magic Defense - 8
Speed - 12
and another 20 points to place. That warrior could focus on their strengths, and go 20/20/8/8/4/8/20. They could also make a gish with 20/12/8/8/20/8/12. Or, they could try to make a really balanced character and have 20/12/12/12/12/12/12. No matter what you choose, there are trade offs, and each choice will further define your role

Hm. The player has to pick one of those archetypes? Or can I just get 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1 and 0 and put those numbers where I like them?

Also, I would like to point out that the fact they all got the same values on different places do not mean they are balanced, in terms of strength. That is misleading, really. Some stats will synergize with others and unbalance stuff. That is what I meant by the example of a tanker focusing everything on defense. It seems like I can build a Guardian with 20 defense, 20 evasion and 20 M defense, and that just seems like it will break your system. I know you pointed out the low speed fact, but I'm quite confidant it wouldn't be a big issue, or at least it would be something that could be overcome.

Also, the maximum I can have in one stat is 20, right? What happens if, by level 11, I have 20 on my main stat? The points I would get naturally on that stat just disappear?

Like I mentioned in , Nature and Nurture. You must pick an archetype. Think of it as your genetics. You cannot change your genetics, but you can train yourself regardless of your genetics.

Where will you get the points to get 20s in those three defenses? No archetype has a 3 or 2 in all three. And, even if you made the best balance of the three main defensive stats, you still have a movement vulnerability which will also get you killed. You'd lose a war of attrition by virtue of never dealing damage (low speed, low power, weak spells, middling accuracy) and being whittled down to death. The tankiest character you can make would be a Cleric with 20 Defense, 16 Evasion, and 20 MDefense, but then you'd hit 0 thresholds for Speed. Lasting aoe effects (think burning oil or Cloudkill) will eventually overwhelm your defenses if you can't escape their areas. There's a counter for everything, though some counters are currently more developed than others. I've designed combat with pvp in mind, but I don't expect or intend pvp to happen. I'm not making a pvp system, but the balance will be as if it were. Bounded accuracy keeps things close, and Rock-Paper-Scissors takes care of the rest.

As far as reaching max stat potential, I'll either let you move points above 20 to another stat or make it clear in the character sheet that you can only add points into a stat a certain number of times (currently leaning towards the character sheet option). I haven't decided which one, but both should be pretty clear.

Minimum stats systems need a lot of context for how they work to judge and work with them. The last system that I saw use 2 main stats also had pages of outside influences and rule exceptions to make it work.

I should've also mentioned, while I used RoF 1 and 2 in the examples, that was just to show how it'd work, those woukd be extremely rare circumstances that you'd get that low. I was looking at the average would be 4, with 3 being really good or fast weapons, and most big hitters would be slower.

4 feels like it hits a good spot on the D12 range. Its low enough so its not too uncommon to get a second hit, while still being high enough that a third would be rare and a 4th needs the most extreme to happen (the attacker rolling at least two 12's, and the defender rolling nothing but 1's).

Should also mention, there would be modifiers to rolls, like cover or range and such. My biggest worry is it actually favoring the defender too heavily.

Bump with a combat flow chart.

Hello /hbg/, first time poster on here.

I've been working on a fully new system, using a tiny bit of pieces from Mazes and Minotaurs for the combat. I am looking for feedback wherever I can get it, so if anyone would be willing to take a look at what I've been working on so far (The now ORGANIZED write up of my system), it would be greatly appreciated.

The system I am making tries to bring Monster Hunter into the world of TTRPG's, and I've been focusing on its viability as an online-played game, since I would be using it with online friends. It's still very much a work in progress, but I feel I have enough down for people to give meaningful critiques.

Heres the Googledoc docs.google.com/document/d/1C23SntKllqCK7U0tUd2aNy0KGrMoUtCt9qyguZ3ePns/edit?usp=sharing

Bits in red are parts I am still thinking about especially, so if anyone would have feedback on those areas that would be cool (Feel free to have feedback for anything though, obviously)

Working on an attribute system for a high-powered (like superheroes), more narrative game. Looking for some general feedback

Attributes:

Physique: Strength and Toughness; Used for melee attack, resist damage, or engage in a feat of unusual strength
Reflexes: Reaction time and relative speed: used for ranged combat, dodge, or in a feat of unusual speed
Charisma: social acumen and force of personality; used for social conflict or apply an understanding of an enemy's psychology to combat
Willpower: focus and strength of psyche; used to defend from mental attack or use magic

Dice:
5dX, rolls

So far this is what the spreads are looking like so far. The idea is the aim for roll under is base 5, but for every 2 points of difference between the stats opposed it shifts, except for wounding where toughness plays a huge roll as it moves on a 1. This won't be too drastic as toughness 10 is going on building-levels of toughness, so dragons, solid stone pillars, a cliff-face, etc. Average human I'm feeling will have around a 4s for stats, with those of renown having 5s.

