/gdg/ Game Design General

Also, attached is from my planning doc.

Sounds like an interesting rules-lite game. Very nice graphics and layout.

Thanks user! When I get back to my computer today, I'll bump some more with some fluff I've put together for my players.

i think its gonna be awesome, i have nothing bad to say, just keep working on it!

Sorry, this was me, I was on mobile. Thanks again for the compliment user.

Hey, thanks! My group is really excited to play, so I'm definitely going to see it through.

Attached is a tease I gave to my group way back when, before I settled on the reddish-pinkish aesthetic.

I do have the first 4 images of a 16-part puzzle that I could post, but I'm kinda blast posting at this point, so I'll wait to see if anyone wants to see them.

I like the design but I havve some advice.
Try and figure out a way to be able to print the stat scores inside the icon.
Like for Fighting, the fists finger fade towards the center so you can write your Fighting score.
No idea what do do with Playing.
Talking is fine as is.
Thinking could be solved in a manner similar to Fighting. A transparency gradient as it approaches the center.

Here's what I want to make:

>point buy rpg
>stats that average at 10 (like GURPS or D&D)
>2d6 mechanic

I can't figure out how to do without derived bonuses. (i.e. an 11 gives a +1) but I really want these elements in the game, they just feel aesthetic as fuck together in my head for some reason.

Hand it over... that thing, your unfinished PDFs

This is an incredible idea, thank you. It's definitely pushing the limits of what I know how to do in Photoshop, but I'm sure I can figure it out, probably just a gradient overlay layer style would do the trick. I'll post in once I make the changes.

I'm interested in trying my hand at a Pokemon system that tries to make combat not nearly as long.

The core issues I have are that people can have 6 Pokemon each and each one has stats to manage as well. My idea is that, not only are citizens not allowed to begin officially adventuring until 16, but that the number of Pokemon allowed to utilize is 3 rather than 6. The only exceptions to this will be those in law enforcement or military branches. Of course criminals can disobey at the cost of being hunted down.

The basic idea for combat is this. Each trainer builds a dice pool for their battle between each Pokemon, which will consist of d6's and a d20 to roll for a crit. The amount of d6's each trainer rolls depends on the trainer's tactical and commanding abilities, level difference between Pokemon and stat changers like growl and tail whip. Pokemon speed might also have something to do with it. Types will determine how much damage is done.

For example, saying if I was GMing a battle between Phil and Joey:

GM: "Ok Phil, this will be a battle between your Charizard and Joey's Pikachu. The battle is over once one of the Pokemon is unable to fight on. Begin!"

Phil: "Charizard, finish this quickly with Flamethrower!"

Joey: "Pikachu, try to take him down with a Thunderbolt!"

GM: "Alright, let's build the dice pool. Phil's trainer abilities (naming in progress) grant him 2 initial d6's, while Joey's give him 3. However, Phil's Charizard is a higher level by X-amount and is faster, so throw in 3 more dice. With a d20 on each side this will be 5 d6's against 3."

The players roll and Phil ends up rolling poorly, giving him a result of 12. Joey's d6's grant him a 14, allowing Pikachu to outmaneuver the Charizard barely and land his Thunderbolt. The damage is not only increased because of type effectiveness, but is also increased because Joey also rolled a 20 on his d20!

Now knowing the dice here, the players keep rolling until one side is KO'd.

Cont.

With the addition of multiple dice in one roll without incredibly specific actions, this can allow the GM and trainers to be a bit creative with the results depending how close or far the were, allowing a more narrative encounter. The restriction to 3 Pokemon at all times can also shorten battles to hopefully be no longer than 30 minutes depending on the situation, though this may be affected by how detailed Pokemon information is.

As for Pokemon, rather than giving them complete statlines and basically a character sheet for each one, I want to try to simplify them to classes based on a more general Size, Speed, Defense and Power and HP, though HP might just be determined by Size class as well. I'll have to do some more work here but the end result could be a system that flows more naturally and isn't a major grind to play through each time.

Bump

Was waiting for one of these to pop up the last couple of days, because I had actual maths that I needed to discuss. And when it pops up is the evening I'm not free to maths.

>my hand at a Pokemon system
Such is life.

How long are the games everyone's working on? I'm working on a project intended to be comparable to things like Exalted in terms of size and quantity of content, and my playtest-doc is at around 80 pages out of a predicted few hundred.

Here's a bit of a description of what I brought up in the last thread. Does this sound like it would be too complex or slow?

