Open Legend

>mobilefag whining about webpage formatting

Making wise ass retorts rather than simply answering the question is the sign of an asshole.

If you can't take the bantz, go back to your safe space.

If you can't take me calling you what you are, go back to your basement.

>Am I overlooking some redeeming qualities or is the system as bad as it looks to me?
Nope, you aren't. If mechanics are able to impact your enjoyment of a game, steer clear of Open Legend. The way they present and use exploding dice reeks of the nautral 20 meme, where the fun of the game comes from cuh-razy rolls.

Do we need to call the waambulance, you crybaby?

D&D at least has the decency to inform you that a 10 is the human average.

Attributes are incredibly vague (Energy includes too much distinct stuff, including overlap with Creation and Movement), while Banes and Boons are highly specific, especially when it comes to their association with Attributes. Why can't you inflict Fear with Energy (fire everywhere)? Why can't you Demoralize with Deception if you can do it with Persuasion and Presence? Why are Learning, Logic, Deception and Persuasion mechanically near useless while Agility and Might get all the good stuff?

>If mechanics are able to impact your enjoyment of a game,
Frankly, I don't understand how mechanics could somehow NOT impact my enjoyment of a game. If mechanics don't matter anyway, why not play freeform?
For that matter, why not reduce all Banes, Boons and Feats in Open Legend to merely descriptive tags and just mete out Advantages and Disadvantages according to those tags? That would probably be much closer to the system's self-portrayal.

I don't like the system. I may be a self absorbed 4rrie, but it really feels like a bunch of ideas that came about because someone took a look at 4e (more broadly, WotC D&D in general) and martial powers, and went "wow, this breaks my immersion! Let's fix all the ways it breaks my immersion in!".

Yeah, sure, it gives you the illusion that you can try anything! Your rogue could try the same "attack and shieldpush at the same time" maneuver as the fighter, and not because he has a power for it, but because obviously, everyone should be able to try! With like, a -10 modifier.

Except the mechanics are opaque as fuck. You have about 50% chance to succeed on any single trick that is at the max level of your attribute and you haven't spent feats on. This makes them absolutely way too risky, and massively encourages being a one trick pony.

If you don't specialize, you'll be left with like 20 equally shitty options which can easily lead to decision paralysis.

You are absolutely best off minmaxing to get the best attack roll you possibly, since you can just add free boons to it if you roll over a target's AC (which is capped anyway).

BTW feats are stupid as shit, with basically no rhyme or reason balance-wise (same is true for bane/boons and attributes). Multiattack being a feat (hell, being a thing at all) is retarded as hell.

>Frankly, I don't understand how mechanics could somehow NOT impact my enjoyment of a game. If mechanics don't matter anyway, why not play freeform?
People somehow enjoy shit like 5e D&D, so I'd say that there are plenty who just don't care about mechanics. They show up, have a good time with their friends and maybe roll a natural 20 or three, slam back beer and pretzels and everything's good.

Even if you did reduce all of that to descriptive tags, you're now doing work to fix their system, when you could instead be using another system suited to your needs. And it still doesn't fix how handwave-y and mushy the system is. It really does read like something meant for the casual gamer, written by people who had no idea what they were doing (which is business as usual with tabletop games).

>Why can't you inflict x with y?
The developers probably intended you to invest in another attribute so you don't dump all your points into three stats

>Why can't you Demoralize with Deception?
Because making someone doubt their own abilities can only rarely be accomplished through lies. That being said, GMs are encouraged to allow such deviations from the rules if you can justify them(maybe you've learned some secret about your opponent?).
The rules are supposed to be guidelines that help you structure the game, they cannot account for every eventuality, no ruleset can.
The developers always stress that fun>rules.

>Learning... are mechanically near useless
No, they just don't have many boons/banes associated with them. They still have plenty of impact out of combat.

>Why not reduce it all to descriptive tags...
That would make the rules too light. The game is supposed to have a certain level of crunchiness so character creation and gameplay are still interesting. It's not supposed to be purely narrative, because then there wouldn't BE a game.

