Perilous System

[TRQ]

I've been vacationing off and on, so I don't get to the computer often...

1)Talents: At this point, I don't think that fighting expertise, etc. would ever hold a candle to masterful technique. I can think of a ton of reasons if you're not convinced. Same goes for shifting style... it seems useless. Quick to learn is not great to get at character creation, but if you ever gain a class, BOOM its awesome... but even then, may still be less useful than another masterful technique (it really just matters how many different maneuvers you want, or whether you're really focussed towards a few ones).
Perhaps a talent that reduces the fatigue cost of any attack by one (or two?) (although never below the minimum cost for an attack). I find myself often using techniques to reduce the fatigue cost at some kind of price (penalty to attack), so getting it free might be competitive.

2) Before I went on vacation, I made a damage dealer character, but I don't have him with me now. Just as my first character used feint to ignore damage rolls (and thus save skill points from the damage skill and still inflict peril), so does this character ignore finesse rolls. He uses timed to do so, adding a couple of aggressives if necessary to build up the 5 required peril. Once he's high enough level to get cautious, he can start tacking on the fun +damage+fatigue techniques. Two weapons again to add all the PP to damage.

3) It is my belief that all spells should default to defending with WIL, instead of those few that go for VIT or SPR. Otherwise its even HARDER to defend against magic (although this is negligible after scaling).

4) Now for the important point: I've been thinking about this, and it seems like magic is strictly better than physical combat. The bottom line is that you need 2 skills for magic attacks and 3 skills for physical ones. This is really the reason why my characters have been cheesed to ignore one of the attack rolls.
Here's what happens when you're just trying to deal damage. If you want to see any of my math, just ask.
Using some simplifying assumptions (ignoring PP, technique bonuses, replacing physical resistances with STR+armor, magical resistances with ART+artifacts, etc) and lumping the multiple rolls together (finesse/damage, gather/casting) you get:
Physical - 2d20+STR+DEX+finesse+damage vs. 2d20+STR+DEX+dodge+armor, difference is Z. Deal Z damage. This happens once a round.
Magical - 2d20+WIL+ART+gather+school(i.e. evocation) vs. 1d20+15+WIL+ART+deflect+artifacts, difference is Z. Deal 2Z damage. This happens every other round.
So these match up to be balanced (multiplying by 2 but happening every other round), with the exception that you have a d20 vs. a 15. So physical damage seems to have a 5 point advantage.

But here are the huge nonscaling differences:
i) To be good at combat you need 3 skills - weapon skill to get techniques, finesse and damage to hit. Unless you use cheese, you need to be good at BOTH finesse and damage to hit at all.
To be good at magic you need 2 skills - school skill and gather skill. The school both grants techniques and adds to rolls. Theoretically arcane weapon also comes in handy, and adds to rolls via PP, but in a nonscaling way... you can ignore it after a certain point.
ii) Already this causes a huge problem... the caster can focus his skill points into 2 skills and still get techniques! This means that, as the level goes up, he essentially can put more points into those 2 skills relative to the fighter, and so his rising bonus will eventually drown out the constant 5 point fighting advantage.
iii) To defend against physical attacks, one need only be good at EITHER armor OR dodge, since a success on either roll will prevent all damage and peril. In other words, putting a point into armor or dodge will both reduce your average damage by 1 when damage is dealt, but concentrating reduces the probability of damage being dealt. To defend against magic, all that matters is the sum total of artifacts and deflect, and concentration is irrelevant (Eventually, the gather mana roll always succeeds). Even without concentrating, it is still much easier to defend against physical attacks, since the probability of rolling two dice that add up to at least 20 is much higher than rolling two dice and having them both be >=10.

There are some other problems too with the finesse/damage guessing game... if you want to be good vs. EVERYONE, then you want to pump damage/finesse equally, while as a caster you can favor the school and ignore gather mana to some degree to pump defense. Essentially, physical combat operates kind of like the Red vs. Blue from the SAME discussion, while magic combat acts like gather mana+school were one big skill... both are balanced, but not against each other.

Anyway, such were my recent conclusions. Back to the mountains!