Is the dice system I'm using too complicated to be fun?
Also, does the attribute system I have work in your opinion? Can you see any flaws that I obviously missed? Can you think of any border cases where none of the Sins apply and break the system decided what to roll for?

A tick-based turn system will always add a bunch of bookkeeping, since you have to keep track of variable action lengths and action orders. And if you don't have variable action lengths and orders, you may as well go back to a more traditional turn-based system. I can't really say anything else without knowing more about the potential actions.

Choosing your stat looks fine at a glance. However, if there is no maximum number of dice, why would higher sin ratings allow you to you to succeed in more difficult tasks. Also, you really should have a probability table for your own use. Are you sure that moderate actions are "moderately difficult"? Because it's not blazingly obvious if moderately difficult means 50% chance of success or 85%?

Having crunched a basic probability table, I've changed my mind. You're dice system is nuts.

That is super funky. So the lower your Sin is, the greatest your odds of being able to perform simple actions, but you are incapable of more extreme actions. As your sin value increases, you become capable of more impressive feats, but simultaneously more likely to fail.

My problem with turn-based combat is that it's unrealistic. There's no sense of things happening in "real time" because players have to wait for everyone else to go, and because of that there's too much time for people to discuss between themselves what strategies are going to be most effective.

>And if you don't have variable action lengths and orders, you may as well go back to a more traditional turn-based system.

Can you explain why? This tick system I've tried to describe is trying to be as simple as possible.

Thanks for doing the math I was too much of a lazy brainlet to do.
Those probabilities somewhat fit into what I felt when I was doing test rolls myself.
> So the lower your Sin is, the greatest your odds of being able to perform simple actions, but you are incapable of more extreme actions. As your sin value increases, you become capable of more impressive feats, but simultaneously more likely to fail.
That is the idea. Alternatively I could have gone for a much simpler roll above/below system but that wasn't enough of a special snowflake for me to justify writing a system for it to myself.

With fixed lengths, it's a fixed order. Those are turns.

At the end of the day, you're using complexity to buy depth. Look for where you can get the best bang for your buck. Tick systems are interesting, but a lot of work. If you aren't going to capitalize on it, you may want to use that complexity elsewhere.

I think I've got a somewhat similar system going with my Monster Hunter RPG system. Image is related.

How it works is you have skills rated from 1 to 10 (Or possibly more, but greater than 10 would still count as 10. It'll make sense why I'd allow players to go over 10 in a moment), Which directly relates to the simplicity rating of performing the related task, minus one, as their exact SR is considered a *partial success* (E.g. Player has a 7 SR in Athletics, so to *succeed* in an athletics check, they need to roll a 6 or lower, or a 7 for a partial success).

This system is very flexible as the GM may decide that a task is more or less difficult in general or for a specific player and/or reason (Say, a player with a broken arm trying to old a door shut) by giving +/-SR to a task. (Take our previous example: Player has a 7 in Athletics, and since the task they are trying to do is actually easy for most/all people the GM decides the task gives a +2SR, bringing the player to 9SR to succeed.

What do you think?

Man I really think you should take a look at my game. I'll link it for you in this thread now: docs.google.com/document/d/1C23SntKllqCK7U0tUd2aNy0KGrMoUtCt9qyguZ3ePns/edit?usp=sharing

I'm building a combat system (and RPG system) around Monster Hunter, and as such I needed combat to be fluid as well as for actions to feel diverse. I had a slightly different system with different action types before, but now I am using an "Action Credits" system, with each Combatant getting a certain amount of AC per round. This allows for some actions to take longer than others. Rounds are also done in a simultaeneous way, with players rolling "Reaction time" each round to determind when they give their actions (Actions are then given in reverse order of slowest to fastest reaction time, giving those who rolled better the chance to react to the actions of others) Additionally, AC can be saved for after the action phase, and are usable in the "Reaction Phase". Players can use Reactions to Dodge or block actions that they otherwise wouldn't be able to due to reacting slower than an attacking enemy. Of course, to save a reaction is a risk as you may not even get attacked.

This is all explained much better in my Doc, but that's the gist.

Thoughts?

>What do you think?
The chance of a partial success being a static 10% while the chance of failure and success changes seems weird to me.
I can't put my finger on why it feels that way to me.
Otherwise it's a pretty standard roll under.

Kind of like an action stack. It bears some semblance to standard turn order, but REALLY stresses going first. Normally winning initiative means getting to strike first at the cost of not being able to respond to an opponent's action. Here winning initiative potentially means getting to do both, which is pretty brutal.

