Alternate Dice Rules

Thu Nov 27 23:43:46 CST 2014

So, remember when I said I could make mistakes? Looks like my upgrade roll logic was wrong, and we were (among other things) rolling Skill + Ability dice, and upgrading all but abs(skill - ability) dice. (Man those would be rough rules to try and explain. :-P) The good news is, it didn’t mess with the percentages terribly much. They went down at lower levels, but the higher levels stayed about the same.

After fixing the code, here’s the updated table, including the average # of successes:

This is interesting. At low levels, multiple successes are rare; getting more than 2 isn’t the majority. This improves as you level However, at higher difficulties multiple successes are rare, and stay rare. A difficulty 7 task with 3 successes is going to be very rare, even for a level 24 character.

I don’t know about you, but this feels pretty nice to me.

–morgul

Wed Nov 26 21:32:54 CST 2014

I mean the one with the upgrade instead of re-roll :P

–lordnull

Tue Nov 25 23:57:49 CST 2014

When you say the latest table, do you mean the one with the upgrade of dice instead of the re-roll?

The app I have generates the average number of successes as well. I can modify the table to include those numbers; just want to know which table I should extend. :-p

–morgul

Tue Nov 25 23:26:43 CST 2014

So I’ve been doing still more thinking on this, and it occured to me I’d been missing a key component that could give a refined enough measure of failure: The Die of Interest (DOI).

Taking into account the DOI and the current proposal, failure becomes true/false, with 3 sub parts depending on the DOI. If the DOI is a 10, it’s not that bad of a failure; the task itself failed, but generated a bonus for later. If it’s a 1, it’s a terrible failure; the bomb explodes, the patient dies, or the lock becomes stuck. If it’s neither, it’s a standard failure, with no progress made either way.

Given that makes failures usually non-punishing, but potentially interesting, I think I can move forward.

I really like the most recent table posted. We should keep in mind that the frequency of success does not need to depend on level, just expertise in an area. While those are often joined together (especially when considering abilty score increases), a level one with high dex and high lock-picking can (should?) be better at locking picking than a level 10 with low dex and no ranks in lock-picking.

If we go forward with that table, I think it would be useful to see how many successes are generated at the given levels. That may give us an idea of how much extra damage a character at that level will be doing.

–lordnull

Tue Nov 25 16:32:29 CST 2014

Round and round we go, where it stops, nobody knows!

The tables are interesting, but I keep pondering if we’re approaching this from the best angle.

I’m going to take a moment to list out the interesting facents for the Action Resolution System. This is not exactly meant as a “the ARS must meet all these things!” but more as a “This is what I’ve been primarily considering”.

• At a non-trivial difficulty, a novice has a lower chance of success than a master.^
• At impossible difficulty, a novice has worse outcomes than a master
• Neither skill ranks nor ability score are definitively better^^
• A binary success/failure result.
• A measure of how successful or how badly a failure was.
• A way to have critical results or complications, not required to result of success or failure.
• A definitive way for players to say “yes, I am improving”.
• A limit to how large a gap between min result and max result there can be (discounting buffs or debuffs).
• Math light

^ The intention here is to assume the novice and master have the same level, the only difference being ability scores and/or skill ranks. Given any difficulty for a level, the master should succeede more often. The trippy part is as the levels go up, and the target number or relative difficulty of the task goes up, the odds of success or failure should remain the same. The prime example is (optimally) attacks in DnD: the players keep giving higher numbers, but the numbers they need to give keep going up as well.

^^ There may be an argument that high skill ranks should overshadow ability, since raw talent can only get one so far. However, I think we want to do a mix for now.

So, The d20 system has:

• Yes, at all target numbers.
• Sometimes. A failure is just a failure in 4e, but SW:Saga has some skills with detrimental effects on failure. A master is less likely to hit those, though, since a failure for them is likely to be when they rolled 1 or 2 (making them pointless).
• Yes, for the most part. The fact they stack makes them about equal in 4e (where max of ‘ranks’ is 8); half level starts to overshadow both.
• Yes.
• Yes.
• No, It is tied to the result.
• Yes, the numbers on the sheet always get higher.
• Yes, it is 20
• No, we are, at higher levels and at best, adding 2 2-digit numbers together and attempting to remember our buffs as well.

EotE:

• Yes, at all difficulties.
• Yes, a master will likely negate more failures and threats.
• Yes.
• Yes, at least one success.
• Yes, the number of remaining success/failure.
• Yes, the threat/advantage and triumph/despair mechanics.
• Mostly, the numbers on the sheet go up, up to a point.
• Mostly, the numbers on the sheet are capped, which caps the spread. Otherwise it is uncapped.
• Yes.

VtM:

• Yes, at all difficulties.
• Not sure.
• Yes, they both contribute to the roll pool equally.
• Yes.
• Mostly. VtM requires a certain number of successes, so we can see how far below the number we got.
• It is tied to the main roll.
• The dots on the sheet increase.
• Mostly; because the dice pool keeps getting bigger, the gap does as well, but the numbers on the sheet are capped.
• Mostly; the d10 re-roll can make things marginally harder.

