/tg/ - Traditional Games

I'm currently designing my own rules-medium fantasy homebrew. I'm stuck on the initiative system though.

Currently, I've got:

> Characters with ready range weapons plus characters concealed at the start of combat either go first or get a big bonus

> Initiative order is based on a random roll, modified by wits and battle experience

Any elegant/tg/entlemen got any ideas?

>>201976

No initiative. Act clockwise around the table. GM decides whether he goes first, or which player goes first. After that it goes clockwise.

Fuck initiative. I'm not even trolling. Every system like WoD and Shadowrun had to make exceptions in their core mechanic just to be like D&D's shit-tarded initiative system.

It's time for something new.

I was working on a weird system that I can only describe as a tabletop mix of undertale, earthbound, and fallout

I am making military units for my races and cultures. They will be used whenever the players end up commandeering in tactical warfare. You have normal-purpose troops, elite troops and specialized troops roughly, the first kind being useful mostly because of its statistics and what it does (spearmen > cavalry, obviously, etc). The second kind are elite units, like Varangians or knights, self-explanatory. The third kind are usually useful because of their abilities. For example, one of the specialist units of that race that invented crossbows and perfected their design is a sharpshooter and can snipe a specific target with great damage and perfect or high accuracy (still haven't designed). Such a unit and the special masterwork crossbow he wields are very precious and quite rare so it's not the rank and file soldier that you send in to the frontline. It's truly valuable and is worth its weight if you manage it carefully. Use him to snipe officers and generals or the other specialist units of the enemy, for example, but on his own he's going to do less damage than basic crossbowmen before he gets killed.

I plan to have tactical combat in scenarios where the players gain control of mercenaries, their own army, or lent troops (if they ever want to play that way). Imagine they carry out a mandate to eliminate a local mercenary band gone rogue and can requisition various troops:

3 spearmen squads (basic levies, light armour, 7 men each)

2 border patrol squads (all-purpose jungle rovers,crossbow and sword + fire pot, improved camouflage, 5 men each)

2 sharpshooter squads (elite crossbowmen, medium armour, sword, improved camouflage, high accuracy, has true aim, 3 men each)

1 sharpshooter ace (ranged specialist unit, improved camouflage, has true aim, can snipe)

1 mounted ballista and crew (superior quality medium ballista on a cart, can be unloaded to go off-road, can fire burning shots, 4 siege operators, crew can build fortifications).

Let's say they're against…. Gnolls (Exiled)

5 raider squads (medium armour, weapon and shield, improved camouflage, 3 males each)

3 archer squads (medium armour, bow, light weapon, improved camouflage, 3 males each)

1 war hunter squad (medium armour, weapon, 6 combat hyenas, 2 males each)

1 reaver squad (elite assault unit,heavy armour, two-handed weapon, improved charge, improved morale damage, 3 females each)

3 champions (melee specialist unit, heavy armour, 2 weapons, improved charge, improved morale damage, can berserk, has blood frenzy, has battle cry, has die hard, has leadership, female)

*Improved camouflage: harder to be detected, provides some protection against special detection abilities

*True aim: unit unaffected by partial concealment of target and certain other bonuses, reduces penalty of or reduces to a penalty high-tier dodging abilities

*Snipe: fires a highly-lethal, perfectly accurate missile at single target, even at long distances. Will kill most targets outright. Cannot use while threatened.

*Improved charge: charge does +50% damage and shock value.

*Improved morale damage: on attack, deals +50% morale damage

*Berserk: has a chance to go berserk during each combat round (cannot retreat until target destroyed,+50% DMG, HP, dodge and speed, immune to mind effects and pain)

*Blood frenzy: +10% DMG and HP for each round in combat (max: 5 rounds), -10% each round out of combat.

*Battle cry: +25% charge damage and shock value, +25% damage and morale damage for self and allies in zone during turn

*Die hard: 50% chance of being seriously wounded rather than dead. Unit taking lethal damage instead takes half its max HP as damage.

*Leadership: enables advanced tactics, formations and organization with commanded units. Can raise morale, reduce morale damage. Permanent morale bonus until out of action.

And thus D&D goes back to wargaming…

…Granted, I'm doing that for DW. But hey.

>>202453

The examples you used on the skills are off. Dr Manhattan may be a genius, but there's no reason to assume he's more intelligent than Einstein.

This, and your descriptions are far from helpful:

>1 : Below Average Willpower

>2 : Average Willpower

>3 : Above Average Willpower (Oh-De-Su OldBoy)

>4 : More than human Willpower (Kamina from Gurren Lagan, or Kariya from Fate/Zero)

>5 : Impossible feats of Willpower (Samurai Jack, Batman)

>6 : The pride of tradition, style, and etiquette never falter. (Rock Lee from Naruto, Alex Louis Armstrong from Full Metal Alchemist)

>7 : Demigod of Willpower (Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z)

>8 : God of Willpower, possibly changing the world around you using your own will. (Haruhi Suzimiha)

>>202453

>Your maximum carrying capacity (comfortably) is equal to your Strength times 30.

>The maximum amount that you can lift over your head (While Struggling) starts at 50 for having 1 Strength, and then increases by 50 for every point in Strength thereafter.

At strength 8 - the highest level possible, which you described with "Chuck Norris Jokes", that would give you an Overhead Press of 400 lbs. Vid related.

>>203673

You are mistaking Intelligence for Wit.

As far as the descriptions being far from helpful, do you have an example of what you mean by that? As it stands I either feel you aren't knowledgeable of any of the pop-culture references, or you're saying that the short text before the examples aren't helpful and I'm not sure which.

>>203675

>Your maximum carrying capacity (comfortably) is equal to your Strength times 30.

>The maximum amount that you can lift over your head (While Struggling) starts at 50 for having 1 Strength, and then increases by 50 for every point in Strength thereafter.

Wow yeah, that does need to be updated. I updated a few of the others instead of Strength originally. I'll be sure to update that. I've been working on making Attunement work more than anything right now. How does this sound?

>Once a character has reached level 6, their carrying capacity and amount they can lift over their head doubles. This process repeats for level 7. At level 8, the amount a character can lift is entirely up to GM's discretion.

I have no idea if this has been done before, but I posted my concept in the Furry RPG General, mostly because of my off-chance of including furry, intelligent, playable, creatures.

The idea is 3.X, but fuck classes.

You got three, Warrior/Gunner, Specailist, Mage. They simply exist because you need something resembling a class for your saves and base attack bonus. You can guess which ones get the better of what.

What makes my system slightly special is that every level, without exception, you get a feat, be it a Bonus Feat or Class Feat.

Class Feats can be taken from the "Feat Groups" that are simple. Martial, Magical, General, Firearms (optional). And subgroups within. Bonus feats have no restriction on which group they are used in (to keep classes somewhat seperate. Don't want fighters outmaging the mage) This is so DMs can designate which Feat Groups are in use for a game. So, want your typical Fantasy setting? Remove Firearms Use. Want WoD like setting? Remove High Magic feat subgroup.

I'm writing this book with the force of a thousand suns, but shit is taking FOREVER.

>>205396

> every level, without exception, you get a feat

Sounds like a lot to keep track of.

>>203477

Funny, until I looked closer, I thought he had a literal clock-face.

No game ever does full auto and or semi auto fire correctly. How many times you've been through multiple encounters with a 30 round magazine because there were not 30 people to kill?

Meanwhile, in real combat, it is quite normal to waste multiple mags for no kills, as most fire is for suppression and not for killing, anyway.

So I've set to make things right, and I'll try to explain the basic logic of what I've done (since I am doing a full homewbrew system, posting the proper rules would take a lot of effort and time and a pdf with quite a lot of pages).

But I can provide a basic outline for understanding: My system is running d10 dice pools. Whenever you roll less or equal to 5, you get a success. Whenever you roll less or equal to skill, you get an additional success.

>e.g. rolling 3d10 with "Marksmanship" skill 8 results in [3, 7, 9]. 3 Successes, one for rolling equal or under 5 (3), two for rolling equal or under 8 (3 and 7).

Successes are not only to check if the shot hits, but also acts as a multiplier of the base damage (and penetration): More powerful calibers may have stronger damages, but in the end, shot placement is key.

The number of d10s rolled in a shot is dependent on the weapon "usability" or "ergonomics" stat, which may be upgraded artuficially with weapon customization or naturally with experience with the weapon system. For example, a pistol may have a "usability" of 3. You may up it to 5 by putting a stock on it, or slowly climb it to 4 and 5 and 6 with training and use, for example. An AR may have a "usability" of 7, so on, so forth.

For the purposes of multiple shots, we also take into account the "Recoil" stat: It goes from 1 (non-existent or negligible recoil) to 5 (extreme recoil).

Resting a weapon upon a surface increases usability and might reduce recoil, depending on how good is the rest (just resting a rifle on a sandbag or wall or window or corpse may give just +1 usability, resting it with a bipod may give +3 usability and -1 recoil and so on…)

Concealment makes targets harder to hit (+ Difficulty), and Cover makes it harder to hit AND damage (+ Difficulty and Armor Level). There's also a lot more little things on Accuracy and Mobility and Aiming, but they are not relevant for this.

Now, how we actually shoot things:

For every "shoot" action, you may fire up to [RoF] rounds in full auto, or [Agility] (goes from 1 to 10) rounds in Semi Auto (or [Agility / 2] for single action revolvers, or [Agility / 3] for pump actions and bolt actions and…). You roll your pool once, on your usability.

Add successes from Usability and Skill. Good. Now, for each dice equal to 1 OR to a multiple of Recoil that is also a success, you add +[n] Successes ((defined in weapon damage), up to the number of rounds fired. Less complicated than it sounds, I suck at explaining:

Lets say Akbar PC, of Close Combat skill 6 goes "I turn to him and press the trigger" with his [RoF=18][Usability=6][Recoil=3] AK. He rolls 6d10 = 1, 3, 3, 6, 9, 10. 7 Sucesses from his roll (2 from 1, 2 from 3, 2 from 3, 1 from 6) + 5 Sucesses from autofire (1 from 1 for being 1, 1 from 3 for being multiple of Recoil, 1 from 3 for being multiple of Recoil, 1 from 6 for being multiple of Recoil, but NOT 1 for 9, despite being a multiple of recoil, because it wasn't successful).

Since when supporting your weapon Usability increases and Recoil decreases, the chance to lay down effective autofire increases greatly.

In another example, Operator PC with Close Combat skill 10 and Agility 8 goes "I shoot him twice in the face with my shotgun", his peculiar shotgun being a regular pump-action (meaning ~= 3 Ag required per shot) [Usability=7][Recoil=5] because I want to imagine it being one of those 23mm surplus-AA-cannon-barelled russian anti-riot goodnesses. Let's suppose he gets a weirdly lucky roll of his 7d10 as = 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5. He gets 14 successes from his roll (2 from each 5), and COULD get +7 * [n] for the 7 multiples of 5 (let's suppose [n] being 4 for the sheer size of the slug fired), but since he only fired 1 shot additional to his first, he may only count 1 of those recoil successes. 14 + 4, then. 18.

