/gdg/ - Game Design General

Thank you for your input.

Hey guys I'm making a game for my fifth graders (I work at a school) I'm not using a system just basic knowledge of rpgs and games in general.

So far if made some races some classes and they enjoyed that just basic fantasy. Elves, dwarfs, gnomes, humans etc. I also let them if it's creative make their own.

With classes they are also basic warrior, knight, archer, mage etc.

Each class has its own stats and each race has its own traits.

The stats work:
Str - is damage and health
End - is defense and health
Dex - is ranged dmg and movement
Agi - is movement and dodge
Int - is spell damage

It's what I got so far we ran a couple quick quests that worked okay and helped me tune the game a bit more but any advice is welcome. I know I could steal from like dnd but meh.

>What's the best way of handling turn order that you've come across?
There's nothing wrong with Dnd-style initiative and rounds, but there are also some decent alternatives.

Tick-based initiative works just like a clock. Ticks are divisions of time and there are no real rounds. All actions take an amount of ticks, quick actions taking few ticks and hefty actions taking many. Actions happen simultaneously and resolve on their tick count, so you can think of it like casting times from any MMO.

Phase based initiative resolves the same kind of actions all at once. You could have a movement phase followed by an attack phase, or you might divide phases by attack range which can represent range and reach. Using phased initiative is useful when you want to accent a certain aspect of taking actions, like the range example.

There's also a certain speed based initiative where the slowest characters declare their actions first and the fastest declare last. However, actions are resolved fastest to slowest to represent the fast characters' ability to react.

I like this OP.

>What's the best way of handling turn order that you've come across?
Let's break down the question a bit. You can be asking a couple different things here...
- What is the IDEAL way to handle it?
- What is the MOST PRAGMATIC way to handle it?

In my opinion the "ideal" turn order system is to have the GM decide who goes next every time, based on his understanding of the situation and characters involved. But that's not very pragmatic because dumb people exist and they'll ruin this.

The most "pragmatic" system is one that even total dummies can understand and that nobody can argue about. Therefore the best way to handle turn order is to make it very static, predictable, and almost arbitrary like just having a list of who goes next.

You should clarify a lot of things before asking meaningless questions without context

I feel like phases are the best idea but take the most work to design. And what if the phases don't have labels, but just 3 phases per round or something, and there are ways to "cheat" and have your character do an action in a different phase than normal? For example, withholding a bow shot until the next phase, or rushing recklessly during an earlier phase than normal?

I'm trying to make a rule set for a game where every player basically has two characters in combat. I've been writing the rules using changing die type resolution, specifically a similar system to the one that regular Cortex uses. I want power levels to go above what that system was made for though and planned to use dice added together past d12. I know this will have some issues with consistency with higher difficulty roles. I think I have some solutions to that but I'm curious if anyone familiar with systems that use dice as stats thinks what I'm doing won't work well.

So I'm working on a game with a few friends with a focus on tactical combat taking inspiration from the best existing RPGs of that kind, but we're establishing a mechanical framework ahead of time, our expectations and goals for the roughly right places the numbers should be in. I figure it might be worth sharing it here and getting peoples thoughts on it.

We're aiming for fights to last 3-5 rounds, with a PC group generally outputting 20-33% of a standard monster groups HP per round, averaging at 25%

We're still pondering exactly how to divvy up damage amongst PC's. One role is focused from damage while three are not, so we're looking at an ideal 4 person group. We're currently mulling between 40/20/20/20 and 33/22/22/22. Damaged focused PCs doing 40% of the groups damage, twice as much as anyone else makes them more distinct without taking away very much from others, but also makes the damage gap so big that not having one, or having multiple in larger groups, might warp the combat dynamic. Them doing 33% of the damage, only 1.5 times the base, makes the disparity less of an issue but might also harm their identity and how much fun it is to play them, since you're not doing that much more than others, and they're also bringing along utility of one kind or another.

The other side of the coin is monster damage. We want things to be threatening without being overwhelming. We're pondering a monster group doing 100% of a standard PC's HP per round (with defensively oriented PCs having 50% more), but that gets problematic when scaling for larger and more difficult encounters, or single boss monsters, with a very high chance of eliminating a PC every round. But reducing it just makes monsters non-threatening and makes ordinary fights pointlessly easy and not cost very many resources.