C&C as always

I'm digging it, Kinda reminds me of the Dice system in NGS. Would definitely be down for play testing a few rounds/scenarios for you

I'd have to see how the spread actually plays out, but doesn't look bad so far.

Yea, this is first iteration. Not sure how it'll function but I'm gonna grab a few models and test it out by rolling attacks/wounds back and forth.

1's always succeed with a "crit" and 10s always fail

Bumpidyboo

Oh, I mixed Accuracy with Evasion. I know this sounds a bit silly, but I think you shouldn't give class names for the archetypes. When you give names like that, people will immediately think about everything they are used to that uses that name, a.k.a. DnD type of classes (or even WoW or any major game), and they will fail to see past that. Maybe you could just call them "Power-Archetype" and etc, and make it free of the influence of other game's premises. But in the end, I feel like you are forcing the archetype premises in fear the system itself couldn't handle people just dividing their 3,2,2,1,1,1,0 attributes at will =(

> You'd lose a war of attrition by virtue of never dealing
I'm assuming it a game to be player in party, where the best party outcome is to each member max at something and let the others do the rest. Therefore, a tanker don't really need to deal damage.

> RoF
People are bad at math. Division is too hard for the average dumbass player.

> I was looking at the average would be 4, with 3 being really good or fast weapons
How many attacks you expect people to do in the same turn? Is attacking 3 or more times in the same turn something normally achieved?

The flow chart is looking a lot better! But I still think its weird that you have to row dodging or blocking even though the attack already missed. That sounds frustrating for the character being attacked, really. I think it would come more natural (and more practical) if you take away the dodge/block roll and just applied it as a reduction on the attacker's "To Hit". Also, remind me again how critical failure works plz?

Sorry but I really need inspiration to actually go into anything linked here and actually read it. If I have the time, I will do, but it would be a lot more helpful if you just posted the main details of your system.

ORGANIZATION POST -> EVERYONE, READ THIS!!!

Guys, there is too many people posting their own systems and it is starting to get hard to keep track of who is posting what. So please, pick a name for yourself like OP (), this guy or even this stupid guy , so we can know what system you are talking about.

Thanks user, That was why I took up the name; so my posts are easily recognised and easy to give CC on

Yeah, it was you who gave me that idea. I just think it will help everyone out.

> But I still think its weird that you have to row dodging or blocking even though the attack already missed
Maybe if both the attacker and the defender rolled together it would feel better? The attack roll to hit, the defender roll to either dodge/block, whoever wins get their action done:
- Attacker wins: damage is taken (after armor reduction or something)
- Defender wins: he moves when dodging, or reduce the damage greatly when blocking.

Also, if dodging ignores all damage and even give you some free movement, while blocking still may let some damage pass, blocking should be considerably easier, therefore being a "safe" option, while dodging being a "risky" option (you might avoid ALL damage, but you also have more chance to fail and take it all in the ass)

Yeah, I also work badly with links. Monday morning I agreed that I would read someone's link, and its wednesday already and I haven't done it yet...

...

I've been using Renders of monsters from Monster Hunter, but alright
I'll see what I can do for a bit of a summary for you guys, but the doc is currently....nine pages long, so I'm going to miss a bunch of stuff. I think I'll start with the combat system, because its probably the bit I need the most feedback on.

To start, the system revolves around a Round based system similar to Mazes and Minotaurs (With combat being seen as a simultaneous thing).
> Players start each round by rolling "Reaction time".

>When fighting a Monster (Usually would be just one big beastie that the PCs are fighting at a time, maybe two later one), the GM now gives a small warning that gives a hint of the monsters next attack. These warnings generally apply to at least two attacks from the monster (At least that's the plan).

> In the "Action phase", combatants give their actions in order of longest to shortest reaction time rolled. This allows for people to react to other players actions or avoid the attacks of a monster that gave its action as attacking them. Players roll to hit during this phase.

> In the "Reaction Phase", players who left parts of their turns unused (I'll explain this more in another post) may use these unused actions as reactions, namely Blocking or Dodging. Blocking/Dodging is more difficult to succeed at when used as a reaction, but for people who gave their actions before the monster gave its, reactions are their best bet.

