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## Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Username17
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### Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Thu Aug 26, 2004 12:24 am

OK, I've been working on some stuff for a while now. Here's a big chunk of it:
Statistics: I'm dropping things down to four statistics. Strength, Quickness, Intelligence, and Charisma. There is no "Wisdom" or "Constitution". Quickness helps you hit your enemies and avoid being hit with a physical attack. Strength helps your physical attacks hurt your opponents and helps you resist being hurt by other physical attacks. Intelligence helps you hit your opponents and avoid being hit with a magical attack. Charisma helps your magical attacks hurt your opponent and helps you resist being hurt by your opponent's magical attacks.
Unified mechanics: Everything, and I mean everything is handled by rolling a d20, adding bonuses, and looking for a DC. Success/Failures scale by meeting/failing the DC by units of 2. Most everything in terms of bonuses are simply adding a skill to a stat bonus (for example, hitting with a saber requires adding a quickness bonus to a melee skill bonus).
Feats/Spells: Feats and Spells are the same thing. The prereqs for all of them are skill-based, and you don't spend experience to get them! That is, that in order to learn a Web spell you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in climb. In order to learn proficiency in the duom you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in melee combat.
Attacks and Damage: When you make an attack, you roll to hit. If you hit, your opponent rolls to reduce damage. Everyone has the same number of hit points. Having more strength makes you take less damage from a physical attack because you add your strength to your soak roll - but there is no variance in the number of hit points between an elephant and a grasshopper. Every two points you fail your soak roll against a physical attack causes you to take one wound level. If you have 10 or more wound levels up you need to make a Will check (which is Charisma based) in order to take an action on any given round. If you have 20 or more wound levels you are totally unconcious and bleeding to death. If you have 30 or more wound levels you are dead.
Magic attacks are similar, but are resisted with Charisma instead of Strength. Also, they tend to not inflict wound levels, but separate Effect Levels. So your petrification gaze attack leaves you with a separate wound track than does a sword, but still 10 levels requires a check to act each round, 20 leaves you incapable of acting, and 30 levels makes you tear your character sheet in half.
Damage Types: There are 14 different types of damage, because there are seven elements which can be physical or mental in nature. Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Life, Death, and Void - physical or mental. People have a base physical resistance (Strength), and a base mental resistance (Charisma) - they also have seven different resistances, one for each element. So you have essentially nine defences, and fourteen types of attack, for the whole game. All physical attacks cause wounds to accumulate into the same box, but each magical attack form fills up its own box. Thus, you have 8 total kinds of damage available. The cut offs for incapacitating and killing your character are the same regardless of type, however.
Materials of weapon change the damage type of an attack. An obsidian dagger inflicts fire damage, an iron sword inflicts void damage, and a silver weapon inflicts water damage. Creatures with "damage reduction" are handled by simply having very large elemental resistances to several different elements. A werewolf, for instance, most probably has a lot more resistance to earth than to water - which in turn makes a thrown rock largely bounce off without effect while a silver sword hurts badly. A magical "flaming sword" counts as either fire or void depending upon which would be more advantageous.
Armor increases physical resistance as well as elemental resistances. So some armor does, in fact, make your character braver by dint of increasing air resistance, for example.
Magic: There are no non-magical people anywhere. There is no ability to detect magic, or dispel magic in a general sense, because nothing is "non-magical" at all anywhere. People who can whirlwind attack are considered to have "sword magic" and people who can strike madness into people are considered to have "fire magic", but there's no distinction between magic and non-magic for anything that anyone can ever do.
Learning: There needs to be a requirement of diversification of expenditure of skill points. First of all, skill points come in several different flavors, and you get them separately. "Active Skills" and "Knowledge Skills" are acquired distinctly and you can't use points for one on the other. Furthermore, there is an expanding requirement of minimum ranks in a number of skills before the maximum rank of skills goes up. So you can't simply put all your Active Skill Points into "melee" forever, you have to raise other active skills to advance the rank maximum.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Thu Aug 26, 2004 3:38 am

Continuation... a rant about character speed.
Initiative: You roll a d20, add your quickness, and your biggest combat skill, and that's your initiative value.
Extra Actions: After everyone has gone, subtract 10 from your initiative and if your initiative is still positive, go again in order. There is an ability you can get where you simply take your extra actions in the first initiative pass and get to beat the living hell out of people before they can get away.
Flurry Attacks: when you have multiple weapons, or a flurrying ability, you can opt to attack multiple enemies at the cost of -2 to your to-hit check per extra enemy attacked (with a maximum based on the number of weapons or ability used). Using multiple weapons comes with an inherent bonus to attack rolls, so you do get something if you choose to go all out on one enemy.
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rapanui
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by rapanui » Thu Aug 26, 2004 4:54 am

"Statistics: I'm dropping things down to four statistics. Strength, Quickness, Intelligence, and Charisma. There is no "Wisdom" or "Constitution". Quickness helps you hit your enemies and avoid being hit with a physical attack. Strength helps your physical attacks hurt your opponents and helps you resist being hurt by other physical attacks. Intelligence helps you hit your opponents and avoid being hit with a magical attack. Charisma helps your magical attacks hurt your opponent and helps you resist being hurt by your opponent's magical attacks."
Jesus. I was thinking about something along those lines today. Uncanny.
"Unified mechanics: Everything, and I mean everything is handled by rolling a d20, adding bonuses, and looking for a DC. Success/Failures scale by meeting/failing the DC by units of 2. Most everything in terms of bonuses are simply adding a skill to a stat bonus (for example, hitting with a saber requires adding a quickness bonus to a melee skill bonus)."
Oh yeah, you're cooking here. Will this entail getting rid of HP and adopting the Shadowrun system you discussed a while back, in which damage also has to beat a DC type stat? Also, this can simplify magic quite a bit, since the same magi power could account for dazing, stunning, putting to sleep, or knocking unconscious by how much the DC of the spell is failed. I will be using this in my current project.
"Feats/Spells: Feats and Spells are the same thing. The prereqs for all of them are skill-based, and you don't spend experience to get them! That is, that in order to learn a Web spell you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in climb. In order to learn proficiency in the duom you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in melee combat."
Spells as feats, yes. But both of those as easily researched powers... looks like you're going to have to start making TIME into a currency. The problem with that is certain races live longer, so elves would start with a crazy number of spells/feats unless I understood this wrong.
"Attacks and Damage: When you make an attack..."
You just answered my question, so HPs ARE indeed gone. That's probably an improvement.
"Damage Types:..."
This is too campaign specific. I might want wood to be an element in my game and death to no be a damage type at all, simply a state. I don't like the idea of having to calculate 14 different resistances for every character.
"Magic: ..."
This is decent, but goes against some of the literature. Some people should not be able to be magical, ever, and certain locations should be devoid of magic. This entire system is starting to seem a bit FF-ish. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just different.
"Learning: ..."
Differentiating skills into multiple groups and splitting rank types might be a good idea, or it might be an increase in complexity without a real payoff. I'll need to ponder it some more.
As for your second post, those are more specific concepts that can be addressed after we clear up some of my comments.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Thu Aug 26, 2004 1:18 pm

> rapa wrote:But both of those as easily researched powers... looks like you're going to have to start making TIME into a currency.

The primary currency is actually access. That is, you need requisite skill minimums to get an ability, but you also need a huge pile of time and to make rolls to research it yourself. From a practicality standpoint, you get most new abilities through teaching, books, and the like - not through personal investiture.
So the primary limiting factor is social, not XP related. The groups you are in are thus kind of like your class. Being a Redarkan Sky Mage allows you to learn a lot of spells that would be very much more difficult for you to research on your own. The skill minimums to research an ability from scratch would also be higher than the minimums to learn it from a source.

> This is too campaign specific. I might want wood to be an element in my game and death to no be a damage type at all, simply a state. I don't like the idea of having to calculate 14 different resistances for every character.

Campaign specificity is an absolute requirement of damage typing. Think about energy resistance, damage reduction, and the damage types of Divine, Light, and Dark damages from D&D. When you write a "new" damage type, nothing in the entire game has resistance to it, so you've just written "unresistable damage", regardless of what you actually called it.
Seven Damage types is a lot, sort of, but it's actually considerably less than any role playing game I've ever played. This is a profound simplification and thus the most likely complaint is that it is not enough damage types - not that it is too many. Damage types are inherently not customizable once established, if Werewolves are resistant to damage that is not "silver" or "water" or whatever, then every new damage type has to explain whether or not it counts as silver or water for that purpose.
In short, "wood" weapons inflict "life" damage. If you want to have a special damage type called "wood", then you have to explain also that every single effect in the game that is based on "life" is called "wood" now. All the special abilities you add that inflict wood damage would need tag lines that they count as life damage for the purposes of abilties and rules already written. So you can change the name of damage types all you want - but there isn't really any point to doing so.
The only way to handle damage types that makes sense is to write up all the damage types you will ever need right at the beginning and stick to them forever. Adding or changing damage types later on simply causes the game to become confusing. Like adding shards damage or nexus damage - there's no point in even having crap like that in the game.

> Some people should not be able to be magical, ever, and certain locations should be devoid of magic.

Bullshit. The "magic is separate" doctrine is what makes Fighters suck ass. This is intended to represent a world where there is magic, not to represent our own ancient past only with real manticores. You can't get away from magic any more than you can get away from electromagnetism or gravity. It's all around you, there is no dead magic zones, and your abilities don't say whether they are magical or not. Seriously, this is the only way to keep people from ruling in favor of one ability over another simply because one is magical and the other is not. All abilties are magical.