We want to figure out these ideals and assumptions before we really go deep on the design, so we know we're designing towards a model that can provide a good balance of fun and challenge

Well, I did it.

Enjoy some comfy roleplaying. It needs some editing and revision, but I wanted to get the general rules (plagiarized from the book and various 1d4chan homebrews).

But... there it is.

What do you use as resolution mechanic?

I should sleep, but Can't Rest My Head when I see something like this.

Allright, I gotta admit, that's pretty cute.

I never thought you could convert such a dark and brooding system into something like this... Don't Rest Your Head is supposed to be bizarre, but I gotta admit that it has nothing on this.

If you have any suggestions or edits (I already saw a few, I blitzed this for a variety of reasons) let me know.

I'm thinking of expanding this with some fluff and sample Befuddlements and a write up on designing a town and home.

I'm trying to come up with a fairly easy armor-health-wounds system. Currently running it where you cross-reference armor vs. weapon damage and roll 2d6. Based on a chart (inb4 reeeee) you have to roll a 2+ to a 6+. If one die rolls above, the character is wounded, if two dice roll above, the character is incapacitated (and probably dead). A wounded character who becomes wounded again is incapacitated (and probably going to die).

My question is: how do you make characters more survivable in this system without turning up the hit point bloat?

1. Soak rolls. Maybe something like Savage Worlds.

2. Increasing armor/toughness to reduce likelihood of being wounded.

3. Increased likelihood of surviving being incapped.

I want combat to be dangerous and deadly throughout the characters' lifespans without being a total shitfest of "you got hit, now dead" and "enemies ping with wimpy attacks back and forth for an hour."

I will see that tomorrow, now I have to sleep. Hopefully the thread is still alive when I return.

I think this might work. Kind of a middle ground between DnD 5e's advantage/disadvantage and what that one user showed last thread.

This probably isn't what you guys usually do, but ineed help finding some old homebrews
One was a system for bioshock, the other was for the world ends with you
Any help would be appreciated

I made a DRYH hack a few years ago for IRC roleplaying with friendly magical ponies, an actually upbeat and happy one opposed to the existential horror-themed one on 1d4chan. It was pretty comfy. I like your Animal Crossing game, I would run it for kids for sure.

anydice.com/program/bef4
Your odds seem to be the following:
>2+ is soaked 3%, wounds 28%, and incapacitates 69% of the time.
>3+ is soaked 11%, wounds 44.5%, and incapacitates 44.5% of the time.
>4+ is soaked 25%, wounds 50%, and incapacitates 25% of the time.
>5+ is soaked 44.5%, wounds 44.5%, and incapacitates 11% of the time.
>6+ is soaked 69%, wounds 28%, and incapacitates 3% of the time.

With this system even the toughest character who takes a hit has a 28% chance of losing one of their two 'hit points', and a 3% chance of instant K.O.. That is not necessarily bad, but since you want advice mine would be threefold.

1) Roll 3 dice instead of two. 0 Successes is a total miss, 1 Success glances and reduces future armour value that battle, 2 Successes wounds the target (action penalties?) in addition to reduced armour value, and 3 Successes incapacitates them. Your odds are here: anydice.com/program/56d2

2) Give durable PCs the ability to ignore X penalties in armour value; they're combat veterans who won't let a few glancing hits rattle them that easy. Give super duper durable PCs the ability to possibly negate a wound or incapacitate roll once per battle, they've got grit or determination that lets them fight through wounds that would fell lesser men.

3) Consider changing the dice from d6s to something larger so that armour penalties and bonuses aren't as swingy. That'll make everyone on both sides a little more durable by making attrition take longer, and it'll also prevent PCs from investing too heavily in armour and feeling unstoppable.

Nevermind, found them in the archives
A lot easier to find than i expected

an RPG based around the idea that all of the player characters are robots

>What's the best way of handling turn order that you've come across?
Whole-party turns are the fastest. That doesn't mean it's always the best choice; sometimes it's worth giving up some speed to model some other thing, especially if you're going for a gritty/tacticool feel.