>>207009

And there you go. To-hit, autofire and damage in a single pool roll. And if it works correctly, as in real situations, there is a rational incentive to putting a lot of lead into your target whenever possible, as you are not in any way penalized by it, and it only increases your chance of doing damage AND hitting (as if your initial successes weren't enough, those volume-of-fire successes added later could be the ones that make you hit). No such thing as being too sure or too dead. But, as said, shooting is not for killing only - after all, you'll never hit your full lead payload if you're firing 20 rounds full-auto. That's where suppression comes in:

Take your sucesses of the "to-hit" roll. All of them (or lack thereof). Including the autofire ones. Do [Successes - Difficulty] (as would be done to see if it hits, anyway). Add to it the total number of rounds fired. Subtract from the value the enemy experience/veterancy/radicalism/dedication/whatever (0 to 5 - from unwilling green civilians to weathered die-for-the-cause veterans). That end result is the "suppression" value of the roll. The one resisting suppression may roll his attribute of [Willpower]d10 (1 to 10) on Tactics/Cohesion skill against the value - if he suceeds, no suppression. If he fails, he is at +Difficulty equal to the result to do anything other than hunker down.

Note that if the initial shots do not hit, you will get a negative value on Successes - Difficulty. And that's the idea, consider it a negative value that will counterbalance your volume of fire if you're a crapshoot.

So, SAW PC fired 21 rounds and had gotten -3 successes at first (21-3, we're at 18). His Jihadi John target is full psycho from seeing homoerotic picture of his favorite prophet, so let's consider a 5 on experience/motivation here (18-5, we're at 13). Jihadi John may roll his [Willpower(Cohesion)] to resist suppression if he wants to react in any way besides hitting the dirt. His cohesion is 1 from poor training, but his willpower is 8 for strong will in achieving his 7000 virgin cuteboys. He rolls 8d10 = 1, 3, 6, 3, 9, 1, 5, 3 for 8 Successes. (13 - 8, we're at 5 suppression). Thus, if he wants to fire back or somesuch, he will have +5 Difficulty on his rolls.

If wanting to suppress an Area instead of a point target, simply spread the Suppression value equally among everyone in the area, rounding high for each.

In another example, Jihadi John was firing his AK at the nearby NATO patrol, wildly and over his head while shouting for his favorite god to guide his bullets. Since he failed his Luck roll to attract aloha's fortune, we consider his 15 shots at -17 sucesses. Well, no need to consider much, we're at -2 suppression from his lack of accuracy: His shots, despite the big volume, are too spread out to suppress anyone, nevermind the fact he'd have to divide his successes among all the patrol members, if he had any.

And there you go, in theory, one roll for to-hit, autofire, damage and suppression, that encourages shooting more for more chances to kill and achieving that fire superiority as fast as possible, because if your volume of fire isn't matched to that of your enemies, they will lock you in place, outmaneuver you and shoot your suppressed plump butt dead. So you better shoot more than them, even if you're not hitting. Specially if you're not hitting - keep their head down while you move closer.

Enjoy finally burning through kilos and kilos of ammo and needing to scramble every single mag possible from the dead stalkers while feeling terribly undergunned when needing to conserve ammo.

Well, at least in theory.

Is it good, /tg/?

>>207010

>Is it good, /tg/?

Very complicated, but fine if you are going for rules-heavy. Otherwise, check out the Savage Worlds autofire system. It involves wasting lots of ammo on auto and represents it fairly "realistically" while still being pulp. basically you get 3 or 4 attacks (depending on rate of fire) at -2.

been thinking of how to make a 2d6 system, i finally wondered if roll-under was faster than roll + adds. Partly because of my autofire system: I like multiple attacks at a penalty, and having a shooting skill of 7, that you adjust to 5 and then roll the dice three times, is quicker than rolling them three times, then adding your +1 for shooting, then subtracting -2, for each of three attacks.

I am thinking of having five stats: Brawn Agility Spirit Intelligence and Charisma. That way it spells "BASIC" which is kind of dumb and gimmicky but whatever.

The system would work a bit like GURPS where you get 10 character points to make your character, buy skills, etc.. Each stat would be average of 6 for a human. Skills would cost triangularly (so 1 point for level 1, 3 points for level 2, 6 points for level 3, etc.).

So you might spend 3 points to improve Agility from 6 to 8, then 1 point on Shooting 1. So when you roll shooting, you are rolling against 9 to hit, minus any ranged penalties.

All skills will default to attribute -3, there won't be any giant complicated skill lists like in GURPS.

I am also thinking of making melee combat resisted by a defense roll (what I loved about GURPS was two high-skilled swordsmen could duel for a long time without anyone hitting, because a highly-skilled swordsman failed Parry checks only rarely). However, I don't thiink ranged attacks will be, I will just rely on range penalties (which will be pretty steep) and cover to make hitting more difficult.

So in melee, a guy rolls fighting, then the other guy rolls fighting or defense or whatever to dodge. At range, a guy shooting at someone 50 feet away will probably get -2 to hit, so even with an 8 or 9 in Shooting he's got a good chance of missing.

I guess if I had to TLDR this idea, it'd be GURPS 2d6 lite. The things I liked about GURPS (the character points, the fast resolution, the way defending against attacks worked) would be included. The rest would be a try at a rules-light, skirmishy RPG without the huge amount of rules that GURPS has.

I say this because my project originally was nothing like GURPS, it was 2d6 + a skill (no stats) versus TN 9. Or 8. I fiddled with the TN a lot to get the odds I wanted, and it drove me nuts. Not to mention, characters felt a bit lackluster without stats, but adding in stat + skill would unbalance the game, because 2d6 doesn't have a very high number range / deviation.

I guess what I'm going for is a rules-light generic system, but most of the ones I've found either aren't really lite (Savage Worlds starts out lite and works well but ends up with quite a few rules) or are narative like FATE and Apocalypse World (and those games have giant books as well). I'm looking for something to fit on 10 or so pages in a nice little folded booklet I'm working on, that will be a good fast system with no extraneous rules or inelegant subsystems kludged on.

So, nothing blindingly original, just trying to fill a niche that doesn't seem to exist.

The only other thing I am trying to go for with this would be to replace Vitality (boring ol' hit points) with a Toughness / Wounds system to cut down on book keeping. I can't think of a good way to include this in the roll-under mechanic, but I figured GURPS has roll high for damage so it wouldn't be too big a deal here either. It's just adding that in would be new subsystem and I am trying to avoid too many divergent mechanics here.

>>207054

>complicated

Exactly what I was trying to avoid. May I ask why?

I thought keeping it all contained on a single roll would keep it streamlined and fast.

Not at all aiming for rules-light, too. But also not going full rules-heavy simulationist, I want to keep it fast - above all, it needs to be fast - and crunchy.

>Savage Worlds autofire

Wouldn't work for me. Firstly, because my brew does not use multiple damage rolls ( or any damage rolls) at all.

Secondly, because it doesn't encompass semi-auto and the most important thing in autofire: Suppression.

>>207058

>Damage

So, a character with 4 Strength does no damage at all?

>>207199

>So, a character with 4 Strength does no damage at all?

Oops… actually it would turn out to be a penalty to the base damage of 1d6, which I forgot to write in.

> Exactly what I was trying to avoid. May I ask why?

Yes, hang on a second.

>>207199

Okay so for one thing I'm not a huge fan of the resolution mechanic:

> Whenever you roll less or equal to 5, you get a success. Whenever you roll less or equal to skill, you get an additional success.

Though I do not understand how dice pools are assembled in your game.

> Successes are not only to check if the shot hits, but also acts as a multiplier of the base damage (and penetration): More powerful calibers may have stronger damages, but in the end, shot placement is key.

This is good.

> The number of d10s rolled in a shot is dependent on the weapon "usability" or "ergonomics" stat, which may be upgraded artuficially with weapon customization or naturally with experience with the weapon system.

Ah okay I understand a bit more now. I kinda only skimmed your post before. Also: usability not 'accuracy''?

But anyway, looking at your actual example, it requires a lot of math after the fact, so if it's meant to be fast, you're kind of losing the benfit of a single roll, to the extra time required to figure out multiples.

It's not necessarily bad, it's just that there are systems that could resolve damage faster.

I hope this helps…. let me know if you want elaboration and I can try to elaborate some more.

>>207238

>Oops… actually it would turn out to be a penalty to the base damage of 1d6

Ah, yes. Then its pretty good and consistent!

This is added to melee weapons damage, I take it (so, for example, a knife 2d6 - 2)?

I like it, even though I tend not to like rules-light a lot. And 2d6 is a nice roll with some nice distributions, so yeah.

I would nitpick on

>Kevlar: Armor 4

As Kevlar sucks in taking blows, compared to shots. And I suppose a dedicated Character (and Character Creationg) section is coming later - it would be nice to read it.

>>207240

>Also: usability not 'accuracy''?

Yes. Accurate weapons do not make one shoot better, and are not at all easier to aim - they just mean that you're hiting where you are pointing, but no weapon will help if you're pointing wrong.

Thus, I went with usability, not accuracy - accuracy is another stat that defines the largest possible number of successes a weapon may have (even if you roll more, you can have only up to accuracy).

So you can have a weapon with huge usability and very small accuracy, for example - very ergonomic and easy to point, but with very large spread of shots and not at all precise. In the other hand, when range increases and so does the Difficulty to hit, some weapons with lower accuracy will simply not be up for the job, no matter how skilled is the shooter.

That was the reasoning, at least.

>multiples

For 1, everything.

For 2: 2, 4, 6 and 8. And 1.

For 3: 3, 6, and 9. And 1.

For 4: 4 and 8. And 1.

For 5: 5 (and 1) only, as 10 is failure regardless.

Multiples are on each individual result of each individual die. No sum needed, no multiple and division of successes. Just look up if the dice has them numbers.

>Recoil 2, roll 4 d10, get [4, 5, 6, 7]. 2 autofire successes as 4 and 6 are multiples of 2.

I'm kinda justifying myself because I really, really suck at explaining. Do not take this wrongly, I'm not trying to defend my idea, I just want to make sure that I made myself understood in order to take criticism in the right place and make things better.

>>207010

Look into EABA.

bump

>>211635

>>211640

fucking christ hotwheels you're killing me here

>>211635

>>211640

Hoo yes. Work is needed. I was hesitant to go into a big section on actually building the tanks because a) it seemed kind of self-evident and b) these were playtest rules intended to be pretty easy to pick up and go. More careful restrictions on how vehicles are put together are definitely needed- in one game one of the players just loaded 7 MGs on to one of his tanks and cherry-tapped everyone else to death.

The stat tracking is a bit of an issue- I have a spreadsheet that will automatically build tanks for you, but I haven't yet figured out a way to translate that to paper.

I'll probably set up a system for scaling game time to points, but in the playtest we found that matches tended to degrade into drawn-out long-range sniping contests between the last vehicles on each side, hence the turn limit.