> Differentiating skills into multiple groups and splitting rank types might be a good idea, or it might be an increase in complexity without a real payoff. I'll need to ponder it some more.

The idea is that it prevents people from avoiding having any idea of geopolitics because it somehow interferes with their ability to know Kung Fu. By putting largely non-combat improvement on an entirely different track from largely combat improvements - PCs end up with a richer collection of abilities without sacrificing game mechanical powah.
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rapanui
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by rapanui » Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:57 am

OK, a couple of things...
1. I like the idea of groups = classes, it gives flavor, character options, and powers without necessarily leading to cheese since ANYONE could theoretically get those Sky Mage spells at higher cost. I really don't like time as a resource (beyond the usual lifespan limits), for various reasons. It changes the power characters have depending on the kind of adventures the DM throws at them... if my DM let's be a mercenary type dude who adventures when he feels like it, I'm going to have more power than the halfing on the ring destroying quest that takes him several years.
2. Would your damage types system lose the differentiation between Slashing, Piercing, and Bludgeoning damage? How would acd and electricty be handled? As subsets of water and wind respectively (this is how I'm handling it for the moment)?
3. I'm not saying that high level fighter feats couldn't behave like sword magic, I just have an issue with it being called magic. It's much cooler to pretend that the fighter just jumped 300 feet in the air to cleave a meteorite in half because he's JUST THAT GOOD than to assume he has a special kind of magic. I kind of like the idea of a mage bein stripped of his powers in certain areas, or the idea of a monster who resists magic simply because it isn't part of the Weave, or the Force, or whatever the hell you want to call it.
4. You're right. At the very least Knowledge and Profession skills should be handled differently. It also allows for a 100-year-old 1st level elf who knows more about Elven history than a 18 year-old 2nd level human. Also, what do you suggest be done with Use Rope? It's the most useless skill ever, but something needs to beat those Escape Artist checks for bounty hunters that want their targets alive. Maybe make it into Knowledge(Knots)?
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Fri Aug 27, 2004 3:31 pm

1. You'll have that anyway. The DM can give you as much or as little XP as they want. In this advancement system, you have three things that advance your character in major fashion: study, active skill points, and passive skill points. The DM can allow you as much or as little as they want of each. There aren't really any "levels" - so it all comes down to player preference as to how fast and to what degree each goes up between adventure arcs.
2. Yes. A Bludgeoning Weapon inflicts physical damage of whatever element is appropriate, as does a slashing weapon. The specifics are not important. Every element is associated with materials, and with specific magical effects that only affect living creatures - and finally with whatever kind of energy blast. An energy blast, such as a lightning bolt, does regular physical damage but is powered by your Charisma. So it's a crossover ability, when you shoot an acid blast at someone you are putting your Int and Cha against their Quickness and Strength, but it's still Water Damage, just like if you were stabbing them with a silver sword once it gets to their end of things.
3. The whole point is that there is absolutely no distinction between magic and non-magic. Think about it in a less modernist, more animist fashion. The "pseudonatural" cannot exist, because if it existed it would be "natural" just like everything else. Since magic exists in the setting, it is not separate in the setting. Magic exists, and people can fly. It's not important, or even detectable, why they can fly - they just can and that's the end of it. The point is that when Hildegard's spear bursts into flame that ability is neither labeled supernatural nor extraordinary - it's just an ability. Detect Magic, Dispel Magic, and Boning People who don't Have Magic are all done away with. I don't care if you like the idea of people being cut off from the force, that's not how magic works here. You can't be cut off from it, it's everywhere, and it's part of the real world as far as anyone in the world can tell.
4. I'm actually OK with having Escape Artist oppose itself. If it also includes the ability to make bonds, then someone skilled in it can both tie you up and untie himself - which seems pretty reasonable.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by rapanui » Fri Aug 27, 2004 6:14 pm

OK, we'll ust have to agree to disagree on point 3. It seems like a setting-specific issue anyways.
Everything else sounds good to me, I'd love to see the final sytem once you're done with it. Oh, and if you don't mind, I'll be stealing the Escape Artist idea for my own system.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by The_Hanged_Man » Fri Aug 27, 2004 6:23 pm

Frank, good ideas. For abilities, if you are going to add abilities straight up, are you going to start at 1? It seems like there's no need to have an average at 10 if you're just adding, not adding ((score-10)/2)
Some questions:

> Feats/Spells: Feats and Spells are the same thing. The prereqs for all of them are skill-based, and you don't spend experience to get them! That is, that in order to learn a Web spell you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in climb. In order to learn proficiency in the duom you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in melee combat.

So I understand. Every so often, the DM hands out some skill points, you up some skills, and qualify for feats or spells or abilities or something. Then you need to find a library, or somebody to teach you, and spend some time . . . or spend a crapload of time. Then you get the feat/spell/whatever.
Right?
If so, this seems very DM-intensive. Which is fine, I'm just saying it sounds like a lot of DM responsibility.

> Attacks and Damage:

I know this is just an overview, but I'm kinda lost here. A lot depends on how ability is based. If they're based on a 1-40, and you start at average, you could one-hit people. It it's based on 1-10, battles could last forever no matter how how level you are. If I understand this, of course - which I probably don't.
What's the goal of your system? It sounds like it could be very flexible, w/ well-matched opponents fighting a long time, and Conan killing mooks right and left. Which sounds cool.

> So you have essentially nine defences, and fourteen types of attack, for the whole game. All physical attacks cause wounds to accumulate into the same box, but each magical attack form fills up its own box.

This is an fun and interesting idea, but it might be too cumbersome for a PnP game. That's a lot of details to track. I'm thinking 2 beers, maximum, or it gets all messed up.
Unless there's some reason it's important to the system that each magic form have separate damage, I'd suggest just tracking one magical and physical. You could get the flavor of different magical elements from the attack and defence types, and avoid a minor bookkeeping issue that could get troublesome.

> Magic: There are no non-magical people anywhere.

I think this is a great concept. But I agree w/ Rapan, some token "non-magic" area would be cool. If nothing else, it'd give the DM a way to drive home the point that you guys are magic - look, see, that's the non-magic.
Just a thought.

> Skills

Why Active and Knowledge? Does this mean "Combat" and "Non-combat?"

> Flurry Attacks

Basically, having multiple weapons or flurry lets you choose whether to power up w/ a bonus on one guy, or attack multiple targets w/ an apparently small modifier. On the face of it, that seems like 2E TWF, where there was basically no reason to ever use one sword. What balances this out?
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:40 pm

> THM wrote:
> So I understand. Every so often, the DM hands out some skill points, you up some skills, and qualify for feats or spells or abilities or something. Then you need to find a library, or somebody to teach you, and spend some time . . . or spend a crapload of time. Then you get the feat/spell/whatever.

Pretty much. Note that 1 skill point raises one skill up by 1. The only diminishing returns thing going on is that you have to raise more skills to higher levels before your cap goes up. So in a sense, the GMhas a much more precise idea of what he's handing out than in D&D. If he gives 3 skill points, that means that 3 of your skill points are going to be one point higher. At no time does this mean that you bank up skill points to get something awesome later on.
Also, your character has a group and cultural affiliation to begin with, which is essentially her class. Whenever she is afforded the opportunity to train, she can pick up any of the cultural abilities that she qualifies for. If you join another secret society in play you get access to more abilties you could be qualifying for, like a PrC. In any case, this aspect of the game would be handed out between adventures, so it's kind of less work than keeping track of thousands of XP and levels. You really only have three quantities to keep track of.

> THM wrote:I know this is just an overview, but I'm kinda lost here.

Here
is an exhaustive run-down of the math involved. The idea is that if you are about equal it's going to take you many hits to drop your opponent (about 3 or 4), and if you are better than they are, you can drop them in just a hit or two, and if they are better than you you have to strike them repeatedly before they'll even notice.
The biggest change here is that the amount of damage needed to kill someone altogether is three times the amount needed to simply drop them. That's important, because there isn't any Raise Dead. People are incapacitated but revivable with medicine for a long damn time.

> THM wrote:This is an fun and interesting idea, but it might be too cumbersome for a PnP game. That's a lot of details to track. I'm thinking 2 beers, maximum, or it gets all messed up.

Actually, I find quite the opposite. People have a lot of problems remembering their +2 bonus against Enchantment effects, for example. This is exactly like the D&D notion of having different save values against illusions and poison and crap except:
1> The math is all done ahead of time.
2> Every single ability tells you exactly what bonuses apply (no more guessing whether a bonus to saves against enchantment effects applies against a dominate gaze)
3> There are less total categories of attack to worry about!
In Dungeons and Dragons you have 3 kinds of savings throws, times seven schools that you can bonuses against, and conservatively a dozen types of energy, and so on and so forth. While a lot of the time you're looking to just three values (Fort, Will, Reflex), it can be important that it is a Fire Effect generated by Conjuration in addition to that. So potentially, it's more like a hundred different values you have to keep track of - many of which are very similar to other values.
This is a huge simplification over D&D, and ideally a lot of characters are going to be wandering around with very similar values for Fire and Air Resistance as well. It's just that by making them nominally separate values in the first place we can have characters gain Fire resistance without making the game complicated or adding more conditional steps to the process of adding your abilities together. Abandoning the old stand-by, where you have a base value and a bunch of conditional abilties that you check every single time to see whether they apply, was not easy - but I'm totally positive that it's easier to keep track of.

> THM wrote:Unless there's some reason it's important to the system that each magic form have separate damage, I'd suggest just tracking one magical and physical.