I'm currently using whole-party turns with one exception - if someone from the party with initiative attacks you, you can immediately attack back and skip your next turn. This encourages the vague notion of positioning (you get an earlier move if you attack someone who's logically next to you because they just attacked you) and softens the swinginess of whole-party turns (which is particularly strong in my system because every round is more dangerous than the last).

First, kudos for designing your system this way around (turns, average damage, etc).

You should consider monster roles in relation to the PC roles. Are they the same? Is it okay if a monster role is missing?

4E has a damage-focused role and the optimal party is known to be mostly those because focus-firing monsters takes them out of the fight, and that's more impactful than anything anyone else can do. You should consider what other roles do that's so important that it's better than permanently reducing threat.

>Monster damage
Take a look at the first page of the Monsters chapter of Rogues To Riches. It defines monsters in terms of two stats, A (turns to kill average PC) and D (turns to get killed by average PC), assumes that monsters spread their damage around but players focus-fire the monsters, and then does the math to make that total up to a close battle.

I'll have a look at the book, it sounds useful. Thanks!

By those stats, assuming an equal number of monsters to PC's, they would take 4 turns to kill the average PC but only 1 turn to be killed by them. It's a useful way of thinking about it.

And it might be necessary to start thinking about roles etc at this point, you're right. We've been trying to work from the simplest possible form of something on upwards, so establishing a very basic combat dynamic based around pure HP and damage, wanting to at least have a vague foundation there before we start applying other roles and effects on top of it.

You are right though, how much impact the defence/support/utility of the other roles have will directly affect how much more damage the damage focused PCs can be allowed to have.

My gut says the 33/22/22/22 model probably works better, but I still worry that it might make damage dealing a useful and necessary role, but not a very interesting or enjoyable one to actually play, if the actual damage output difference between you and others isn't that significant. It might not be as bad as that in practice though, we'll have to see.

>You should clarify a lot of things before asking meaningless questions without context
Thanks for being snobby and providing nothing worthwhile.

In my system, you roll for initiative, & then every action as a value, every weapon has a "Heft" value, which is how much time it takes to draw & how much Initiative it costs to attack with it. This allows characters with daggers to so flurries & those with heavier weapons getc fewer attacks but will usually deal a lot more damage

I come to these threads literally to help people like you but when you don't give any useful starting information and ask questions that can't be properly answered it's gay. So it's not being snobby as much as it's trying to help clueless people

Sadly I've been having them roll 1d6 and 3or less is a fail and 4 or more is a succes. They seem to not be minding it and I just kinda come up with fun things to have happen on the fly.

In there first time playing we arrived at a town and they all went to the inn and as they were there I had goblins attack the village and kidnap the mayor, so they quickly defeated all the goblins then I had then chase after, I told them 1 person needs to roll to see if you catch up to the goblins on the road or if you fail they make it back to their hideout and will be harder to fight, they caught them on the road, it was a good fight.

On index cards they created their character sheets and use the back for inventory, and we made equipment cards and I had them draw what they look like. Things like bronze armor or bronze swords. Then I had them make draw their characters small enough so when I cut it out it would stand up and fit in the square.

I feel like I want to improve the combat and also make more options but I have to say I'm really enjoying this and thnx for the question makes the brain work and think. Props to you solid user

That was me and true I am quite clueless and left out a lot of information but I have just begun so I will have better questions I'm sure or I'll crash and burn either way time to kill some skeletons!

The phases would need to mean something, otherwise there's no point differentiating the phases at all.

It sounds like a lot of your questions are about numbers. Frankly, numbers are some of the easiest things to balance and should probably be done last because they're that easy. You don't need to marry yourself to to many specifics early on because they'll hamper further design decisions. Not only that, but the best way to balance numbers is through playtesting which, in addition to being done towards the end of the design process (specifically for numbers), is something you can do yourself to figure out where the numbers should be.

However, if you balance around certain numbers and then add or remove mechanics after that testing your results won't be accurate anymore. You'd have to do a lot of unnecessary testing that could be avoided by more efficient design methodology.

The phases would be different from each other but not explicitly labeled. If there's four phases then loading your bow with am arrow might be one phase, steadying your aim another (optional), and releasing a third. You can start this process in the first or second phase, but those phases don't have to be labeled and 100% restrictive.