> in the "Recap Phase, the GM gives a summary of how the round went, and they move on to roll reaction time for the next round.

Player turns are split into various action types, allowing for certain attacks to take "longer" than others, which I believe is pretty important for a system trying to capture the feel of Monster Hunter.

The action types are:
Move action
>Moving, dodging, blocking, and sheathing your weapon
Full action
> Takes your entire turn, including movement action
Long Action
> Takes all of your turn except your movement action
Action
> Takes half your turn (Can have two Actions in a turn) not including movement action. These can be replaced with movement actions.
Fast Action
>Takes 1/3 of your turn (Can have three fast actions in a turn) not including movement action.

This system allows for a diverse cast of weapons that attack with different timings, as well as special things like Charged strikes that could take as long as three full actions to completely charge. I've been working on implementing...twelve of the weapons from the Monster Hunter Series into the system (Which is going to be a bitch to do numbers wise but I should be able to add weapons and their stats as RPGs go on, not just all at once, which would help.) each of these weapons use the action length mechanic to have various special uses, each very unique from the rest.

So did the game design general die then?

I think you could actually get something smoother by breaking each action down into a running ticker and assigning values based on how long they'll take. For example, Full actions take 12 ticks to complete. Long takes 9, Action takes 6, Fast takes 3. Movement can also take 3, sheathing might take 2, etc. Then, both players and GM will declare actions and list how long they take based on reverse reaction order like you already have. Actions resolve at the end of their ticker, so they're declared and known to all participants. This allows for more fluid combat than the distinct turns and lets players strategize on the fly. Lets say the GM states a Monster takes a Full Action attack. Your Dual Dagger player can move, fast action, fast action, move again and be back outside the range of the monster's attack. I think a system like this would get a lot closer to MH style fights and would be easy to convert. It's important to note that your list of actions shouldn't perfectly match. which is why I suggested sheathing might only take 2 ticks. Once you get players and the monsters taking multiple actions, you'll be having important things resolving on every tick instead of every 3, and that will be the key to making combat fluid and dynamic.

Finally, Damage. Damage in this system is pretty different from most that I've seen, opting for a Static damage system.

Next to "Damage" or whatever, weapons will have three values: One for Armored, one for Regular, and one for Weak hitzones (A/R/W).

I considered this for a while, but the problem is that tick stuff doesnt translate too well into an online environment, especially when most of the Actual RPing is text-based which is what I will probably end up using this system in. Ticks would be a bit more dynamic but the added complexity is just too much imo.

I didnt finish this post sorry. Monsters would have different values (A/R/N) for different parts of themselves (either up to the GM or applied in broad swathes for simplicity probably)

The archetype names I'm not fully sold on, but I'm keeping them so far for flavor. Additionally, having to choose a pre-existing array is an intentional design decision. The game would be perfectly fine if you chose everything on your own (like I mentioned, you can still quickly die even with maxed defenses), but by needing to conform to a predetermined archetype, you'll need to make meaningful choices. You still have all the freedom to place your free points wherever you want to create your desired character. Its baked into the theme of growth. Part of it is also for new players. New (or even experienced) players might not know what kind of character they want to play. The currently named archetypes give an idea of what kind of character they could play, though they never have to adhere to any interpretation. The names and archetypes plant a little seed to help get a concept going, and I find that to be worthwhile in an otherwise very freeform system.

When I think of roll20, their rolling chatlog would be perfect for it imo. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a script available that would streamline it even better.

For a D&D clone type thing. It's supposed to be highly palatable and feel very "safe". Looking for feedback on the concept of tiers (middle paragraph), but I felt like the rest was needed for context.

When your character gets better, you get to spend a level. There are lots of different levels in the game, you can pick any one that you have the prerequisites for. Many levels are organized into paths: groups where each level depends on the previous ones. Many paths are organized into classes: groups of paths that are appropriate for a common character archetype. It's recommended for new characters to spend their first few levels split between two paths in the same class, but you're not required to do this. The total number of levels you've spent is referred to as your character level.

> (This one)
One type of level prerequisite is a tier. Your party will gain a tier at the GM's discretion. There are recommended character levels to gain tiers at, but these aren't set in stone, and you could achieve them out of order or even skip them entirely.

Tiers:
- Paragon (level 5): Characters start to get abilities that can trivialize certain dungeon crawl type challenges, like flight and teleportation.
- Champion (level 10): Characters start to get holdings like castles and towers, followers, and armies (possibly mundane, possibly undead)
- Master (level 15): Characters start traveling to other planes

I'll think about it, though I do like the simpler nature of the action types to be honest.