Current only actually workable solution:

• Not really. It’s about the same success rate for a given number after a bit. This is useful for buiding encounters, though, since the GM doesn’t need a table to figure out what the target number should be.
• Not really. There’s nothing worse for the novice that failed than there is the master.
• Yes, as in EotE.
• Yes.
• No, currently lacks a measure of failure.
• Yes, using the DOI.
• Mostly, the die pool and re-rolls increase; however success chance does not.
• Mostly, but only because the numbers on the sheet are capped.
• Yes, we’re just counting starts.

–lordnull

Tue Nov 25 15:44:59 CST 2014

Ok, here’s yet another approach:

1. Take the higher of your Skill or Ability; that is the number of dice your roll.
2. Take the lower of your Skill or Ability; that is the number of dice you upgrade. (Next largest size die.)
3. Roll dice. Any result larger than the targetNumber is a success.

Admittedly, this has no degree of failure (still stumped on that.) Regardless, here’s the probability table it outputs:

…Wow, the nearly exact 10% drop on the Level 24 column is a bit scary, but I’ve run those numbers quite a bit, and they’re +/- 0.4%.

Pros:

• Very uniform difficulty increase (~10% difference per difficulty level at higher levels, slightly more at lower)
• Easiest difficulty is only 90% chance of success.
• Gives degree of success
• Small dice pool
• Only 1 roll

Cons:

• No degree of failure
• Chance of success only increases slightly as characters level.
• Awkward ‘upgrade’ die mechanic

I think this is a slight improvement over our original alternative system, and mostly because I like the difficulty curve much better. (The 10% drop makes it super easy to know how hard a task/defense is to hit.)

Still, it’s a little disappointing that this didn’t pan out too improved. (I may look at increasing the upgrade die to a d12.)

Edit: I tried upgrading to a d12 instead of a d10. It improved the spread at higher levels, but I question how much it’ll be noticed while you’re leveling. If you want, I can do a table for it.

–morgul

Tue Nov 25 16:02:26 CST 2014

Given that failing is the least fun part of any game, I’m not sure it’s a factor that is worth adding much formal complexity to. If we have to make sacrifices, that’s one of the areas I’m most willing to forego.

–burstaholic

2c0dfdb2dd4b7bb7c60f20750fa68ad53e85e476 Tue Nov 25 14:45:32 CST 2014

I’ve modified one of your suggestions:

1. Add your Skill and Ability: this is your dice pool.
2. Roll the pool. Any die with a result over the targetNumber count as a success; the rest are failures.
3. Remove as many failures as points in your Skill.
4. Subtract failures from successes; 0 counts as a failure.

Here are the numbers, run assuming beats and d8:

Yikes. As the player improves, everything either stays the same, or gets harder. Consider, this is a more gentle version of your initial failure suggestion; clearly this isn’t what we’re looking for…

…dammit.

–morgul

Tue Nov 25 14:25:59 CST 2014

Hadn’t concidered that; you make a fair point on the measure of failure.

With a (perfect world version of) degree of failure, the novice could break his tools or generally make things worse due to a potential high failure, while the master would avoid making things worse. This is without even involving the DOI.

There’s a fine line here; if failure is severe enough, it takes the entire place of the DoI. If it’s not, why bother having it? I think the SW:Saga Edition actually did a good job of this (now that you’ve pointed it out to me). The best example I can think of is disabling an explosive. If you failed by 5 or more, the thing exploded; otherwise it was just a failure. This doesn’t override the DoI’s point (to add complications), but it still has a reason for being there.

Personally, however, I dislike the idea of being able to break your tools just because you’re not skilled at something. (I’d rather that be a DoI thing, if anything.)

In short, I see degree of failure as being one way to differentiate novice from master, allowing for another avenue of tangible advancement.

I get what you’re striving for. But I’m not convinced that we’ve settled on the best way to do this, yet…

–morgul

Tue Nov 25 11:34:27 CST 2014

D20 doesn’t have a measure for failure; EotE is a bit unique in that, I think.

D20 most certainly does have a measure for failure: how far below the target number you were. In SW:Saga, some skills have effects if you roll 5 or more under the number needed. In fact, any system that uses a target number, whether it be total added together or number of successes needed will in herently have a measure of failure as well.

This seems (unless I’m missing the boat completely) to make it harder for more skilled characters to succeed.

Hmmm, that’s true for cases where the target number is higher; it’s the opposite for more lower target numbers. Still, not a good feature to have.

Also, it seems like we’re putting more work back on the player. If it bought something for us, I’d be ok with this, but I’m not sure what a degree of failure actually does for us, mechanically?

Let’s take the example of picking a lock as well as healing a wound. Without degree of failure, the novice and the master fail in the same way: the lock just doesn’t get picked, and the wound just doesn’t get closed.

With a (perfect world version of) degree of failure, the novice could break his tools or generally make things worse due to a potential high failure, while the master would avoid making things worse. This is without even involving the DOI.

In short, I see degree of failure as being one way to differentiate novice from master, allowing for another avenue of tangible advancement.