There sure is. Mental spells apply conditions, and conditions are handled as damage boxes in order to make it easy to keep track of what the penalties involved are. So being charmed, frightened, nauseated, or petrified are all handled the same way. And since Charming really doesn't want to stack with Terror in order to kill people somehow - it's a separate damage bar.

> I think this is a great concept. But I agree w/ Rapan, some token "non-magic" area would be cool. If nothing else, it'd give the DM a way to drive home the point that you guys are magic - look, see, that's the non-magic.

Mostly that sort of thing requires you to keep track of what is and is not magic - which means that you end up stacking them together. The end result is that "magic" becomes like "the enhancement bonus" - if you want to not suck, you have to have it. Otherwise your stuff just isn't as big as it could be, and that sucks.
Forsakers will never be viable under any system ever. As long as it is in any way meaningful whether you have magic or non-magic, it's always going to be bigger to have both. Even allowing the distinction to exist in the rules makes both the forsaker and the pure-thought spellcaster into a pointless waste of time.
Keeping track of what is and is not magical does not add to the game, it subtracts from it.

> Why Active and Knowledge? Does this mean "Combat" and "Non-combat?"

Pretty much, yes.

> Basically, having multiple weapons or flurry lets you choose whether to power up w/ a bonus on one guy, or attack multiple targets w/ an apparently small modifier. On the face of it, that seems like 2E TWF, where there was basically no reason to ever use one sword. What balances this out?

If you're using a sword you do more damage all the time. Also you can learn to whirlwind attack with whatever weapon, so I'm actually currently looking at trying to come up with a reason for a high level character to ever use two weapons.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by RandomCasualty » Sun Aug 29, 2004 7:02 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1093479879[/unixtime]]
> Feats/Spells:[/b] Feats and Spells are the same thing. The prereqs for all of them are skill-based, and you don't spend experience to get them! That is, that in order to learn a Web spell you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in climb. In order to learn proficiency in the duom you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in melee combat.

This one seems to be the biggest problem from a design point of view. And the main reason is for people who are creating high level characters from scratch. How do you decide what they learned in all thier time? Do they automatically know everything they're capable of, do you have time points that you have to spend or what? It seems to run into the same problems as the familiarity limitation on polymorph.
Also this tends to make campaigns very time specific. It will become difficult to run a race against time campaign where the PCs are always doing things.
Logistics wise, this could get in the way a lot.
Also, what does a web spell have to do with ranks in climb? And what happens when an elven PC wants additional ranks in skills simply because he had longer to train?
Tying time to power tends to run into a lot of problems.
------
Also, I disagree with the whole "everything is magic" concept because I think it ruins storytelling IMO by destroying consistency and logic, but I'm not going to bother with that point and focus on the actual mechanics.
But on that mechanic you've got a few problems. First, if you're not going to have detect magic, how does someone determine if an item is magical or not? Do you automatically know the properties of your weapons, which oddly aren't differentiated between magic or non-magical, or do you have to find them out the Gygax way?
Also, what about magical effects. If you dont' have dispel magic or antimagic field, how are you going to beat spells that get cast on you? Say you get held, blinded, or whatever. Are you going to have to have a specific cure for all those status conditions and not just a blanket dispel magic? And if so, then there becomes little difference between a permanent spell and an instantaneous effect. Not sure if that was your goal or not, but that will be a definite side effect.
And without dispelling magic, you won't really have any way to remove buffs on your opponents unless you assign some other system to deal with that.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Sun Aug 29, 2004 1:48 pm

> RC wrote:This one seems to be the biggest problem from a design point of view. And the main reason is for people who are creating high level characters from scratch. How do you decide what they learned in all thier time? Do they automatically know everything they're capable of, do you have time points that you have to spend or what? It seems to run into the same problems as the familiarity limitation on polymorph.

It's actually the same limitation as how many spells a starting high level wizard knows, round about. These things come in difficulty levels, so you just announce that players start with N points of Active Skills, M points of Passive Skills, and X Difficulty Levels worth of abilities they qualify for. There is going to be a standard number of these things for starting characters, but if you want to start an accelerated game where you have more this is pretty easy to accomplish.

> RC wrote:Also this tends to make campaigns very time specific. It will become difficult to run a race against time campaign where the PCs are always doing things.

The idea is that every character will benefit roughly equally from downtime, so that if you have more or less of it everyone will care about the same. This is an improvement over the current system where Wizards need Downtime and noone else gives a damn. This way, there will not be an inherent argument between the Fighter (who wants to go adventure now), and the Wizard (who wants to adventure in three weeks). You'll have adventures with downtime in between them, and everyone will be glad of both (since they get skill points and associations from the adventures, and abilities from the down time).

> RC wrote:Also, what does a web spell have to do with ranks in climb?

Each of the elements have associated totem animals, who in turn are associated with abiliites and with skills. The Spider, for example, is associated with the Climb skill. So if you must be able to climb at a certain level of ability before you can master abilities from the Spider totem - like shooting webs or growing extra limbs.
Some abilities have multiple different associations, like poison bolts, which come off of Spiders (climb) or Snakes (heal), in different cultures. So depending upon where you are from, you may be able to get the same spell with a different special effect by investing in a different skill.

> RC wrote:And what happens when an elven PC wants additional ranks in skills simply because he had longer to train?

Training doesn't give you ranks in skills, that comes out of regular XP. Training gives you the abilties which your skill ranks and associations qualify you for. Of course, I'm doing away with all the forehead aliens, so there aren't any elves at all. I'm looking at more like half a dozen races, and each and every one of them has to be sufficiently different from humans to lend itself to an entirely different set of cultures. So far, the races do things like have an obligate hive structure, go into must late in life, and such like - people who "live a long time" or "have pointy ears" are just humans who happen to have an appropriate special ability.
So when a player is immortal, they became immortal fairly recently, and thus don't start with any more abilities or skill points than anyone else.

> RC wrote:First, if you're not going to have detect magic, how does someone determine if an item is magical or not?

That question doesn't even make sense. Everything is magic. An iron hammer inflicts void damage when you hit people with it, and is a vital component of smithing, which is also magic. With some appraisal and/or familiarity with smithing, you could determine what kind of magic you could do with the hammer - but it's still magic regardless. A better hammer is more magical, and with the proper skill you could distinguish it as such.

> RC wrote: If you dont' have dispel magic or antimagic field, how are you going to beat spells that get cast on you?

Curses of any kind are a form of damage, that collects in the appropriate damage box, and with the appropriate skill and abilties can be healed. So no, there is no difference between a permanent and instantaneous effect. The difference has caused a lot of problems (suh as casting Awaken on yourself, or becoming a Barghest), and I'm doing away with it up front.

> RC wrote:And without dispelling magic, you won't really have any way to remove buffs on your opponents unless you assign some other system to deal with that.

Generallly not, debuffing is stupid. In D&D it's pretty much a waste of time, and it's frustrating to have done to you. Some buffs will be in the form of talismans/fetishes, which can be disarmed, but if someone has learned to see in the dark it's pretty retarded for someone to come up and undo that.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by RandomCasualty » Sun Aug 29, 2004 10:12 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1093787327[/unixtime]]
> Each of the elements have associated totem animals, who in turn are associated with abiliites and with skills. The Spider, for example, is associated with the Climb skill. So if you must be able to climb at a certain level of ability before you can master abilities from the Spider totem - like shooting webs or growing extra limbs.

While this is a cool idea, it's adding a lot of flavor directly to the rules set, which I'm not sure is a good idea. Also I find it somewhat weird that wizards have to learn physical skills to cast spells.

> Training doesn't give you ranks in skills, that comes out of regular XP. Training gives you the abilties which your skill ranks and associations qualify you for.

Hmm ok, now I'm confused. I thought that your maximum ranks in the skills was simply limited by how many ranks you had in other stuff (to prevent all the points going to one place) and you gained ranks and abilities whenever you wanted just by training. I'll need a little explanation on how this works.
Also, I'm not sure if i'd get rid of elves and dwarves entirely, as they are a staple of fiction pretty much. You could probably get rid of gnomes and halflings as playable races and nobody would care, but sooner or later somebody is going to want to make the elven archer.

> Generallly not, debuffing is stupid. In D&D it's pretty much a waste of time, and it's frustrating to have done to you. Some buffs will be in the form of talismans/fetishes, which can be disarmed, but if someone has learned to see in the dark it's pretty retarded for someone to come up and undo that.

Well, I kind of like debuffing in concept, because it allows you to cast stuff on your opponent and negate some of his abilities, which actually lends to more strategic play, so long as debuffing is effective. The problem in the current rules is that debuffing sucks. You cast dispel magic and you just "might" debuff someone. When you debuff it should be something automatic, or nearly automatic. That would add some more strategic value to the game.
Assuming everyone is going to be magical, there's really no reason they can't all have some means to debuff people. Everyone can have their own debuff spells, so debuffing a guy may actually prove to be a useful strategic tactic.

> Initiative: You roll a d20, add your quickness, and your biggest combat skill, and that's your initiative value.
> Extra Actions: After everyone has gone, subtract 10 from your initiative and if your initiative is still positive, go again in order. There is an ability you can get where you simply take your extra actions in the first initiative pass and get to beat the living hell out of people before they can get away.