[Manxome]

1)Talents: At this point, I don't think that fighting expertise, etc. would ever hold a candle to masterful technique. I can think of a ton of reasons if you're not convinced. Same goes for shifting style... it seems useless. Quick to learn is not great to get at character creation, but if you ever gain a class, BOOM its awesome... but even then, may still be less useful than another masterful technique (it really just matters how many different maneuvers you want, or whether you're really focussed towards a few ones).
Perhaps a talent that reduces the fatigue cost of any attack by one (or two?) (although never below the minimum cost for an attack). I find myself often using techniques to reduce the fatigue cost at some kind of price (penalty to attack), so getting it free might be competitive.

I'm currently considering increasing the benefit of the expertise talents to +2 techniques in maneuvers, rather than +1. I'm also thinking that quick to learn should give a constant number of extra techniques and free maneuvers (maybe around 3-4 of each), rather than changing with level. Keep in mind that both can be replaced every level, and so can always draw from your newest available techniques, whereas normally you won't have very many techniques from your newest skill rank(s).

I've also been debating whether the masterful technique talent should only grant one masterful technique, instead of two--that's clearly a very big change, and would probably necessitate changes to all the other talents.

The idea of shifting style was to try to allow people to become more effective by preparing for a specific fight or quest--for example, you know that you're going to be exploring an ice cave, so you prepare a bunch of spells that resist ice and inflict fire damage. Do you find this concept fundamentally unappealing, or do you just think that the current talent doesn't support this well enough? How about if it made all your maneuvers mutable?

3) It is my belief that all spells should default to defending with WIL, instead of those few that go for VIT or SPR. Otherwise its even HARDER to defend against magic (although this is negligible after scaling).

It actually makes it easier to defend if the caster wants to combine those with any other effects in a single spell, and I imagine fighters are not likely to be disadvantaged by having their VIT targeted instead of their WIL.

I agree this is a potential concern, but I think the effects are likely to be fairly small.

4) Now for the important point: I've been thinking about this, and it seems like magic is strictly better than physical combat. The bottom line is that you need 2 skills for magic attacks and 3 skills for physical ones.

You seem to be assuming that the equipment listed as "appropriate starting equipment for first-level characters" is the best stuff you're ever going to get. The intention is that higher-level characters will have weapons that can make effective use of many more PP, which means the fighter is going to continue to get indirect bonuses to his damage and finesse rolls from his weapon skill (and the caster will continue getting bonuses to gathering mana and casting from arcane weapon skill). I haven't gotten around to writing up stats for more weapons yet, but the intent is that characters won't generally have more PP than they can spend unless they spike their weapon skill way ahead of their other skills or don't have access to level-appropriate equipment.

So the number of skills is essentially equal. Casters could ignore their arcane weapon skill and focus just on gather mana + school, but that actually puts them at a disadvantage, because the total ranks (and thus total bonuses to the rolls) are larger when the skill points are split between 3 skills. So casters would generally be foolish to ignore their arcane weapon skill.

Regarding defending against attacks, I think you're oversimplifying. While it's true that it's harder to hit someone when you're at a +10/-10 difference on finesse and damage than when you're at a 0/0, it costs more skill points to raise one to 20 than to raise two to 10. In fact, you can get 14/14 for the same cost as 20/0, and it's even harder to hit -4/-4 than it is to hit +10/-10 (that changes somewhat depending on where you are on the scale; +1/+1 is easier to hit than +15/-5, but it is still not always a good idea to specialize).

-4/-4 is also less susceptible to Feint than +10/-10 is. But even if you're not going to use Feint, the fighter can use techniques like Fast and Hard to create one "high-finesse" maneuver and another "high-damage" maneuver, and then choose an appropriate one to increase chances of hitting, which means that unbalancing your defense scores (at the cost of lowering their sum) becomes an even more questionable proposition (a similar effect could also be produced using debuffs).

On top of that, unbalancing your defenses means that you're going to be hit harder when you do get hit, which lowers reliability (which is bad for PCs) and makes combat healing more difficult.

There should definitely be lots of monsters with unbalanced defense scores, because it's interesting and leads to varied tactics, but it's not clear to me that balanced defenses are necessarily worse than unbalanced ones.