–lordnull

Tue Nov 25 09:06:10 CST 2014

[…] I had a bad reaction to your example. Stating ‘X action takes Y rounds’ time locks things, and brings up the question of ‘how many things do we need to specify’. A marker of ‘needs concentration’ seems clearer. That’s a discussion for skills rather than die rolls though.

I agree about the time-locking thing. It made the example work, but is flawed. The bigger issue, though, is ‘how many things do we need to specify’. While I agree that’s a related but parallel discussion, it’s worth pointing out that even if we get the Perfect Dice System (tm), we need to make sure that characters “get better” at a skill as they level. However that happens, if it doesn’t feel tangible to players, they won’t like it. Currently, that’s a (potential) problem with my proposal.

Just wanted to make sure that we’re thinking about it.

I don’t like the fact that there’s no measure for failure, though. It’s either trivial, or critical, with no middle ground like there is for successes.

D20 doesn’t have a measure for failure; EotE is a bit unique in that, I think. It might not be the only one, but it’s certainly the exception, not the rule. Personally, I don’t need a measure for failure.

Here’s another idea […]

This seems (unless I’m missing the boat completely) to make it harder for more skilled characters to succeed. You need > 50% of Y dice to be success as opposed to any. The chances of getting 3 dice > N is a lower chance than 2 dice > N, I’m pretty sure.

Also, it seems like we’re putting more work back on the player. If it bought something for us, I’d be ok with this, but I’m not sure what a degree of failure actually does for us, mechanically?

Variations […]

Some of these are interesting. I especially like the “Skill ranks remove failures before determining failure” option. But, it implicitly says, “It doesn’t matter how much a non-naturally skilled person trains, they can never be as good as a naturally skilled person.” That may be fine, but I want to call it out and make sure we’re ok with that. If we’re not, we have to add the complexity of the “whichever is lower” scheme. (Meh.)

I might run some numbers for this scheme today. (It’s a holiday week, very little work to do.) Oh, and since you asked:

Probabilities when using a d8

Assuming beats rules, using a d8:

What I like about this is that there’s an average of a 12.5% drop in chance between each of the difficulty levels, which feels significant but not too huge. (I think I like these numbers the best so far.)

–morgul

Tue Nov 25 00:57:49 CST 2014

I think I was comparing a list to an integer, which will horribly scew my results.

The d10 variant has very little change between the lowers difficulties, while the d6 has an appreciable amount. It would be interesting to see the results for a d8.

We are on the same page that we do not want to require a number of successes, but I had a bad reaction to your example. Stating ‘X action takes Y rounds’ time locks things, and brings up the question of ‘how many things do we need to specify’. A marker of ‘needs concentration’ seems clearer. That’s a discussion for skills rather than die rolls though.

I don’t like the fact that there’s no measure for failure, though. It’s either trivial, or critical, with no middle ground like there is for successes.

Here’s another idea:

A skill roll is a pool of dN’s, the pool being ability + skill. Each die that is greater than the target number is a success, otherwise it is a failure. Success - Failure = result. If Result is greater than 0, we have a success (and a degree thereof). If not, we have a failure (and a degree there of).

Consequences:

• No matter how high a level a character gets, we know the chances of a binary success (1/N, 2/N, 3/N, etc) (me likey, intuition only though).
• We need to calculate average number of successes for average characters at given levels to get combat right (anything we do will need this).
• There is no measureable increase in power aside from number of successes (so, same).
• A master can screw the pooch much worse than a novice can (not too keen).
• Much simpler to describe (me likey).
• oh look, we made a variant of VtM! (meh).

Variations:

• Skill roll is ability, skill rank cannot exceed abilty, skill ranks allow re-rolls.
• Skill ranks remove failures after determineing failure (reducing severity of failure).
• Skill ranks remove failures before determing failure (potentially turning a fail into a success).

–lordnull

Mon Nov 24 19:33:33 CST 2014

Well, not that I haven’t made a mistake as well, I can disprove your tables: you have ‘Skill 3, Ability 4’, a target number of 2 as having a 100% probability. But, take the case of [1, 1, 1, 1]. It is the only case, but there exists one case where a success does not happen, therefore the probability is not 100%. So, something’s not quite right with the numbers your’re spitting out.

That said, my methodology was:

1. Take the larger of Skill or Ability, roll that many d6, store results in a list.
2. Take the smaller of Skill or Ability, that becomes maxReRoll.
3. results.each: if result < targetNumber and we’ve replaced less than maxReRoll, roll a d6, and replace results[i] with that result. Increment the number of rerolled dice.

All this is using Monty, 10,000 rolls. (Near as I can tell, it’s pretty spot on.)