Due to it being Round based, Going first only gives a player an advantage as they will know every action happening before they give their own.

As for It being unfair, Reaction time is rolled at the beginning of each round, making the order shift each round. Players will have options to gain (or lose) reaction time, so their odds at reacting sooner/later can be played with as well.

I understand where you're coming from, but I stand by the 10% partial success. Especially with how it works at the two extremes (1 and 10) giving either the chance for a small success against what should otherwise be utterly impossible, or the chance for even a master to stumble a little.

By "brutal" I did not mean "unfair," as these rules do apply to everyone. Simply know that people who move later will have major problems. How locked into announced actions are combatants? A simple example of what I'm thinking:

Player is fighting a group of enemies, player wins init. He knows which one will charge him, which one will fire, which one will position, etc. He can now act in a way so as to avoid or minimize as many of these as possible. This is going from "reacts faster" to full-blown precognition.

This is true. Reactions (From the reaction phase) are used to help circumvent the problem of players with slow reaction times knowing less some.

Additionally, combat will be against one Very large enemy, not multiple smaller ones (As this is me bringing Monster Hunter to Tabletop). Due to this, the fastest Players will generally only know the actions of other allies and The attack (Not targets, distance, or direction) of the monster. Also due to this, Players who rolled poorly on reaction don't need to be borderline psychic to *guess* what may befall them if they don't dodge as they only need to analyse the positioning and warning from the monster (A thing left out from the previous post, monsters give minute movement warnings before any actions are given to signify a general thing (possible target(s), possible next attacks [as these would generally correlate to more than just one attack from a monster]), and decide weather to save some of their AC to react and dodge/block the attack.

If I may ask, if you're making this system specifically for group of players vs big monster, why deal with variable turns at all? Player phase->Monster phase, or have fast monsters have an ability to act first. Players will talk to each other anyway, and they should be communicating their plans to coordinate, without having to predict each other. I could understand a mechanic to predict a massive monster's attack to make a preemptive action, but having all players constantly doing such seems a bit strange.

Loving the progress you're making. I'd buy a nice hardcover rulebook of this when finished and fleshed out. The aesthetic is just so well done and I really like the idea behind it. Keep up the great work. Not much to criticize on

Yever put memes in your game? Been thinking about.

Since we're talking of non-traditional combat styles, I might as well toss what I'm thinking of using for my system onto the pile.
I'm thinking of using a system where everyone rolls Ini, then decides what action they're going to take on their turn and "locks in" that action, before resolving every action in Ini order. Combatants can take reactions to any action taken against them, and Combatants who are killed prior to their turn get to go during their turn before being removed (although their action will be at a large penalty). Once all actions are resolved, the next round begins with the same order of operations.
I want to better represent the simultaneous nature of combat, where being able to flick a shot into an opponent a split second before they can means the difference between getting out alive and being domed.

The system actually started out this way, but I felt that it didn't feel like players were given the ability to see a monsters action coming and react to it, much like the mainline games.

I suppose a combination of the already existing "Warning Phase" and perhaps use of Awareness checks could allow players more information... I'll have to put some thought into this.

However, this would basically make combat vs multiple enemies (like other people for example) more difficult.

This is why it's important to consider what EXACTLY you want your system to do. Doing player turn/enemy turn would greatly streamline single monster fighting, allowing you to shift that complexity elsewhere, or simplify it. The downside is that fighting groups will be awkward. So how much do you expect to be in each sort of combat scenario?

I'd imagine this is also a factor in how attacks function. Monster attacks and defenses are wildly different from those of characters. If you're only ever fighting monsters, you can design a system around tailoring your approaches to specific opponents. Player attacks will only ever be directed at big monsters and players will only ever defend against big monsters, and you can design around that. The narrower your focus, the more polished you can make the experience, but the more limited it becomes.

yeah I guess that is the problem. It works fine with the games as they don't need a system for combat vs a group of mercenaries or whatever, just four people against a Monster.

On the topic of monster attacks I...haven't fully fleshed out how to determine how it will work, but I guess the main framework is there. Monsters will have AC just like players, and attacks will take more or less AC to use. Some of these attacks would have a unique "Lag" stat, telling how long (or how many AC) is spent *after an attack is used (This is a rough idea, I still need to sit down and put some serious time into monster behaviour).

Working on a sizable game, with the intent that it would be capable of producing a massive variety of possible characters and a relatively balanced approach to combat, social and exploration.

The setting would be kitchen-sink fantasy, absolutely insane in terms of the quantity and prevalence of supernatural threats. Standard heroes were getting their asses handed to them, so kingdoms rallied together and established a system of academies to properly train hopefuls against their myriad threats.