>I've been using Renders of monsters from Monster Hunter, but alright
Well, I had only seen 2 posts of yours so I didn't know you would keep doing that. I guess that is also what this guy has been trying to do as well (use similar images on every post).

I couldn't even read all that said because I'm at work, but sounded extremely complicated diving things by ticks or whatever you may call it.

One system of types of actions that I actually enjoyed was DnD 4e (btw, I don't remember how it was on other editions), where characters have a Standard Action, a Move Action and a Minor Action, and can make one of each every turn. Furthermore, players can "downgrade" an action into a lesser action, which means they can turn a Standard Action into a Move Action, or a Move Action into a Minor.

I always enjoyed that, and I have been using it on my homebrew I having been testing with some friends. The only addition I made into it is that I created a "Full Action" which just takes the entire whole turn.

I thought this was kind of similar to what you described, so that is why I'm telling you this.

This thread has been rotating between homebrew general and game design general since ever

Making a game in general, working out the math

for a DBZ game, do you feel it's fair to have energy attacks in general be less accurate but do more damage, and have melee attacks start at 100% accuracy, but do less damage compared to beams.

Calculated the damage per CC by averaging 10 attacks

CC is cost, you start at 10, gain 4 for basic attacks, and 2 per defensive phase

Cont Punch
100 damage
100% accuracy
10 CC

100 damage per CC

Energy Bomb
100 damage
100% accuracy
10 CC

100 damage per CC

Cont Kick
200 damage
100 acc
18 CC

111 dmg:CC

Energy Wave
250 damage
75% acc
16 CC
117 dmg:CC

I suggested tick based initiative because it would more closely emulate the dynamic and animation based combat of the Monster Hunter games. Plenty of games use a continuous initiative (Exalted being notable), so its not like its unheard of. Rounds and 4e style turns are perfectly fine themselves, but having turns and actions really lends itself better to mimicing your average SNES-era RPG battle. Part of the draw of Monster Hunter games, other than killing big monsters to craft better equipment and kill even bigger monsters, is the need to become intimately familiar with the enemy's attack patterns so you can survive. Of all the initiative systems I'm familiar with, continuous (or tick based) fits the closest.

I'll be honest, while I 100% agree that tick-based combat would work super well for a monster hunter combat feel, things like Combat are already complicated (or at least different, making it something new for players to get used to), so I am trying to cut down on complexity where I can. I think the action system is a decent compromise though

> action types
I would suggest you give your characters 5 (or any number that suits you) "action credits". Then make each type of action cost a specific amount of "action credits" (ac).

-> Move action = 2 ac
-> Full action = 4 or 5 ac
-> Long action = 3 ac
-> Action = 2 ac
-> Fast action = 1 ac

Then you don't really need to explain the possible combinations, since its implicit in how much you can afford. On top of that, you can also perhaps play with that and give some characters (or maybe some quick-ass monsters) additional "action credits". That is my suggestion. For you.

>One for Armored, one for Regular, and one for Weak hitzones
That is actually really cool. I might use that idea sometime.

ALSO, where are you getting the images? Is there a folder or link you can provide? I would like to check them out.

>GM's discretion
I believe you are walking in a dangerous zone there. If your rule book says "players maybe should get this awesome thing at level 5, but GM decides", players will read this as "you definitely will get this at level 5", and get disappointed when they don't. I would recommend make the level suggestion VERY discrete (maybe for the DM only), because seems like these tiers are very influenced by the style of the game they are playing: it might be really nice for a specific game, but might completely ruins another (so it should indeed be on DM's discretion).

Additional tier suggestions would be:
- I would have a separate (low level) tier for companion, which is either an ally or like an animal companion. This would differ from an "army" tier because its a lot easier to handle.
- Maybe you could also consider a tier for permanent enchantments, either by enchanting/creating magical items or by creating any sort of permanent magic.
- A tier where non-magical characters start doing epic shit. And by epic I mean, something that would be impossible naturally, yet they now get to do it just because they are that awesome

You'd actually be surprised. I've known plenty of people that learned to calculate the Pythagorean theorem in their head in order to guess ranges in Warhammer.

Its all about wording. If you say "divide", people go "Ew, math, too hard!" But if you say "For every full RoF, you get an additional hit", it sounds less math and people are ok with that for some reason.

I blame the education system.

Its funny that only a few threads ago, we had people complaining about the amount of namefagging in these threads.