More concretely, here’s my code:

function rollDie(sides)
{
    return Math.floor(Math.random() * sides) + 1;
} // end rollDie

function rollSkill(skill, ability, targetNumber)
{
    var results = [];

    // We take the lesser of skill and ability, and that's the maximum number of dice we can re-roll.
    var reRollLimit = skill >= ability ? ability : skill;

    // We take the greater of skill and ability, and that's the total number of dice to roll.
    var numDice = skill >= ability ? skill : ability;

    // Roll numDice
    _.each(_.range(numDice), function()
    {
        results.push(rollDie(SKILL_DIE_SIDES));
    });

    // Perform re-rolls
    _.each(results, function(result, index)
    {
        if(result < targetNumber && reRollLimit > 0)
        {
            results.splice(index, 1, rollDie(SKILL_DIE_SIDES));
            reRollLimit--;
        } // end if
    });

    // Roll the die of interest
    var dieOfInterest = rollDie(DOI_DIE_SIDES);

    // Return a results object that gives us all the information we want.
    return {
        successes: _.filter(results, function(result){ return result >= targetNumber; }).length,
        complication: dieOfInterest == 1,
        boon: dieOfInterest == 10,
        results: results,
        dieOfInterest: dieOfInterest
    }
} // end rollSkill

Regardless, I don’t have much caremad about the meet or beat thing; I actually kinda like the way the table works out with beat better, but I also can’t think of an RPG that uses beat rules (not that there isn’t one). It’s just a little bit of a context switch. An informal pole of Dave and Travis shows they prefer meet. Eh, whichever; hardly worth getting stuck on.

Let’s assume my numbers are right… how do we feel about the way it works out? You can make the point that the character probably isn’t going to get noticably better at a task as you level; Average difficulty tasks will always have the same succeed chance. So, to prevent characters from feeling too much alike, we’ll have to rely on the number of succcesses as the real differentiator. But we’ll need to be careful; we can’t make 1-2 successes be worthless, and therefore a failure in disguise. OTOH, we can have certain high-level things (Powers?) require 2 or more successes. (VtM did this, but sometimes it felt cheap; I’m not sold on going this route.)

Over all, I really do like the idea that picking a lock requires the same amount of concentration for both the novice and the master, it’s just that the master can do it and leave no trace, while the novice simply doesn’t have that option.

Or, take it another way: Picking a lock takes 3 rounds, average difficulty. Each additional success removes a round from the total time, or can be used to remove evidence of the lock having been picked. A level 1 will complete it in about 5 rounds, without covering their tracks. A level 30 will complete it in a single round, with no sign of forced entry(on average).

TBH, I really like this design space; it feel simple, yet has at least as much depth as DnD, if not more.

–morgul

Mon Nov 24 17:06:50 CST 2014

I think we need to review some (my) methodology, because I’m getting different results.

I’m attempting to do a generated result set when I can, and if I can’t, I fall back to monty. A result set is generated by:

1. Create the die pool by adding ability + skill
2. Generate result of each die possiblity either by calculation or monty
3. remove skill lowest results for the result pool.

This seemed a reasonable way to emulate the result of re-rolling failed dice.

What I’m seeing is large swaths of ‘never fail’ and ‘never succeede’ no matter the die used. This is using the ‘meat or beat’ style.

Aside from that, I think the “everyone else uses meet” is overstated. I prefer the simpler rule of “if your roll is greater than the target number” rather than the longer “if your roll is equal to or greater than the target number”. The first example that comes off the top of my head is risk, where defender wins a tie.

Both have a point of ‘useless difficulty’ however. The ‘meet’ has a useless difficultly at the low end where the roller always succeedes, while ‘beat’ has a useless diffuclty at the high end, where the roller always fails.

–lordnull

Mon Nov 24 16:31:02 CST 2014

Probabilities when using a d10

Here’s the same table as before (assuming meets rules), but using a d10:

Unfortunately, the ranges for each name didn’t exactly line up as well as I’d have hoped, but this seems to work. It gives a finer grained control over the difficulty, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s ‘better’ than the d6 version. I’d need to spend more time looking at it to get a better opinion.

–morgul

Mon Nov 24 15:27:58 CST 2014

Probabilities when using a d6

Let’s assume we stick with beats and use a d6, this is how our target numbers would map to difficulty, and % Chance of success for the best Ability/Skill levels, as pulled from the Monster Building table (all percentages are rounded approximates):

Initially, I was unsure about the spread in probabilities between the numbers, however looking at them, they don’t feel too off. Here are a few generalizations I think we can make:

• “A first level character will accomplish an average task a little more often than random chance.”
• “A max level character will accomplish an average task significantly more often than random chance.”
• “Higher level characters will succeed any given task a bit more often than low level characters.”
• “The difficulty of a task is reasonably stable, regardless of level.”

Just for comparison, this is what the table looks like if we do meets:

It basically adds a ‘nearly guarenteed’ band, while everything else stays the same. Personally, I’m willing to accept that nearly useless target number for not needing to make the mental context switch of having to remember that it’s beats not meets, like everything else.

Next, I’ll do the same tables for d10.

–morgul

Mon Nov 24 14:25:05 CST 2014

As per our discussion, these are the new dice rule we’re playing with:

1. Take the higher of Skill or Ability, that is the number of dice you roll.
2. Take the lower of Skill or Ability, that is the number of dice your may re-roll once.
3. Any result that beats the target number counts as a success.
4. Roll a d10. If 1, a complication (negative) happens, if 10 a boon (positive) happens.