Yup, it's an adventurer-academy game. Play is mostly during regular field-missions to simultaneously test the abilities of PCs and to help deal with escalating problems around whatever kingdom the PCs find themselves in. At the start of each quarter, players must select how they'll spend their academic and free time, with a massive list of classes (I've got about 75 and would like 400+) and a small list of freetime activities (clubs, romance, etc.) which all have small but flavorful effects. Classes each give benefits over the course of the next three sessions, both flat skill bonuses and special abilities.

As an example:
Bedside Manner:
Credits: 3
1st: Medicine +1
2nd: Insight +1
3rd: Medicine +1, Insight +1. Ability: Console - You can ease someone’s pain as you care for them. While performing a Long Term Care action, you can care for up to 6 individuals at once. Additionally, any targets at below half of their max health when you begin treatment recuperate an additional point of willpower during their rest.

In addition to classes, PCs also pick a variety of traits during character creation, and can get extras by getting disadvantages. I have several dozen of each, and have done my best to make them all interesting, while none are flatly must-takes for certain character types and none are absolute trash.

Does this sound like something anyone would want to play?

I've played very little Monster Hunter, so apologies if I'm off-base-

When fighting big monsters, I think accentuating their specific anatomy is a big deal for making them interesting. Not only their special moves/attacks, but literally how they are put together. The way you fight a giant turtle thing should be different than the way you fight a dragon, etc. I'd consider how you'd go about achieving those effects. How do you make those encounters mechanically distinct, and reward players strategizing appropriately? A basic idea would be having specific body parts have independent defensive stats, and effects when crippled (something I'm considering for my own game).

The two things you suggested are already 100% in place. But first, I should explain the (Already heavily specialized....>.>) way that damage from players is currently set to work.

Damage from players is given on their weapon by three static values (For this example we'll use 1/2/3), with 1 being damage to an armored zone, 2 being damage to a regular zone, and 3 being damage to a weak zone. The turtle monster from your example could have an Armored (A) zone covering its entire back, making it very difficult to hurt hitting there, but have regular legs and a Weak head and tail.

As for breaking parts, this is also very central thing in the Monster hunter games, and I will be implementing some kind of system for this as well, though I haven't stamped one out specifically yet. Thinking on the fly, each monster could have a "break threshold" or something, where maybe a specific number could be given, and any zone that takes that much damage is broken (Probably going down one armor value, giving a + to damage if already a weak zone, or maybe giving some other kind of effect for those areas)

One other thing I want to mention, each weapon will have a "+/-" value, which is used to give buffs/debuffs to the static damage dealt. so say a player has a buff from an ally, as well as using some special ability of their specific weapon, giving them a total of 2+, which would add 2(whatever the +/- value on the weapon is) to the weapons damage that round.

I really like this. I'd definitely want to see interesting effects for breaking parts (break the wings and it can't fly, break the snake-tail and it can't lash at you, etc.). I also really like how you have your weapons set up. Having the four values for ARWB gives you MASSIVE opportunities for interesting and unique weapons even before special abilities (which I'm pretty sure Monster Hunter is big on). My first thought is a weapon with low A and R and a huge W, clearly made for the dashy rogue who is constantly trying to get to the weak spot, versus the hulking tank who uses a weapon with a more even statline and focuses on his A value. Meanwhile the spellsword likes his high B and is really most effective when buffing.

Yeah, I like this.

Yeah there's a LOT of variability. And that's not even including status attack values. Oh and Ranged weapons. So much Variability comes with a cost: my sanity. It's going to be a lot of fun making so many different weapons.

I'm not sure what the B value is on your ARWB thing (the +/- thing maybe?), but it is the value that applies to your weapon specifically, not other peoples weapons.

The combat of Monster Hunter is baked around constant movement and attacking and avoiding, so even the "support" weapons are built around attacking. For example, the Hunting Horn plays one note every attack, and may use 2-4 notes to play a song with various effects. Another weapon has the ability to use items without putting the weapon away, allowing for quick use of healing items, traps, and flash-bombs (Among other things). My setting has no magic (for players at least) but I could see other settings having magic and using the same system.

Yeah, I went with B for bonus for the +/-, and I did mean him buffing himself.

So the bit you've developed less is how the monsters will attack the players?

Also, is me, and I'd really appreciate any comment, if you wouldn't mind.

Hi um.....you wanted comment here it is. Love it. In my own system I've actually had plans to use schools for skill progression instead of levels and i just....yup this looks good.

