Bigdy McKen wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 10:02 pm
Maybe I’ve been brain poisoned by too much Elden Ring, but you could just use condition tracks that build up over time, similar to the way that death, madness, frostbite, etc. work in that game.
You wouldn’t even need to make a discrete track for every single unique condition, just make general tracks for fortitude, reflex, will and maybe awareness for illusion/trickery type stuff. Each spell can then have an additional, unique effect like a debuff that happens as long as the spell is in effect.
I’m thinking spell caster hurls a petrify at the target who makes a saving throw each round, while caster spends an action to keep the spell going. Each failed save moves them one step toward the bad end, and each successful one moves them one step toward the good end.
Might work better within a 5E paradigm since you’re only getting one slot at the levels where power word kill and finger of death come online rather than 3E where you get upwards of 4 slots for each spell level.
The devil is in the details.
If I'm a caster and I cast petrify, am I losing the ability to contribute anything else other than maintaining my spell? Does my target have to spend an action resisting the spell if they make their save? A spell that doesn't do anything to the target (because they make their save) but effectively paralyzes me (because I have to spend my full turn maintaining the spell) is probably not a solution you want. And if the track requires 5+ saves to be effective, it's going to struggle to be combat relevant.
Before you ask 'how can we do this', you should at least take a stab at answering 'should we do this?'.
While Save-or-Die has a history in the game, from a design perspective you should consider what it gives you and whether that's even what you want. Is it 'good' that a world-ending threat has a 5% chance to be obliterated, or would that type of victory be anti-climatic. I think it's defensible to say 'you shouldn't be able to one-shot level-appropriate challenges', without taking away the ability to do so to lower-level opposition. And of course, depending on what you decide you want, there are multiple different ways to approach the problem.
Having multiple (non-fungible) tracks can be a problem. If Character A is attacking the Reflex Track and Character B is attacking the Fortitude Track, but damage between them is completely separate, effectively one of the characters is wasting their time. One of the advantages of hit-point-damage is that it is easy to make sure everyone's contribution matters. If an opponent has 100 hit points and you deal 20 damage to them, you've contributed something even if another character does 80 damage and finishes him off. On the other hand, if you do 20 damage and then someone else
banishes that opponent, your damage didn't contribute at all.
Adding de-buffs to more attacks may help to some degree. If a Reflex Attack makes the opponent easier to hit, allowing the Fortitude Attacks better chance of succeeding, you could make the case that each character's actions are contributing meaningfully to the defeat of the opponent, even if eventually only one track involves the 'final blow'.
And if you consider putting anything on a track, you have to consider how people 'heal' that damage. Obviously players are going to want to start every fight they can at 'full power', so they won't have much incentive to start a fight with 50% fortitude damage. In a video game it's pretty easy to establish a scenario where a track will persist until the scenario is concluded and that can create both an incentive to keep moving (complete the scenario as quickly as possible, before the damage accumulates to lethal levels) and organically creates additional drama regarding 'end-boss' encounters where you are going to start the fight depleted of resources and the question is really how weak are you as a result of the time/actions you took to that point.
It's easy to describe how you think something might work in one single 'clear' case, and that's a great starting point, but once you look at implementing it you're going to have dozens and dozens of other questions. Going back to the example you provided, if I cast
petrify and someone else
also casts
petrify on the same target, what happens? Do they potentially petrify 2x as fast? Do they make one save but the TN is more difficult? As you answer those questions you're going to create strategies and synergies that you might not have intended. As you discover them, you definitely need to consider whether they generate the outcomes you want - which is really the whole point of the game rules in the first place.