That's just tick initiative with 4 ticks.
Phases would need to resolve completely during that phase.

Oh, I thought ticks were just a continuous progression. Alright, my semantics were wrong then.

Whether they're continuous or roll over is irrelevant. Tick initiative deals with relatively minute details and inherently allows for simultaneous actions. Phases instead are divided by types of actions that are self contained and allow for mechanics that relate to the phase. Weapon range, for example, can be a factor in who acts first: ranged attacks might resolve actions before melee attacks to represent distance.

Each system might be didn't in implementation, but the gist is the same. Ticks have a "casting time" whether it's for spells, weapons, movement, etc. Phases resolve all of one type of action at once.

I understand what you're saying, but at the same time nothing you're saying is necessarily true if you just design it differently. It's all flexible, so there's still merit in brainstorming it, regardless of the terminology you end up going with

Guy got two answers before you decided to be a fag. So yeah, you were just being snobby.

This isn't balancing, exactly, and more creating an idealised set of values which will create, roughly, the experience we're working towards.

This isn't meant to constrain us or bind us, but to provide a framework we know makes sense to design around. Adapting and tweaking it over time will likely happen, but having a sold structure in place first gives us something to build on and a frame of reference to gauge things against.

All you need for a framework is "dps deals more damage than non dps". Your questions revolve around "should dps deal 40% or 33% damage a round?" which is purely about numbers. So you decide 33% is best, but then you have a mechanic that allows you to block damage, and then you want an archetype that boosts damage, and then you create a spell that weakens an enemy's armor and all of a sudden you aren't dealing 33% damage anymore.

Generally, you'll want to determine What can be done, then How it's done with numbers coming in last. Both the latest things and the most specific things you add are the easiest things to change. They're built upon all the mechanics and framework you created earlier, so any design revisions will have to pull away everything that relies on the mechanic you're revising. When you're making a framework, that's at the very beginning of the design process so you'd want to start with the most generic items first. If you start with numbers, you might decide that 40/20 is the better dps split, or even a 20/15 split which disrupts your previously stated numbers. Staying general allows the most flexibility when you're making an outline. Numbers are specific and don't provide flexibility of they're your starting point.

I feel like you're missing the point, still. We're not dealing with numbers, but proportions. Proportional relationships are implicitly flexible, and give us a good way of assessing and analysing mechanics before we've nailed down the exact numbers, because we know the general values we're aiming for in proportion to whatever else we've established.

And I'm saying there's no difference. I even provided an example where a simple change in your proportions affects everything you've posted in the thread. You're spending too much time on things that don't matter yet at this point in the process. If all you're going to do is wonder whether a character should deal 6 damage or 5 damage to an enemy with 15 health then don't waste time creating a framework and get some mechanics to work with first.

That question reminds me of an idea I need vetted. I've been working on my home brew and I think I've got a good initiative system here.

Combat is broken into 5 phases in which only certain actions can be performed.
>Ability Phase
>Characters use this phase to activate movement abilities and begin casting powerful spells. Turn Order here is lowest Instinct to highest.
So whoever has the highest Instinct gets to choose their ability/spell in response everyone else. The lowest Instinct character is stuck making a choice blind.
>Movement Phase
> Characters take turns moving in the battle space. Turn Order in this phase goes from fastest to slowest to fastest. The second movement opportunity (the slowest to fastest part) is called the Follow Up, which grants characters the opportunity to spend any movement they didn't earlier.
The fastest character gets to go first and last, allowing them to both influence and react to the movement of others.
>Ability Phase 2
>Characters that chose to pass in the first ability phase can make choices here, again this is highest to lowest. This phase is mostly used for tactics (situational buffs) or weaker spells.
I'm considering getting rid of one of the ability phases, but I'm not sure which one. If I drop the first then there'll be no opportunity to use movement based powers, but if I drop the second then martial characters will have to declare their tactics before moving.
>Action Phase
>This is when attacks are made and spells are cast. Turn Order is determined by weapon reach, with longer weapons striking first. Ranged weapons use Range as Reach for this purpose, but adjacent melee attacker's can make attacks of opportunity.
Spears will be useful for their first strike potential. I'll need to find a way to balance them against shorter weapons.
>Effect Phase
>Characters don't act here. This is when fire burns, poison damages and other environment effects take their toll.