One thing I sort of need clarification on: once they get the bonus, is it permanent? so, 1st session player gets the +1 medicine, 2nd session does the player now ALSO get the insight bonus, or does the medicine get swapped out for....nah that doesn't sound right

So in your example the player would gain a total of +2 to insight and Medicine, as well as the Ability at the end?

Yeah I've mostly been working on the player side of things, though I'm working my way towards monsters. Maybe I'll sit down tomorrow and just jot down the points I want to get myself started and see where I go from there. However, In reply to the previous user, I really think that I'll have to specialize to only Monster Combat, which will require me to think about how encounters with other people that may turn physical could work. HMMMMM

You are correct, the bonuses are cumulative. So by the end of the quarter you'd have +2 to each of the two skills, plus the ability. Players have 12 credits per quarter to spend on classes, so you can get a sense of the range of skills and abilities each would get.

Maybe I should start namefagging, I'm the only one you've been talking to. One of the things I enjoy is using a second but super-simple system to handle secondary conflict. An example of this can be seen in Mythenders, which has a very complicated and abstract system for players all working together to defeat literal myths. PvP then is weird, as that structure doesn't work at all. Instead there's a simple rule that any player at any time can declare they want to kill another. The responding player can choose to defend themselves, and the two roll off. The loser dies. This is a huge contrast to the main combat system which can easily take the better part of an hour for a single fight. The result is backstabbing is abrupt and vicious.

That is to say, if you intend character vs character to be relatively rare, create a system which provides exactly how much detail is necessary, and focus on your main experience.

Actually, I'm not the only one, just the only one recently.

Are all me.

Roll under your attribute? That's how it was done in olden times.

I only started namefagging in these threads to keep discussions more organized, as there were a lot of other ideas being thrown around by other people. I see a couple of those people in here at times. Yeah I'd recommend it.

As for that super simple system thing....yeah I probably will have to end up doing something like that. As well as thinking about how changing combat to Player phase>Monster phase will change how my combat currently works (RIP Reactions?). Lots to think about.

I do have a system in place for relatively detailed Social Conflicts, so PERHAPS I could do something similar with person conflicts...

There's totally nothing wrong with a game that has a focused ruleset. If it's like MH then it's a game about killing big things, even velociraptors are like twice your size. I'd rather the 'kill big things' rules be solid. I don't know how biased I am, though, because I made a game all about killing roughly human enemies that falls apart the moment someone wants to use a big monster or even a horse

So this system is mostly centered around your academy system, but how about the adventures that they're needed for? What sort of stuff are you using for this?

The idea is dealing with a diverse set of problems around the kingdom, a bit Brothers Grimm-y. Examples, off the top of my head-

A strange disease has been spreading through crops in a nearby village

Bodies have been going missing from local cemeteries, and the mayor turns out to be a necromancer

A feud has started between two prominent houses, possibly going full-blown montague/capulet

A dragon has moved in nearby and is demanding tribute

Etc. etc. Situations with a number of possible approaches and requiring pretty diverse skillsets.

This sounds pretty cool and I would totally play this I think. I like systems built around diverse options (Which is funny considering the heavy combat focus of my system, though I swear diverse options are available...in combat [and before combat in some situations])

You're right. I'm glad I posted about this in here so I could get this light shone on my...system. THE WORK BEGINS ANEW.

So here's what happened - I tried the gradient thing and couldn't get it to look good for anything. I messed with it for a few hours, and nothing looked good. So, I decided to use some different images (that were naturally blank in the center) and redo that section so that the design kind of encourages someone filling out the sheet to write their numbers in the images.

See attached and let me know if it looks better, and thanks again for the advice!

>I'd buy a nice hardcover rulebook of this when finished and fleshed out. The aesthetic is just so well done and I really like the idea behind it.

Holy shit, that's quite the compliment user! I will totally keep you guys updated in these threads, especially when I have a bonafide PDF.

I'll do a few late night bumps and post the puzzle images I mentioned earlier. This is fluff, so not necessarily game design, but essentially I'm creating a puzzle for my players using a publication in the town setting (Mystic Harbor), called "Overheard in Mystic Harbor." Think of it like a mix of the Humans of New York Twitter, and sort of a Weird Tales, Lovecraft sorta thing. I imagine it's a section in Mystic Harbor's local newspaper or something.

This will be only 4 parts of the puzzle (it's all I have right now), so it'll be damn near impossible to figure out (but not fully impossible, props if you get it).

