The Gaming Den

OK. So I messing with character combat resources a bit for my latest project and it goes like this.

Characters have two basic resources. Stuff and Energy.

Stuff
Stuff is gear. Like weapons, armor, etc...

Characters can expend stuff (which loses it or breaks it requiring time consuming out of combat repairs).

You expend stuff to activate special abilities or to cancel an injury (which is a big thing since even strong characters won't take too many individual uncanceled hits before going down.

Expending stuff is a trade off because while it gives you cool things now you generally need your stuff (like say your hand guns) to use your cool ability sets (like your hand gun sharp shooting skills).

Stuff can almost certainly be renewed out of combat time. But in addition you can equip most available Stuff that might be lying around at the cost of an action, maybe less with special abilities related to the specific stuff.

So characters should to some degree be running around in combat breaking swords over each others heads and looting new swords off fallen mooks.

Energy[/i]
Characters have some small pool of Energy points.

You can restore an Energy Point by expending a turn and not being attacked.

You can expend it to do many of the things you might do by expending your Stuff, or you might expend Energy and Stuff together to do something even a bit cooler.

Unlike Stuff which generally can only be expended on related special abilities Energy is all purpose and is used by abilities from basically any and every ability set.

You should generally have a larger pool of Energy to expend on any single given ability set than you have stuff. So while breaking your sword over someones head is cool, you probably don't do that until you have run out of Energy resources to spend in place of the sword itself.

Most basic resource expending actions expend "1 Energy". But the biggest ones expend "All Energy, minimum 1". Characters can nova first turn of combat, but that blows their entire energy reserve (and maybe even a Stuff resource to boot) which they COULD have spent on other profitable actions.

So it's more sensible for them to blow off some of their Energy for at least a turn or two then drop the big "All Energy" hitter. There is even some moderate motivation to wade through mooks for a turn or two before dropping the all energy hit on the boss, because if you drop the boss first your resources will be so depleted the mooks might actually be a threat on their own.

Right now I'm keeping Max Energy reserves fairly low. And I'm thinking I want fairly long combats with some chance of a second or further additional "Nova" as they draw out.

So the ability sets come with additional abilities that restore minor amounts of energy (usually just 1) by something OTHER than just entirely wasting your action. Currently usually some event or lesser action trigger. And those triggers vary between ability classes so you have some characters making excessive move actions to recharge and others making minor mook take down attacks or defensive parries or something. Making different types of character behave rather differently in their activity cycles.

The general idea however being that characters can slowly recharge some energy while still being part of the fight. Of course once you are at zero energy and you get 1 back it's pretty easy to see a "All Energy Attack!" almost every second turn as being mildly well motivated.

But with admittedly early intentions of having fairly large combat encounters with fairly spread out mildly isolated opponents the idea is that you go something like...

1) Wade through mooks, expend energy, makes it pretty safe and easy.
2) Drop "All Energy" strike on a more threatening boss type.
3) Wade through more mooks (only available targets and in your way to the next big target) regain energy in the process, maybe spend some too. This time round things are a bit harder because your Energy resources aren't entirely full when you start.
4) Drop "All Energy" strike on more threatening boss type.

Repeat 3 and 4 until you run out of Stuff or Enemies or you get knocked clean out of it. Encounters are the scale of an entire facility or encampment or something instead of a single room (if you know what I mean).

During all this you may or may not spend the odd bit of stuff to get out of the stickier moments, especially the low energy bits just after you drop an "All Energy" hit and still may have to deal with remaining or additional opponents. And given any opportunities or lulls in the action you might restore some stuff by grabbing it off the ground and enemy corpses.

Wait, why Stuff AND Energy
Energy seems like the more functional resource here and I could have used it without the stuff expenditure/renewal.

But I have more than one goal here and I want adventure action that motivates players to not just pick up swords off mooks and use them in combat but also motivates and rewards them to declare "Gee, there goes another sword, flying off into pieces".

It solves the whole disarm/sunder thing rather nicely in my view. It's a cool event we want in the game and now players have a reason to want it to happen. Because its a way of giving themselves defensive or offensive bonuses instead of a lame and action costly debuff that could have been a direct attack.

It also means everyone runs around doing the whole Captain Kirk thing where they get their shirt torn (for the free block) in every combat whether it's wrestling or an exchange of lightning bolts. And I think that's hilarious and appropriate for the tone of game I'm going for.