The main idea here is to keep everyone engaged in the game. There's no waiting for your turn, everyone is acting in rapid succession.

The GM will have to list Instinct, Speed and Reach. But since there's no rolling for initiative these values won't change often.

I've used the approach they're using before, both on RPGs and non-RPGs, and it works very well, particularly for content-heavy games.

It makes it more likely for you to end up with a game that plays the way you thought it will, and drastically reduces how many rounds of playtesting you need.

Shit, Ability Phase 2 is lowest to highest. I mis-typed.

Have you tried running a few combats with this system? I'll be the first to admit that games don't always play as they read, but this sounds like a nightmare to keep track of.

>Ok, so now I'll move again...
>Wait, did I spend all my movement at the beginning? Or do I have 2 squares of movement left?
>Ok, I'll cast this spell in Ability Phase 2
>You can't! Remember, you did something in Ability phase 1 a few minutes ago!
>Hey, you can't go first in this phase! You only go first in ability phases, no action phases!

Keeping players involved is good, quick decision making is good, but keep tracking in mind too.

A trial combat has been held with my roommates, and there was a bit of that.

Which is why I'm thinking of ditching one of the ability phases, or allowing characters to act in both.

The movement phase issue is more of a slapped on fix. I can't let the slowest character move last, or the faster ones might never end the phase next to them (rather counter intuitive, the followup was invented during the trial game).

I suppose one solution could be to make the movement phase just go slowest to fastest, or maybe movement points are restored during the followup.

I don't know if it fits in your framework, but you could add a resource mechanic to assist in tracking:

Give each player an ability, movement, and action token. When they act, they turn over the appropriate token to the GM.

For the movement section, why not just flip the movement order from slowest to fastest? It even uses your justifications for the Ability phase
>So whoever has the highest Instinct gets to choose their ability/spell in response everyone else. The lowest Instinct character is stuck making a choice blind.

Not that user, but slowest to fastest movement can have some issues of its own.

Imagine two characters an equal distance from a door. One is fast, the other slow, but both can reach the door on their turn.

The slower one will beat the faster one there, as he gets to move first.

Having the followup restore movement could be a viable solution, but I think movement speed would need to be low for all characters, given that they would each move twice in the phase.

I dunno, might need testing.

Given that powerful spells are cast in the first phase, can I correctly assume the caster can't move in the second phase?

Correct.

If they want to move they're gonna have to use a weaker version of the spell in Ability Phase 2 (AP2).

I've considered having a resource system, but some of my fellow players are really bad at keeping track of stuff. The tokens seem simple enough though, less of a resource and more of a tracking method. If I keep the system the way it is I'll keep the token idea in mind.

Is it a bad idea to have custom abilities as one of the primary means of character progression in a low(er) fantasy RPG?

Say they get a certain number of points to build an ability for their character to use, defining aspects of the ability such as the number of targets, range, damage, whether it inflicts a status effect, and so on. Leveling up/training gives them a few points to allocate to these characteristics, or they can use them to build another ability to use.

Would players have a natural tendency toward being one-trick-ponies, or would they try to diversify while having one or two abilities a bit above the rest? Does their tendency toward either direction depend primarily on how the combats end up developing, or will that be a negligible factor in whether they go for one super-ability or a full skill set?

How does health and damage work in your game? This is a topic I continually revisit in my designs. I've gone through three or four mechanics now. None really satisfy me.

I think I've seen systems that do this before, but I've drank a little so it's cloudy. Was it Mutants & Masterminds? Wild Talents? Can't quite remember.

M&M has a system for custom powers.

I'm my experience players tend to have a few minor powers to make their lives easier and one "Fuck You" power they've pumped to the max.

I've come to like "Take damage, roll against damage to not keel" kinds of deals. Keeps damage always risky.

>pic related
So, there are three aspects here, Strain, Despair and Fatal injury.

You get Strain when you get damaged in any way.

You get Despair when you push rolls to succeed (Think it as Fate that doesn't have a limit).