Going over this, I’ve got a couple of comments:

• If we switch to meets instead of beats, we stay consistent with most other RPGs, and simply have to have diceSides + 1 be our ‘impossible’ difficulty
• Step 4 can safely be ignored when worrying about the probability of various target numbers, which is nice
• Breaking with the EotE dice makes it more likely this system could be used outside of our group, sans law suits.

I have some preliminary data that suggests that using d10s instead of d6s might be required for the best possible probability spread, but I’ll comment with some actual numbers shortly.

–morgul

Rename Action action

Thu Jul 10 23:28:13 CDT 2014

Currently the answer to ‘how many actions do I get on my turn’ is ‘1 action and up to 2 maneuvers’ with a few caveats for the maneuvers. The problem is we have an action type called ‘Action’. I feel this will only cause confusion to new players. Add on the additional rules there already are for how many actions a player gets a turn, and I think it’ll be better in the long run to rename it to something else.

Standard, Primary, Major, Greater, something else?

–lordnull

Unified Power Sources

Tue Jul 8 21:24:40 CDT 2014

After an evening of talking (that we’ll put the logic behind these choices later), we have settled upon:

Power Sources

• Melee Weapons Weapons - Brawn
• Ranged Weapons Weapons - Agility
• Guile - Presence
• Technologynology - Intellect
• Arcane - Intellect
• Divine - Wisdom
• Primal - Wisdom

Classes

• Bard: Guile, Arcane, Primal
• Brawler: Technology, Melee Weapons, Primal
• Changeling: Arcane, Technology, Primal
• Marital Artitist: Arcane, Divine, Melee Weapons
• Mage: Arcane, Technology, Divine
• Medic: Arcane, Technology, Divine
• Sage: Arcane, Technology, Primal
• Scout: Technology, Melee Weapons, Ranged Weapons
• Specialist: Guile, Melee Weapons, Ranged Weapons
• Soldier: Melee Weapons, Ranged Weapons, Guile
• Tactician: Arcane, Divine, Guile

As for unifying power sources and damage types, that’s a flat ‘nope’.

–lordnull

Tue Jul 8 16:22:20 CDT 2014

In addition, I realized that our power sources could be unified with our damage types? Or, at least have a mapping between them? Just a thought…

–morgul

Tue Jul 8 15:00:51 CDT 2014

I’m actually pretty sick of trying to come up with power source names that don’t overlap with skills. I also kinda like the idea of power sources having unified names when they are the same thing. As I see it, the problem only arises from Arcane, Mechanical, Nature and Divine sources, as those are the ones that overlap existing skills. If someone uses the power of poorly timed holocaust jokes, I have no problem naming his power source “Poorly Times Holocaust Jokes”. But, having, say, Aether, Arcanium, Pyramid Power, etc… I just don’t like it.

My proposal is to unify common power sources. Some classes may have sources that are unique; that’s fine (especially where it lends a neat bit of flavor). But, if you’re a magic user, you use the same source as other magic users. Here are my proposals; we should pick one from each:

• Arcana: (aka, the “magic” power source)
  • Aether - this could be the name of ‘magic power’. This would make Arcana actuall mean, “the study of Aether”.
  • Arcanum - this sounds kinda cheesey imho, but it works…
  • Arcane Power - pretty unimaginative, but at least it won’t be confusing.
  • Magic - also unimaginative
• Divinity: (aka, the “divine” power source)
  • Divinus - because latin is cool! (“of, or belonging to a deity”)
  • Sanctity - I’m leaning towards this one, because it literalty means ‘the quality of being holy’… sounds like a source of divine power to me.
  • Spirit - a little on the lame side, but it works
  • Righteousness - straightforward, but clashes with my favorites from the other sections…
• Mechanics: (aka, the “tech” power source)
  • Cyber - flavor-wise, I like it because it would make sense that you’d shorten ‘cyberpunk’ or ‘cyberspace’ to cyber, as the name of the tech power source.
  • Mech - Another shortened name for the “mechanical” power source. Makes me think more mechanical than “technological”, though.
  • Technomancy - This almost implies mixing magic and technology, but could simply be stated as the use of technology as a power source.
• Nature: (aka, the “natural” power source)
  • Gaia - another one I like in the “aether”, “cyber” family of names. And it’s historical, too!
  • Primal - ripping off Dnd, but not terrible.
  • Wilder - as in a shortened form of ‘wilderness’? I dunno.

If the decision were up to me, we’d have:

• Aether
• Sanctity
• Cyber
• Gaia

Unifying All Sources

Modifying from our current list of power sources, this is the final list:

• Armor
• Aether
• Chi
• Cyber
• Deceit
• Drugs
• Gaia
• Guile
• Hatred
• Knowledge
• Sanctity
• Tactics
• Weapons

And, our classes become:

• Bard: Guile, Deceit, Knowledge
• Brawler: Hatred, Cyber, Drugs
• Changeling: Aether, Cyber, Gaia
• Martial Artist: Aether, Chi, Sanctity
• Mage: Aether, Cyber, Sanctity
• Medic: Aether, Knowledge, Sanctity
• Sage: Aether, Cyber, Gaia
• Scout: Cyber, Tactics, Weapons
• Soldier: Armor, Tactics, Weapons
• Specialist: Guile, Deceit, Weapons
• Tactician: Aether, Tactics, Sanctity