People bitch about everything. I think it starts to get classified as "namefagging" when people start using the same name on different threads, specially when there's absolute no reason why anyone would need to know that you are the same person that posted on that other thread. "hey look at me I'm special blah", that is namefagging.

Using the name option to identify who is talking about what in a thread like this in order to avoid confusion and mixing up is just practical :)

Action credits is actually a very cool idea. I'm going to put some serious thought into it. I especially like what you said about it being something that players/monsters could get more of.

For these renders, Look at the Monster Hunter Wiki. each monsters individual page has a photo gallery with renders. That's where I've been finding these, but you could maybe find somewhere else that requires less clicking around.

Actually, now that I really think about it, while Action credits are a pretty cool concept, they have the unintended consequence of really helping the Fast weapons more than any others. With this said, I'll keep thinking about the idea, but I'm probably going to stick with the Action types for now.

How does weapon speed works? I thought attacking was a specific type of action despite of the weapon

>Some weapons (Sword and shield, Dual Blades, Lance) attack using Fast actions

> Some (Charge blade, Gunlance, Hammer) attack using Actions

> A few weapons attack using Long actions (Great sword, Gunlance slam attack, Charge axe)
> Some special attacks use Full actions, or multiple full actions (Wyvernfire from Gunlance takes two Full Actions to use, Fully charged Great sword can take up to three Full Actions)

Im using the action types to diversify the weapons and how quickly they are able to attack. Faster weapons are generally safer to use more aggressively, but deal less damage, and Slower weapons are capable of Higher damage but need considerable time and risk to fully exploit.

This would also be clearer if I mentioned its for a sci-fantasy setting. We're talking about guns here.

My fantasy game is on a different scale and uses a different system.

I see. Maybe when user suggested those values, he was not aware of this weapon speed thingy (I at least wasn't until now). To me it seems that is is all a matter of how you balance it really. Check this out:

-> Move action = 2 ac
-> Full action = 5 or 6 ac
-> Long action = 4 ac
-> Action = 3 ac
-> Fast action = 2 ac

With those values and an average of 6 "action credits" to spend per turn, maybe you might have better results. This way, the maximum amount of Fast actions possible is still 3 (which seems like what you intended).

Which in the end, is basically this:
-> Move action = 2/6 = 1/3 of full action
-> Full action = 6/6 = full action
-> Long action = 4/6 = 2/3 of full action
-> Action = 3/6 = half a full action
-> Fast action = 2/6 = 1/3 of full action

Seems pretty much to cope what you intended in the first place. But giving them numbers might make it more natural for your players to think about what can fit together with what.

Playing devil's advocate, but it could be argued that certain actions he proposed that take multiple full actions might be tricky with that system.

But that could be countered with the idea of a sustained action; something that needs so many AC per turn until complete or you choose to end it. Like the wyvern's breath taking 6 AC a turn for the 2 or 3 turns it takes, or guarding (honestly can't remember if you can move and guard in MH, its been a while) takes 3 AC a turn until you choose to drop it.

Or things like Wyverns breath or a Fully charged GS swing could take a certain number of AC (say, 12 for a fully charged Wyverns breath, 18 for a lvl 3 GS swing), and by increasing your AC per turn, you could allow yourself another action on the turn you finish (Say someone had 7AC per turn. after three turns, this would lag into 3 AC which a GS could use two of for a move action or a reaction)

This is looking more and more viable. there are two problems that I am seeing with implementing this: weapons like Bow and Hammer, which I have using move actions (which in my current system could be taken instead of Actions) to charge themselves, and (For the hammer) an action to attack. In this system, a hammer wouldn't be allowed to charge twice and take an action to attack. This, I believe, could be remedied by increasing the AC per turn base to 7, and adjusting accordingly (Namely Full action and Long action).

The other problem is that in my current system I had assumed that everyone would always have a chance at movement, so I kept it as a sort of separate entity from the other action types. Including it in the AC count makes it more of a sacrifice to move or save an action type for reacting.

So I think the real question here isn't "Will this work" and is instead "Do I/we think there should be a guaranteed movement action every round?"

Also it's worth noting that, in this current state, increasing your AC still mostly favors the fast weapons. So How about this: Excess AC carries over (To a max number?), allowing it to be used on the next round (or used for x turns after?).

For example: a Heavy Bowgun fires two shots, one action each, bringing it to 6AC used, and 1AC unused. the next turn it has 7AC+1, and the HBG fires two shots for 6AC, and then later in the round uses the final 2AC to react to a monsters attack.