You get Fatal Injury when these two overlap. So if you had, say, 7 Strain and 4 Despair, you would have 1 Fatal Injury. That's on a 10-step tracker though.

>how it works
Rolling under Strain or Despair causes you to Fall, meaning you are removed from the fight in some way. Rolling under Fatal Injury (basically rolling under all 3) means that you take a fatal wound and the character will be shelved unless you're given some proper help soon. I say shelved, because dying is only one way out. The character might betray the group, run away like a coward never to be seen again, get a mental trauma hard enough to be unable to go on and so forth.

My older game has an ascending dice type of a deal, and it had buffer health, where you need to take certain amount of damage before you can be given wounds or status effects like disarms or such.

The natural tendency in point buy is to put the majority of your points into one good trick. That also tends to be the mechanical optimum, so anyone who tried something else will be weaker. Especially if they invested in non-combat abilities, which can make the game "take turns being able to contribute" at best.

Something that would be interesting to experiment with is making the rules give everyone something like 200 points to spend on one power and 100 points each to spend on two more powers. That gets everyone to the fun part of point buy (optimizing a cool power) without having to deal with shaving points off of unrelated skills and making uncomfortable apples to oranges comparisons.

>Does their tendency toward either direction depend primarily on how the combats end up developing?
It's a little easier to keep track of one big thing. Point buy is inherently a bit complicated, so people will naturally simplify. And it's usually easier to put a lot of oomph behind a versatile tool and let raw power make up for it not being a perfect fit.

But the biggest thing is that, no matter the system, you're generally only using one ability at a time (in each action), so every point that's not in your biggest ability is wasted for that moment.

> How does health and damage work in your game?
My HP represents temporary physical damage. You take the entire brunt of the blow on your shield arm and now your hand is numb. Your helmet protected you, but you have a minor concussion. The lion scratched your arm badly and it's not serious but the pain slows your reflexes. When you take enough of that (go negative), you start failing to defend yourself and take the kinds of wounds that need actual healing.

It's a really evocative way of describing things, but I'm really just using it for the same old meatpoints system. Knowing now how well this way of fluffing damage worked out, I'd like to explore a system designed around this idea of damage some time.

How's this as a tentative for attack rolls?

>Character has an Accuracy of Stat+Skill+Mods
>Weapons have a Damage modifier
>Character rolls 2d12+Accuracy
>Result is compared to target's Armor or Evasion (whichever is highest)
>If the attack hits, add the Damage modifier to the total roll
>The effect of the attack is defined by how far above the final damage roll is from armor

i.e.
>Character rolls 11 (Die) + 5 (Accuracy) for a total of 16 against the target's 13 Armor
>His sword's damage (3) is added to the roll (19)
>Overflow is a total of 6, which causes 2 light wounds to the target

it should be simple enough but i'm pretty sure i'm missing something very important here and that it's actually shit so far

For the moment, I have 8 hit locations (head, 2 arms, 2 legs, 3 torso) each with their own hp total. HP for each hit location equals your Defense stat (1-20) which also governs what armor you can wear. Armor acts as physical damage reduction. There's also a Magic Defense stat that reduces magical damage. For the moment, I have the maximum damage you can output per round at 10d6 or equivalent, regardless whether its physical or magical.

You can "break" hit locations by reducing their hp to 0. Broken locations are considered incapacitated and unusable. A broken leg might reduce movement speed, a broken arm can't wield a weapon, etc. Death occurs when 3 of the 8 hit locations are reduced to 0. I also have rules planned for severing/impaling locations, but those are currently undecided.

Overall it looks good from a math standpoint. Balance between martials and spellcasters was a supreme concern, so I decided that mathematical balance was the direction I should go. I still have to deal with the non-math abilities that each can do in addition to solidifying armor, but I'll be able to mimic the numbers and actions once I get each missing portion completed. My system is designed to concretely place the boundaries of minimum and maximum capability and then let the player run free within those bounds. In a way, it could be described as a sandbox system. Freedom to create anything within the boundaries and tools the system provides. sandbox system would be good for my elevator pitch

Nah, alone its perfectly good. One roll, accuracy and damage self-contained. Works the same for hp or wounds.

But, you don't need a new term "Overflow" when 'Difference" already exists.