NPCs and Resources
Resource expenditure here is complex and highly rewarding. Those 1 Energy effects are nice, the All Energy effects are really nice. Recharging Energy and Stuff is pretty complex.

If Everyone goes around doing it combats are going to be fairly small, both by book keeping limitations and because PCs will start dropping against excessive mirror matches.

So these resources, or the abilities that expend them are only available to major named NPCs.

The big boss is certainly at least the equal of a PC. And he may have some side kicks or scattered lieutenants among his troops with varying lesser access to resources.

Most of his troops though have 0 Energy and little if anything that profitably expends their Stuff. And they probably take significantly less damage to drop compared to a PC too.

So most opponents are nameless mooks that don't do very much or live very long and happen to have little to no motivation to expend that cool Stuff you might be needing to grab on the way through to the real NPCs.

What's the rationale for All Energy attacks having a minimum of 1? That seems kind of...bad. Wouldn't you be better off requiring more energy than that? Because if they're so much better than other abilities, I don't see any incentive not to use those every other turn.

Because if the minimum is higher then the characters will have incentive to use them in the first turn of the encounter. Basically the higher the minimum energy cost the earlier they are encouraged to pop their "ultimate" attacks. Hell I've been toying with "Minimum 0" all energy actions and I'm not entirely sure some abilities might not be nice like that (though those would be ones you'd design to either require a Stuff expenditure or else expect to see basically every turn for a while once they come out).

Also the thing where characters are supposed to rely on 1 Energy cost attacks, and defenses, means that dropping an All Energy attack leaves them briefly vulnerable and weak, because they at least need to spend 1 turn regaining an energy somehow before they can be safe or effective again. They have limited capacity to take hits, and basically all of them can trade Energy in some way to prevent being hit.

I can see a situation where characters might expend their energy down to one then alternate the all energy attacks every second turn. But the idea is that even that will be discouraged by a simple lack of targets. Once the characters have dropped the first round of All Energy attacks there shouldn't be enough targets left standing (or with enough remaining damage capacity) to warrant another All Energy hit. But there may well be other targets about 2-3 turns away that they don't want to meet with zero, or even low energy.

I can also see a potential where players might have one character throw down an all energy attack first turn, then play round robin cycling through the group dropping all energy attacks while others either recharge or clean up with 1 Energy attacks. But I'm OK with that because it makes for a good degree of variety and decision making. And that's why there isn't a maximum energy cost.

And finally I'm looking at maybe about 3-5 Energy points total per character. 1 is a big number.

Well, rather than All Energy attacks, why not just have 3 energy attacks?

Unless you're seriously crippled while at 0 defense. Exactly how bad is it to be at 0 energy and how much more powerful are these all energy attacks?

So people are incentivized to get multilayered suits of armor (properly, like with a gambeson, maille, and plate) and then start having that blown away as combat goes on in order to deflect injuries. Neat.

I suggest establishing a certain amount of "encumbrance" rules, which don't need to be very complicated, but just enough to inflict a few minor penalties on people who walk around in plate all day. Or at least have the plate armor go first and establish it as a rarity, so most people are not at the highest level of armor all the time unless they're actually girding on for war, and not just a stroll down the street (since why get temp HP for casual encounters if it's hard to replace). With other sets of armor in the first place, they probably won't care too much about the extra benefit of some plate.

Apalala wrote:Well, rather than All Energy attacks, why not just have 3 energy attacks?

It depends what you mean by 3 Energy. Is that 3 max? 3 cost with 1 min? 3 cost only, no more, no less? Or 3 cost in a traditional "must have at least 3, reduces total by 3"?

I want the use of an all energy attack to be a major decision. If it is the traditional 3 cost from a standard points based resource system where you just mark three off your tally there is no particular issue with it's timing to make the most of the rest of your energy resources. And I do want there to be a timing issue to consider.

Unless you're seriously crippled while at 0 defense. Exactly how bad is it to be at 0 energy and how much more powerful are these all energy attacks?

That's somewhat in the works right now. I'm messing with some write ups and seeing what I like.

For now it looks a bit like.

A zero energy attack has a reasonably even chance to take out a single nameless mook in a single hit.

Zero energy defenses basically involve just copping injuries, about three of these and you drop out of combat. It is very hard to receive more than one injury per combat turn due to a mechanical injury cap that is only bypassed by some special attacks (basically other named characters All Energy attacks).