This is literally continuous initiative. Just wanted to point that out.

Not exactly. Turns still work in the same way I've put out before, only some actions (Attacks that would currently use multiple full actions) that would carry on to later turns. it doesnt affect *when* an attack is completed so much as (if a character has extra AC) whether or not they are able to use an action on the turn they finish their big attack.

This could also just be me misunderstanding what continuous initiative is.

I think that in general having Melee attacks have higher accuracy makes a good deal of sense. you seem to have taken the decrease in accuracy into account with higher damage, but be careful about getting to the point where an attack hits so hard its basically a one hit kill, but has shit accuracy (Unless you're into that sort of thing I guess).

Actually, funnily enough, this whole thing reminds me a lot of Pokemon, with heavier hitting attacks like Stone Edge having worse accuracy to compensate.

Pretty much how most things are balanced

Raised energy wave to 255 to sit around 120 damage per CC in 10 attacks

the original game has some powerful near one shot kill stuff, but it's super expensive or hard to pull off

up

>Maybe when user suggested those values, he was not aware of this weapon speed thingy
I thought that different attacks/weapons could use different weapons, but I assumed Fast Action was too fast to be a regular attack.

> This is looking more and more viable.
I'm glad you liked the idea, but I gotta be honest with you that I don't really understand 100% of what you are trying to do. So naturally, I'm just throwing suggestions in case something can be useful for you.

OP, are you gone? I would like to hear more about your stuff and what have you changed lately.

I didn't get your idea as a whole. Is this intend to be some sort of tabletop RPG? or is it just a board game? You just gave us a bunch of info about the attacks, but I feel like I don't know enough about the game to give any suggestions.

You're right that I have been operating here with a lot of assumed knowledge that I really shouldn't be. One of the easier ways would be to check out my Doc (wink).

If you have any questions about the system that could maybe clear things up for you more, feel free to ask.

For a skill system, I'm working with proficiencies:
-1: Inapt
0: Untrained
1: Trained
2: Journeyman
3: Veteran
4: Expert
5: Master
6: Grand Master

Everyone starts at 0, max level is 5 (-1 and 6 are exceptions).
If challenge rating (CR) is under your skill level (SL), you auto succeed if you aren't in a stressful situation (combat, time trap...). If you are, roll with a bonus of x*difference of SL and CR. You don't need to roll if SL is two or more over CR.
If SL = CR, roll only adding stat modifier.
If SL is one lower than CR, you roll with penalties. Else, autofail.

Good, bad, ugly?

What are you rolling and what makes up the Target Number you're rolling against?

Sounds interesting, but very confusing the way you put it (seems like there is some key information missing).

What is X in the formula "x*difference of SL and CR"? Also, like asked, what dices are you rolling? How much you need to pass?

>I didn't get your idea as a whole. Is this intend to be some sort of tabletop RPG? or is it just a board game? You just gave us a bunch of info about the attacks, but I feel like I don't know enough about the game to give any suggestions.

based on an old GBC game

but it's also more general, I'll probably stick to melee attacks having higher accuracy, with ranged attacks dealing more damage overall

Are attacks blockable or dodgable at all? or is their damage applied no matter what

Yes, if you have high speed you have a decent chance to naturally block/dodge attacks.

There are also built in defensive options for Block/Dodge(Melee)/Dodge(Ranged)

those cost 8/6/6 and cost +2 more every time you use it, there are cards you can put into your deck that have a cost of 0 to dodge, but those are limited to 1 per deck.

There's other options that help to mitigate damage as well

So this is a....deck based game? Would you be able to give us a more detailed overview of your game so we're able to understand it better and thereby give better feedback/critiques?

I'm just rebalancing all the math mostly and adding some new features, currently, gotta figure the rest out later.

Mostly just thinking of game design philosophy

There's gameplay, should probably just play the game though, it's pretty great for a mobile game
youtu.be/vSuj51iKWPo?t=13

Let me rephrase it:
SL two steps above CR: Autosucceed
SL one step above CR: Roll with bonus (autosucceed if not in stressful situation)
SL = CR: Roll
SL one step below CR: Roll with penalty
SL two steps below CR: Autofail

The roll part is still in the works, swinging between d20 (+stat modifier) vs 10 or 3d6 (+stat modifier) vs 10.

"X" could be +2 (3d6) or +5 (d20), or even Advantage (roll 2d20, pick highest or roll 4d6, discard lowest) or Disadvantage (roll 2d20, pick lowest or roll 4d6, discard highest).