THANK YOU, I knew there was a word I was missing in my vocabulary here and it definitely wasn't overflow

Thanks, guys. That gives me some things to think about and work around.

Let's say that I have a lot of things in my system that look like this:
"Deal 3d6 damage, then, if the target has less than 4d6 HP, it is turned to stone."

How can I phrase this in such a way that the thing that there was 4d6 of in this example uses a keyword? So I can then go on to say "Increase all the THIS_THING from your attacks by 1d6," or "You resist 5 HP worth of THIS_THING."

Threshold, perhaps?

"Deal 3d6 damage, then the target is turned to stone if it fails a Threshold check."
and
"Add 1d6 to any Threshold check your attacks trigger"
"Lower the result of Threshold checks you make by 5"

I'm not 100% satisfied, but it's an idea.

So I've been re-visiting a dice pool mechanic I was tinkering with before.

The current take I'm working on is when a model attacks, you roll a number of D8/10/12 (haven't figured that out yet, just that I want some more granularity than D6) equal to the weapon's power, and the target rolls a number equal to its armor. Each scores a success on a roll equal to their respective attack/defense skill. If the attack rolls more successes than the defense, the target takes a point of damage.

When a unit activates, the models can do a combine attack. One model makes the attack, and you add one die for each other model that gives up their attack to contribute. The other models have to be in range to add their attacks. The idea is multiple models ganging up to harm a high-armored target, or one with high defense scores. The limit to one damage is to prevent dumping all your attacks into one action.

The numbers I'm looking at are about 2 base for power and armor on the basic mook-level model.

One thing I'm wondering though, is to add exploding dice to the mix. It would give a little bit of swing to add those rare heroic moments, where a model that couldn't succeed does. The other concern I have is that without it, you'd run into situations where some models may be next to useless due to the math. Like a unit being reduced to 1 model having to fight something armor 3+.

I'm not 100% on the math yet, though.

HALP

I don't know how to apply this to anydice.com so I don't know the statistics of this.

Roll is d% (2d10). Usually the player decides which die is the tens and which are the singles.
But When in advantage the roll comes first and the highest is the tens.

Example (because English is not my native language):
Red and yellow die.
Normal roll: player chooses red dice as the tens. So if he rolls 7 on red and 3 on yellow the roll is 73.
If he had advantage, it would be 73. If disadvantage, it would be 37.

The idea is simple, but I don't know how to calculate how meaningful this is.

It's better than "phantom damage" which is the way I've tried phrasing it in the past.

output ([highest 1 of 2d10] - 1) * 10 + ([lowest 1 of 2d10] - 1)
output ([highest 1 of 2d10] - 1) + ([lowest 1 of 2d10] - 1) * 10

I'm rather excited for this mechanic--makes me think of burning Stress for bonuses in Fate (which I may or may not employ, depending).

The diagram you use makes sense, though I wonder if the two could be represented as two vertically stacked axes, so that the half-moon is oriented 90 degrees forward.

Just a little sketch of what I meant
Maybe it sucks but maybe this orientation shows the "movement" of left to right more easily

hmmmm

Feeling uneasy seeing Vigor 3 times but I guess that's your "not die" stat; I get anxious when one stat does too much

It's affecting me as well. One of the things I want to do with stats is to have as few as possible and allow them to be flexible, but even then, looking at one stat doing too much kinda throws that away.

I originally had them kind of like that way (didn't have the diagonal lines that make it clearer), but that does look pretty nifty. It implies motion pretty well.

I might implement that, thanks. There are actually other benefits to the vertical stacking I just kind of didn't realize, such as erasing them. With the current system, each part needs to be erased separately, but with vertical stacks, you can just run the eraser through it.

Listen to this dude, it's way better the way he drew it.

Working on a beta, but I gotta sleep.

Are there any games that handle size differences in an intuitive way? I might want to use it for things like not-poise, grapple mechanics and accuracy and other stuff that aren't really reflected by other stats, but I also don't want to make everything go to shit.

Size is an attribute in some games, or so I recall--it's more robust than "strength" which measures muscle-to-mass ratio (often creating narrative weirdness when strength is high and constitution is low).
From here, it's sensible to calculate HP (meatpoints, in this case) and can be used to modify miniature size or even determine raw strength.