In group fights, melee also gets advantages from lowering a single target's effective defense roll by ganging up. And doing a little bit of damage every round is generally better than doing twice as much on alternate rounds, because it gives you less potential wasted on overkill, faster reactions to enemy actions, an effective initiative advantage, and higher reliability (the last of which is offset in this particular case by the fact that attacks miss more often than spells).

After considering all of that, I find the question of whether fighters or casters are better at killing people rather muddy. If you simply add up all the numbers on both sides, they're clearly in a comparable range. But both types have lots of not-easily-quantifiable advantages and disadvantages. It's entirely possible that they're not balanced, but I'm not seeing any one consideration that clearly outweighs all the others.

[TRQ]

Having expertise add +2 techniques is better... I'd have to think about whether I'd take it. It's hard to predict for higher level characters, who have significantly more options.
Another way to make it competitive is to make it more like masterful: the extra technique can be added to maneuvers on the fly. So masterful fixes 2 techniques and lets you add them freely on the fly, while expertise lets you add only 1 on the fly, but any one. If this is too powerful, you could add a restriction on the rank of the added technique. It does slow things down though.

The idea of shifting style was to try to allow people to become more effective by preparing for a specific fight or quest--for example, you know that you're going to be exploring an ice cave, so you prepare a bunch of spells that resist ice and inflict fire damage. Do you find this concept fundamentally unappealing, or do you just think that the current talent doesn't support this well enough? How about if it made all your maneuvers mutable?

Hmm... I was mostly looking at fighter types, where this skill is far less useful - the same concept applies equally to C/P/B as it does to fire/ice (if you're fighting zombies, etc) but the problem is that most of the techniques that affect these things actually require a particular kind of weapon (C/P/B) and so mutable is no help. At higher levels they get a bit more flexible I guess, but I admit that I haven't thought that far ahead.
It also has to be better at solving this problem than Quick Learner, which I'm not sure it is. There aren't THAT many combinations of fire/ice/..., and if you can have a prefab maneuver for each one, AND get more techniques on top, it's worth it.

You seem to be assuming that the equipment listed as "appropriate starting equipment for first-level characters" is the best stuff you're ever going to get. The intention is that higher-level characters will have weapons that can make effective use of many more PP, which means the fighter is going to continue to get indirect bonuses to his damage and finesse rolls from his weapon skill...

Great. That solves that question... actually I feel ashamed that I didn't realize that.

There should definitely be lots of monsters with unbalanced defense scores, because it's interesting and leads to varied tactics, but it's not clear to me that balanced defenses are necessarily worse than unbalanced ones.

Oh, I agree with everything you said there. There are many nuances to the balancing game, just as there are in the red/blue game. I may have overemphasized it a bit when I said it before, I guess. The real problem is not the balance issues between finesse and damage, or dodge and armor. The problem is that for physical there are two opposed rolls, while for magic there is only one. I'll stop arguing about +10/-10 vs. 0/0... I'd really rather argue about 0/0 or +10/-10 vs. 0.

[Manxome]

Another way to make it competitive is to make it more like masterful: the extra technique can be added to maneuvers on the fly. So masterful fixes 2 techniques and lets you add them freely on the fly, while expertise lets you add only 1 on the fly, but any one. If this is too powerful, you could add a restriction on the rank of the added technique. It does slow things down though.

I'm not entirely happy about the flavor of that approach. What if you could get the +2 maneuver bonus (or maybe just a +1 bonus) without actually using a maneuver? That would reduce the effective penalty for whipping up entirely new moves on the fly, while still restricting them to be "simpler" than real maneuvers.

Hmm... I was mostly looking at fighter types, where this skill is far less useful - the same concept applies equally to C/P/B as it does to fire/ice (if you're fighting zombies, etc) but the problem is that most of the techniques that affect these things actually require a particular kind of weapon (C/P/B) and so mutable is no help.

Fighters can potentially get an advantage from knowing whether to concentrate on damage or finesse (and how much), whether they should have anti-melee or anti-caster abilities, what attributes they should try to damage, whether they'll need movement debuffs to prevent enemy kiting, and any number of other details (though those might be harder to infer from the story-flavor of the adventuring area).

I'm also considering techniques that would change the damage type of a weapon...