I'll add options for multiple games in series/games where you can modify your tank force between rounds to adapt to the enemy's tactics.

I'm torn between recording an actual playtest or making one up for examples of play.

Hmmmmm… the 4E grid rule might work well. I'll look into that, thank you!

Turning costs 1 point of mobility per 45 degrees of turn. It's in the movement section somewhere, I think.

As for removing randomness… I'm not sure how that would work? What would be stopping one player from building a bunch of vehicles with really heavy guns and then just hammering the enemy when they're within range. Maybe reducing the random element- make hits more common?

Anyways, thanks!

I'm currently writing up notes for a 5e port of Guild Wars' Ritualist class. Looking like it's gonna be a half-caster but rather than having martial proficiency to make up for the lower spellcasting power, there'll be a major side mechanic that lets the character bind spirits to their service. You bind some number of spirits at rest, and they all give passive buffs or abilities. If you're in dire need, you can break a bond with a spirit to get a powerful effect, like healing a lot of life to nearby allies.

What do you guys think about a half-caster that uses a side mechanic to improve the spellcasting ability? I figure one of the archetypes will get a second attack and some armor proficiency, while another might get a way to reclaim spell slots.

>>211676

Not too familiar with 5e, but couldn't you just make that spirit-binding power another kind of spell?

>>212032

Would the field zone be location-based? Like, would this be as much about the arrangement of the cards as about the types of cards in play? I'm having difficulty visualizing how the setup would look.

>>203436

So utter shit?

>>203436

>my system/game/story is mix of X, Y and Z

its not yours if you can't describe it without using other games as refferences

>>201976

savage worlds has the best initiative system Ive ever used. Everyone draws a card from a deck and it goes from ace of spades down. jokers act when they want. I like the idea of a new initiative every turn.

>>212542

True, but a giant part of his character is that he's still human. His arc is more him coming to terms that intelligence isn't what makes a being.

>>213566

Forgot to add…

Which means while he is very intelligent in a literal sense he is also very stupid when it comes to understanding humans who are so much less intelligent or complex as the phenomena that he has seen and understands.

>>212542

Big Gary-Stu…

I'm working on a tabletop miniature wargame, heavily inspired by 40k but lighter on the rules and dividing the focus between combat and creating 'infrastructure' (generic term for systems and features that improve your ability to fight). I'm planning on someday making it into a vidya, but for now I'm writing rules to make it playable on a hex-based mat. My biggest differences between this and 40k/other wargames is that I use three Z-levels in my maps/battlefields (which are intended to be mostly desolate and empty). Ground level, where armies deploy initially; sky level, where flying units can enter and move around in; and ground level, where some special units can create entrances to and dig tunnels, but any land units can access through said entrances.

Most of the armies revolve around a few 'gimmicks', which are generally designed to ensure that you don't start the game with your army as strong as it could be in that scenario. For example, I've got a race of bug-creatures inspired by zerg/nids, and most of their best units have to be grown from eggs which hatch underground, lain by queens who produce very slowly unless fed a few dead bodies. Most of their units are replaceable, meaning after your squad of fatties dies, you can hatch another one.

Having a hard time giving factions/armies their own flavor to make them 'unique'. Designing this thing is a ton of fun though, and if all goes well I'll be testing it out this weekend or next.

>>211676

GW's Ritualist's two big defining spirit powers are:

- High sustained ranged damage in smallish packets (offensive spirit spam)

- Party-wide limited use protection (defensive spirits, which affect everyone in range but tend to die fastish if a lot of damage is happening)

Those are the main characteristics.

On top of that you also have direct healing spells which usually work better with a spirit nearby, and some buffs (defensive/offensive, through weapon spells, and self-buffs via ashes, which can be dropped to end the self-buff and have one bonus effect when dropped).

The Ritualist's own direct damage spells are trash and not worth considering at all.

Generally, Ritualists serve as either artillery placers or as party-wide prot (in contrast to Monks who usually focus on protting one person at a time but far more effectively; both have their advantages in particular circumstances and a party ideally has both).

>>213702

In terms of the meta of the class at the time I played, you're right. Spirit spam was the dominant strategy for PvE but I played a variety of builds and I'm trying mostly to get the flavor of the class rather than the particular playstyle.

So far I've got a half caster with the following features, partly ripped off from other homebrew classes:

>Spirit Binding: You bind spirit(s) to your service during rest and gain a passive bonus of some kind depending on the spirit. Each spirit has a passive bonus and a 'severance' effect that can be triggered by breaking the bond.

This is kind of like the "ashes" spells that the ritualist had - There were a number of them that only had a passive buff or an on-drop effect, but I like the concept a lot.

>Archetypes gain certain bonuses for having spirits bound, or additional effects for severance - for example, the Channeler archetype regains some number of spell slots when breaking a spirit bond. When dealing lightning damage, you can add extra damage that scales with the amount of spirit bonds you currently have active.

This is kind of like how the spells that gained additional effects based on nearby spirits worked, and I might make a "spirit attack" ability that grants a ranged attack with damage scaling based on spirits.

>Some new specialized spells for the Ritualist class to represent weapon spells

I'm thinking of writing a few custom spells that kind of work like the Paladin's Smite spells, but you can target allies with them rather than yourself. They would be far more situational and not necessarily give an offensive buff. Vampiric Weapon for example could be used as a reaction when an ally you can see takes damage, and allows the ally to steal Xd6 hit points from the attacker based on spell level.

I'm writing random notes all the time so I figure it's time for me to start assembling a proper class table and stuff. If this one goes well I might try to do the Mesmer class.

>>213568

Not the guy that you are replying to, but the guy who made the system here. I think what you're trying to express is that he isn't Charismatic at all. By D&D standards I think he has like a 4 in CHA. Mainly because he's becoming something that isn't human.

>>213569

4u But yeah, that's his main plot point is that he can do anything.

>>214614

>What should happen when both players play strikes

Both players take damage. Think of strike/strike as your standard "turn" - the guy with the highest strike cards can just tank the lower damage hits because he's gonna kill the other guy first. Totally reasonable

>Lastly, should I invert the way counters work?

Yes

>Also, what resource system do you think is appropriate?

I'm gonna use this to launch into a more general suggestion - you need more stuff going on. It sounds right now like you've just got two health bars whittling each other down, so my suggestion is to have two new types of cards that affect the general attack/block/counter play of the game:

1. "Environment" cards. These are cards that you can place on the field and have a global effect. For example, River might be "All damage is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 1". When you place a new environment card, it replaces the existing one.

2. "Stance" cards. A player can only be in one stance at a time, and playing a new one replaces his old one. These give certain player-specific bonuses, like "crane stance" might give reduce your Counter cards' power (assuming you invert counter numbers) by 1 or similar. Certain attack or block cards might have an additional effect of removing an enemy's stance if the attack or block is successful.

Resource wise, I suggest that you make certain more powerful cards have some requirement. Maybe you've gotta be wounded in the previous turn to play "rage attack" that does more damage than a normal attack card. Maybe "dolphin slash" does double damage in water-based environments, etc.

>>214694

I actually love the idea of environment and stance cards. But yeah the game isnt going to be as nearly barebones as it sounds. I'll try and give most cards some upside requirement to make each turn feel a bit more dynamic.

What do you think about character cards? I plan to separate cards into factions but I'm debating whether to add in a card in the style of Netrunner or Hex where you also get to choose what samurai to play as. Im thinking each samurai would get a passive or static ability, a faction, and a starting life total/handsize.

>>214614

Make HP be your resource. The more you're losing the more dangerous you get. Make some stances be only usable when at low HP. "Last Stand - All Strike Cards do double damage." Something like that. That will help to make playing certain characters having their total life and handsize matter more.

Let me know what you think.

Yo, /tg/. Last time I posted my game Power Creeps it was pretty well received. I am currently working on making it a little prettier, adding a wealth of optional rules, correcting typos, adding a basic character sheet, etc…

Anybody know of a drawfag I could commission to make some cute little sketches? I've been considering asking Krees in the drawthread too. Also: How does an idiot like me get into some document design? I wanna make it look real good.

Does anyone have the copy pasta of the setting where the players were all minor demigods trying to ascend to full gods and they end up killing other demigods to absorb their power over the course of hundreds of years so they can take on the blatantly OP real gods?

>>215584

2d6 is better, I'd say. It is less random (I know, I know, you said randomness doesn't matter, but if it is better…), it uses cheapest and most common type of dice around and it has no problems like recquiring exploding dice or hitting too much.

Have you considered +d6-d6 or 2d6+/- or whatever? You could still go stat+skill +/- 2d6.

>>215627

The problem with stat + skill + 2d6 (or 1d6-1d6) is that it limits the range of your stats and skills. It's a pretty tight number range. It also gives minmaxers two ways to minmax: by raising their stat and raising their skill.

Think of it this way: say your game can really only handle a bonus of around +6 or +7 before it kind of breaks down. If it is stat only, you can have stats ranging up to +6 if you really want, and there is lots of room for granularity. Whereas if your game is stat + skill, the max stat is +3, the max skill can only be +3 as well. Thus they are more limited. I also am not a huge fan of stats allowing you to be better than someone who is trained; to that end, there is a penalty for using a stat when unskilled (think GURPS and defaults).

What I had for a 2d6 rollunder system:

* stats averaged at 6

* basically stat + skill (so you might have a shooting score of 9, for shooting 2 + agility 7)

* unskilled attempts default to stat - 2 (so if you had Agility 7 but no shooting your shooting would be against 5)

The biggest problem I have with roll under is that it requires two rolls; one to attack and one to defend.

I also was going with a 2d6 + skill game, that was only skills. The problem was Strength didn't really work as a skill and splitting it up felt boring. The creature's stat blocks also felt lackluster without stats.

>>215645

>It also gives minmaxers two ways to minmax: by raising their stat and raising their skill.

But you'll have this anyway, won't you?

As soon as you have Stat and Skills, and both are connected, both will be targeted by minmaxers unless some other mechanic prevents them from doing so - or you embrace it.

As for the rest, yes, I get what you're saying - but I don't at all get why d12 would be better at solving those problems.

Say you have stats going from 1 to 5 (very bad, bad, average, good, excellent) and Skill going 0 to 3 (untrained, amaetur, professional, expert).

I'd say a system of Stat + Skill + 2d6 +/- bonii/penalties where success is result when sum >= 10 would work fine.

Someone with excellent stat and expert skill would have 100% chance of success under normal circunstances.

Someone with excellent stat and no skill whatsoever would still manage most of the time.

Someone with expert skill but very bad stat would still manage around half of the time.

You can also get as a result a "success margin", which could be used in the mechanics as to not need a roll to defend, but instead having defenses up to a given success margin.

Hell, if you're going heavy emphasis on skills, you could even go

Stat 1 - 3 (Hampering, Neutral, Talent in relation to skills)

while Skills go 0 - 5 (Untrained, Amaetur, Enthusiast, Professional, Specialist, Expert) or somesuch.

… and, in addition, you can get more flexibility when, instead of "roll under" or having a fixed number to beat, the target number varies depending on circustanes. But that is more system-intensive to do.

