To clarify, this is mostly to ask opinions about the dual-sided "health" bar.
It works so that sometimes you use despair to hit or accomplish something else on the field, and it creeps up slowly. Strain on the other hand, is basically just regular "HP" in the sense that you can just take a nap and get rid of 1d6 of it.
You can't actually die unless you really rack up on Despair, a little like in TBZ where you need to check the "Death" box to be able to die. If you ever roll under your Despair in any situation, you basically get into a position where you would be ejected from the scene, no matter if it happened while you're taking coffee from a coffee shop.
Strain can cause you to run out of juice, meaning you become unable to use your powers "effortlessly", and of course cause you to get knocked out.
Both have their own rolls, meaning Despair is checked against on every roll you make, and Strain is rolled against every time you go over the damage threshold.
Have an un-updated version as of now, just focus on everything but "conflict rolls" if you want to know what's up. I haven't been here for months due to there being little progress due to playtesting.
I can't use attributes, because my system has reverse attributes, basically. The lower the stat the better. So somehow converting to...
Wait, I might have struck an idea.
What if, instead of action points going downwards, there is something that goes upwards and makes it harder to make actions, rather than it being some super-brutal 2d6 roll basically.
Allright, how about "Fatigue" or "Stamina" bar on TOP of this. Every time you make an action, you add a point to your fatigue bar (I really like using bars instead of numbers it seems). If you roll under your fatigue, you complete the action but take Strain.
Shit, this combat system is turning into some real fricking resource management. Although, this is still peanuts, because these are the only thing you need to worry about.