The problem is that for physical there are two opposed rolls, while for magic there is only one. I'll stop arguing about +10/-10 vs. 0/0... I'd really rather argue about 0/0 or +10/-10 vs. 0.

Ah, but it's not 0/0 vs. 0...it's 0/0 vs. -5, remember? (Actually, it's not exactly -5, what with explosions on natural 20s and the gather mana roll auto-failing on a natural 1 and so forth, but you get the idea.)

Fighters absolutely have a higher chance to miss for a given target number because they have to make two rolls. But casters have a higher target number. Which, if the caster's penalty is set to an appropriate number, should mean that casters hit more often but do less average damage on a hit, and might do about the same average damage overall.

That obviously doesn't work for all attack and defense values; when the attacker has a big advantage, the fighter wins, because they almost always hit, and so the fact that they do ~5 more damage on a hit gives them higher damage output; when the chances of hitting get small, they get small faster for the fighter than the caster, and that ~5 penalty pales in comparison to missing all the time (except, I think, for a small range where that ~5 penalty means that the caster needs more explosions to hit than the fighter needs, and then the fighter might briefly have actual better accuracy).

But that penalty doesn't need to be balanced for all numerical ranges, because when you're in a fight that's so lop-sided that one side can't plausibly hope to win, you don't care whether the fighters or the casters have a marginal advantage. Offensive and defensive bonuses go up similarly as you level, so for equal-level fights their difference should stay in about the same range over a fairly wide range of levels (and possibly indefinitely for certain builds). So if that ~5 point penalty approximately cancels out the increased miss chance from double rolls when the difference between offensive and defensive bonuses is in a plausible range, that's probably good enough. Maybe fighters are marginally better against some opponents and casters against others, but that's actually probably a good thing.

Additionally, if we consider the case of several low-level characters ganging up on a smaller number of higher-level opponents, we are actually glad that that ~5 penalty benefits fighters with offensive advantage and hurts them when there's a defensive advantage...because the fighters also get an advantage over casters from numbers (as multiple melee attacks against one target whittle down their defensive scores). So we now have a clear reason why the side with the numerical advantage and level disadvantage might want to be fighters and a clear reason why they might not want to be fighters, and they probably cancel out within some numerical range I can't easily calculate, which extends the range of possible fights over which these mechanics should be roughly balanced.



By the way, thanks again for your continued input, it's very helpful to have an additional perspective.

[Catharz]

[Edit] Just found the "sample equipment" section, that clears up a lot relative to THFing.[/Edit]
[Edit]Wait, no it doesn't![/Edit]
As far as I can tell, there is no mention of two-handed fighting. Will wielding a weapon in two hands double your right-hand numbers (i.e. 2HF staff Gather +3/6 -> Gather +6/6)?

I also don't see a reason to ever use two weapons, unless skill-appropriate weapons aren't available. If I've got a Swords of 5 and two swords with 5/5 flash and 5/5 parry, I'm never going to wield them both. There's even less incentive to pump my 2WFing skill and go sword and dagger, because I'll have to drop 3+6 = 9 points to use them with a proficiency of 5. For that cost I can invest another 6 points in Swords and 3 to get a Shields of 2.

Sorry if that's already been covered, I'm basically just referencing the .doc.

Also, there seems to be very little reason not to specialize. You tend to get doubly fucked for using skills at lower ranks. Why would I ever go with Books 5 and Holy Symbols 5 when instead I could always use just one at 7? The extra 3 ranks worth of two techniques doesn't seem like much, especially when I'm already Book-specialized.

My opinion on non-combat skills is that they should be part of a completely independent system. The independent systems can look exactly the same, and they can even interact, but they should be kept apart as religiously as Church and State.

[Manxome]

[Edit] Just found the "sample equipment" section, that clears up a lot relative to THFing.[/Edit]
As far as I can tell, there is no mention of two-handed fighting. Will wielding a weapon in two hands double your right-hand numbers (i.e. 2HF staff -> Gather 3/6)?

I also don't see a reason to ever use two weapons, unless skill-appropriate weapons aren't available. If I've got a Swords of 5 and two swords with 5/5 flash and 5/5 parry, I'm never going to wield them both. There's even less incentive to pump my 2WFing skill and go sword and dagger, because I'll have to drop 3+6 = 9 points to use them with a proficiency of 5. For that cost I can invest another 6 points in Swords and 3 to get a Shields of 2.