Over all, this just feels a little more unified and self consistent. It also moves our weapon-heavy classes more in line with the rest of our classes. And, while it’s rather bike-sheddy, it does effect not just the flavor, but the design of some powers/classes, as well as opening up the possibility for mechanics that leverage power sources down the road. (ex: Anti-aether field, cyber-jammer, etc. Not that I like anti-magic fields, but as an example of one idea…)

I’m not sold on Knowledge, but over all I think it works better than, say, Academics. Either way…

–morgul

Rename Class ‘Skills’ to Class ‘Sources’

Wed Jun 18 12:00:12 CDT 2014

While I tend to prefer things that are the same to be named the same, I cannot deny human nature. So I suppose power sources work.

I am irked by the the statement “The special skill for my class is always worse than any of my out of combat skills”. Actually, no. Unless you’ve somehow gotten way more skill points than you’re supposed to, your combat source will be as good as or better than most of your skills, with 1 or 2 being better. Not a reason to oppose this change.

It is similar to how I changed up the tactition attack skills; Arcanum replacing Arcana, Awareness replacing Insight, and Righteousness replacing Divinity.

–lordnull

Wed Jun 18 08:39:37 CDT 2014

After having two eerily similiar discussion less than 10 hours apart, I think we need to avoid the use of the word ‘skills’ when naming the the class specific attack skills. Both Ginny and Dave expressed confusion that “The special skill for my class is always worse than any of my out of combat skills?” The answer to this is obviously, “Yes, it makes the numbers work, shut up.” Still, I think we can avoid this reaction simply by using different terms and divorcing the attack specific skills from the idea of what a skill inherently means about your character.

My proposal (which has garnished a positive reaction in my limited sample space) is to call them “Class Power Sources”. It has a familiar feel, a la DnD4’s power sources, and it has instantly resonated with at least three people. I also like the direction it seems to suggest for flavor. Just for comparison’s sake, let’s assume we have a Defender class:

Defender

• Attack Skills:
  • Brawl
  • Intuition
  • Divinity

Makes sense, reasonable skill names, and mechanically it’s fine. But, compare it to this:

Defender

• Power Source:
  • Fury
  • Intuition
  • Righteous Might

I had a little more fun with the flavor, admittedly, but psychologically, this resonates with me. And, it has the benefit of being an instance of, “and they work just like you’d expect” (aka, like a skill).

–morgul

Healing, Stamina, Second wind

Mon Jun 16 18:25:57 CDT 2014

Add in that any damage while staggered (not just damage >= threshold) bumps you down, and suddenly that swarm of minions is looking very deadly, as well as any ongoing damage you are taking. (as a side effect, ongoing damage could lose the damage and be reduced to ‘on fire’ or ‘bleeding’ with an automatic stagger effect).

I’ll buy that. I also love the idea of ‘on fire’, ‘bleeding’, etc. So much easier to think about. “What does bleeding mean?” “Well, you keep moving down the condition track while you’re staggered.” “Oh. An ‘on fire’?” “Same thing.”

If the threshold is per round, large amounts of low damage attacks and a few heavy attacks are equivalent. Means tracking a number, which is anethema to the idea of threshold.

I don’t think we need it to stack up beyond a turn; eg: monsters with multiple attacks will more easily beat the threshold, while other monsters can depend on special attacks that if they hit not only deal damage, but stagger the target regardless of how much damage was dealt.

Yeah, I kinda agree with this; damage should stack up per turn. What it means is that it’s up to the attacker (GM) to remember all damage numbers to produce a final number to compare against the threshold. I kinda dislike this bookkeeping, I think it makes multiple attacks have a real point.

Side note: Does this open us up for a Dual Strike feat for players? I think it might…

Healing sucks, leaders only heal a bit. They are upfront with the defender (or in back w/ the mage if we can swing balance right) dealing the same amount of damage as the other non-strikers, only instead of debuffing/taunting, they are buffing.

Again, I can really get behind this, if we do it right.

It may be simplier just from a design/GM standpoint to keep them as they are.

We’ll have to play with this… I like the idea of things being parallel only simplified on the monster side. But, that’s fine, we can work on this.

We need to test this

At this point, I think we need to try it. I suggest we build a few level 5 classes that are modified versions of what we have, with the modified mechancis. Then we don’t have to worry about converting everything before we know if it works.

If the test goes well, I really like what it’ll will give us.

–morgul

Mon Jun 16 17:10:56 CDT 2014

Low damage attacks are useless

Not entirely. This assumes the primary reason for an attack is damage. While is is true for many monsters, it also false for many monsters. Controller and lurker monsters will generally use the attacks to weaken the opposition so other monsters are more likely to deal damage. The reverse is also true (if monsters use a threshold): controllers set ’em up, strikers knock ’em down.

Add in that any damage while staggered (not just damage >= threshold) bumps you down, and suddenly that swarm of minions is looking very deadly, as well as any ongoing damage you are taking. (as a side effect, ongoing damage could lose the damage and be reduced to ‘on fire’ or ‘bleeding’ with an automatic stagger effect).