So, /tg/, look. I'm homebrewing stuff. But I've run across a problem mostly related to rpg and game theory in general, and I feel like I need an opinion on stuff.

I have a general system. It has general rules for conflict resolution. The whole game is made by rolling the same dice in the same manner, so no inconsistencies there.

However, the framework for how and when you roll is widely different between different skills of the game - and all of them require some learning and some skill in the part of the player (not only the character, but the player) to be played to the fullest.

Alchemy has its own framework of how the mechanics are used.

Spagyria, another.

Mechanic, another.

Runism, another.

Travel and survival related abilities, another.

Social skills, another.

Combat, another.

All of them roll and deal with resolution in the same way, but all of them need some particular degree of learning, getting used to, and improvement.

It is not at all meant to be rules-light, god forbid, but I am also aiming for fast (as in, fast play and ease to get in, not fast mastery) and fun. Is it viable?

Or should I just make everything behave in the same way for simplicity and acessibility sakes?

>>215595

I've tweaked the Wild Magic system a bit - donjon.bin.sh has a good generator for wild surges based on level, and I altered the rules for casting:

>Every time you cast a spell of 1st level or higher, roll the d20 to see if you wild surge

>If Tides of Chaos is recharging, when you roll the d20 to see if you wild surge, on a 10 or below you get a wild surge and tides recharges.

>>216326

>But what kind of damage is Charisma/Willpower damage?

Disfiguring and/or extremely painful for you attacks? As in torture or throwing acid on your enemy's face.

>>216349

I just can't get the feel for what happens when you reach Charisma 0.

Like, with Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence, it's more or less obvious.

Strength 0 is being a cripple who is too weak to do anything at all and must rely on life support for the most basic shit, kinda like muscle atrophy.

Dexterity 0 is being a cripple who can't move or control his body, Parkinson's disease or whatever.

Intelligence 0 is being batshit insane or suffering major sensoric issues (like being completely blind and/or deaf).

Charisma 0 is, what, constant panic attacks and extreme disfigurement? Looking like a ghoul and being scared shitless of everything and anything? I just dunno, man, it's kinda nagging me.

>>216326

>Charisma damage

In the long term, I could see Charisma penalties manifesting as confidence and presence hindering psychological conditions. Stutters and speech impediments, anxiety attacks and panic issues.

>>216326

>>216326

I would say that Willpower can't be damaged, but rather is the function of how well one can resist the pain and effects of wounds.

Is Willpower the same stat as Charisma?

If so, I would not get damage on it. I mean, sure, you can get disfiguring wounds - and the disfiguring should be noted and accounted for. But if Charisma == Willpower and both are more mental than physical attributes, the character's Charisma shouldn't be lowered by physical wounds.

Rather, he should get an equivalent of a lower "reaction modifier" or something.

Or such is my take on the issue.

>>216131

>Or should I just make everything behave in the same way for simplicity and acessibility sakes?

Aim for it but don't be afraid to have subsystems.

For example crafting should follow the same core mechanic if it's a check. But you might have different rules for what that check means and how much progress it represents.

Look at Savage Worlds for the example of raises. A raise is when you get 4 or higher over the TN for a check. A lot of the rules use "raises" to determine MoS and give concrete effects on rolls; for example, hitting with a raise in combat gives extra damage. Getting a raise on a climbing check makes you climb faster. Getting a raise on a spellcasting roll makes the spell work better or even reduce its mana cost. Different rules, same mechanic.

I'd need to know more about your game to help you out more.

>>216326

Have something like "luck" or "energy" or whatever, then have Vitality as a stat that gets reduced.

Do not do what traveller did with all the stats slowly being reduced. Or Iron Kingdoms. I hated that. Not BAD systems but I did not like that aspcet of them.

Think D&D's Vitality / Wounds system where wounds was just equal to Con score. Just make that a thing in your game. Vitality stat, that determines "core hp" and then have Vigor or something as the "energy shield" thing. Vigor and Vitality are alliterative which could be good or bad.

>>216375

>But if Charisma == Willpower and both are more mental than physical attributes, the character's Charisma shouldn't be lowered by physical wounds.

Yeah, I guess you're right, and yeah, Charisma = Willpower.

Then again, let's say I make people "defend" with their stats.

For example, when a mook attacks physically, I make them defend with Strength (and a relevant Skill). If they succeed, they block or shrug off the damage, if they fail, their Strength gets reduced.

So the situation where Charisma is used to block the physical wounds theoretically shouldn't arise, because the GM chooses which Stat and Skill player defends himself. If anything, it will be used in social or mental combat.

But then, should I account for disfigurement/ugliness when measuring/calculating Charisma? I mean, there are a lot of cases when an ugly person turns out to be charismatic, and Charisma does technically cover all social interactions, intimidation and such included.

>>216382

I don't want to introduce a lot of stats into the game.

My initial goal was to get rid of as many superficial things that a lot of RPGs have, and strip it down to bare bones in regards to the stat/skill system. The bare minimum of stats is, well, 4, if you want to adequately represent all basic archetypes (brute guy, finesse guy, mental guy, social guy) and their variations.

Skills are essentially freeform backgrounds/jobs - like, if you have a Thief skill of 3, you will roll at least 3 dice on any thing a thief usually does, so that's as simple as it gets too. Sure, there might be disagreements over what is a Thief thing and what isn't, but that's not a major problem.

So when I have the health system, it's either making Wounds and Fatigue two numeric values that are entirely separate from the stats (which I don't really like, because the concept of Wound death spiral appeals to me), or tying it somehow either to Skills (which makes no sense) or Stats (which does make sense).

>>202506

Hate to tell you, but Cortex Plus Firefly already does player/GM assigned initiative

>>216419

>should I account for disfigurement/ugliness when measuring/calculating Charisma?

Well, yes. I mean, no. I mean, kinda?

How do you deal with wounds in your system? You list them one by one or just lower stat without listing?

Is some area on the sheet where you list things like

>Wound(Average): Right leg. Dex -2.

, for example?

Because yes, there are ugly, charismatic people. And scarred motherfuckers can be scary intimidating - but it would be still really cool to have scarring and disfigurement accounted for. Or it might be just bloat, specially considering if you're going for a bare bones essence system.

… hell, there is a character description area, right? Maybe rule in that whatever aggravated or disfiguring attack forces the player to add in scarring to his description. No stat or skill modifier, but let the GM bring it up into play.

>>216381

I am >>214373

That is the outline of spagyria. One of the subsystems. It works as everything else: Some things add difficulty (repeating processes, speeding Drocesses, slowing processes). You roll your pool of d6s on relevant skill and aim to beat Difficulty.

Alchemy would be a different structure. The difficulty would be proportional to the complexity of an alchemical circle (which is inversely proportional to its energy consumption) - the biggest the number of processes, the more difficulty it is to draw the circle correctly. The making of a circle will have its own peculiarities and laws and results: But you still get a Difficulty to beat by rolling you d6s on skill.

Mechanics will be about repairing gear, modifying gear, imbuing gear with characteristics or building gear out of raw materials. Different parts and different materials will have widely different consequences and imbue different properties on the final product, but you still get the sum of Difficulties of the operation, and try to beat it with d6 pool on skill.

And then combat is about outmaneuvering and taking away your oponent's capacity to react, and then social is about argumenting in Ethos, Pathos and Logos, and then runism is about stringing alchemical circles together through runic logic gates and...

Everything has its own system. Everything works within the core mechanic of "Get Difficulty, beat with d6 pool".

But everything has this "figure it out" mentality. It is up to the player to figure out how to use the 12 processes in order to get the spagyric drug he wants. It is up to the character to see if it is within his skill level.

It is up to the player to present his argument. It is up to the character to see if he presents it in a convincing way. So on, so forth. With everything.

>>211577

This is a cool idea but the tables are formatted like shit.

Second, I do not want to track hit points for tanks. Either use some lego pieces that fall off for damage, or make it a save or die for damage.

Third, just make each tank have a static defense. Opposed rolling for to-hit is really dumb IMO, it only works in dice pool or GURPS.

>>216560

Nice sheet. Can I see more of the system?

>>216560

Also what did you use to make the sheet? I use Open Office for mine but I am sure there are much better options out there.

>Get 5e player handbook

>check monk

>no dwarven drunk brawler path

BULLSHIT, here i made a raging STR based manly monk path

Way of the Foolish Fist

Opportunist Brawler

Starting from the level 3 you have mastered the basis of the Opportunist Brawler style, improvised weapons count as Monk Weapons, also you can attack when prone without penalities and can stand up by using only 5 feet of movement.

You are also immune to all negative effects of being intoxicated by alcohol other than difficulty in communicating, you also gain proficiency in brewer tools.

Style Mastery

At the 6th level you have mastered all techniques of the Foolish Fist, in addition when you shove, stun or knock an enemy prone you deal damage to them equal to your strength modifier

You now have access to these techniques:

-Fool Fall: When you are standing and is targeted by a physical attack you can go prone as a Reaction and evade the attack completely

-Swirl Swing: When you are prone you use an action to spin and twist arround on the ground irregularly in an attempt to knock all adjacent hostile creatures prone, each creature makes a strength or dexterity check with DC 10 + your strength modifer + your proficiency bonus, any creature that fail that save falls prone

-Flowing Fist: When you hit a creature with Flurry of Blows you can shove the creature immediately after.

Drunken Rage

At the 10th level you have learned how to invoke your inner beast, by spending a bonus action consuming alcohol and spending 5 Ki points you enter the Drunken Rage state

While raging, you gain the following benefits if you aren't wearing any armor:

You have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.

When you make a melee attack using Strength, you gain 2 bonus to the damage roll

You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.

If you are able to cast spells, you ean't cast them or concentrate on them while raging.

Your rage lasts for 1 minute. lt ends early if you are knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven't attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then. Vou can also end your rage on your turn as a bonus action.

Raging Ignition

While raging you can use a bonus action to expel the Ki infused alcohol from your body through your mouth in the form a cone of fire with 15 feet reach dealing from 2d6 to 20d6 fire damage depending on long you managed to maintain your rage, each turn you raged lowers the final damage of the fire breath by 2d6, you rage ends if you use this attack

You can use this abilitiy as a reaction right before your rage expires if your rage is about to end prematurely.

Also when raging if you fail a save against Sleep, Charm or Fear you can increase your exaustion level by one at the end of the raging state and succeed the save instead.

>>201976

Why don't you try non-random turn order? Everyone declares their action silently, and turn order goes by categories of actions, with one category always going first, one going second, and so on. A character's reaction speed only matters within a category.

There was a Doctor Who RPG that did this. If you just want to talk, you go first, followed by nonviolent physical actions, followed by running, and at last fighting. The intent is to make a confrontation play out like it would in the show, so in your system the order would have to reinforce the kind of story it's meant to tell.

>design a tabletop game

>the Fighting and Shooting stats are abbreviated FGT and SHT

>within 10 minutes of the first playtest, your players are calling them Faggot and Shit

I should have seen this coming.