I'm not sure exactly what the sample equipment did or did not clear up for you, so I'll try to address all your points.

Currently, there is no benefit for using two hands on a single weapon (unless, as in the case of a bow, it's logically impossible to wield without 2 hands). The right-hand numbers on weapon bonuses are costs, so doubling them would be a bad thing. The reason that Gather Mana is 3/6 is because gather mana and casting skills are used on separate rounds, and you can reallocate your PP every round, so +3/6 Gather and +3/6 Cast actually provides the same numerical bonus per PP to a caster that a fighter would get from +3/3 Finesse and +3/3 Damage (because the caster only needs one at a time).

Skill-appropriate weapons are ones where you don't have the PP to use all the bonuses, not necessarily where you can sink all of your PP into a single bonus. If your swords is 5, then a level-appropriate sword probably has +3/3 finesse and +3/3 damage, not +5/5 each, and so wielding 2 will give you additional flexibility in how you spend your points. Weapons can also have bonuses that grant techniques not easily replaceable by other means or other weapons, and dual-wielding lets you mix-and-match, or combine a special property from an old weapon with level-appropriate stat boosts on a new one. Your second weapon could also be an arcane weapon (for hybrid casters) or an exotic weapon (none written yet). The benefits and drawbacks of dual-wielding were discussed in greater detail earlier in the thread.

My opinion on non-combat skills is that they should be part of a completely independent system. The independent systems can look exactly the same, and they can even interact, but they should be kept apart as religiously as Church and State.

I think I've got a fairly clear idea how non-combat skills are likely to work now. They will rely partly on your attributes, but won't be a drain on your skill points. I hope to have a draft of the rules for non-combat abilities available early next week (or sooner).

I am still having a little difficulty deciding exactly where to draw the line between "combat" and "non-combat" abilities, though...currently I'm thinking that athletics will end up as a combat skill that provides a small inherent bonus to movement speed (1ft/rank?) and a few techniques, but that acrobatics will be considered non-combat...

[Fuzzy_logic]

Indeed, my attempts at character building suggest that dual-wielding martial and arcane is pretty awesome.

If you use a sword or dagger and a staff, you have a pretty flexible weapon for martial fighting, PLUS casting bonuses. I made a fighter with a staff of warding/restoring who was pretty sweet.

It does cause a weird issue where he needs a sword to do even noncombat healing, because dual-wielding buffs his staff skill.

[Catharz]

1187917245[/unixtime]]
Currently, there is no benefit for using two hands on a single weapon (unless, as in the case of a bow, it's logically impossible to wield without 2 hands).

My point is that wielding a weapon two-handed should be just as good of an option as any, and that characters (especially casters 'going nova') are rewarded for 2HFing. When you're casting big shit, you grab that staff firmly in both hands. Sure, it reduces your versatility and defensive ability, but that's the cost.

1187917245[/unixtime]]Skill-appropriate weapons are ones where you don't have the PP to use all the bonuses, not necessarily where you can sink all of your PP into a single bonus.

Gotcha.

1187917245[/unixtime]]...currently I'm thinking that athletics will end up as a combat skill that provides a small inherent bonus to movement speed (1ft/rank?) and a few techniques, but that acrobatics will be considered non-combat...

You could go the Shadowrun route of making acrobatics the 'dodge' skill. In this case, parry is nice because it saves skill points, shield is nice because in improves defensive versatility, and acrobatics is nice because it makes you an acrobat (e.g. super ninja).

1188004712[/unixtime]]Indeed, my attempts at character building suggest that dual-wielding martial and arcane is pretty awesome.

If you use a sword or dagger and a staff, you have a pretty flexible weapon for martial fighting, PLUS casting bonuses. I made a fighter with a staff of warding/restoring who was pretty sweet.

It does cause a weird issue where he needs a sword to do even noncombat healing, because dual-wielding buffs his staff skill.

Right, that makes sense. It even creates a cool niche for dual-wielders.





Also, I was wondering if there are going to be arcane shields as well. I was thinking earlier about how it might make more sense to have holy symbols be shields, so you can have the classic metaphor of the cross as a shield and the bible as a weapon.