Just was looking at this, and the first quiestion is if you'd have to roll every round or would the iniative work like it normally does, only high initiatives would get 2 actions to one.
And either way, I think it's a bad idea to give multiple actions. Multiple actions before the other guy gets to act leads to all sorts of crap, lke we saw with 3.0 haste. For one, it lets you do all sorts of AC sacrificing stuff on your first action, and then raise your defenses again before the other guy can even do anything. Second, oddly enough guys with high init scores are also marathon runners, since they can outrun pretty much anybody by taking 2 actions to thier 1. I'm not sure why reflexes should always equate with a super fast running speed. Third, you're now making possible more spell supercombos.
Also, I think it makes initiative way too valuable a stat. Already it's supervaluable for a wizard, and this just makes it over the top for everybody. +10 init points gives you the offensive power of two characters, and that's going to be impossible to balance. I'd definitely stick wtih the original 3E round structure. If you want people to gain more attacks then make feats to do that, but don't give them undefined "extra actions" because it leads to all sorts of weird ass stuff and unforseen rules manipulations.
IMO, the 1 standard action + 1 move action per round paradigm shouldn't be violated under any circumstances. As a mechanic extra actions just plain doesn't work. In every system it's been used in, from D&D to Storyteller to SHadowrun it's just been crazy powerful, and the thing that gives you extra actions has always been ridiculously overpowered. Like 3.0 haste, you seem to have to find a way to give it to everyone otherwise the one without it is at such a severe disadvantage. I've never ever seen the extra action mechanic balanced under any game system so far, so I'd really shy away from it.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Mon Aug 30, 2004 12:45 am

> RC wrote:While this is a cool idea, it's adding a lot of flavor directly to the rules set, which I'm not sure is a good idea.

That's unavoidable. If people learn spells from books, that's flavor. If not everyone can cast magic, that's a huge amount of flavor. That's an inherent segmentation of the party into social classes based on power and so on and so forth. However you set up your acquisition of fantastic elements, it's flavor. It's fundamentally different from any particular other set of methodologies for handing out fantastic elements, and it's not generic. As soon as people anywhere can do things in your game that people in the real world can't do, that's no longer generic or generalizable.
And if you are going to write a fantasy game, you had better damn well understand that before your fingers even hit your word processor. There is no generic fantasy, and you can't please everyone with your imaginary creations. Period. The claim "this isn't generic" is meaningless in this context.

> RC wrote:Also I find it somewhat weird that wizards have to learn physical skills to cast spells.

There aren't any wizards. There's just people, and they use magic. That's it.

> RC wrote:I'll need a little explanation on how this works.

Let's consider the skill of Climb and the ability of Web. In order to learn the ability of web, you need two things:
1> Access to the ability.
2> The minimum skill ranks required to learn the ability.
Number one can be had a number of ways. Certain countries will have web casting as a reasonably common thing, and if that's where you are from you are considered to have access to it automatically. Or you might have a teacher, and if you are a member of an order that uses web a lot you can pretty much be assumed to have one. Or you could have a description in a book (like unto a spell book), or just research it yourself your own way.
Number two might vary depending upon how you met number one. That is, researching it on your own requires more ranks than having it taught to you. Also, some groups might have a different methodology of using that ability and have an Escape Artist requirement instead. This would look very different, but the game mechanical effects would largely be the same.
In any case, you buy skills with skill points. There is a diversification minimum to buy each higher rank of a skill, and each rank costs a point. Your skill points are your XP (although naturally in much more manageable numbers than are in D&D).

> RC wrote:but sooner or later somebody is going to want to make the elven archer.

Then you're a human who happens to have improved senses and an extended lifespan, both of which happen to be abilities that you can learn. If it looks like a human in funny make-up, in the game it's a human in funny makeup. End.

> RC wrote:Well, I kind of like debuffing in concept, because it allows you to cast stuff on your opponent and negate some of his abilities, which actually lends to more strategic play, so long as debuffing is effective.

It's just like regular cursing and hindering except that they have to cooperate by arbitrarily having some of their abilities be predefined as the kind of thing you can damage with your debuffs. Lame!
No, if you want to cast spells that give people penalties, you jolly well cast spells that give people penalties. Anything that involves requiring a bunch of arbitrary categorization of abilities before hand in order to allow certain special kinds of curses to affect the abilities directly is bad. For one thing, to make that viable it is an absolute requirement that peoples' abilties must be so big that turning them off is bigger than hitting someone with an offensive curse (which in turn has to be competitive with a potentially lethal physical attack) - and that's way too damn large.
If it takes three hits to take someone down with a sword, and hitting someone with a slow spell is competitive with that, and a debuff would have to be bigger than that to take into account all the times you are fighting unbuffed people and the fact that you can't hit someone twice with it - that's completely insane. People would have to routinely be more than doubled in effectiveness by these buff spells for the debuff model to be even vaguely considerable. And that's too much.
It's way easier to make things balanced if there is no god damned debuff at all!

> RC wrote:Just was looking at this, and the first quiestion is if you'd have to roll every round or would the iniative work like it normally does, only high initiatives would get 2 actions to one.

This would be an initiative every round system. Remember, there is no "how things normally work" because this isn't D&D. It's built from the ground. This is a system in which people acting a couple of times between your actions happens. A lot.

> RC wrote:For one, it lets you do all sorts of AC sacrificing stuff on your first action, and then raise your defenses again before the other guy can even do anything.

I call that "tactics". If you want to take your last action in the round as a reckless attack or something, and then gamble that you get the Init jump on your opponent the next round - good for you. You just figured out how to maximize your abilities in such a way that you smacked people upside the head. I don't have a problem with that. At all.

> Second, oddly enough guys with high init scores are also marathon runners,

That's not a bug, it's a feature. People who are totally hardcore can outrun basically anyone. That's completely intentional.

> RC wrote:Like 3.0 haste, you seem to have to find a way to give it to everyone otherwise the one without it is at such a severe disadvantage.

And since everyone in the party has the same skill totals, the difference in your initiative modifiers won't be huge within the party. That's taken care of. 3.0 Mass Haste wasn't unbalanced, although 3.0 Haste was.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by RandomCasualty » Mon Aug 30, 2004 1:26 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1093826707[/unixtime]]
> There aren't any wizards. There's just people, and they use magic. That's it.

Well, "wizard" the guy in the pointy hat that casts spells, is a concept, and I would hope it'd be one you allow to exist.

> In any case, you buy skills with skill points. There is a diversification minimum to buy each higher rank of a skill, and each rank costs a point. Your skill points are your XP (although naturally in much more manageable numbers than are in D&D).

Hmm... I suppose that could work, though I could see it running into trouble again with premade characters at a high level, because you'd have to have some kind of limitation on how many powers they could learn.
Also, you're going to hit a lot of background min/maxing. It won't be unusual for some guy to have been mysteriously trained by like 10 different factions so he could pick up various 1337 powers. So you'd have to watch for that.
It sounds like character creation and character advancement have to use separate methods under your idea.

> Then you're a human who happens to have improved senses and an extended lifespan, both of which happen to be abilities that you can learn. If it looks like a human in funny make-up, in the game it's a human in funny makeup. End.

So you're going to have no differentiation between races at all? And races are essentially just flavor with mandatory skill ranks required to learn stuff like "extended lifespan" and "improved senses". It'd be kind of weird for someone to try to get an elf to teach him the skill of "extended lifespan"... from a flavor point of view, that just seems wrong.

> No, if you want to cast spells that give people penalties, you jolly well cast spells that give people penalties. Anything that involves requiring a bunch of arbitrary categorization of abilities before hand in order to allow certain special kinds of curses to affect the abilities directly is bad. For one thing, to make that viable it is an absolute requirement that peoples' abilties must be so big that turning them off is bigger than hitting someone with an offensive curse (which in turn has to be competitive with a potentially lethal physical attack) - and that's way too damn large.

Well the advantage of a debuff is that it can hit several buffs at once or that it works automatically. The penalty can be the same as a normal curse spell, only the target cant' resist it, but he does have to be affected by the right buffs in the first place for it to work.
The idea strategically is you want to create situations where one tactic is better than another and a debuff works quite nicely in concept there. It's more effective than a regular curse spell assuming the other guy has buffs, otherwise it's not.

> If it takes three hits to take someone down with a sword, and hitting someone with a slow spell is competitive with that, and a debuff would have to be bigger than that to take into account all the times you are fighting unbuffed people and the fact that you can't hit someone twice with it - that's completely insane. People would have to routinely be more than doubled in effectiveness by these buff spells for the debuff model to be even vaguely considerable. And that's too much.

Not really... the slow spell just grants a save and the debuff doesn't. Further the debuff can hit multipile buffs at once, while the slow spell is only going to do one effect at a time.
Further, debuffs can be cheaper in terms of what spell slots you use to prepare them (well not really sure if you're using spell slots actually), but whatever you're using to prepare spells, they could be cheaper. I'd have to learn a little more about your magic system though before I could say it was a good or bad idea.

> This would be an initiative every round system.

Yeah, that's what I thought... that makes the initiative stat way too powerful.

> I call that "tactics". If you want to take your last action in the round as a reckless attack or something, and then gamble that you get the Init jump on your opponent the next round - good for you. You just figured out how to maximize your abilities in such a way that you smacked people upside the head. I don't have a problem with that. At all.

Well, no, it's not really tactics. Because you use your first action to do that, and then your last action to raise your defenses again. It's more just an added hidden bonus for people with high initiative scores, and a total fuck over for people with low init.

> hat's not a bug, it's a feature. People who are totally hardcore can outrun basically anyone. That's completely intentional.

But it's not the stat for being hardcore, it's just the stat for acting first. Initiative is flat out too valuable under your system.

> And since everyone in the party has the same skill totals, the difference in your initiative modifiers won't be huge within the party. That's taken care of. 3.0 Mass Haste wasn't unbalanced, although 3.0 Haste was.