Taking into account HP was already part of the monster building rules, so there’s actually no (functional) change there.

If the threshold is per round, large amounts of low damage attacks and a few heavy attacks are equivalent. Means tracking a number, which is anethema to the idea of threshold.

Add in that it is possible to have an attack that hits but explicitly staggers…

Healing. What is it good for?

This is symtomatic of thinking in terms of hitpoints. Even in DnD, the leader’s primary role was not to actually heal. Each leader had a minor that could heal, but was limited in uses per encounter. Of the other ‘spend a surge’ heals, there are very few. This means that a leader never had enough healing power to even get near to using all of a party’s surges.

In short, the point of a leader is not thier ability to heal. The point of a leader is to buff the party such that they either hit the opposition harder, or survive hits from the opposition.

Healing sucks, leaders only heal a bit. They are upfront with the defender (or in back w/ the mage if we can swing balance right) dealing the same amount of damage as the other non-strikers, only instead of debuffing/taunting, they are buffing.

There’s an advatnage to a leader allowing multiple party members to go up the condition track: they then get to use thier maneuver/action (depending on build) on something else. It’s a matter of action efficiency.

Monsters: Two or Infinite hits to kill

They already are build differently than the players, so this will likely continue to be true. The monster build table ignores abilities entirely, and simply provides the dice to role. It may be simplier just from a design/GM standpoint to keep them as they are.

1. We need a way for damage to stack up, at least per turn. (I’m fine with it going away at the start of your next turn, kinda prefer it.)
2. Healing needs to be more than just bumping up on the condition track. There needs to be a reason to play a class that heals.
3. Monsters probably still need hitpoints. Or, at the very least, they need to be able to be whittled down like PCs.

I don’t think we need it to stack up beyond a turn; eg: monsters with multiple attacks will more easily beat the threshold, while other monsters can depend on special attacks that if they hit not only deal damage, but stagger the target regardless of how much damage was dealt.

Healing should never be the focus of a class. It should be a cherry on top of the other awesome stuff they can do. The reason to play a leader should be because you like the support style of buffing your friends.

Monsters likely do still need hitpoints.

–lordnull

Mon Jun 16 17:02:45 CDT 2014

Random thought. Current Stamina as threshold? I’m not sure it solves any of my issues, but throwing it out there, incase it inspires some solution…

–morgul

Mon Jun 16 16:29:19 CDT 2014

“I think the main trouble is that players are spending a lot of time at mid-hitpoint levels, and focussing on hitpoints being the primary way to”not die“.”

Closer to bottom hitpoint levels, but yeah. It basically feels like you’re constantly about to die, even when that’s not exactly true. I think we have ‘hitpoints’ so engrained in our heads as “When this is gone, we’re dead”, that it’s hard to break from that.

“Stamina as a resource does it’s job very well. I see no need to actually change this.”

exhales I’m glad. I’m becoming a fan of the whole mechanic.

“So, my proposal:

• Hitpoints are a threshold and not tracked. If you take damage >= hitpoints in one turn, you are staggered.
• If you take damage while you are staggered, you go down one step on the condition track.
• Any ‘healing’, including going up one step on the condition track, removes the ‘staggered’ condition.
• All hero’s have ‘steady’, a maneuver that expends a point of stamina to go up one step on the condition track."

Hmm. I like a lot about what this does and where it’s going, but I have some serious concerns. Let me see if I can’t put my thoughts together in a cogent way…

What I like

Staggered

This mechanic has a certain appeal for me. I like the idea that as long as I hit you hard enough, I can set you up for my buddy to knock you down. It’s a neat design space, and something about it makes me want to play with it.

No more tracking HP

Tracking HP sucks. Worrying about it sucks. I’d love to remove it entirely. That your proposal does so is really nice, and I support it in principal.

Potions can die in a fire

Frankly, healing items feel a bit like a kludge, conceptually. At the very least, a money sink. I’d love to see them go away.

Issues

Low-damage attacks are useless

In DnD, EotE, and SSRPG today, dealing 1 damage means something. With DnD’s high numbers, it doesn’t mean much unless it happens over time, but even numbers has high as 5 can be of serious concern to low-level players. In EotE and SSRPG, 1 damage is much more serious, since hitpoints are shallow. In any of them, monsters with a high attack and low damage can be still effective against players, and has some interesting prospects as a tactic to wear player’s down.

With a threshold system, attacks less than the player’s threshold are literally useless, and can never do anything. What it means as a GM is that I have to know what the lowest and highest thresholds are in the party and ABSOLUTELY make sure I have monsters whose damage is in the middle of that. Either we need to make threshold reliable predictable and then bake those numbers into the monster building rules, or … yeah, any other option feels like it’s putting a burden on the GM and makes me less interested in the system over all. So, yeah. There’s that.

Healing. What is it good for?

I’m not sure what healing would look like, with this. Bumps up on the condition track? That works, but if everyone can bump on the condition track by spending a point of stamina, then what good is a healer? Do they… bump two steps? This is starting to feel like it has some of EotE’s issues with healing focused characters.