I'd love to know, despite there being very little context, if these little vignettes fit the aesthetic you had in your mind, having seen the other stuff in this thread.

1/4

2/4

3/4

4/4

No.

bump for the one time

Bumping

I prefer the other version with the numbers outside but it's mostly because I really like the original icons. Nothing bad about this version I just like the look of the other one

But what I've tried to describe doesn't have an order in the sense that you seem to think it does. Everyone goes nearly simultaneously. Ticks aren't taken in order. Everyone chooses what to do every tick. I realized last night that a simple way to look at it was to check out a video game I've never played before.

youtube.com/watch?v=zv6BaVH5u90

I took a look at it last thread at your suggestion, and it doesn't really fit with my idea of simultaneous. I also decided against using anything like action points or stamina that put an economy into combat.

Totally fair. did you perhaps take a look at the combat from Mazes and Minotaurs? It might help.

If you ever want to playtest with strangers over the internet I'll gladly help out

Bump

i agree with

What's a good source for royalty/copyright/etc-free card art? I don't need anything really good looking, I just want something a little better than clipart

Yeah honestly these images don't outwardly really say "This is where the numbers go", as much as I love the images themselves.

I did, and it seems to be close to what I want. Part of me doesn't like it just because it feels like turn-based combat. As explained people going in an order based on initiative isn't really simultaneous. Another part of me thinks it might be the best option for "simultaneous" combat I've seen from other sources.

I guess I have some explaining to do with combat as I envision it. I'll just take a break and work on the way the world's calendar works instead. Who doesn't like useless fluff?

Oh fuck it didn't include the lunar cycle symbols.

Seems neat but dear lord is that a lot of information.

So I've been thinking a bit about the Armor system to be used in my System. Trying to go by Better Armor = Less damage taken, the Armor Class system doesn't really work. However, Going by a system with Mitigation, things get a bit complicated for two reasons:

>Armor Pieces
In Monster hunter, hunters wear a set of 5 different armor pieces, Head, Chest, arms, waist, and legs. I want to bring this down to three.

>Even more complicating: Static HP
This may be a thing that I end up being forced to change, but I want to avoid it if possible. Basically, The current number I'm throwing out is that Players will have a static total of 100 HP (That can be brought to as high as 150 with food buffs, I'll explain my reasoning for having higher HP values in a bit). Due to HP being static, Armor is forced to do pretty much *all* the heavy lifting when it comes to incoming damage.

The current system that has been coming together in my head has been that each piece of armor would have a set mitigation value (As well as one or more points towards an armor skill, but that's not something I want to talk about in this post) which would combine with the other two armor pieces to give the players Mitigation amount. This brings me to the complicated bit. With players having 100HP, and me wanting attacks from monsters that are balanced to their armor level dealing around 1/4 to 1/3 of their HP (or very strong attacks dealing as much as 1/2 or 2/3), armor values would need to be large numbers and therefore almost definitely require a calculator for seeing how much damage people take from attacks. This just plain isn't good. I do not want my system requiring a Calculator for finding out how much damage a player takes. No.
(Continued in next post)

The reasoning for having Player HP so high is that I have been working under the assumption that Player and Monster HP would be relative, even if the damage systems revolving around their HP is not, and therefore higher HP on players gives me more play room when it comes to Weapon Damage, and therefore the ability to balance weapons easier.

As I have written this, I have realized my central mistake: Reasoning that Player and Monster HP NEED to be relative at all. Especially since I have already made it so Monsters take damage differently from how players do.

Due to this, I have come up with a possible solution that I would appreciate commentary on: Reduce player HP drastically, and damage numbers from monsters at the same time.

For example, if I were to bring the starting HP total from 100HP to 10HP, Mitigation numbers can be MUCH smaller and easy to work with, with starting armor totaling to maybe 7 or 8 MIT instead of something like 70 to 80. Different armors can still be weaker or stronger between each other, but don't require nearly as massive numbers to compensate for monster Damage.

The size of your numbers is a balancing point of granularity versus ease of use, which again means that you want to opt for the smallest numbers which achieve the level of granularity you want. I do think that smaller HP on players is going to result in faster damage calculations. Summing MITs also seems like a perfectly fine solution, and is what many videogames use. Just make sure the individual pieces are interesting and diverse enough to warrant the mix-and-match system instead of just purchasing full sets.