3.0 mass haste was pretty much broken too in terms of party versus monster. You still have a huge gap in the sense that people who do have it have such a huge advantage over people that don't.
ANd the advantage is basically double firepower. So whatever you could do in one round, you can now do at double power, and that's basically impossible to balance in your system. It makes initiative so super valuable that everything else pales in comparison to it. It might be possible to balance in a straight point system if you give it an astronomical exponentially increasing cost, but when you're trying to make all stats equal, everything that boosts init is going to be incredibly overpowered. And here's why... ok every 10 points gives you an extra action, so roughly every +1 to init is worth
+10% average damage
+10% movement rate
+10% spells cast per round
And not only that but quickness also helps you do other stuff too, like hit your opponent AND boost your AC, and merely acting first prevents you from taking damage because you may kill the other guy. That's an uber stat. It does everything.
What I hate about extra actions is they make playing a big dumb oaf absolutely impossible as a balanced concept unless you give them huge benefits to compensate. Because to compete it means your 1 action needs to equal the quick guy's 2 or 3 actions, and that's virtually impossible to do under a system that scores all ability scores equal, because clearly quickness and feats like improved initiative are going to be insanely powerful. Somehow a 10 point initiative difference needs to be worth a doubling in character power.
So I still stick by the original design paradigm.
Extra actions, bad idea.
I mean, name one game system in which they've been balanced? In D&D it was a super advantage (remember 2 spells a round). In shadowrun you got screwed if you didn't have wired reflexes, and in storyteller celerity easily overshadowed the other combat disciplines. I have yet to see a system that used extra actions and didn't make them ridiculously powerful. I would take something that gave me extra actions almost over any other concievable combat benefit, the benefit would have to be astronomical for me to consider taking it. Every guy in your game is going to max quickness... I certainly know I would.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Mon Aug 30, 2004 2:45 am

> RC wrote:Well, "wizard" the guy in the pointy hat that casts spells, is a concept, and I would hope it'd be one you allow to exist.

You can cast spells. If you want to wear a pointy hat, you can. Of course, just as in D&D, there is nothing mandating you to wear a pointy hat if you want to, for example, wear a bowler or fedora.

> RC wrote:Also, you're going to hit a lot of background min/maxing. It won't be unusual for some guy to have been mysteriously trained by like 10 different factions so he could pick up various 1337 powers. So you'd have to watch for that.

That is a potential problem for premade characters, but it's supposed to be a feature (not a bug) in organic play. You're supposed to be able to be trained by different factions to get 1337 powers as quest rewards. That part is intentional.

> RC wrote:It sounds like character creation and character advancement have to use separate methods under your idea.

Why? The only thing that is even vaguely different about character generation is that you have a pre-set wad of ability levels to be trained in, rather than being able to learn a set number of levels worth of abilties in between adventures... which is really not different at all.
This system transfers from lump-sum to organic very smoothely, because there's no difference in cost for taking different upgrades in different orders. It doesn't matter if you took your blacksmithing before your stealthing or vice versa, because the total number of skill points you have doesn't change.

> RC wrote:So you're going to have no differentiation between races at all?

Being a dragon lets you have access to the Fire Breath ability, but other than that.. pretty much no (note that non-dragons need to have various skill ranks and such to emulate that ability).

> RC wrote: It'd be kind of weird for someone to try to get an elf to teach him the skill of "extended lifespan"... from a flavor point of view, that just seems wrong.

"Elf" is not a race. If for some reason you absolutely had to put it in there, "Elf" would be a tribe. Of humans. Who lived in the forest. And had a long lifespan ability that probably came out of a knowledge skill or something.
"Races" are only available to creatures which are fundamentally different than humans. If there's even a question of whether you could be a "half XXX", then "XXX" is a tribe, and not a race. End of story.
There are half a dozen races, and they are all really, really different from each other - and from humans. The Ormigans develope into sexual maturity or not based on the types and proportions of Ormigan vomit they consume at age five. Ormigan player characters are therefore probably going to be "workers" or "warriors", and thus be sterile. That's different, and that qualifies you to be a whole different "race" with "racial abilities" and shit. Having pointy ears and living in the woods is not and does not. There are no fvcking forehead aliens in this setup. At all. Anywhere.

> RC wrote:The idea strategically is you want to create situations where one tactic is better than another...

Which is completely adequately achieved by having 7 elemental resistances to choose from. As long as shooting someone with a Slow Curse and shooting someone with a Petrification Curse hit different resistances, different creatures will be more or less resistant to them and different things will be more or less desirable.
The problem with a debuff vs. a Slow or Petrify is that if you hit someone with either enough times they go out of the combat. But a debuff has no effect (by definition) the second time it goes off. So it has to be balanced not only the fact that lots of enemies are not simply resistant but inherently immune, and also the fact that it's a one-shot attack even if it works.
So to make that good, you'd have to make it cause a huge honkin loss to your opponent. And since the loss it can cause is by definition no more than the bonuses your opponent has - your opponent would have to have bonuses which not having are comparable in size to falling over dead. And that's bullshit. So no, debuffing, as a concept, is not salvagable and I'm not writing it in.

> RC wrote:Yeah, that's what I thought... that makes the initiative stat way too powerful.

Compared to what, exactly? Whoever you are, your intiative goes up as you become more powerful. It's like iterative attacks, but it applies to whatever the hell it is that you happen to do.
People who in invest in Quickness are going to have a few more actions over the long haul, and that's good. The bonus is, relatively speaking, kind of small. When you have your +30 intiative bonus and are super speedy guy, you'll be taking four or five actions in equal measure. And "not that speedy guy" is going to have an initiative of like +24. Half the time he'll be taking four actions, 20% of the time he'll take five, and 30% of the time he'll only get three.
But the extra action that Fasty McFastfast gets takes place at the end of the round - so even if he takes five actions and his friend only takes three, he still isn't going to get those extra two actions until his friend has attacked three times. And unless you're talking a very big battle, the whole thing may well be over (or practically over) at that point. The entire party has just had a chance to smack the enemy ogre three times in the face, and now our fast and lucky companion gets to take two more actions... enough for a coup de grace and not much else methinks.
Your percentages are hokum, because they start assuming a baseline of 1 action - which is ricoculous. Even a +0 initiative bonus dude has a 50% chance of having two actions per round, and most starting characters are looking at an initiative bonus of more like +10 - which is a 50% split of having two or three actions in a round.
So that +1 initiative is a 10% chance of having one more action than you would have had, at the end of the combat round where it makes the least difference. So if you were having two actions, that's a 5% increase in ass whupping, if you were having 3 actions that's a 3.3% increase in ass whupping, and if you were having four actions that's a 2.5% chance of ass whupping increasing. Yes, that +1 init is good, but the returns are diminishing. Each bonus increases your butt kicking by substantially less than the bonus before it did, both relatively and actually.

> RC wrote:
> It's more just an added hidden bonus for people with high initiative scores, and a total fvck over for people with low init.

What people with a low init? Your init is your Quickness plus your best active skill - so the biggest modifier into your init is roughly static across the party. It's a function of essentially character level more than it is a function of character priorities. More powerful characters go first and last every round. Other people get to also act several times, but not as much. Think of the round as a 12 segment combat turn from Champions.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by RandomCasualty » Mon Aug 30, 2004 6:20 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1093833951[/unixtime]]
> That is a potential problem for premade characters, but it's supposed to be a feature (not a bug) in organic play. You're supposed to be able to be trained by different factions to get 1337 powers as quest rewards. That part is intentional.
> ...
> Why? The only thing that is even vaguely different about character generation is that you have a pre-set wad of ability levels to be trained in, rather than being able to learn a set number of levels worth of abilties in between adventures... which is really not different at all.

Because your character generation system doesn't take into account the "Availability" factor that is essentially a main part of your prereqs for abilities. So there's no real limitation when creating a character on what you can be trained in, because you get to make up all the flavor text. So if you wanted to be trained by 10 different people wioth all sorts of weird unrelated abilities, then you can.
Your system is build for organic advancement, but I think it falls apart when you start letting PCs control the organics of it.

> The problem with a debuff vs. a Slow or Petrify is that if you hit someone with either enough times they go out of the combat. But a debuff has no effect (by definition) the second time it goes off. So it has to be balanced not only the fact that lots of enemies are not simply resistant but inherently immune, and also the fact that it's a one-shot attack even if it works.

well this can be counter balanced simply by the fact that it works automatically. So instead of firing an all or notihng slow effect for instance, if you know the guy's buffed, it's going to negate those buffs. So you've got a guaranteed effect. Now, it's highly situational which limits its effectiveness. So long as there is a point where debuffs > slow and slow > debuffs then the effect is still useful, even if situational.

> So to make that good, you'd have to make it cause a huge honkin loss to your opponent. And since the loss it can cause is by definition no more than the bonuses your opponent has - your opponent would have to have bonuses which not having are comparable in size to falling over dead. And that's bullshit. So no, debuffing, as a concept, is not salvagable and I'm not writing it in.

Save or die may work, debuffs can automatically work. That's a big difference. Something that kills a guy 25% of the time versus something thgat lowers his effectiveness 100% of the time.

> Compared to what, exactly? Whoever you are, your intiative goes up as you become more powerful. It's like iterative attacks, but it applies to whatever the hell it is that you happen to do.

If 3.0 taught us anything its that additional actions favor casters way more than fighters.

> People who in invest in Quickness are going to have a few more actions over the long haul, and that's good. The bonus is, relatively speaking, kind of small. When you have your +30 intiative bonus and are super speedy guy, you'll be taking four or five actions in equal measure. And "not that speedy guy" is going to have an initiative of like +24. Half the time he'll be taking four actions, 20% of the time he'll take five, and 30% of the time he'll only get three.