[Manxome]

My point is that wielding a weapon two-handed should be just as good of an option as any, and that characters (especially casters 'going nova') are rewarded for 2HFing. When you're casting big shit, you grab that staff firmly in both hands. Sure, it reduces your versatility and defensive ability, but that's the cost.

Using a single weapon and nothing else is intended to be a completely viable option, balanced against sword-and-shield or dual-wielding. There's nothing in the mechanics at present that pays attention to whether you're using two hands to grip the thing or your second hand is empty, though you can certainly narrate whichever makes more sense.

Does that cover your concern?

You could go the Shadowrun route of making acrobatics the 'dodge' skill. In this case, parry is nice because it saves skill points, shield is nice because in improves defensive versatility, and acrobatics is nice because it makes you an acrobat (e.g. super ninja).

I don't think that parry save skill points, per se. It allows you to trade some offensive PP for defensive bonuses.

Currently, dodge is supposed to be nice because it works against the widest range of attacks and requires absolutely no equipment to use.

Combining acrobatics and dodge is an interesting idea, though, I'll give it some thought...

Also, I was wondering if there are going to be arcane shields as well. I was thinking earlier about how it might make more sense to have holy symbols be shields, so you can have the classic metaphor of the cross as a shield and the bible as a weapon.

I wasn't aware that the cross as a shield was actually a classic metaphor...

A small deflection bonus on a shield is entirely possible as a special benefit for some cool magical shield, but I think it's a bad idea for it to be a standard feature strictly from a balance standpoint--that would allow you to get stacking bonuses to your magical defense by investing in a "physical defense" skill, which would mean that someone using an arcane shield can get significantly better magical protection for a given skill point cost than anyone without one (unless the shield bonus didn't stack with your normal deflection skill, and even then, you're able to use a single skill (shield) for both blocking and deflection).

Some arcane weapons could easily provide bonuses to deflection, though, similar to how some weapons provide bonuses to parry. However, I think you'd need to do 50% efficiency of PP (e.g. +2/4 Deflection, not +2/2), because otherwise it provides a clear numerical advantage (by using it on alternate rounds) except when there are multiple enemy offensive casters using staggered spells, and I don't think it's fair for a fringe benefit on a weapon to force that level of tactical adjustment on an enemy.


Although if you really want arcane shields, you could also just house rule in a new skill that is to deflection what shield is to dodge.

[Catharz]

I don't really see how being able to defend yourself on alternate rounds provides a 'clear numerical advantage.' You're still either spending those points of defense or offense.

Anyway, I was laboring under the false impression that parrying worked in a more Shadowrun-esque fashion, so you can disregard what I said about that too.

[Manxome]

Spells take two rounds to cast, but their bonuses and defenses are supposed to fall in the same numerical range as attacks, and they're balanced by doing twice as much per success. Therefore, the utility of having a bonus to gather magic or to casting for one round is twice the benefit of having the same numerical bonus to damage or finesse, provided you get to choose when you use it. Weapon bonuses to gather or cast have half the PP efficiency of weapon bonuses to finesse or damage because the fighter needs to use those bonuses every round and the caster only needs them on alternate rounds to be equally effective (and PP can be reallocated every round).

Skill points invested into gather mana or casting still provide the same numerical bonus as those invested into finesse or damage, but only because those are "always on" and can't be reallocated on a round-by-round basis. A +1 to finesse is useful to a fighter every round. A +1 to gather mana is worth twice as much to a caster when they use it, but they only expect to use it once every other round, so it balances out on average.

Similarly, if there's one enemy slinging spells at you, you know that he needs to pause on alternate rounds to gather mana. That means you can allocate PP to a deflection bonus on your weapon only on the rounds that he's casting, and use the PP for something else on the rounds when he's gathering mana. You get all the benefits of having +X to your deflection skill, but you only need to pay for it half the time. Therefore, like a bonus to gathering mana or casting, the PP efficiency needs to be dropped by half in order to keep it balanced against, e.g., the PP your opponent is using to boost his spells.