Monsters: Two or Infinite hits to kill

I’m making the assumption that we’re making monsters use the same system as players. (This might not be what you had in mind, but it’s worth the discussion.) This means that players with low attacks can never hit monsters with high defenses, therefore will just be standing there, doing nothing. And, if we make it so that the lowest possible attack can hit, then that just means monsters are 2 hit kills. Period.

Suddenly, any balance mistake (made by either us, or the GM) becomes catastrophic.

Where does that leave us?

Well, I don’t think we can go with your proposal. I was all for giving it a shot before I wrote this, but now I’m pretty sure it won’t work without tweaks. That being said, I still love where it’s going; we just need to address some of these issues in a nice, easy way.

Here’s what I think we need:

1. We need a way for damage to stack up, at least per turn. (I’m fine with it going away at the start of your next turn, kinda prefer it.)
2. Healing needs to be more than just bumping up on the condition track. There needs to be a reason to play a class that heals.
3. Monsters probably still need hitpoints. Or, at the very least, they need to be able to be whittled down like PCs.

Let me be clear: I think this is the most important part of the entire system to get right. If we screw up here, it’s not going to be fun to play. At least, not for our group.

–morgul

Mon Jun 16 15:18:15 CDT 2014

Revisting this due to http://ssrpg.skewedaspect.com/Playtest%204.

I think the main trouble is that players are spending a lot of time at mid-hitpoint levels, and focussing on hitpoints being the primary way to “not die”.

There are, as it stands now, 3 health tracks: hit points, condition track, and stamina. Hitpoints are just a buffer against the condition track; you can be at 0, but if you’re not being hit, you’re not in danager. condition track is how a character is killed. Each step is painful, and there’s only 5 steps. Stamina is a reactionary state that adds the buffer back to hitpoints (at the moment). If there’s 0 stamina, there’s the same situation as hitpoints, with the exception that you can no longer get that buffer back.

The purpose of stamina being limited is to provide a player a signal that they should stop adventuring for the day. It’s a simple enough mechanic, and does it’s job well.

The condition track provides a sense of increasing stakes, and actual progress toward death. It allows players to have a better way to provide meta (“who’s turn the most”) without actually needing to give a number (“Crippled vs Winded”) which is nice and flavorful (though numbers work too).

Hitpoints provide a way for damage to not automatically hit the condition track; it provides the variable ‘toughness’ of characters so defenders will take a hit or two extra and squishies go squish (since defenses are all actually the same numbers).

Based on the play test, healing numbers were low, so it would take 2 or more heals to get back to full HP. Getting HP was done at the cost of being able to go back up on the condition track. So, not only did healing have to happen often, it was done to the detrimine of ‘real’ healing (going back up the condition track).

Add on top that monsters deal more damage than is healed, and it’s almost like after the first hit, there’s no point healing at all.

So, let’s look at what we need:

• A way to tell players that the character should prolly stop adventuring for the day.
• A way for defenses/tough characters to feel tougher than the squishies
• A way to make healing less arduous.

Stamina as a resource does it’s job very well. I see no need to actually change this.

Hitpoints, even if they are higher, are not sufficient to make the defenders feel defendering. I’m hesitant to suggest increasing thier defenses, so I would like to try to resolve this either though powers, or the HP/cond track system.

Making healing less arduous means it needs to happen less often.

So, my proposal:

• Hitpoints are a threshold and not tracked. If you take damage >= hitpoints in one turn, you are staggered.
• If you take damage while you are staggered, you go down one step on the condition track.
• Any ‘healing’, including going up one step on the condition track, removes the ‘staggered’ condition.
• All hero’s have ‘steady’, a maneuver that expends a point of stamina to go up one step on the condition track.

So, this means:

• defenders get a higher HP feel harder to stagger, thus tougher.
• leaders don’t need to focus on healing much all; they can focus on buffs instead with group heals being the better choice (so player’s done need to spend a maneuver on thier turn).
• Potentially simpler; a status effect vs a moving number.

Downsides:

• Potions are pretty much worthless…is this really a disadvantage, though? We could focus on them giving other effects than just healing.
• Um..it’s stealing from savage worlds?

–lordnull

Tue Jun 3 13:26:46 CDT 2014

Not so sure we do. Currently, the only way to effectively ‘kill’ a character is to reduce them to the bottom of the condition track. This means going up the condition track is by far the most effectively way to stave off death; all HP means is not every hit will drop you down the condition track.

We already 2 ways to go back up the condition track. By making potions relatively easy to get and use, and having healing powers focus on moderate group heals will allow us to have fewer default powers. The down side to the strategy is player characters spending significant amounts of time going back up the condition track.

–lordnull

Mon Jun 2 00:50:07 CDT 2014

We need a Second Wind power.

–morgul

Sun Jun 1 14:17:51 CDT 2014

Your Stamina is defined by your class

Currently, I’m using D&D’s values for the equivalent classes, minus one. Reasoning is that in D&D, it’s Con Mod, and generally Con Mod will start at 0, while we start at 1. (I know you can have negative mods in D&D, but that just confuses things.)

–morgul