A 1 Energy cost attack is either very likely to take out a single mook, reasonably likely to damage a named opponent, or reasonably likely to damage several mooks.

A 1 Energy cost defense should protect you against injury for a turn. But won't necessarily save you, or entirely save you, from an expensive special attack from a named opponent.

An All Energy attack may either target a rather large number of mooks and is more limited by range and available targets rather than a maximum target limit. Or it is a powerful single target attack that is very likely to either take down or severely damage a single named opponent in a single hit.

An All Energy defense can save you from the effects of the most nasty big hitting special attacks around.

As a stop gap you can expend stuff at around the one energy level of effectiveness for attacks and defenses in order to save your ass. But it trades off your longer term effectiveness as you lose items that are prerequisites for your attacks and defenses. Forcing you to fall back on alternate often weaker attacks and defenses until you find the opportunity to re-equip.

TavishArtair wrote:So people are incentivized to get multilayered suits of armor (properly, like with a gambeson, maille, and plate) and then start having that blown away as combat goes on in order to deflect injuries. Neat.

Yes. That is very much the plan for the Stuff resources.

In addition the game will handle things like Ammo in a similar way, you carry some pistols and shoot crap up with them at leisure with no limit to ammo, but to trigger cool attacks you expend all the ammo in them as part of the cost. A similarly some sword type guys will be running around breaking swords over heads or leaving them impaled in their enemies and stuff.

TavishArtair wrote:I suggest establishing a certain amount of "encumbrance" rules, which don't need to be very complicated, but just enough to inflict a few minor penalties on people who walk around in plate all day.

I have some encumbrance limits in mind. They are fairly silly and moderately informal, but they WILL be applied as some form of limit on carrying 300 spare swords.

establish it as a rarity, so most people are not at the highest level of armor all the time unless they're actually girding on for war, and not just a stroll down the street

I'm putting together a slightly more eccentric setting than "stabbing dragons with swords" but there is intended to be some degree of social pressure not to go walking around in full war panoply ALL of the time.

Indeed one of the larger limits is that characters are going to want to hide some of their stuff about their persons because it is socially embarrassing or even illegal to be seen with. Which will act as a further carried item limit. And if players say "Yeah but today we are storming the mega death castle of Dr mega death and his mega army, so screw social limitations I'm packing 3 of my illegal swords openly and just not getting out of the carraige until we charge the place" I'm actually kind of OK with it when the mission is a straight out bigger than usual hack fest.

Action limitations for equipping additional carried gear into active modes are intended to be the final upper limit on carrying 300 spare swords. Because you might find them lying around, or you might carry them, but regardless, it takes basically a full combat action to get a new one out or pick one up off the floor.

but regardless, it takes basically a full combat action to get a new one out or pick one up off the floor.

This would make ambushes pretty devastating though. I mean, you ambush someone, and you get to hit them first, plus you get another round while they're getting out their weapons, and if they also don't have their full gear on, or have it hidden, then they're even more screwed.

Ice9 wrote:

but regardless, it takes basically a full combat action to get a new one out or pick one up off the floor.

This would make ambushes pretty devastating though. I mean, you ambush someone, and you get to hit them first, plus you get another round while they're getting out their weapons, and if they also don't have their full gear on, or have it hidden, then they're even more screwed.

I would imagine a sheathed sword counts as "out," but you just have so many swords you can carry at a time before they start getting in eachothers' way.

Ice9 wrote:

but regardless, it takes basically a full combat action to get a new one out or pick one up off the floor.

This would make ambushes pretty devastating though. I mean, you ambush someone, and you get to hit them first, plus you get another round while they're getting out their weapons, and if they also don't have their full gear on, or have it hidden, then they're even more screwed.

Currently my take on ambushes and equipment status is this.

You count as having a bunch of equipped items basically all the time, to formalize this you get to equip any items on your person (to the limit of available hands or whatever the hell you strap your favored items of gear to) at the start of combat resolution, free, even if surprised.

Surprise instead has it's own mechanics and if an individual is surprised they miss their first action and may be vulnerable to special attacks that target surprised characters.

Surprise is intended to be fairly limited in frequency and likely to fall to the PCs favor. Missions/encounters are fairly large and once the first surprise/hostile actions occur on the fringes basically the entire mission will be alert, aware of the attackers and probably moving toward them (or maybe away from them, or something).

I even intend to write some rules to have a formalized structure for propagating alert status through an enemy complex/camp/whatever. But right now I don't really have anything written down.