How tied should I make my mechanics and system and crunch to my setting and feeling and fluff?

I first started my brewing as trying to do sarcastic /pol/-themed grand-scale geopolitical-military intrigue on one side, and DnD with ballistic shield and machinegun on the other side.

Later, I fused them together within a generic, modular system. It would be not!gurps, now with more abstraction and d6 pools.

Later, I got setting inspired and hacked so much of the original "generic" idea and concepts that the end draft was unrecognizeable.

Now, it has a solid feel. Real, real solid. I literally can't see any other setting being played with the current state of mechanics. I can't see any other game set in any other place being played with this character sheet. Really, I can see nothing else working - which seems great, because the mechanics couldn't be reinforcing and backing my fluff more. They are almost one and the same.

On the other hand, it seems… Well, the engine could handle a lot more stuff without the flavouring and the coats of paint - but then, it gets boring and plain. It could work really well in a lot of places (from medieval intrigue to innawoods operatan to mundane depression drama, due to being brought up from a modular concept) - but it would work as well in other places as in my setting, and that seems like such a waste of potential.

What do you grognards think I should aim for? Full, flavoury, seamless integration or open, flexible, generic modularity?

Great!

Thanks, anon.

>>220277

Meant for >>219918

>>222089

Way too cluttered.

Think of simplfying your shit a little bit, unless you want your character sheet to be Eoris tier.

>>222144 (praise Kek)

The number of info/data can't be reduced - and not its like it is a huge number of data, being 4 skills and 4 fields and 1 description per planet/metal.

What I could do is go less hard on symbolism and group shit together. But then, I lose flavor - specially considering the 6 planet/metal areas are interchangeable and such interchangeability is the most important thing in character creation.

2nd page is just lists, anyway.

Worth it?

>>222180

What you need is readability.

You can use custom shapes instead of boring and cluttered rectangulars to add flavor.

Circles are a good start. Everyone loves circles.

For example, >>216560 and >>219918 look really pretty, without sacrificing usability.

Of course, that's just my personal opinion.

>>217903

kek

bimp

>>222778

>but it is also partly a town-building game; the characters' village can improve just like the characters do, becoming stronger. The game provides a system for tracking a village's food

levels, health, combat readiness, and fortification.

Well, you got me interested. Can't say I'll be able to read it all and post now, but I'll give it a nice and hard look later tonight.

>>222778

I've just written 258 lines of text in nano.

I really, really like the concept. But I've been somewhat harsh in reviewing stuff, because hey, that's what you want out of here, right?

Don't take it personally. Consider I'm playing the role of a pissed of underpaid critic.

But first, the questions!

>What is good?

Settlement. It's what makes it different and unique. Also, Combat has some really nice ideas.

>What sucks?

Your lack of focus on what actually makes the game worthwhile. Combat not working so well to reinforce themes. EVERYTHING but settlement stuff being focused in combat instead of the actual game.

>What should have more mechanics?

Settlement stuff. Integration of settlement-narrative-gameplay-player.

>What should have less mechanics?

Eh. Nothing? But then, I hate rules-light with a passion and tend to like crunchy stuff, so there's that.

>How do you like the damage system?

I really like it! Keep it.

>Should said "mook" creature have only 1 Vitality?

Hmm. Yes. If you're talking about the Drudge Zombo, then maybe.

>How do you feel about the Food/Population mechanics?

Pop seems fine. Food seems way too less interactive than it should be.

>Should there be more abstract characteristics for villages, like with Apocalypse World hardholds?

Haven't read Apoc World yet. But nonetheless yes, it should. The general settlement seems to generic, specially in a game where one will probably fail at first.

>should this game aim to be an RTS tacked onto an RPG

No. It should be an RPG.

>or should the settlement mechanics be as minimal as possible?

No, they should be the biggest stuff! They are what make your game worthwhile.

It's just that it's an rpg about rebuilding and reclaiming, but it's still and rpg. Not an rts. With a focus on your settlement. It's a great concept.

>Should there be rules for characters' history / relationship to the settlement, or should that be mentioned as a "session 0" thing but not given any specific rules?

Can you do it in any elegant way that reinforces the feel of the world? If yes, yes. If no, no.

>Are there enough spells? What kind of spells are missing?

Can't help. Don't ever play spellcasters.

>Is this almost ready for playtesting?

Yes, it is. Almost.

>>223588 (Hail Kek!)

Now, for concentrated autism in detailed reviewing…

>Core Mechanics

Simple. Direct. Very Good.

>Careers

REALLY biased towards combat. I mean, it is a game about "claiming what still lays outside the walls", but I don't think you're doing any favors for yourself by holding such a focus in combat mechanics. Your sales pitch is taking back the pieces of the world, and using them to rebuild and reclaim. It's what makes the game, both in setting and feel AND mechanics, different. Highlight and spotlight and focus more on it.

It'd be cool to see more careers about rebuilding. Or every character having "reclaim" combat/field related traits and "rebuild" village/city related traits. After all, most of the time the characters experience will be in the village, right? Weeks of adventuring, months in town.

>Cavalier

I'm a cavalryfag, so I'm hurt and oh-so-sad that the horsan-impalan-cuttan guy only gets a ability that can only get used once, isn't a guaranteed hit and isn't even all that good.

Post-read note: The double damage is actually real good. But still not worth it. Making it charge-disengage-charge-disengage could make for nice cyclic mechanics in combat. Provided the cavalier can disengage.

Also, there were no rules for mounts in travel, were they?

>Herbalist

This ability refreshes at midnight each night

Reeeeeaaaaally exploitable. I'd rather not say anything about it and leave it at "once per day" or "once per rest".

>Skills:

>Throwing

Maaaaybe a little bit too specific.

Also, a lot of field-related skills. But not that many town related skills.

>Traits:

Absolutely nothing but combat traits, notable exception of Convincing Merchant.

>Tough as Nails

Can't I become real real tough and hard by adventuring? 3:

>Equipment:

>Starting money

Nice. For the random roll and for the chance of shittier settlements having no coin at all.

>Equipment of same Damage, same Hands, same Cost, same Special.

Are you planning in doing cultures and factions? If so, it would be cool to associate different weapons of same stat but different name to different factions.

Also, being a polearmfag, the spear being basically just a cheaper halberd makes me pissy. Consider some weapons being better at fucking up armor, even if not better or even having lesser damage.

>Shield

Bonus seems waaaaaay to small considering the starting stat of 8+skill. Shields tend to be a very big thing, and c'mon, you are signing off one of your hands in exchange for Defense. It can afford to be more juicy. And maybe even more dynamic.

>Alchemical Items

Need I say only combat? Beucase yes, only combat.

>Other Items

I'm not sure how I feel about the "other items" being called "other items" and being the penultimate section in Equipment. I mean, sure, combat is a big focus. You said the world is dangerous and there are dangerous people and things, and you said reclaim, not just recover. But for a game that also does the "travel out in the gray deathland and colorful woods and try to find stuff to bring back", the actual road and survival gear seem awfully underepresented.

I mean, calling it "other items" makes it feel as absolutely tangential to gameplay and not at all an important or relevant part of the game.

>>223592

>Stats:

Short and simple. I like it.

But guess what I'm going to say? Yep. You called it. They are only combat stats.

>Combat:

It's solid and I like it.

Specially the damage/armor thing, really nice. I'd have to double back on having some items (e.g.: maces, warhammers, halberds) being dedicated or having some anti-armor capacity. The mace being exactly as effective as a longsword against armor and exactly as effective as a longsword against flesh is, well, kinda irky to me. But then, I'm big on combat dynamics and tactics and history and wargaming and whatnot, so there's that.

>Unconsciousness and Death

Since you already roll 1d6 for checking if ded or living, just use that same d6. 1 = dead, 2 = 2mins, 3 = 3mins, so on, so forth…

Seems kinda unnecessary and tension-forcing to roll twice for what could be the same thing.

>Feiting

There's absolutely no reason not to feint. Thus I'll make every attack I take a feint, no matter my chances of actually achieving it. As in the offchance that I manage it, I'll get +2. If not, all is as is. Meanwhile, the table handles me rolling 2d6 twice every turn.

>Unaware Opponents

Okay, so… I'm an Assasin. Trying to get a guard of 8(base)+1(fightan) defense. So I roll my 2d6+1(my fighting)+4(my bonus). And then I roll a 3. And then my Assassin character, master of sneak attacks, misses. Misses an attack on a Unaware Opponent. And it's not even Snake Eyes. But let's suppose I hit. I hit with my dagger against the heavily armored guard. And then I roll, well… 2, 3, 4. And then he fucks me up because I couldn't even do 1 damage. And that's because I'm an assassin.

Now, I must ask: Why is anyone who has even half a point in fighting rolling to hit an UNAWARE OPONENT. He doesn't even know I'm there! It's like hitting a fucking practice dummy, why must I roll to hit? He doesn't even know I'm there, how can he even DEFEND? How comes he gets to have +defense against an attack he is unaware off if he's using a shield?

And why is my assassin being rewarded for bringing a greathammer instead of a dagger for sneaky beaky stabbity stab?

>Misc Rules:

Alright.

>The Settlement

>The Fallen Land isn't just about the characters; it's about the settlement that they support and fight for.

Yeeesss. And since fantasy medieval-ish combat has been done by everyone and their slutty teenage sweethearts, it is also what makes your game good or not. Because ANOTHER medieval combat focused fantasy game would be just one game too much. Pity you're hiding the good stuff after the middle of the book, though.

I wouldn't ever buy or even play your game for the combat. Again, everyone did combat already. And your combat system

is not flavorful, too - it's simple and efficient and elegant, but it doesn't bring me anything special or tasty that would make me want to play it. The concept of the Settlement, however… That was what made me waste all my fucking night reviewing this and writing shit instead of working on my own stuff. This seems nice and novel and cool. I'd play your game and maybe even buy your game for some nice system of developing and expanding your settlement. That's what's new, what's cool, what makes it different from the other stuff.

So make it the first stuff your readers/players/GMs ever get to read.

… or maybe after the "Reclaiming" part, which there were no mechanics to speak of until now.

>Draw a map of your village, preferably on graph paper. A house takes up 1 square…

NICE. This is real, real nice.

Post-read note: You're asking for actually drawing the village on graph paper, then "resolving" raids? No, fuck you. Really.

Nothing beyond this point makes drawing it actually matter. But drawing and making it matter seems really cool. Make it relevant.

>Manpower

Nicey niceness.

>Food

Good. But how do my trading of goods in and hunting and such affect the Food supply?

Also, we not only start with a small reserve of food, but also one additional farm. I get this for gameplay reasons - but makes me think the situation of the world is not as opressive as it seems, at first.

Post-read note: Having different villages specialized in different aspects would be interesting. Hell, make a fucking character sheet. For the settlement. It's more important than any individual character, anyway.

Aaaalso,

>you lose 1 Food per 10 people not fed.

This could be better worded. This way, it seems that as long as I have only 9 people starving, they can starve without any problem at all and not them and not me and not the settlement will lose anything at all for it.