That means that if there are two enemies slinging spells at you out of phase, you have to spend PP on deflection every round to keep your defenses up, and you still only have 50% efficiency. But all that really means is that, by staggering their casting, they've robbed you of the opportunity to "double-count" by using the same deflection bonus against both of them. You might think that would make deflection bonuses worse than, say, parry bonuses, but actually you can't really double-count parry, either, because of the rules for temporary defense reduction when you're attacked multiple times in a round. It actually still leaves deflection bonuses better because you can double-count it if you're targeted by two spells in a single round.

There are a lot of subtleties required to adjust for the fact that spells only go off on alternate rounds.

[Manxome]

OK, didn't get things quite as complete as I hoped (in particular wanted more example difficulties), but it looks like a lot of my free time in the immediate future is being Corrupted, so there are now [counturl=78]updated rules[/counturl] with non-combat abilities available for download.

I'm interested, of course, in comments on everything...overall system, numerical ranges, which of the comparative difficulties in my samples are completely unbelievable or unplayable, etc.

[Manxome]

I can see you all feel very strongly about this.

Anyone ever run test combats, by the way?

[TRQ]

Hi Manxome,

Finally had time to read the new rules.
First, you have a typo in the second paragraph of the entire document... it says "complete" where I think, for humility's sake, you meant "incomplete"...hehe
I like the reworking of the techniques, seems fine to me.

On first glance, I really like what you've done with the NCAs. I like how its coarser than combat abilities, how people's schtick changes slowly over time, how the defensive NCAs each defend against about 2 offensive NCAs, how out-of-combat magic is handled in general. I'm a fan. I definitely haven't crunched any numbers.

I also like the Athletics skill, even though its unique amongst the others. It just gave me a ccompletely random idea: If you really want to include more out of combat magic for a more complete setting, I might include a skill like Ritualism as a magical analogue to Athletics. Ritualism checks allow you to learn and cast specific out-of-combat spells (you have to be taught them) and each rank in Ritualism increases the range of your spells by 1 foot, same rounding rules. That might be opening up a whole can of worms... but I'm thinking entirely of out-of-combat magic which is mostly harmless (or possibly plot-oriented), and leaves you completely defenseless, so that shouldn't be terribly unbalanced or anywhere near as useful as combat skills. A physical dude gets better at scaling walls, a magical dude might get a levitate spell that's essentially useless in combat.

Anyway, in general Manxome, I approve of your style and thoughtfulness.

-TRQ

[Orion]

Is this project still alive? If so, what do you ned from us at this point?

ETA: I actually used Quick to Learn the other day... when making gish characters at level one, the skill point savings are invaluable.

[Orion]

I do hope this project is alive -- I'm stattinng out some mroe equipment/monsters.

Incidentally, I've changed my mind and think that, at least at low levels, shields are probably okay...

[Manxome]

The project is not exactly zipping along, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's dead.

I did a little light gaming with this system with some friends during my Christmas vacation. No major problems, but I don't think I thoroughly stressed the system, either (the players not being rule hounds of the sort that frequent this forum, and my preparations as GM being minimal). There was some grumbling regarding offensive casters being unable to sling a spell every round, which I think was partly due to circumstance (the caster made some tactical mistakes that prevented him from acting as often as he might have) and partly due to the player's personal playstyle preferences. There were a couple other minor things I may tweak...

My brother (who played in the aforementioned game) is possibly going to try to get some of his college friends to try playing it.

I feel like the game at this point mostly wants testing. There's a lot of content that could be added, but I don't think that will get in the way of using the content that exists, and the ease and quality of content production is likely to increase with a better feel for how the game actually plays.

...though I could also probably find time to whip out more techniques or some sample monsters or something if it would be significantly helpful to anyone...

[Orion]

It would definitely be helpful to have some idea of what you expect opposition to look like.

I could do up stats for goblins on my own, but there are a lot of fiddly thigns to get right. I'm also unclear on how this system handles nonhumanoid monsters. Maybe Giant Spiders use an exotic weapon called "fangs" which comes with "web" and "poison" maneuvers?

Also, I may need to study the book more closely, but what is the point of dodge? Is there any situation where it's better than Parry?

ETA: also, what did you have in mind for movement rates and ranges?

All spells, attacks, etc. are touch range unless otherwise stated?

People move 30 feet per round? Double if they don't fight?