Because quickness helps you at anything. It doesn't matter what you do. You're getting huge boosts. It improves your save DCs, by simply letting you throw more spells, it improves your attack bonus by simply letting you make more attacks. If you hit on an 11 normally you'd have a 50% chance to hit, but with two attacks that rises to a 75% at least one attack will land and a 25% that you'll land two attacks. The power difference is huge.
So you have to basically balance the game on a certain number of actions and anything over that limit ends up being overpowered and anything under that limit ends up sucking. I mean I've played shadowrun. I know that the guy with wired reflexes level 3 pretty much ALWAYS wins. Going first was normally good enough, but when you could go first two timnes in a row, you had an automatic lock on the battle. And no amount of anything else is really going to change that.
Not to mention it allows a ton of spell combos, and makes sneak attack godly. And I don't really see how the system benefits from it. It allows casters to chain gun spells, which generally means spells have to totally suck. Otherwise, every battle is going to be over in one round. Is there actually any point to having multiple actions? It takes longer to resolve and each individual action has to be weaker than a normal D&D action is.
I don't see how it helps the system at all. Because you don't want wizards acting more than once anyway, and you really don't need fighters to either, unless you just want to normalize his average damage. But when you're using an effect like yours where a fighter's attack is like a save or die style, a fighter really doesn't need multiple actions either. You simply let him do whatever damage you'd want him to do in 4 attacks in 1 attack, and then you can deal with a simplified rouind structure. I guess you might want 2 or 3 attacks total if you wanted to factor in iterative attacks or some other mechanic and to make DR more significant.
You just won't be able to balance stuff like sneak attack, and any kind of battlefield control spell effect.

> What people with a low init? Your init is your Quickness plus your best active skill - so the biggest modifier into your init is roughly static across the party.

Not really, because you're forgetting feats and other stuff to bring up init. I mean first the difference in quickness. Assuming your races have ability mods, say you get a mod of +4 and you've got 18 quickness, so 22 total. You then spend your level up bonuses all on quickness so that's 27. Factor in an ability score bonus item which brings you to around 32... and now you're looking at a +11 bonus, and I haven't even counted improved initiative feat yet, or any other modifiers. So counting +4 from improved init and assuming your slowest party member has an 8 quickness you're looking at a +16 difference, roughly 2 actions, and that seems awfully significant to me.
QUickness is flat out too good, there's no reason not to take it and it affects everything from your AC and hit rolls to the percentage per round your spells will work or your attacks will hit, and how much average damage you do. There is nothing the stat doesn't do, and every class is going to want to get as much of it as they can.
Just try to compare a +1 bonus to strength to a +1 quickenss bonus. You're comparing a small added bonus to damage with a +1 to hit, a +1 to AC, a 10% chance of gettinmg another attack (probably more than +1 average damage right there), a 10% chance of getting another spell and a 5% greater chance of acting first in the round, a 10% chance of getting your speed increased.
I'd say it's a hell of a lot better than strength. I mean really, what stat would you take, one that lets you do more damage or one that lets you do more damage indirectly plus gives you a bunch of other awesome benefits. It even lets you pick a lock faster as a rogue. I mean quickness isn't just one stat, it's everything.
Mechanics that grant extra turns haven't worked... ever. They didn't work in 3.0, they still don't work in 3.5, they didnt' work in shadowrun, and they didn't work in storyteller. They didn't even work in magic the gathering. I honestly don't think they'll work here either.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Mon Aug 30, 2004 11:21 am

> RC wrote:Because your character generation system doesn't take into account the "Availability" factor that is essentially a main part of your prereqs for abilities.

Um... yes it sure as hell does. At character generation, all the abilities of your starting culture and organization are available, and other things are not. I suppose you could have a "high level game" where people could pick from multiple organizations, but normally your character generation is drawn from a single set of starting groups.
It functions exactly the same as character advancement in every single way. Why you keep waving your arms and insisting that there is a fundamental difference is beyond me. There isn't.

> RC wrote:well this can be counter balanced simply by the fact that it works automatically.

No it can't. Always works if you guess right might buy off the fact that a slow effect doesn't always hit but could hit anyone, but it doesn't buy off the fact that you can keep slowing your opponent over and over again until they can't move at all.
A debuff is an attack that can only be used once per combat - that's a -2 power limitation in Champions, and they aren't kidding. Any other attack is going to be called upon several times a round even - the increase in effectiveness would have to be insane. Which means buffing spells would have to be insane. Which means that:
Debuffing can never be an effective use of your time unless the game system has accepted the paradigm of the Cleric Archer - and having invented the Cleric Archer, I can say with authority that doing so is a terrible idea. So yes, Debuffing requires that all game balance be set on fire in order to make debuffing balanced.
Remember, those buffs have to be common enough and powerful enough that people would turn aside from an ability that could build up and take an opponent out of the combat to take it. Which means that the buffs would have to be enough better than normal abilities that they would be balanced with the fact that sometimes they get debuffed so hard that the debuffing would be competitive with a deadly sword blow. So you would by necessity have buffs so big that the people who weren't using them would feel useless whenever they were up - and the crash would be so big that the buff users would feel useless whenever debuffed.
It's a shitty paradigm based around people feeling and being useless like all the damn time. And there's absolutely no reason for it. Doing away with the whole "magic is a frosting that we can smell and scoop off of all the stuff we slap it on" rubric, we can have mysteries, coherent explanations of why we need rogue types, and so on. Not only does combat work infinitely better if we don't have debuffs and all the Cleric Archers that requires - but the world works better too. You don't have to justify why one character can do silly stuff while another character gets a free ride, you don't have to come up with complicated bull crap to turn off the PC sensors everytime you want a murder mystery.

> RC wrote:If 3.0 taught us anything its that additional actions favor casters way more than fighters.

...because Fighters were based on having multiple attacks anyway, and Wizards scaled on having one bigger attack. So when Fighter A gets a bonus partial, he just got a +33% increase in offensive output, when Wizard B gets a bonus partial, he just got a 100% increase in offense. Even if they were balanced at the start, they obviously wouldn't be anymore (although actually, quite often a Fighter could charge on the Partial and then take a Full Attack, which would more than double his offense, so sometimes it would actually work out).
But since I'm not using that paradigm, I don't have that problem. Casters are built into the system shooting off more than one spell per round, just like the Fighter is based on swinging a sword more than one time. So casters are not benefitting more from extra actions than warriors are. Really, they are not.

> RC wrote:If you hit on an 11 normally you'd have a 50% chance to hit, but with two attacks that rises to a 75% at least one attack will land and a 25% that you'll land two attacks. The power difference is huge.

That's an irrelevent comparison though. Everyone is taking more like three actions a round, and if your quickness is 10 points higher, you get a bonus action at the end of the round. So +10 points of quickness makes that 11+ attack hit land one half of a time extra per round. Whuppy. If you had 10 more points of Int you'd land that spell all the damn time. And do 5 more points of damage with each blast.
So, for comparison:
3 actions, 1.5 average hits per round.
With 10 more quickness: 2 average hits per round.
With 10 more Int: 3 average hits per round.
And 10 points of quickness (or int) is more than I expect people to differ by. I'm just not seeing your doom prediction, Quickness is nice and all, but it's a really very minor predictor of who goes first or gets extra actions.
---
Having actions take place at staggered and assymetric intervals makes long range initiative count manipulation impossible. And that's good. I'm very good at manipulating that count - but it's totally metagame and annoys the crap out of me.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by RandomCasualty » Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:37 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1093864865[/unixtime]]
> No it can't. Always works if you guess right might buy off the fact that a slow effect doesn't always hit but could hit anyone, but it doesn't buy off the fact that you can keep slowing your opponent over and over again until they can't move at all.

You can't do that with slow anyway... Curse spells basically inflict some kind of penalty status condition, and usually you can't cast it more than once. Ray of enfeeblement for instance only gets one cast on a person at a time.

> A debuff is an attack that can only be used once per combat - that's a -2 power limitation in Champions, and they aren't kidding. Any other attack is going to be called upon several times a round even - the increase in effectiveness would have to be insane. Which means buffing spells would have to be insane. Which means that:

So what if it can only be used once per combat, if you've only memorized one fireball, that can only be used once per combat too, big deal. I mean, all that means is that people won't be filling up all their slots wtih debuffs, but so what? I never expected or wanted them to. I simply wanted debuffs as an option.

> Debuffing can never be an effective use of your time unless the game system has accepted the paradigm of the Cleric Archer - and having invented the Cleric Archer, I can say with authority that doing so is a terrible idea. So yes, Debuffing requires that all game balance be set on fire in order to make debuffing balanced.

Not really, debuffs just need to be either simply a quickened action or they need to be in some way better than a slow spell, and making them work without a save does just that.

> you don't have to come up with complicated bull crap to turn off the PC sensors everytime you want a murder mystery.

I don't see what this has to do with your magic paradigm.

> But since I'm not using that paradigm, I don't have that problem. Casters are built into the system shooting off more than one spell per round, just like the Fighter is based on swinging a sword more than one time. So casters are not benefitting more from extra actions than warriors are. Really, they are not.

I don't think that casting more than one spell a round is a good paradigm, unless you intend for spells to be no more effective than bows. First, you're going to burn through your spells per day faster than anything, and second you really can't have many special spells, like walls or similar stuff, because you've got so many spell combos to worry about.