> as does having superior armaments.

Oooh, are we getting rules for this?

Also, rules for better walls?

>Downtime

Really cool.

Can be better elaborated, though. But already really cool to have it as a system.

>Building

Considering the income of Wood per month and base manpower, it seems that a shortage of resource and an abundance of labor is the norm. Is that intended?

>Fortune

Ah, fucking excellent. Now, this is the cool shit.

>Plague

>1d6 per week

Ooof, now this seems harsh. But a really nice quest prompt, so I guess it pays out nicely.

>My very subjective opinion

Now, see? This is the game. This, right here. I'd start the game with this shit. You got everything you need for a start here. You create something the players have a connection with, you roll fortune, you get the results - and be them good or bad, you get adventure prompts that can be followed.

It's just a matter of instructing the GM how to use the Fortune roll to get adventures rolling and everyone having a blast of a time dealing with problems and good stuff. Like, literally EVERYTHING on the fortune roll could make an adventure prompt. Even the good stuff.

This is the game. Right here. That whole section over there? Bring it down. This is the core experience. This is what's new and unique and interesting. Focus this as the center, build everything else coming out of this delicious juicy core of plagues and raids and hard wood.

>The Deathstain

And this is endgame nice stuff here. It's reads almost like a roguelike experience - and I mean this in a good way.

You try and get lucky until the real bad stuff comes, and then you must solve it or lose or flee to begin again. Mechanically speaking, it is sound and nice and fun and replayable and enjoyable.

I mean, the systems in place now may be a little too flat for full replayability. Dumping too much responsibility on the GM to make new attempts of surviving and prevailing seem fresh. But it has so much fucking potential for fun.

>Raids

Yes. Yeees. YEES. Y E E E -

>to resolve a raid

Oh, fuck, no?

You went through all that time making a combat system, and then the raid just gets "resolved" like that?

This is meaty stuff. Let them play it out. Shouting from the walls, attempting to disable heavier siege equipment, messing with leadership and supplies, ambushing - as in the example - trying to minimize losses. This is all real cool, and it's good juicy session material being played out hard instead of simply resolved by comparing and barely even rolling.

If you're going to do rules, rules about how different kinds of raids fuck up your village or not in different ways depending on the player's actions are a good call. You are rolling for the raid power - what do they have, what do they bring, how will they attack, how can I stop them, delay them, kill them, make them kill less of my people and burn less of my shit?

If the players are out, however, the resolution seems fine.

>NPCs

Pretty fine. Would be nice to have the option of messing with the demographics of a village (making a more warriorlike or traderlike settlement and everything), but is pretty fine and simple as is.

>>223544

I've done a quick mockup, wish I knew about this before I made it into its own thread

>Map

>Hex

Why?

The settlement is already squares. And squares are so much easier to find and do manually. And aren't really much more quirky than hexes in terms of distances and movement. I mean, you even can them squares in the 3rd paragraph.

>Revealing

Nice

>Mountain climbing mechanic

Extra nice!

>Random Tables. Of Land Types. And Features. And Encounters.

WHY IS THIS HERE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOOK? THIS IS GOOD. IT SHOULD BE UP TOP. Have you considered a "plot thread" random table for (some) features?

>The GM might want to make adjustments to the random number of monsters

Why? To balance the disease-borne apocalypse to be fair and manageable? It's like you said in the next paragraph, it is meant to be a dangerous place, not a fair place. Let the dice fall where they may - they don't need to win every battle, neither they need to fight every battle. They are reclaiming a dangerous world, sometimes the best to do is run away, or sneak around, or nope the fuck out and come back with bigger swords.

>Other Settlements

Veeeeerry nice. Specially like the "Produces" and "Wants". Why doesn't the PC village have this too? I mean, I get that attempting to play caravan in a game about reclaiming what was losst may go off the point, but having specialized productions the players may benefit from, and special wants the players may benefit from meeting in the player's own settlement seems kinda nice.

>Make sure to roll once a month on the Fortune table, though; it serves as an excellent catalyst for adventure.

YES IT DOES. And I'm reading this almost at the very end of the book.

>Though the settlement is the premise and focus of the campaign.

Then why is it in the middle - not in the very beginning - of the book?

>Hooks

They are great. This whole section is great. I shouldn't be reading it only now. Damn you!

No, but really, integrating the hooks into the (mis)Fortune roll mechanically/pseudo-objectively seems like it could be a good thing instead of going full subjective.

>Describing a Dying World

Real nice aesthethic.

>Sticking to the rules

>you're free not to, if you want

That's it? No disclaimer or anything. I mean, I get it, but… But it feels kinda cheap that the GM can just throw the really nice random rolls away without telling anyone or going through any kind of process just because they don't fit into his idea of where the rails should lead to. It's a matter of style, sure. And I'm just being bitchy. But eh.

>XP

>Productive

What defines productive? If the GM measure productive in terms of (his) plot advancement, and player 1 measures productive in terms of how many different herbs he managed to stock in his house in the event of a very red-rainy day, does the player get rewarded with XP?

>Time

What happens when more than 4 hours go by? Does coffee break time counts? Time-based progression feels silly to me.

Isn't it possible to figure out a way to award XP related to doing what characters should be doing? Reclaiming, rebuilding, discovering…

Tie the incentives to do things to the things you want the players to do in order to experience the game, and you'll get your game a nice experience.

>When a character has Experience Points equal to the next level, they lose all their Experience Points, and increase

their level by 1

I'll say this is elegant for an ego boost. Did something similar in the thing I'm working on. :3

>Bestiary

I like the general feel of it a lot. Makes me thing of… Weird art about slav-like forests and the monsters that

lurk in them.

The mechanics are also really nice. And the flavor.

>Character Sheet

IT'S SHIT.

It's readable and simple and nice. But what does it tell me about your game?

Nothing.

>Name:

Okay.

>Gender:

Never mentioned in the rules. Are you going to give +1 in faggotry skill for players playing hermaphrodite characters than identify as non-binary half-eigoloth?

Does it matter, then?

>Carreer:

Alright.

>Level:

Alright.

>Age:

>Height:

See Gender.

>Looks:

Could substitute Gender, Age and Height. And isn't even necessary.

>Player's name:

Alright

>The rest

Okay.

Now… Where the fuck is ANYTHING AT ALL related to the settlement?

This could be the sheet of any game, but yours. Because for a game that's "about the settlement that they support and fight for", there's notably no information at all regarding the settlement.

Nothing.

Not the name. Not other settlements. Not how they're doing. Not anything related to the world, to the setting, to anything in any way not generic and in any way flavorful.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just being a huge cunt. But come one, at least the fucking name of the settlement. Anything at all. Anything that ties the players to characters to settlement to world.

… and uh. That's it. Sorry thread for shitting up the place with a lot of text. And sorry Fallen Land guy for being both harsh and a huge ass with narrativistic tendencies. But hey, there you go. Bad reading material about your stuff.

>>223600

>Post-read note: You're asking for actually drawing the village on graph paper, then "resolving" raids? No, fuck you. Really.

I don't understand this… is the raiding too simplified? Or would you not want your village raided at all?

Anyway your reviewing is really really good so far, so thank you.

>>223612

For XP, do you think I should base it more on in-game time? Or just "every 4 hour session the PCs get 1 XP" kind of thing?

I use time based progression because it means the PCs get some XP every session.

I might add something where each career gets XP for a certain thing. Like whenever a fighter kills an enemy they get like 1 XP or something, I'd have to balance it. Or when the botanist discovers some plants or shit.

>>223606

It's Hex because it simplifies distances and I prefer hex-crawl for land. I might even re-do the settlement to be hexes as well and include some Hex paper with the package for the game.

That said I haven't fleshed out the hex crawl a whole lot yet.

>The GM might want to make adjustments to the random number of monsters

Yeah you are right that part is shitty and I contradicted myself with it.

Just a curiosity: how would you organize the book? ike what sections would you put first, last, etc.?

I might integrate more hooks into the misfortune table.

I will try to add produces and wants to the PC village, in fact I think I will start with that and create a random table for it. That way I can create a sort of economy system within the game.

Thanks a ton for this, man, this has helped me so much more than anything else I have seen. Someone else helped me fix the Armor numbers.

>>223603

Sounds good. I will work on changing up the raid rules. i wanted some thing rules light to make it easier to resolve NPC v.s. NPC combat, but I guess not. You are right though, getting ass fucked by a raid lke that would be stupid if you didn't get to play it out.

Thank you very much for your feedback so far. I am going to fix the Unaware rules and alsoadd Produces and Wants for the PCs village.

> This could be better worded. This way, it seems that as long as I have only 9 people starving, they can starve without any problem at all and not them and not me and not the settlement will lose anything at all for it.

My core issue here is that it's hard to reconcile food as an abstract resource…. maybe each month, each farm produces 10 food, then you subtract population from food? I dunno. That might work.

>>223613

I'm considering adding some "suggested music" to play as background music, some really melancholic and ethereal music to set the tone. It feels kind of tacky, I dunno.

>>224277

>do you think I should base it more on in-game time? Or just "every 4 hour session the PCs get 1 XP" kind of thing?

In game time is superior, IMO.

>I use time based progression because it means the PCs get some XP every session.

Why should they? If the PCs spent the whole session doing something completely other than what they should considering the theme of the game and their goals, should they still be rewarded for it?

> might add something where each career gets XP for a certain thing. Like whenever a fighter kills an enemy they get like 1 XP or something, I'd have to balance it. Or when the botanist discovers some plants or shit.

This sounds really cool. But it also sounds like it could be really disruptive to party dynamics, depending on implementation. Like, for example, if the warrior gains experience by fighting and the botanist by not fighting, one will always try and pull the other towards something not enjoyable, and one of the two will always be stopped from progress in any given situation.

And then, there could be xp for… training/working/building the settlement. Discovering relevant stuff (e.g.: ruins), recovering a lost relic, learning more about the Deathstain or the Eigoloth, resolving a hook, etc.

>It's Hex because it simplifies distances and I prefer hex-crawl for land. I might even re-do the settlement to be hexes as well and include some Hex paper with the package for the game.

Well, fair enough!

>Just a curiosity: how would you organize the book? ike what sections would you put first, last, etc.?

I am having a LOT of trouble with this on my brew. I have the rules and themes set, but I can't figure the way and order to write them, so I'm not really reliable help.

However, try to put what's new and different and unique in your game first - in this case, Settlement. From settlement (maybe even from the settlement population), characters. Then rules.

I guess.

Maybe Settlement - Settlement rules - Character - Character rules? Fuck. I don't know. I just know you should get what's different and unique first - it's what will hook people into reading the rest of the book.

>in fact I think I will start with that and create a random table for it.

Awesome.

>That way I can create a sort of economy system within the game.

Well, probably. But then, does if fit your vision of how the game should go? Because, then, for example, it becomes valid adventures to play caravan and open roads and trade routes and stuff - and while this seems really nice to play, it also seems tangential.

>maybe each month, each farm produces 10 food, then you subtract population from food?