The idea is that a Veterant should not fail a challenge for someone Trained, but may fail (although rare) a Journeyman challenge if under pressure, and may attempt an Expert challenge with difficulty, but not achieve something of a Master degree if even he tries.

So, I have a dilemma

My game's a numbers-heavy table-top MMO style game

Currently, each time you take an action or use an ability, you suffer a penalty to Hit Chance on the next action (15%, linearly scaling)

This allows players to take as many actions as they'd like, but penalizes them. Additionally, it lets the game be dynamic in that a character's Hit chance doesn't have to be naturally low to allow misses--they can expect to hit with their first ability, but not the ones after. (if they move extra, they might miss, etc.)

However, the more obvious solution to the entire multi-action issue is action points. Not only would this be simpler and put less value on one stat for seemingly arbitrary reasons, but it would allow me to add a new stat to the game--and as all chance stats are based off of D20, adding a new stat to the game would allow me to reduce the stat bloat that the characters are experiencing at level 10 (where some friends of mine are going to playtest in a few days)

Does /HBG/ have any opinion on this? Should I just bite the bullet and go to an action point system for simplicity, or should I at least give my hit chance penalty system a try?

The Hit chance penalty thing sounds interesting in theory. Honestly I would at least give it a try and see how it goes, just to see if its good. That said, the action point system is pretty reliable, so if it doesnt work you can fall back on that pretty easily.

Your system sounds interesting. How do characters increase their proficiency? Is the proficiency tied to the stat modifier or are they separate numbers?

>How do characters increase their proficiency?
Through leveling. Still working on balance, but for now every 5th level (5, 10, 15, 20) characters increase one (or two?) skills by one step, up to Master.

Still thinking if letting ALL skills go up in 10 and 20, since after so many adventurers, characters must learn a little of everything.

Thinking with D&D classes in mind (but actually working a more loose character role):
Rogues/Bards can attain Grand Master in (one or) two skills. Depending on the (for now, ever-changing) skill list, maybe allow the Fighter (for athletic skills), Cleric (religion) and Wizard (arcane knowledge).

It is still a subsystem to be attached to a system that's still not made.

>Is the proficiency tied to the stat modifier or are they separate numbers?
Separate, so naturally good characters can overcome lack of proficiency.

This brings up the question of how many skills there are. If you only have, say, 8 or less "skills", then getting only 1 or 2 skills to grandmaster is understandable. if its more like 15 or 20, then it may be pretty low.

Basically my concern is that characters that want to be Grandmaster level at something are forced to be terrible at most other things. There may be something that I am missing from the system though.

>my concern is that characters that want to be Grandmaster level at something are forced to be terrible at most other things

That's why I'm ()
>thinking if letting ALL skills go up in 10 and 20, since after so many adventurers, characters must learn a little of everything.

The number of skills is still not fixed, but it won't be GURPS level neither 3.PF level, thinking of broad skills (like Persuasion instead of Intimidation + Diplomacy + Bluff + Sense Motive + Streetwise).

Alright /hbg/ its time for me to show you the system that I have come up with for rolls. I'm pretty happy with it, but I want to see what the general consensus on it is.

>Primaries
Characters have a level of skill in a Primary Stat (Strength, Agility, Charisma, Perception, and Intelligence [thinking about changing this to "Skill"]) When these stats are increased, everything under them is increased by the same amount.

>Secondaries
Under Primaries, characters have more specific skills called Secondaries. these are the more specialized applications of the Primary skills. These can be increased individually through schools in my setting (In Monster Hunter there is no true level up system, so I have been working to keep close to that). Generally when a character wants to do something, they are asked to roll according to their relevant Secondary skill, which brings me to

>Simplicity Rating (SR)
This is what my picture is for. When a character wants to do something, their skill in the relevant Secondary is the base for their Simplicity Rating (SR) in that task. The GM can then bring Positive (+SR) or Negative (-SR) modifiers into the mix depending on the situation. The final SR is what the player rolls against.

For example, lets say Joey wants to Pick a Lock, which uses the Dexterity Secondary. Joeys Dexterity is 8, but the GM decides that since he is working under a great deal of pressure (He needs to pick this lock quickly since the guards are coming soon), he will tack on a penalty of -2SR to the check. This brings Joey to a final 6SR, which he rolls against on he chart.

Rolling a 6, he partially succeeds. The GM decides that this means he manages to pick the lock, but the guards saw it happen on their way back.