And are bows really meant to only go 4 squares at MAX?

[Manxome]

I could do up stats for goblins on my own, but there are a lot of fiddly thigns to get right. I'm also unclear on how this system handles nonhumanoid monsters. Maybe Giant Spiders use an exotic weapon called "fangs" which comes with "web" and "poison" maneuvers?

If it were a BBEG, I'd probably set it up to work something like that.

If giant spiders are fodder, that's probably more detail and more on-the-fly choices for the GM than is necessary, so instead I'd say that the giant spider doesn't use weapons, but has a short, arbitrary list of techniques and maneuvers (possibly including some that aren't normally available to PCs), and bump up its attributes or damage/finesse skills to compensate for the lack of weapon bonuses. That way, you don't need to worry about allocating weapon proficiency points every round for standard monsters, and players can't debuff the spider's "fangs" skill to make it suddenly forget how to bite.

I'd also probably fill in arbitrary amounts of damage resistance instead of bothering with "armor."

Mechanically, I expect monsters to look a lot like PCs, except with some things either removed or set to arbitrary values to give the GM an easier time and/or more control over the difficulty.

On the other hand, one of my monsters in the aforementioned game was an animated swarm of crystal balls with the special ability to cast a separate offensive spell on each opponent in a single round (dividing available mana between the spells). Balance gets trickier when you start throwing in arbitrary abilities, though.

Also, I may need to study the book more closely, but what is the point of dodge? Is there any situation where it's better than Parry?

Parry requires a durable, rigid object in hand, and therefore doesn't work if you're unarmed (for whatever reason). Parry also doesn't work against most projectiles (e.g. arrows), and dodge has the special property that you can use it (instead of deflection) against projectile magic.

On the down side, dodge never gets bonuses from your weapons, and can't be used if you lack freedom of movement (e.g. if your legs are somehow pinned).

There's also some techniques that specifically target dodge and/or parry, and the general benefits of having more than one defensive skill, but those don't recommend one skill over the other.

ETA: also, what did you have in mind for movement rates and ranges?

All spells, attacks, etc. are touch range unless otherwise stated?

People move 30 feet per round? Double if they don't fight?

And are bows really meant to only go 4 squares at MAX?

Your movement speed is the same whether you perform a combat action or not (because I want the system to allow for interesting chase scenes, which are difficult if everyone is forfeiting the opportunity to do cool things in order to run faster). Base movement speed isn't specified in the current rules, but 30 ft/round is probably fine.

All attacks and spells are "melee" range by default, which I suppose is essentially the same as "touch" range unless you want a really high level of precision in your distances, but if it comes up, you don't have to literally touch something to put a spell on it, even if you have no range bonuses. If you're using a 5' square grid, then that range is probably 5'.

The sample short bow has a maximum of plus 20 ft, so if your "melee" range is 5 ft, that means it shoots up to 25 ft with accuracy. Yes, that's likely shorter than would be nice; I tried to fit it into the existing PP system without special rules. That was actually one of the complaints in my aforementioned recent game.

I'm considering some system where you spend 1 PP to increase a weapon's range and incur some penalty (probably reduced finesse), so that you can get larger ranges for a given PP without increasing the value of one PP, but I still kind of dislike the idea of having a magical rule for range bonuses that works completely differently from everything else in the game.

[Orion]

Why not just make the range bonus +80'/4 instead of +20'/4?

[Manxome]

Because then you're implying that a 45'-range attack is no better than a 5'-range attack with +1 to damage and finesse, which is patently untrue.

[Orion]

You could create techniques that give a range bonus at a cist if finesse and make bows come with those techniques...

[Manxome]

That's a good idea, actually. More generally, there should be a bunch of ranged-only martial weapon techniques that increase maximum attack range (whether they actually get attached to weapons is secondary).

I like this solution. I'll see if I can't write some up in the next day or two...

[Manxome]

Updated rules with some new (ranged-only) martial weapon techniques that increase attack range. For ease in finding them, here are the names and ranks:

• Drawn (-)
  
• Long (2)
  
• Deep (4)
  
• Distant (6)
  
• Projected (9)
  
• Far (12)

Thoughts?

[Orion]

Any chance of getting Perilous reposted? I was planing on working on it this summer.