Clunky and mathy.

"Each Food unit feeds 10 people" is fine, really. It was just the wording.

… which brings me to a tangential point - how is the weather in the setting? Do seasons still exist?

>>224300

>Sheet

Sweet and simple, fair enough.

Any intended use for the two blank squares?

And I'd still suggest adding at least a "Settlement" to the character sheet.

>Working on redoing the raiding rules, already impleemented a bunch of changes.

Nice! How is it looking?

>if you want credit for helping with the game

I may pick up on this. If I can find a non-faggy handle, that is.

>>224312

Eeeh, don't. Suggesting music or such gives off that weird shitty fanfic feel.

However, putting in a section of "media consumed when writing this" or somesuch - including but not restricted to music - has been said to be more acceptable and fill the same purpose without being too invasive.

Or maybe my time delving in fanfics forever traumatized me and that's why I'm against it, that too.

Also, I was daydreaming and making weird faces on my way from work and…

You know how the Pendragon RPG is (supposedly, never played or read it) not about a single character, but a whole House, a whole Lineage?

Well, I got thinking about how you said the players will most likely fail, at first. Which lead me to thinking of the fail states. Is it a TPK? The loss of the settlement?

Which actually lead me to… Both. And only both. The dynamics of your game could be really lethal for PCs. Or to settlements. But you can still die, and your settlement keeps on. The settlement can still burn, and you can still keep on. You only lose if you suffer both.

If the PCs die - even in a TPK - the settlement keeps its progress, and probably most of the acquired knowledge and information. And the PCs can keep on the story by drawing their next characters from the village population. The fight continues.

If the settlement burns and the PCs keep alive, they are in a very hard spot - but they keep their own individual progress, and may pass on all the knowledge and information if they can find refuge in other settlement. Thus keeping on the story, and passing on the legacy (and learning from the mistakes) of the old settlement. The fight continues.

This is a very, VERY nice dynamic of play. Capitalizing on it mechanically could yield very cool results. Probably tying it to the progression system.

>>224336

>And I'd still suggest adding at least a "Settlement" to the character sheet.

On a second thought, that could result in players wanting to be from another settlement, which could be a problem.

… adding a "House" to the character sheet, however…

>>224431

They are, aaah, already denoted under the set of Mercury, in the example. Arts are under the Moon, Combat under Mars, Social skills under Venus, Field skills under Jupiter and Techniques under Saturn.

Sounds obtuse as all fuck, but the alignment of planets is the most important part of character creation, so there won't be a misunderstanding.

>Add dividers of some sort to the Strength/Agility/etc. stat block for better readability, like lines or something.

Thanks, will do~

>>224432

>They are, aaah, already denoted under the set of Mercury, in the example. Arts are under the Moon, Combat under Mars, Social skills under Venus, Field skills under Jupiter and Techniques under Saturn.

Then add what the sign represents under it, because for a random person all of the signs look similar.

>>224459

Then write "Mercury" under the Mercury sign, "Luna" under the Moon sign etc. - it's better to be redundant rather than undescriptive.

>>224489

Hmm. Well, fair enough!

Thanks again, anon.

>>224336

Won't do the music. Will do the whole "PCs can play new characters if they die from the same village" thing for sure. I'll add that after the bestiary as the "aftermath" or whatever section to explain what to do if the PCs die or the settlement is destroyed.

>>224334

Seasons would still exist, yes. I don't know how to implement those yet but I will start thinking about it.

XP would probably be for contributing to the settlement, or per-adventure or per month of downtime.

Your point about different XP mechanics screwing with party dynamics is a good one.

I don't know quite how to implement the settlement rules early on…. maybe a summary? Like "oh well the adventure is driven by a fortune table you roll on each month" kind of like how a lot of RPGs have that 2 to 3 page section outlining all the rules and what not?

>>224334

I am also working on reorganizing the rules big time. It'll screw up my table of contents but that's obviously a non-issue. Added a getting started section, put in a procedure (informal) for generating PC relationships, and had settlement creation take place before character creation. Will have a settlement rules section further on. Fortune is mentioned early on, but it's going to likely still be further back int the book. I don't know if I'll move it up, it just doesn't make quite as much sense. But the idea of generating the settlement, then characters, should be enough for now.

>>224542

I'm liking the beginning (that Getting Started, yes!), but I'll go a little more slowly on this one because I'm working on some of my own stuff.

Finally had creative a breakthrough in a system, want to capitalize on it. Will read it and think about it, though, worry not.

>This allows for droughts to affect farms proportionally; so if there is a drought, each farm produces 4 less food, so if you have 5 farms they only produce 30 food instead of 50.

Well, this is interesting. You've convinced me. And also adds potential for lowered farming in winter and more manageable mechanics for stocking of food and… …and then the granary gets attacked on a raid.

And since it is basically compare-subtract, it is simple enough. But since now the farm output is variable, noting it on the sheet (production per farm or total production, don't know) would be interesting.

>Starvation

I agree that simply getting everyone not fed to simply die wouldn't work. But then, a whole month…

Heck, lose half of unfed pop per month? Unsure. I'll think about it on the way to work.

>So if you have a project you want feedback on, post it and I will definitely take a look, and try to return the favor.

Help make the Homebrew thread great again!

I might be one of the anons posting here. I might not be. But if I want feedback, I'll be posting here.

>>224542

Goddamn I really want to play your game. There are some things in there I'd personally change if I was making the game, but that's merely a matter of taste. Still, because I want to help, I'll try and give the best feedback I can.

Firstly, I love the fluff you got set out. Really sets the mood. The book itself is well written and gets you excited somehow. Now moving on.

The first issue I see is that, in opposed rolls, you have no precedent set for what happens in the event of a tie. A reroll, an impasse, highest skill wins - just something.

A question I have - in the tables you have written up, you have several blank spaces. Are they supposed to be that way and if so, why do you have separate written out "Nothing" spaces? I'm assuming that you simply haven't thought of things to fill up those spaces, but I am curious.

Secondly, in the downtime section, you note out that if you do not have 1 farm per 10 people in your settlement, reduce food by 1 for every ten people. However, you note above that one unit of food is the measurement of enough food to sustain a single person for a month. Therefore, I would think you should change the rule to "Multiply the number of farms you have by ten. Then, subtract that number from the number of people you have. The result is how much food you lose, or gain." So if you have 5 farms, and 60 people, you would lose 10 food that month. If you had, say, 6 farms and 50 people, you would gain 10 food that month. If you had 7 farms and 68 people, you would gain 2 food, so on and so forth, yadda yadda. I would also improve the bonuses you gain for bountiful harvests and the such by a multiple of ten, if that thing above wasn't a typo.

As for starvation, I have an idea (this is still working on the premise that 1 unit of food is equal to enough food for one person to live on for a month). Obviously, if there is a shortage of food, people aren't just gonna eat exactly enough for them to get by comfortably and let one person starve to death. No, the food will be rationed out appropriately, in most cases. So, I propose that you introduce something like a Fatigue counter for settlements. Wherein, you gain a single point of fatigue for each unit of food you cannot provide for your people each month. So, at low levels, this may provide penalties to work or something like that, but once you hit 5 Fatigue, you being rolling checks to see if people start dying - at every multiple of 5 the checks grow and such, and you do Fatigue checks at the end of every month, after all of the other things have been calculated. Just a thought.

Just a few last comments - Firstly, I enjoy the damage system you have up. Reminds me of 40k in a way, and I think its rather good. Secondly, based on the way armor works, I think Steel Skin should stack with armor - it makes it a very good trait, and your still not invincible, since if you have plate and if the enemy rolls a six, you still get damaged. Otherwise, its just kind of a meh shitty situational trait. It also makes sense, I'd say.

And then two questions I have. Are you satisfied with the way attacking and defending works currently, and do you want dedicated help - because I'm offering on that second front if you just so happen to think the ideas I've posited above aren't shit. In any case, I hope you find my advice useful, even if in a roundabout way.

Here's one I worked on for two weeks before i realized the system i was modding wouldn't support the scale of space ships.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hrpMEJ6DkKKdcQXIUDjkW2ItO5hC2PYPStQUSAwWYAU/edit?usp=sharing

>>224648

The farm rules are inconsistent / contradictory, yeah. I've rewritten them a couple of times.

I think I might use a fatigue system. It would be good for comba as well, as fatigued villagers would be worse at defending your village.

Glad you like the damage system. The issue I have with armor 6 is that it is literally twice as good as Armor 5. It's kinda a weird effect thanks to logarithms and what not, but basically there's a 1 in 6 chance of getting hurt with armor 6 and a 1 in 3 chance of getting hutr with armor 5. 50% with armor 4, etc.. if you graph it out, the jump from armor 5 to 6 is actually noticeable. Someone pointed this out to me and I realized that Armor 6 was pretty OP. I don'tk now what I'll do with steel skin. I might just make it stack because why not.

I'd love to hear your ideas for attacking and defending rules. The ones I have right now I don't like very much, and I am thinking of doing more "volley" and smaller mass combat rules involving actual numbers of men.

Something I'm thinking is, you kinda map out the battle, then roll a d6 for every 5 guys or 10 guys or maybe even 1 guy who attacks, and just say "ok and a 5 or 6 hits" for simplicity. So if you had 20 guys shooting an arrow volley you'd just roll 4 dice and the 5s or 6s hit and caused casualties, and then similar stuff for melee except it'd be simultaneous.

That said I haven't settled on anything yet, so your ideas are more than welcome.

And I will fix the omission on opposed rolls, thanks for spotting that. A lot of games actually miss that, I've found.

>>224790

This looks pretty cool. Honestly I'd love to see a game that did just regular Hull Points and Armor iwth everything on the same scale, so a cruiser might have Armor 20 and like 400 hull points, a little fighter might have Armor 5 and 5 hull points, and so some weapons would be basically ineffective but still work on the same scale.

I'd also love if instead of "sections" and what not, you could just do called shots against certain locations, so combat doesn't get bogged down figuring out where each shot goes, but if you aim specifically then you can hit that area. Kinda like Savage Worlds.

>>224815

I get what you mean. Perhaps make Steel Skin a two tiered skill, where the first doesn't stack and the second does?

Well, I can throw out a few things for combat - not particularly fleshed out, but maybe they can help you come up with something interesting. The first thing is to make defense more dynamic. Maybe a roll every time you're attacked (slower but perhaps more interesting), or a singular roll once per round - representing a change in position or a lapse in concentration. In addition, adding combat maneuvers that don't deal damage, but instead reduce the enemies defense for round, allowing your allies to hit the enemy easier. Perhaps you could add some more basic combat maneuvers, and then allow Steelguards, Dervishes, Berserkers and the such to gain improvements upon those maneuvers as they level up. I dunno. On a pretty much unrelated note, I also just noticed that you don't have rules for being outnumbered or being flanked, so perhaps something for that would help as well.