To help understanding, the SR of a check is always the number to roll for a partial success. anything below the partial success number is a success, and anything above is a failure.

What do you think?

Thanks. Here are the basic combat maneuvers I've come up with.
Combat Actions

Soak: Physique Check; reduce damage by 1 for each success to min 1
Dodge: Reflexes Check; success -1; if success >=3, take no damage
Attack: Physique/Reflexes Check; 0-1 = n/a 2-3 1d6 4-5 =2d6
Feint: Charisma check; utilize psychology to gain insight on opponent; step-down on next roll
Magic: Willpower check; effect depends on spell

Not sure about how to incorporate different superpowers and skills into this framework, but it is something.

Shit, just opened your link and had a look at it. This shit seems well elaborated. Might actually read it if I don't go out tonight.

I asked for some more info, your other comments didn't really help at out. This way, I'm simply unable to give any sort of feedback/suggestion to you.

Ok, that is better info. About the roll part, the main difference between 1d20 and 3d6 (besides the obvious different of min/max results) is that 3d6 has a lot higher chance to get around 10.5, while even though the expected value of 1d20 is also 10.5, it has the same chance of getting any number. Since you want your roll to be more predictable (people who are good at a skill get good rolls for it), maybe you should go for the 3d6.

Also, just in case you are interesting in knowing this, the expected value of 2d20 and pick the highest is around 13.83 which is roughly like a +3.33 bonus (therefore its a lower bonus than the +5 you were considering). The same thing goes for picking the lowest (2d20 and pick the lowest is expected to go around 7.17, which is -3.33).

> suffer a penalty to Hit Chance on the next action (15%, linearly scaling)
That don't work. If you make it in a way that I can choose how many actions I want and take 15% penalty on my second action, 30% on my third, etc, the best strategy is always do ∞ amount of actions. What I strongly recommend you is to do it in a way that, for each additional action, ALL my actions get the same linear-scaling penalty. So people actually think twice before trying their luck with ∞ attacks.

Back to you, I think you should make it in a way that people should be encouraged to level up multiple skills instead of maxing only one up. There's several ways to achieve this, but I think its usually not good when people can go straight to maxing their main skills.

user, WTF? I just started reading your link and it intrigues me why the hell you thought it would be a good idea to have low numbers represent success and high numbers to represent failure. How does that logic works?

It weirded me out greatly. I strongly suggested you swap that thing having it so the highest the number, the better the result. That is A LOT more natural.

Btw, the idea of getting a tie = partial success is actually really cool.

>what is roll under?

Haha! I got one!

Here's hoping its not all inane rambling to everyone but me.

Why the hell would anyone choose that? It sounds/feels so unnatural.

Its existed for longer than you've been alive

Because the number you want to roll under is directly connected to the number you have next to the relevant Secondary. 6 in a secondary with no -SR is a success below 6. 10 in a secondary with no -SR is a success below 10. If I did it the other way around then SR would be all flipsy turny backwards.

> Its existed for longer than you've been alive
Worst argument in the whole thread (including the first part that was archived)

I don't think I know many that does this (or any, really), so it felt really WTF when I read it. For me is a lot more natural to add the number I have for it together with the result I got in the roll and compare that with a difficulty. I get now the reason why, and it does make sense in a logical-way, but I fear that it might feel less natural that way

>I don't understand it so its shit
Nah, its been a thing for a long time and many games use that mechanic. BECMI DnD used it for ability checks, DnD 2e had THAC0 which is basically roll under, most d% systems (should) use roll under, etc. There's even Blackjack mechanics where higher numbers are better, but you fail if you roll above the target number.

Honestly, if you're this unfamiliar with mechanics I'd probably refrain from offering design advice.

I never said that the roll under mechanic is shit. I said that your argument was shit, because honestly, it is. A lot of things has been a while for a long time and are used by a lot of thing/people and that don't make them any good.

> Honestly, if you're this unfamiliar with mechanics I'd probably refrain from offering design advice.
What is basic for you might not be basic for others. Sometimes, the best person to give you suggestions are those who think completely different from you, because they might help you see things in other angles. Its not like knowledge of game design is a linear path, where you can assume that because someone don't know X it means they don't know anything else beyond that point.

Sure, and yet, a lot of things are in use for a long time precisely because they are good.
I'm well aware that multiple points of view can be beneficial, but that's usually an argument for aesthetics, not design. There's nothing inherently wrong with roll under, or the myriad of other possible mechanics that you no doubt haven't heard of. There's only so much help you can realistically give if there isn't much to draw from.