That said, 10 HP might be a bit too small if you want MITs of 7-8ish, unless you really want to emphasize "Your armor must be this good or you are screwed". That is to say, let's say a monster's attack does 9 damage. A player with MIT 8 will take one damage (10% of their health), while a player with MIT 7 will take double that (20%). There is very little potential margin between damage values and armor values, as each increment of 1 off is a full 10% health different. If you fight something and your MIT is two under what it ought to be, you'll be taking SUBSTANTIALLY more damage than you otherwise would. That said, this may be the effect you're going for, with monsters being very deadly if you are not super confident you are properly equipped. The downside is that you have very little wiggle-room for the MITs of different armor pieces, as a difference of one is such a big deal. If your base health was, say, 20 or 25, you could start with MITs in the 14-16 range, achieving similar % DR but with more wiggle room to make distinct pieces of armor.

In my own system, I'm going with a generic system of weapons and armor. Weapons and armor have point-levels, with each point being usable to increase a variety of stats. For example, weapons have damage, accuracy and block as their three primary values, with a 0pt weapon at 3/0/0. Each point allows you to increase damage by 2, or block or acc by 1. No more than half of a weapon (or armor)'s points can be spent on any one thing (no overloading on just damage, for example). Meanwhile, there are a variety of tags which have associated point values that grant different effects, like making the weapon cause bleed damage or being Light, etc. By default, characters can only effectively use weapons and armor with a single tag, but they can take classes to get various levels of Exotic Weapon/Armor proficiency that lets them use weirder stuff (Need that bleeding light concealable weapon for assassins).

Armor uses a similar system, where there are 6 types of damage (bash/pierce/slash/heat/cold/elec) and armor grants Damage Mitigation (DM) towards each of these values, as well as a maneuverability penalty. Points can be spent to get a total of 4 DM to spread around (can't put more than 2 on a single one), but each point spent on DM increases the penalty by one, or points can be spent to decrease penalty by two. Therefore two players could have equal-quality armor, but one has spent more of their resources to drop the maneuverability penalty, making "light" armor. Again, there are a variety of interesting tags, though not near as many as for weapons.

The intention is to have a ton of pre-made weapons with this system, then allow player-smiths to design their own stuff if they are so inclined.

I'm making a monster-building system for GMs to come up with their own things. The basic idea is that there are various complexities of monsters, which have a different number of points to throw around on things. These include special abilities, but also skills like Melee, Block and Stealth. Skills are purchased as Slow, Medium or Faster-scaling. A monster's kit has no assigned power-level, with all aspects of it scaling off of power-level (the effective quarter), so you can design a monster once and it just scales up and down as you want. For example, Medium-scaling skills get +2 skill points each power level. Naturally I'd have a big bundle of pre-made monsters with both their overall kits, and their specific stats at probably three levels each, so you could fight young, adult and elder versions of them.

In case you haven't noticed, I REALLY like me some point-buy as a way of providing massive quantities of options.

Going with 20HP might be a bit better, yes. I'll put some thought into HP but it's not super important for me to put out straight numbers just yet, as long as the actual systems are sound I can build numbers into them afterwards. Thank you for the insight!

Going back to starting numbers, I honestly could make Monster damage even straight out *start* at 3 or 4 damage (6-8 with 20 HP) with players having little to no Armor and start from there. not sure why I said 7 or 8 but you still get the point.

Are...are you and I making the same game?

I mean It's different, and I haven't really put any powerful thought into Monster Scaling, but it has been an intention and I'm loving the way you did it with your system.

The numbers you end up deciding on will ultimately depend on how lethal you want your combat to be, and the setups you want on your armor. If you want three pieces of armor which all contribute MIT, then that should give you an idea of what sort of MIT increments you'll be working with.

Honestly, monster scaling makes a lot of sense with your setup. Monster fights are a big deal for you, and I'd expect them to be very thoroughly designed. Standard fantasy games expect players to fight several monsters (possibly several kinds) at once, and each individual one tends to be less memorable than the overall combat. Your system is really about polishing that player vs monsters fight though, so you'd want as interesting monsters as possible. This naturally means that you'll end up with less of them, due to the increased time needed to make and balance each one. Making them scale, or at least presenting them at different stages, allows reuse of these statblocks in a diegetic fashion.

And thanks! I just need to make sure all of this is understandable enough for GMs, and that the options are both broad enough and balanced enough.

From stats to dice.

how should this be done? i feel like most ways have already been done, i dont like to out right copy with the stats / dice system being slightly different.

any ideas to overcome this issue?