For attacking, the only thing I can think of off the bat which generally conserves the system you currently have, is instead changing the 2d6 +Modifier system to a hybridized dice pool system. The reason I thought of this is because at high levels, rolling a 2d6 basically turns into a courtesy instead of something to add randomization. With Fighting at say, 20 or so, 2d6 is really quite a small bonus compared to your straight +20. So, instead, I would propose something that makes sense in my head - but I'm not really sure if I can make it concise enough for everyone to understand what I was saying.

So, lets say our character has Fighting 3. So he rolls 2d6+3 when he attacks. Next level, he ups his Fighting to 4. Instead of upping his roll to 2d6+4, he instead changes his roll to 3d6. Then at Fighting 5, he goes to 3d6+1, and so on. So, every time you would change your bonus to plus 4, you make your modifier 0 and add a d6 instead, and then go up again.

There are two unfortunate things about this system. Firstly, you'd probably have to change all skills to this system instead of just fighting, so there's that. Secondly, this kind of fucks up your snake eyes, box cars system - though I have a suggestion to take care of that if you decide this isn't completely retarded. It would basically amount to making it so that a minimum of two boxcars makes a crit, whilst you have to get all ones to get a fumble. This makes it so that you both marginally increase your chances to crit as you increase in skill, and decrease your chances to fumble as well. Or perhaps you could make it some other way, and that is a Trait? I dunno.

Now, for mass battle shit. What you have is nice and simplistic, but unfortunately doesn't take into account a key component of combat - unit quality. I'd add both modifiers (either a straight bonus or just more dice) for higher quality units in addition with a defense score for each unit. Another example, because I am shit at making points contritely, say you have 30 men, whom are quality 4 or something. 30 men gives you three dice - you then add 4 for their quality. So this unit rolls 7d6 for attack. Now take the unit quality, and multiply it by 6. This is the units defense score. So our aforementioned unit would have 7d6 attack and 24 defense. Now, when rolling for attack, every point you get over the defense threshold causes a unit to die. So a roll of 26 against the unit above would cause 2 units to die. In addition, you could easily add on some bonuses for armor and other shit. As a side note, simultaneous resolution is a great idea, I approve.

Welp. There are my shitty ideas. At the very least, I hope they can give you some inspiration.

>>225082

I figured you wouldn't want to do the opposed roll thingy. I was just throwing it out there anyways. Doesn't mean you can't use the hybrid dice pool idea though, if you like that, along with the ideas for non-direct attacks, flanking and more maneuvers.

For your starvation rules, I like the basics of what you got. Keeping it simpler feels better for a system like this. Like you noted, the issue seems to be with wording, as its a bit confusing, and doesn't really take into account you managing to get enough food to feed some of your starving people, but not all of them. Firstly, I'd remove the "If your settlement is left with 0 or less food at the end of the next month, the people in the “Starving” column die, and your population is reduced by that number" bit, and replace it with "At the end of the next month, tally up your food for your normal population, minus the people in the starving column. Then, if you have excess food, for every unit of excess you have, remove a person from the starving column. Then, any people left within the column are killed from starvation - reduce your population by that number. If you do not have any excess, or in fact are in the deficit once again, everyone in the starvation column is killed from starvation, removing them from your population. Then, determine whether or not more of your population goes into the starvation column." Or something to that effect.

I imagine you could make that more concise and less confusing, but do you get the idea? Also, you probably already know, but you don't actually have a starvation column on the settlement sheet.

>>225082

Also, the mass battle rules being similar the Pathfinder is kind of funny, since I really hate Pathfinder (all d20 systems really), and I was basically recommending a very simplified version of the mass battle rules I'm using for my own system.

>>225102

That's better wording, thank you. It's still a tiny bit confusing but you at least put the right way of phrasing it in my head. I hope to do a playtest within the month and that will the be the acid test of how well it works.

>>225103

PF's mass battle system, in a nutshell, is basically "figure out hit points by multiplying CR and number of dudes except through some formula," then "opposed d20 rolls, and the MoS on the winner determines the casualties for the loser in "army hit points" which are removed then you go again". It's actually pretty cool but your idea is better because larger combats will be less swingy, smalelr ones will.

>>225276

Yeah, it would seem the main problem with the PF system is that there's no way for armies to damage each other at the same time, which is possible in the thing I recommended above. Anyways, keep on keepin' on. Just ask if you need more help, I'm looking forward to running a session with some of my group.

bump to keep this alive while I work on stuff.

>>228842

1) Why would I ever want Mind unless I am a mage? I think Mind should give a skill points bonus honestly.

2) Dice category is pretty cool. Good way of doing things.

3) Have background give some skill points, and mind give some skill points. So you might get 5 skill points from soldier but you can only spend those on soldier skills. Then you get your Mind skill points you can spend on whatever you want. That way there's a nice division of class / cross class skills. IMO it's better than giving 10 skill points but limiting how you spend 5 of them.

If you ask me skills should be fighting and shooting and throwing rather than melee and ranged. If you want to be more autistic, have different skill complexities like GURPS and have shooting and archery be different. Shooting should be easier than archery (crossbows are easier to aim than bows) so it would make crossbows more viable for basic troops but an elite unit would use longbows. You might not want that much autism, though.

4) I like that you have a level 0.

5) Some of the feats look pretty abusable just because they are vague and narrative but that's not a problem just don't play with cunts. FATE is the same way and it does fine.

6) Remove the bonus to hit on Weapon Focus. The entire point of bounded accuracy was to remove extraneous modifiers and I fully agree with that. Same with magic weapons, keep it as a damage buff. I mean what does the bonus to hit even represent? It's lighter? So hitting with a feather gives you +8 to hit? It gives you magical luck? Well it's not a luck bonus so fuck that shit. It… I dunno, guide you to teh target? I guess enhancement technically makes you better to hit.

I like the spellcasting rules and the way you set up spells. I think that's how they should be done.

>>228842

Oh yeah and rituals are cool too.

I would personally rather two handed not be 2d6+2. Personally I hate static modifiers on damage anyway, unless you are using d6 only or doing .45 vs 9mm autism. 2d6+2 is pretty close to 2d8 in terms of probability. The average result is the same, the min and max is a bit different. I'd go with that and save the adding. I'd also make the difference between light and one-handed the same as between one handed and two handed. Because a shield drop to armor class is ALWAYS worth the bonus damage and that's why two-handed weapon has been almost objectively the best strategy in D&D for years.

Take 3.5. If you give up a shield, you are giving up +2 to AC, maybe +3 if you had shield spec at 1st level. Later you miss out on magic shield bonuses which usually go up to +5. So your AC is 8 lower. This is an issue later, but early on not so much. And without constantly-increasing magic bonuses to shields like 3.5 had, there might only be a +2 or +3 different in AC. That means getting hit 15% more often. In exchange for 3 additional average damage. Let's take a look at the average damage for swords in D&D.

Dagger - d4 - avg 2.5

Shortsword - d6 - avg 3.5

Longsword - d8 - avg 4.5

Bastard sword - d10 - avg 5.5

Greatsword - 2d6 - avg 7

See that extra jump? Take out the bastard sword since for the purposes of argument it's a 2 handed weapon. That jump from the standard one hand weapon (longsword) to greatsword is 2.5 instead of 1.5. A greatsword is also more reliable (two dice instead of one so bell-curvy results) so while a longsword has a 1 in 8 chance of dealing minimum damage, a greatsword has a 1 in 36 chance of dealing minimum damage.

It is also technically superior to the great axe by 0.5 damage. Is this worth tweaking? No. Not in my opinion, because the benefit an axe provides is still "worth it" and you are more likely to get the high results. It's a riskier weapon but a fair one.

The two weapon fighting rules are … meh. They're okay. It's a clever idea but I personally think it should be "roll once to hit for each weapon" and maybe have a penalty: I think -6/-6 without the feat and -2/-2 with the feat, is fair. Then have improved two weapon fighting be a high level thing that takes away the penalty completely. Or a prestige class. Or something that represents you truly becoming just as good with two weapons as with one.

You might consider a Dex-to-damage feat but that is one time I'd definitely use a feat tax. Make it require something else.

Shield as DR is kind of… whatever. Honestly if you are going to have Dex be the only thing that influences AC (what else is there?) I'd just use the D&D scores and make Defense equal to Dex and there you go.

I think you should use the standard scores just because they feel right. If you don't like the formula just have score be score and bonus = score - 10. So a 15 gives +5, it's an exceptional score. GURPS does this instead of having 18 the "higest score" because gurps uses 3d6 and rolling under 18 is a certainty. 2d10 is somewhat similar, keeping 15 as the higher end of scores would be fine and it would give a nice baseline for defense. The stats are okay but I'm growing to be less and less of a fan of low scores where there is also possibility for a negative. That's just an aesthetic taste thing though.

I like that there are infection rules.

I wouldn't bother with the extra complexity for falling. d6 per 10 feet is fine. Reducing dice category based on what kind of surface you land on is good. But damage is based on force and acceleration is a constant increase in velocity, so the damage taken should increase linearly, in my opinion. To a maximum of 20d6, of course.

I see what you did with the mass combat rules, that's actually a clever and statistical way to do it. Personally I think opposed rolls with MOS determining casualties, would be better. Then you roll again if the battle continues, etc.. Look up the Pathfinder Mass Battle rules just to get the general idea. They are complciated but you don't have to use anything but the basic idea. Also you are using 2d10 so battles should be less swingy with that system. Just my advice though.

If you are going to do ship stats pelase only do one pool of HP. Have it be: certain shit is divided / resisted (like fire damage is halved and cold damage is quartered because that shit isn't quite as good against objects, but straight impact / explosive damage is undivided) then subtract hardness then apply the rest to HP. The d20 modern vehicles shit was pretty simple which was good: an Abrams Tank was like hardness 20 and had 60 HP. It was simple and made a tank v.s. dragon battle easy to run, as opposed to 3.5 ship combat which was complete shit for the most part. I mean, I didn't mind it, but that's because I know the system.

>>228842

As for the rest, seems like a lot of houserules. Just make sure they are worth using, because I've ended up just ignoring a lot of rules / systems in books because I was like "do I really care? fuck it" and then the results gave me something that I, the GM, didn't want to happen because it fucked up the game. Like gather info. Oh well you gathered the wrong info due to this table so now your adventure is fucked. Admittedly its bad GMing to have only one route to things, but my point is sometimes the GM just likes to say "okay well you failed, so I'll still say you found out, but because you fucked up it's the wrong info" or something like that. Putting THAT on a table would help give ideas for ways to move the story forward. Which is what Gather Info usually is. For attack rolls and adventuring, fuck that narrative shit for the most part. But in a story-driving mechanic you got to keep in mind some GMs will throw it out.

I guess I'm just rambling overall. This is decent for you to use, there's so many fantasy systems out there that there's no point in even trying to compete in my opinion.

So TLDR it's good but do read what I outlined it might give you some ideas. If you actually wanted to publish these on drive through as house rules, I would publish the infection rules, maybe the ship / vehicles rules if you wanted, and some of the gather information stuff. Maybe an alternate skill / background system. Personally I think a lot can be improved in 5e. But anyway, hope this helps.