> And 10 points of quickness (or int) is more than I expect people to differ by. I'm just not seeing your doom prediction, Quickness is nice and all, but it's a really very minor predictor of who goes first or gets extra actions.

Well, all I'm saying is to compare a +1 bonus to strength or any other stat versus +1 quickness. The benefits you're gaining from quickness far outweigh anything the other stat is giving you. Clearly quickness is the uber stat.
And this is before you're considering the little extra tactical stuff you can do from acting twice in a row, like forfeiting defense for one attack, then raising it again after. Getting extra turns just creates so many weird and unforseeable advantages. Like I said before, I have yet to see a game system that made it work. It may work here, I don't know, but prior uses of extra actions in a variety of systems have generally drove the point home to me that they just dont' work. Your initiative system sounds a lot like Shadowrun, and I can just remember how screwed you were in Shadowrun if you had no wired reflexes against a guy who had it. It just wasn't very much fun at all, and wired reflexes were like the most broken thing in the game. Just going first was awesome enough in Shadowrun with the wound penalties, when you go first and get more actions, that was crazy powerful.
In a multiple action init system, having the best initiative becomes top priority.

> Having actions take place at staggered and assymetric intervals makes long range initiative count manipulation impossible. And that's good. I'm very good at manipulating that count - but it's totally metagame and annoys the crap out of me.

I'm not sure what you mean here... If anything your system makes count manipulation easier, especially if die rolls are visible. There are going to be lots of times you know that you are getting two actions in a row. And it's real easy to use your defense sacrificing tactical actions there. If anything your system has more metagaming. I can see lots of people rolling that natural 20 for initiative and then using all their AC sacrificing attack combos on thier opening action. Just the fact that you're always considering the count in the back of your mind to know when the new round starts and ends is tons of metagaming.
The regular D&D system doesn't allow for that stuff. You simply go in the order you went in every turn, and while you can do stuff like delay, you're only losing initiative by doing so. I just don't see where all the abuses come in. The D&D initiative system is overall pretty good IMO cause you forget the numbers after the combat starts and then everyone just goes in order.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by User3 » Mon Aug 30, 2004 11:02 pm

Frank, could you give some numbers for us to look at? The system looks workable, but w/o knowing what range of stuff is covered, it's kinda hard to go beyond that. For instant, subtracting 10 from initiative for further actions sounds fine - depending on how quickness scales. The damage system also sounds fine, depending on how stuff scales.
Or with skills. What's a good skill no? What's a bad skill no? How does that compare to ability modifiers - or are there no ability mods?
SOunds like a good system, though. Grats, Frank.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by RandomCasualty » Mon Aug 30, 2004 11:31 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1093479879[/unixtime]]Damage Types: There are 14 different types of damage, because there are seven elements which can be physical or mental in nature. Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Life, Death, and Void - physical or mental. People have a base physical resistance (Strength), and a base mental resistance (Charisma) - they also have seven different resistances, one for each element. So you have essentially nine defences, and fourteen types of attack, for the whole game. All physical attacks cause wounds to accumulate into the same box, but each magical attack form fills up its own box. Thus, you have 8 total kinds of damage available. The cut offs for incapacitating and killing your character are the same regardless of type, however.

You should really streamline the damage types.
Earth isn't really a damage type, nor is air... hitting a guy with a rock should be the same as hitting him with a club. And air is just blowing him into something or freezing him, which should be either physical or cold damage. Also, I'm not sure why there's a mental and physical variant to each. Are they purely just for illusory flames? Can't you just call that mental damage in general? After all, resist fire shouldn't neccessarily help you from illusory flames. I guess if you wanted it to, you could still break them down into physical and mental but I'm not really sure what the advantage would be.
I'd stick with some of the D&D basic resistances. Electricity, Fire, Death/negative energy, Life/positive energy, Cold, Physical and mental. Those should be your types... possibly adding a few like acid, Divine, or some other types if you really wanted to.
Damage types should relate to some real concept so they can be logically placed in terms of effect. If it's a rock bouncing off you it should always do physical damage. If it's flames burning you it should always do fire damage, and if it's all in your mind that should do mental damage.
Also on the topic of races...

> There are half a dozen races, and they are all really, really different from each other - and from humans. The Ormigans develope into sexual maturity or not based on the types and proportions of Ormigan vomit they consume at age five. Ormigan player characters are therefore probably going to be "workers" or "warriors", and thus be sterile. That's different, and that qualifies you to be a whole different "race" with "racial abilities" and shit. Having pointy ears and living in the woods is not and does not. There are no fvcking forehead aliens in this setup. At all. Anywhere.

I'm not sure why you're against "forehead aliens" as you put it. Your appearance is pretty irrelevant in general IMO. Flavor like that can exist for any race, whether it looks human or not, and I don't see why you're against them.
Merely saying "they have to be different" doesn't really mean anything. Elves merely being more dextrous and immortal or at the very least long lived, are different from humans. Personality wise it depends on how different you want to make them, but their ways could be similar, distant or totally alien to human ways depending on what you want to do with them. And it doesn't really matter what they look like, or if they have 5 arms and blue and pink tentacles. The fact that an elf lives for over 500 years pretty much makes it very different from a human, and IMO different enough to make a new race.
Personally I'd say you have a lot of races, even lots of human subraces, because your going to want to have requirements based on them for your various abilities. It would allow for bloodlines and all sorts of other stuff that you generally use in fantasy.
A special race of humans who have dragon blood who can turn themselves into dragons, or a special fey race which resembles humans but has special powers (like nymphs). Just because something looks human doesn't mean it automatically shouldn't get special rules.
I just don't see the hostility toward "forehead aliens" as you call them. Why does looking human automatically make you boring?
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Lago_AM3P » Tue Aug 31, 2004 12:34 am

I agree with RandomCasualty here, Frank.
What makes you think that people are going to like more diversity than the current selection of races?
Again, I'm interjecting my opinion on probably everyone else, but I think games like FFXI shows about the extremes in appearance/stats people are willing to accept in races.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Joy_Division » Tue Aug 31, 2004 5:59 am

From what I understand Frank IS streamlining the damage system. The damage simply falls under these predefined categories and then names are simply an abstracted labelling system. You have different mental types because mental damages are your debilitating curses. Having abstract damage types that don't associate with real physical elements lets you group several types of somewhat dissasociated damage types together. That way say wood and garlic can do the same type of damage and vampires are automatically weak against both.(Even though it's odd to think of garlic doing damage to anything but your breath.)
For example (pulled out of my ass but using the same sort of concept) , your speed could be tied into the Air (mental) damage type. Since mental damage types all have their own damage progressions each time you take air (mental) damage you become slower. So the effects of attack spells are based entirely on what kind of damage they do and how much of it they do.
I also think that the system is supposed to not use spell slots in any way shape or form. I would suggest not assuming anything is in this system because it's in D&D. I think you missed the point where Frank was designing a system from the ground up that isn't D&D.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Tue Aug 31, 2004 3:08 pm

> RC wrote:You can't do that with slow anyway... Curse spells basically inflict some kind of penalty status condition, and usually you can't cast it more than once. Ray of enfeeblement for instance only gets one cast on a person at a time.

OK, this has officially become tiresome. Really tiresome. For the last damn time:
1> This is not intended to be D&D, that's why it is a different forum and has the title "building things from scratch".
2> Conditions are all forms of damage, with each damage level being an increased penalty to whatever it applies against.
3> There is no distinguishment between magic and not magic. The guy who shoots bolts of lightning from his bow and the guy who shoots bolts of lightning from his hands follow essentially the same mechanics.
4> People take multiple actions in a round, staggered against each other, and the amount they take is slightly variable (with the extras coming at the end). The game therefore is set up so that you can occassionally lap your opponent, and in so doing there is absolutely no guaranty that your opponent will therefore eventually lap you - but the total difference in actions is always small.
5> Again, it's not D&D. There are no "spells per day" - anything more effective than a simple sword blow inflicts damage of some kind back on the caster and is thus inherently limited.

> There are going to be lots of times you know that you are getting two actions in a row.

Actually, you'll hardly ever know you are getting two actions in a row. When you get more actions than your opponent, your first action happens before the enemy moves, and your last action happens after your opponent takes their last action, then you roll again next round, and your opponent may end up acting before you do or even having more actions next round (or maybe not, you don't know).
So when you get that bonus action, the count goes:
You, Enemy, You, Enemy, You *new initiative roll after your action is declared*.
So no, you don't know that you are getting a double action unless your initiative count is twenty points higher than your opponent, which is generally an unlikely event all around (since you need a higher initiative bonus, and to roll very high when your opponent rolls very low - the spread on the d20s is only +/-19). And heck, if you roll a 20 and your opponent rolls a 1, that's equivalent to them missing and you getting a crit, right? So you'd essentially get two actions on your opponent in D&D in that instance anyway (since one of your actions would count double and one of their actions wouldn't count at all).

> JD wrote:Frank, could you give some numbers for us to look at? The system looks workable, but w/o knowing what range of stuff is covered, it's kinda hard to go beyond that. For instant, subtracting 10 from initiative for further actions sounds fine - depending on how quickness scales. The damage system also sounds fine, depending on how stuff scales.