>The rules are supposed to be guidelines that help you structure the game, they cannot account for every eventuality, no ruleset can.
>The developers always stress that fun>rules.
While this is true to a point, too often game designers use it as a shield to hide behind when someone calls them out on their shitty rules. Your job as a game designer is to make rules that amplify fun. If your rules aren't doing that, you've failed as a game designer. If your rules are so vague that the GM has to adjudicate every step of the way, you've failed as a game designer. If your rules don't make the intended mode of play for your game fun, forcing GMs to homebrew better rules, you've failed as a game designer.

5e is fine, it's simple and doesn't get in the way. I prefer more involved systems.

>The developers probably intended you to invest in another attribute so you don't dump all your points into three stats

And yet they gave you a feat to substitute (also, you'll just invest in the best stats).

>Because making someone doubt their own abilities can only rarely be accomplished through lies.

How about demoralizing them through making them think I'm more dangerous than they think? If I tell them convincingly that I'm the fabled Killer of a Thousand Men, verily, they should shit their pants. If they think they can not hit me, because my armor is unbreakable, maybe they'll think twice before trying to strike, etc.

>The developers always stress that fun>rules.
Okay so then why have so many rules...
>It's not supposed to be purely narrative, because then there wouldn't BE a game.
But these particular rules are getting in the way of fun. Not to mention there would be quite a number of rules left, like the bane/boon list and feats.

>You have about a fifty percent chance to succeed
And a fifty percent chance to either succeed at a cost, or fail in a way that progresses the story. This rule is literally called Every Roll Matters.
But if you're just risk-averse, try a lower-ranked boon. There's still plenty of options.

>If you don't specialize, you'll be left with like 20 equally shitty options which can easily lead to decision paralysis.
Unless you literally have no character concept, the list is gonna be small.
Want to be a barbarian pushing people around?
Forced Move, Immobile, Knockdown, Slowed, Stunned; that's five options right there, can't be too many for you.
If you want to draw enemy fire away from your friends, add provoked to that list.
A healer has Heal and/or Regenerate, plus Bolster if he wants to buff.

>you can just add free banes
Fixed it for you.

>Multiattack being a feat (hell, being a thing at all) is retarded as hell.
Do you mind explaining why?

>People somehow enjoy shit like 5e D&D, so I'd say that there are plenty who just don't care about mechanics. They show up, have a good time with their friends and maybe roll a natural 20 or three, slam back beer and pretzels and everything's good.
But even the enjoyment of that sort of people is impacted by the mechanics. Negatively, that is. They would be better off playing something super light, where you just roll a die every now and then without any bigger mechanical considerations to be had.

>Even if you did reduce all of that to descriptive tags, you're now doing work to fix their system, when you could instead be using another system suited to your needs.
That was really more of a rhethorical question and one meant to apply on a core design level, not on a table application level.

>The developers probably intended you to invest in another attribute so you don't dump all your points into three stats
Then they should have provided either hard limits (which they have, actually) or provided actual incentives, because as it stands, dumping as many points as you can into three stats seems to be the best option.

>Because making someone doubt their own abilities can only rarely be accomplished through lies.
Portray the situation worse than it is, making the target doubt its ability to overcome the situation. Simple, really.

>The rules are supposed to be guidelines that help you structure the game
And that's where it falls apart, because there is no discernible thematic or mechanical structure to the rules. It's not that I want the system to account for every eventuality, I want it to provide a sensible basic framework. Which it doesn't.

>No, they just don't have many boons/banes associated with them. They still have plenty of impact out of combat.
Except banes and boons are a very central mechanic of the system and by far not limited to combat.

>That would make the rules too light.
Better too light than inconsistent.

>Do you mind explaining why?
Because a combat turn is a complicated thing, with dodges, parries and strikes. It is absolutely not swinging your sword only once, which is what having multiple attacks heavily implies it is (this is also why I hate TWF being back to being an extra attack in 5e).

Besides that, action economy is king, and MA literally translates to multiple actions. It being a feat means you have a really fucking hard time balancing shit between characters.

Its probably not the most broken feat (which is saying something), its possible that the most broken builds don't even take it, but it being a feat at all is stupid. It's a force multiplier. If you want "take multiple actions at a penalty" to be an option at all, it should be a universal one, something you can base the base assumptions of the system on, not something you need to spend feats on.