Advantage if you're bigger than your opponent, disadvantage if they're bigger than you.

those are some of the goals i have, last build i had a size secondary attribute that worked like "size gives you vigor (resilience + strength), vigor doesn't give you size" and the difference between attacker and target sizes would be added to accuracy (effectively giving you -1s if you were bigger than your target), but that REALLY bogged the combat down

i wanna know if there are any more streamlined alternatives for size itself, not for its uses

...

I am conveniently running into an opportunity to test out my modern Kick-ass, Watchmen RPG system so that I might actually finish it.

I thought that result looked suspicious so I learned some more about anydice's (weirdass) semantics and found a better answer:

X: 1d10 - 1
Y: 1d10 - 1
function: advant A:n to B:n {
result: [highest of A and B] * 10 + [lowest of A and B]
}
function: disadvant A:n to B:n {
result: [highest of A and B] + [lowest of A and B] * 10
}
output [advant X to Y]
output [disadvant X to Y]

--or--

On a normal d100, each roll is 1% likely. On this advantage roll, the multiples of 11 are 1% likely, the numbers with lower 1s digits than those are 2% likely, and the numbers with higher 1s digits are 0% likely.

How would you feel about:

>Starting Careers that give the players a "starter pack" of items to choose from and general stat/skill bonuses given for free to reflect the character's past experience, but leaving the players to go free besides these starting bonuses - someone with a Soldier career may end up being a knight or a ranger in character creation, but grow to be a spellblade through narrative and leveling
>Level-based progression in which the players gain experience to reach a new level and once they level up they use that same experience to buy points in stats, skills, specializations, purchase abilities, spells, traits, having the advantages of free point-buy with the measurability of level-based systems
>Abilities, Spells and other things asking for a minimum rank in a stat or skill rather than a level

not entirely sure about the starting careers and open level progression because i'm not sure how i really want to handle progression, but it's something i could work wit

I'd try to match it with the rest of your game.

My game has a strong dichotomy between things you can't control and things you can, so a Starting Career path would work best for me.
However, if your game's theme and/or mechanics lend themselves to strict adherence to certain paths (like in a class-based system with no multiclassing, or in a sports theme where players have their specific roles), then it might be better to have a mechanics that mirrors what you already have.

Quick question about attacks that I want y'all's gut feelings on.

Assume you can get 5 attacks a turn. The first attack always does stated weapon damage.
There are also special attacks like Trip, Sunder, or Disarm.

Should additional attacks after the first deal weapon damage like before or should they deal something smaller like +1d6 for each additional attack.
Should special attacks deal full damage, partial damage, or no damage in addition to the special effect?

As a player what would you want to play with
As a DM/Designer what would you want to deal with?

I know there's no context, but I'm just looking for what y'all's feeling about em are

In on itself, this design is better, I am not disputing that.

But when you put it into the sheet, or at least when I try to, fitting things becomes pretty hard. It just looks a little off all in all, where as while the old version was harder to get ahold of... I must admit that it was prettier in pure aesthetic sense.

There was nothing wrong with the first one.

Looks 70s as shit desu

...

Well, yeah. I'll probably stick to it anyway. Better not try to fix what ain't broken lest you might break it.

Why even ask for advice then. You've already been told it's not intuitive, so although it's not "broken" is not good either.

Your new design adds extra shit, that's why it's not an improvement. Look at it as if you're a stranger to the rules, you'll understand

This didn't begin with me asking for advice. In , I explained how my own health system worked because an user asked "How does health and damage work in your game?". I wasn't planning on changing it in the first place.

Also, pic related is the one I'm currently going with, I just decided to make it much more streamlined, because numbering the halves makes it much more manageable. It leaves a little bit of empty space on the character sheet, but it seems pretty manageable, honestly.

Also half of the reason was that I had accidentally saved over the original, but it wasn't that good anyway, and it was pretty easy to redo.

Thank you.

One of my many homebrews work like this. Each class have a "starter perk" exclusively when choosing the class at first level. Allied with unrestricted multiclass, this makes a Warrior 1 / Wizard 1 different than a Wizard 1 / Warrior 1.

Each class works like a skill tree that improve options instead of growing big numbers