Right now, I'm looking at starting attributes going from 5 to 10, and starting skills going from zero to five. Playtest may make me change that a bit, but it seems to be an OK beginning.
So Fasty McFastfast has a Quickness of 10 and maxxes out his melee skill at 5. He rolls a d20 +15 for his initiave and takes 2, 3, or 4 actions 25%, 50%, and 25% of the time respectively. Slowly McSlowslow has a minimum quickness of 5, and spread his skills all the way out and ends up fighting with his Swim skill of 3 - and his total initiative bonus is d20 +8. So he takes 1, 2, or 3 actions 10% of the time, 50% of the time, and 40% of the time respectively. The total possible lapping of slowman here is 3 actions (although if he was even vaguely concerned about kicking ass in combat he'd have a minimum of 2 actions), an event which occurs 2.5% of the time (roughly as often as a battle axe scores a critical hit).

> RC wrote:
> Earth isn't really a damage type, nor is air

Dude, shut up. Seriously. Damage Types don't make any sense in any "real" context, they only make sense from a "magical" context. That is, it's an entirely fantasy concept that has no real-world analogy. As it so happens, these sum up damage resistance as well as energy resistance, so it sure as hell makes a difference.
Vampires are vulnerable to wooden weapons and not vulnerable to rocks. That means they have a low life resistance and a high earth resistance. While I could make both the rock and the stick inflict "bludgeoning damage", and then have them labeled with a special label of being "wood" or "stone" - this is not simpler in any way. It would then be "physical bludgeoning wood damage" instead of just "physical life damage".
See? Vastly more complicated. Your suggestion of "streamlining" actually simply adds an extra property to every single attack for no reason. By combining material resistances and magical resistances the damage types are streamlined. The damage types system I am proposing is the most streamlined damage system of any role playing game ever made.

> Lago wrote:What makes you think that people are going to like more diversity than the current selection of races?

I'll let RC and THM field that one:

> THM wrote:My other issue is RP. It's fun to RP being a Troll or something for a session. I've never seen anybody every RP a non-humanoid well for a whole campaign. It's just too hard. Either you end up being That One Troll Who's Really Cool and Bathes, Reads, and Likes Gnomes, or you end up sloshing around between being a troll, and not being a troll.

> RC wrote:Remember we are talking about normal cities, not planar metropoli, it isn't very common to see someone with a squid for a head walking around,

People want being a different race to matter, they want to recognize the people they meet, and they want to empathise with other creatures. People do not want a race to be a one-dimensional stereotype, and if there's fifty gajillion of them, that's what it's going to end up as.
D&D has more books published for it then I am ever going to write for this game, even if I live to be a thousand years old. And there still isn't a coherent write-up of what the religious practices of the worshippers of the Troll god even are. What days are sacred to it? What do they do to commemorate those sacred events? What the fvck?
As long as there are hundreds of intelligent races, there's no way that you can give any race more than cursory stereotype to work with, and that ends up having all of them end up super flat. Either you play your race "to type" or you play "against type" and either way it's totally binary and sucktastic.
With half a dozen races, you can have multiple cultures for each one. Each race can be distinct and interesting and come equipped with avenues for actual role playing.
And of course, if you can make a half elf, then an elf is by definition just a human ethnicity. If I was going to be writing up "racial" ability modifiers for creatures which freely interbred with humans, I might as well just write up racial mods for black people - and I'm not comfortable with that kind of shit.

> JD wrote:For example (pulled out of my ass but using the same sort of concept) , your speed could be tied into the Air (mental) damage type. Since mental damage types all have their own damage progressions each time you take air (mental) damage you become slower. So the effects of attack spells are based entirely on what kind of damage they do and how much of it they do.
> I also think that the system is supposed to not use spell slots in any way shape or form. I would suggest not assuming anything is in this system because it's in D&D. I think you missed the point where Frank was designing a system from the ground up that isn't D&D.

Exactly.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Aug 31, 2004 10:00 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1093964919[/unixtime]]
> Actually, you'll hardly ever know you are getting two actions in a row. When you get more actions than your opponent, your first action happens before the enemy moves, and your last action happens after your opponent takes their last action, then you roll again next round, and your opponent may end up acting before you do or even having more actions next round (or maybe not, you don't know).

What if die rolls are public? Some groups don't play wtih DM screens.

> Dude, shut up. Seriously. Damage Types don't make any sense in any "real" context, they only make sense from a "magical" context. That is, it's an entirely fantasy concept that has no real-world analogy. As it so happens, these sum up damage resistance as well as energy resistance, so it sure as hell makes a difference.

So? The least you can do is break down how the attack actually kills you, and not just assign it some arbitrary damage type. I mean that's just unneccesarily complex. Granted you could have a broadsword do earth damage, a claymore do mental damage and a fireball do air damage, but why bother? I mean why not make it intuitive and somewhat logical.
Is your system based on the fact that logic is anathema? I mean seriously, this has nothing to do wtih magic or anything, it just has to do with reasonable names for stuff. Sure you could have a club do peircing damage but it wouldn't make any sense... so why not put them in a format that people can understand and don't have to constnatly be looking up in a table? I don't get it.

> Vampires are vulnerable to wooden weapons and not vulnerable to rocks. That means they have a low life resistance and a high earth resistance. While I could make both the rock and the stick inflict "bludgeoning damage", and then have them labeled with a special label of being "wood" or "stone" - this is not simpler in any way. It would then be "physical bludgeoning wood damage" instead of just "physical life damage".

You're gonna have to do this anyway... having wood do life damage, means wooden stuff no longer affects well, living things, assuming you're going to have life energy heal people normally.
And what about incorporeal undead. Obviously you'd want life to hurt them but you wouldn't want wood to hurt them. A vampire's vulneraiblity to stakes should be put right into its description, because it is unique to a vampire. The rules set shouldn't really support that as a general mechanic it should be an aberration.
And you run into all kinds of weird ass conundrums and unambiguities when you start saying materials change damage type. Is a sword earth, fire or void? It's metal, mined from the earth, it was shaped by fire, but it's also just a physical weapon. What about a wooden arrow with a metal tip? It's wood(life), earth/fire(metal) and it flies through the air, so that might make it air too. It's too confusing and the only way you give something a type in your system is to look it up on a table. Why not just give things logically consistent unambiguous damage types? It's better and easier than having things illogically fit into any number of possible types.

> See? Vastly more complicated. Your suggestion of "streamlining" actually simply adds an extra property to every single attack for no reason. By combining material resistances and magical resistances the damage types are streamlined. The damage types system I am proposing is the most streamlined damage system of any role playing game ever made.

huh? By combining material, weapon type and magic you're types are just plain confusing and make no sense. I don't call that streamlined or simple. It's confusing and convoluted. Your types represent many things at once, and can be self contradictory in the case of a wooden arrow with a metal tip. Again, you're going to be looking up every weapon on a table with no logical basis. And then we get to monster attacks, and things get really confusing. It's a hydra, well for one it's alive, so is its bite a life attack? Well no, we don't want it to hurt a vampire like wood... it lives in the water, so is that a water attack? Or maybe it lives on a cave... is that an earth attack now? Or is it just void? A case could be made for all of those.
In a streamlined system you'd just be saying, "ok, it bites you, what kind of damage is a bite?"
Trying to created some convoluted system where a mace attack is no longer a mace attack because it's a wooden mace as opposed to a metal mace is pointlessly complex.
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### Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Post by Username17 » Wed Sep 01, 2004 1:53 am

> RC wrote:What if die rolls are public? Some groups don't play wtih DM screens.

What if they are? You roll next round's initiative after you complete your actions for this round. So the point at which you are most likely to get two actions - the point where you get the last action this round and the first action next round - is one you can't generally know in advance that you'll get.
I assume that people roll dice publically, I don't see how it's going to magically allow you to see the future and know what people will roll next round.

> RC wrote:I mean why not make it intuitive and somewhat logical.

It is logical. Materials have elemental associations, and weapons inflict damage based on the element of the association of the material it is made out of. That is logical. I honestly don't understand your complaint here.
It saves space over giving things some kind of half-assed differentiation between chopping and cutting or something, and then giving out the magical effects of the materials things are made out of which you're going to have to do anyway. All I'm really doing here is cutting out the entirely extraneous differentiation between impact damage and different impact damage that many games seem so fond of.
Your tirades about how it is somehow not logical for stone weapons to be associated with Earth for the purposes of magical defenses and vulnerabilities which care about such things is noted and ignored.

> RC wrote:having wood do life damage, means wooden stuff no longer affects well, living things, assuming you're going to have life energy heal people normally.

Why would I do that? Damage is damage. If you want to Heal people, you do that with... Healing. Duh. Do I have to draw you a fvcking diagram?

> And then we get to monster attacks, and things get really confusing. It's a hydra, well for one it's alive, so is its bite a life attack?

Yep. That's why the Wolf Man can fvck up Dracula's shit. That's what we are going for, total simplicity and a working format that is easy to understand and meshes seamlessly with the magic system. The way people swing swords is game mechanically and flavor related to the way people shoot lightning bolts. Swords and Sorcery is not two separate systems inaccurately kludged together here, it's a synergystic whole.
Your basic complaint seems to over and over be "why can't magic be some kind of poorly appended appendix upon the rest of the rest of the game system that exists like a crazy lepper of a count with its own mad fiefdom and no supervision?" I think that D&D's own poor experience with exactly that should tell you why.
Spell attacks effect people just like sword attacks. People learn magical tricks just like sword tricks. Damage Reduction against swords works exactly the same as energy resistance against spells. It all ties together and nothing is the kind of head-up-its-ass unique game mechanic that you keep wanting me to append to every little thing.
Just cause it's magic doesn't mean that it can't make sense. In fact, if the magic doesn't make sense within its own criteria for doing so the game suffers tremendously. The rules magic follows are "magic rules", but they are the story rules of the story that the game is there to represent - and those are jolly well going to be the story rules that everyone in the game has to work with. Period.
-Username17
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