>while this is true to a point
And that point seems to be subjective. I've seen plenty of people who love the system, but if you don't that's fine.

>And yet they gave you a feat to substitute
Which will cost you four feat points in this case.

>How about demoralizing them through making them think I'm more dangerous than they think?
That lie won't work if you obviously can't back it up. You'd need to be intimidating to pull that off.

>But these particular rules are getting in the way of fun
If you feel that way, the system might not be for you. Others don't.

>Not to mention there would be quite a number of rules left, like the bane/boon list and feats
>why not reduce all Banes, Boons and Feats in Open Legend to merely descriptive tags

>dodges, parries
Defend Interrupt action actively, wearing armour and a shield/having Agility passively
If someone fails an attack roll, they can still hurt you - at a cost. Maybe both parties suffer damage, representing a counter-attack. One example in the rules seems quite good:
"Vera hurls herself at the red dragon attempting to cut through his scaly hide. However, her attack roll fails to hit the dragon’s Guard of 25. She chooses to inflict 3 damage, but the GM also gets a choice.
He chooses to inflict the knockdown bane: The dragon’s tail lashes around and sweeps Vera to the floor."

I've been reading the rules off and on for most of today and I don't think it's so bad as all that.

Open Legend says 0 in a score is human average.

Extraordinary attributes can represent anything that the group (well, the GM) finds justifiable: they're distinct from the more immediately descriptive attribute in that they're more effect-based, like powers in Mutants & Masterminds.
In M&M a guy can have Jump as a movement power, but that doesn't tell you where the ability to superjump is actually coming from (brute strength, a magic aura, pneumatic boots, whatever). Those details and how they interact with things are down to the group understanding what they're actually building and keeping those properties in mind.

The impression I get is that the Boon/Bane details are largely a balance measure. Like, the "fire freaking people out" could certainly be expressed with Demoralize, while full-on mindless Fear seems to be intentionally much more gated off when it comes to being able to access it.

Part of it is also that the expectation is that if you have knowledge or persuasion/deception abilities that allow more extended things you'll either invest a few points in an attribute representing that or take one of a few feats designed to allow you to short-circuit the default expectations. Just skimming through the example 'archteypes' in the character creation section has a couple of good examples of that. The "Hacker" has Prescience and is designed to use the Precognition boon, but instead of literally seeing the future it represents keeping close tabs on everything and heuristically running numbers across a bunch of different computers.
And then there's the "Chronomage" which has the first level of the 'attribute substitution' feat to represent their time control (Movement) letting them interact with certain things as if they're exceptionally coordinated, just from the reaction time.

>they're distinct from the more immediately descriptive attribute in that they're more effect-based
Except they're not. That's exactly the problem. The effects possible do not describe the attribute, but neither does the attribute describe the effects possible.You're supposed to arbitrarily define what the attributes actually mean within pointlessly vague guidelines and then arbitrarily determine which of the Banes and Boons agree with that arbitrary definition. This means that the extraordinary attributes have no other effect than restricting possible character concepts through their association with particular Banes and Boons.
A "create your own attribute" system that lets you assemble a predetermined amount of Banes and Boons and assign a number to them would have made much more sense.

>Like, the "fire freaking people out" could certainly be expressed with Demoralize, while full-on mindless Fear seems to be intentionally much more gated off when it comes to being able to access it.
But that would have to be a matter of Power Level, not attribute. By assigning stronger effects to particular attributes, you create a hierarchy between attributes, which is the oppposite of balance.

>pointlessly vague guidelines
You're looking at this all very backwards. The guidelines are pretty clear--read the character creation section. First thing you do is start with a character concept. THEN you assign attributes. Their attributes are expressions of that concept and operate as such. The ways they'll be able to use them are expressions of concept. What boons or banes they're going to be able to use are expressions of that concept.

Except all the attributes do is hamstring your ability to express your character concept.

The attribute descriptions (extraordinary attributes in particular) are so vague as to be useless in both guiding the character concept in a direction beneficial for the game and translating the character concept into mechanics. Thanks to their extremely uneven distribution of Banes and Boons and their thematic inconsistency, all attributes do is keep you from picking the Banes and Boons that would be relevant to your character concept.