I personally would advise against novelty for novelty's sake. If the traditional systems don't achieve the effect you're looking for, by all means try messing around with less traditional ones. That said, different systems can achieve an interesting variety of effects that your traditional dice+stat or dice pool systems cannot, such as the one described here , which can indeed lead to a unique experience. So basically I'd say evaluate whether you really need a unique system to achieve your desired effect, and if so how you can work backwards from where you're trying to get to a dice system which produces that result.

this is actually great advice holy cow man thanks alot.

No problem!

I've been considering what to do dice-wise myself. I've been going with 2d10+modifiers versus a flat target number, but I very specifically want diminishing returns on increasing skills for a variety of mathy balance reasons. Right now I have a break between "Skill Points" and "Skill Bonus", based off of a table, where your skill points are the sum from the classes you've taken, which translates into a Skill Bonus, with diminishing returns. This system works and I have a lot of control over how exactly the curve works out, but the downside is that it's kinda clunky. I've been considering an alternate dice system to integrate my diminishing returns without a chart as a middle-man, but I have the downside of needing to balance skill point values from 0 to 36, meaning systems where you add dice based on skill would get really unwieldy.

i have tried loads of different dice systems

d20+d6 per stat (to much math / time consuming)

flat d20+1 per stat (to random or to hard to fail)

+d6 per stat (to many dice at higher stat points and 1 more point is TWICE AS GOOD)

im currently thinking about a procentile based system simular to the warhammer system because its kinda simple and gets the job done without all the additions +1/-1 and all that.

this is some tough stuff to figure out.

Basically, I've identified a problem with typical D&D-esque scaling-numbers systems. Take saving throws in 3.PF, for example. At level 1, the difference between a good and a bad save is 2, which translates to a 10% difference. That is to say that a wizard with the same wis as a fighter will make his will save 10% more of the time on average. However, as they progress to higher levels, the gap between the two grows. By level 15, the Wizard is at +9 versus the Fighter's +5, a full doubling. BAB works out similarly, if not more extremely, where the full-bab is one ahead at level 1, but is 8 ahead by 15. This means that things that people are bad at they get WORSE at as the game progresses, and you end up with situations of there being things you just can or cannot do, because the difference between someone who's good and someone who's not is just so great. Skill points get even more insane with all the modifiers you can stack, with people throwing around +40 on rolls by upper levels, at which point challenges must be so hard that people with a +10 are out of luck, even though that should be pretty impressive.

With my class system, I want people to feel like investing a bit in things is actually worthwhile. As an example, attack rolls are compared against defense scores which are also from skills. I want someone who gets +1 skill point per quarter on combat skills to not be completely crushed by someone who gets +2 per quarter, but be significantly weaker. This means making a curve where as their skill-point values continue to diverge, the bonus derived from those points remains about static, though likely growing a /bit/. With my current setup, 16 skill points translates to a bonus of 10, while 9 skill points translates to a bonus of 7. On 2d10, a difference of one when things are close is about 10%, meaning that the person with half as many skill points is about 30% worse, which sounds right.

This depends a lot on the scale of your numbers. What are your average, low and high stat values like?

And dang, forgot to re-set my name. Remembering to put on and off the name as I post elsewhere is harder than I thought.

oh that was just mentioning waht i have done before, i tried most thing that came to mind just to see how it interacts so its no longer an issue.

for example 1d20+15 is kinda pointless unless what your roling against is also very high and its just a mess really

very intersesting stuff, and that info on DnD is a point worth keeping in mind.

making a game that is simple with depths is truly a challange

1d20+15 isn't /always/ awful. The thing to consider here is the degree to which you value character skill versus chance. On dice+modifier, the larger the modifiers are, the more important is that your modifier is appropriate for whatever task you're trying to perform. That is to say, when you're trying to hit 50 on d20+mod, simple luck can't get you too far. When hitting 15 though, skill just helps your odds, or eventually trivializes the roll entirely. If the game is very rigidly structured though so that success thresholds scale evenly with modifiers, d20+modifier can work just fine even at high values. 1d20+90 versus a DC of 100 has the same odds as 1d20+5 versus DC 15. The difficult part is variation in modifier. In the second example, a 20% difference in modifier is a +1 difference (5% success difference), while in the first that would be a +18 difference, which is a whopping 90% success difference (making the roll pointless). What this means is that higher modifiers relative to dice necessitates less individual variation in order to keep things working correctly. %-wise, the differences between "mediocre" and "good" can be much larger with smaller modifiers.

I think this was a lot of the reasoning behind 5e's bounded accuracy, trying to rein in rampant bonus scaling and keep numbers reasonable.

I do a lot of math.

i can tell holy cow, im terrible at math but i do try to get better at it.