Standardizing Bad Statuses

[DragonChild]

For a while now, I had been considering a system to standardize how named bad statuses - stuff like shaken, sicken, etc - are removed and what they effect to make a theoretical new game run smoother. D&D 4e proved that having a bunch of unique statuses that all act differently and end at different times is too much of a pain, but ALSO proved that throwing around different status effects is pretty fun. As such, I was considering these statuses, where they could be handed out as something like a "Fear X effect", which means you take a -X penalty to everything Fear applies to, and only the strongest Fear applies.

Fear is likely the most common status type, but I don't want it to remove control. What I was thinking was that fear would be an overall defensive penalty - that encourages the player to actually have the character run away if need be, or to alternatively "fight their fear" and put themselves at risk. Fear would go away whenever the source is removed. If a necromancer casts fear on you, you have to KO the necromancer to remove it. If you get feared from the aura of a mummy when you're fighting five, you have to get rid of all the mummies.

Weaken would be up next, as the counterpart to fear it just applies straight offensive penalties. Great for enfeebling ray, rusting grasp on an iron golem, etc. My thought is that weaken would be until end of combat, or be a "save ends" effect like in D&D 4e.

Persistent damage effects really need a spot - being on fire, acid arrow, and in addition, fire walls, cold auras, and similar can be adjudicated on the same "tick", rather than at different times. This I think is pretty easy of "You need to spend an action to remove it or not stand in its effect". Taking a move action to pat out the fires, wipe off the acid, or jump in a lake would work, and allowing other people to spend an action to do the same.

Slowing effects - ice clings to you from a cold spell, the rogue hamstrings you, etc. I don't know what to do about these, or if I even like them. They seem too common not to have, but problematic. This also seems a decent place to put "save ends" style stuff, and seems to overlap with weaken in general, to the point where they might just be able to be added together.

Stuns would only ever be given at one round at a time and extremely, extremely rare. They're just not very fun, frankly.

"Battle ender" combat effects, such as turning a target to stone, or putting them to sleep, would all be standardized under their own battle ender stuff. While I'm leaning towards a Power Word style (works on opponents of <X HP) you could do the combat advantage system frank had before, or whatever. This is really more to do with the combat stuff in general i don't want to get into.

Finally there's stuff like mind control, which I want to handle as a strictly out-of-combat plot power.


Does anyone have any thoughts on this, with suggestions or obvious flaws?

[Username17]

Stuns would only ever be given at one round at a time and extremely, extremely rare. They're just not very fun, frankly.

The acceptability of Stuns has everything to do with what turns are like. Losing a 2 second turn in Hungry Hungry Hippos is about as exciting as actually getting a turn. Losing a 2 week turn in World in Flames is totally unacceptable. Really anything that modifies or constrains player agency is similar. Being compelled to take or not take certain actions for a short period is an interesting tactical consideration, being compelled for a long period means you might as well quit the game and go play Smash Brothers.

Without knowing anything about the game you're attempting to build, I can't comment on whether the assumptions you are working with are reasonable. Different flows of play will call for different kinds of mechanics to back up conditions and their durations.

-Username17

[DragonChild]

The acceptability of Stuns has everything to do with what turns are like. Losing a 2 second turn in Hungry Hungry Hippos is about as exciting as actually getting a turn. Losing a 2 week turn in World in Flames is totally unacceptable. Really anything that modifies or constrains player agency is similar. Being compelled to take or not take certain actions for a short period is an interesting tactical consideration, being compelled for a long period means you might as well quit the game and go play Smash Brothers.

This is true. For the specific case of stuns, I don't think I've seen any tabletop RPG that was actually interesting where rounds flowed fast enough to make a longer than 1 round stun not completely boring.

Without knowing anything about the game you're attempting to build, I can't comment on whether the assumptions you are working with are reasonable. Different flows of play will call for different kinds of mechanics to back up conditions and their durations.

This is a difficult question to answer. What I'm aiming for for my system is a sort of happy medium between D&D 3e and 4e, my own personal heartbreaker (everyone has one) where combat is going to last a few rounds but not take all of fucking forever, and use a Standard/move/minor action economy or similar. I would, however, be interested in hearing different ideas for different systems or styles, too.

[Josh_Kablack]

Old Thread with idea of condition "trees"

[OgreBattle]

Here's some stuff Frank wrote about from another thread about organizing effects better:

Shaken->
Charmed
Frightened
Panicked
Cowering
Confused
Suggestion (exceptional effect defined in spell text)
Sickened->
Nauseated
Exhausted
Paralyzed
Slowed->
Stunned
Petrified
Restrained->
Pinned



Sure. In order to whip out a proof of concept mock-up, we should procedurally generate these things, because that is fast. Let's say that you decided that your six basic conditions were going to be tied to the six basic stats:

Fatigued happens when someone pops you in the Strength
Slowed happens when someone pops you in the Dexterity
Sickened happens when someone pops you in the Constitution
Shaken happens when someone pops you in the Charisma
Distracted happens when someone pops you in the Wisdom
Confused happens when someone pops you in the Intelligence
OK, now each of these basic conditions has three secondary conditions that are each keyed to a Save, but each of the secondary conditions has two entrance points. That means that there are Nine Secondary Conditions: Three "Fort", Three "Ref", Three "Will".

Exhausted (Fatigued or Slowed)
Poisoned (Sickened or Confused)
Pinned (Distracted or Shaken)
Dazed (Fatigued or Distracted)
Entangled (Slowed or Confused)
Blinded (Shaken or Sickened)
Insane (Distracted or Confused)
Frightened (Fatigued or Shaken)
Nauseated (Sickened or Slowed)


Now, you have finishing states, these finishing states end combat one way or the other:

Dropped
Asleep
Paralyzed
Petrified
Panicked
Charmed
Now, we have 21 conditions. We probably also want a category of temporary bullshit conditions like Prone and Off Balance. Let's say there are three of them. Then we remember the "bloodied" condition that kicks in at half hit points. When you bring someone to bloodied, you also get to hand out a basic condition based on what you hit them with to make it feel like a real milestone. That would get us to 25.

Obviously, you would probably want to swap some of these around, but for a two minute proof of concept on the back of a piece of paper I think it works well enough.

On stunning, and taking away player action in general, it does feel un-fun at times. In D&D4e, it reached a point where I didn't want to use my stunning moves because it was taking fun away from fights.

How about instead... it grants OA's? With a huge bonus for the attacker.

Ex: You are "stunned" You can take your actions but anyone you move past gets an OA with a big hit/damage bonus, anyone you attack gets a free attack on you that strikes first, and if they hit you your action is lost.

In that way the player is still acting, so it feels more like the enemy is taking advantage of the situation instead of you being a dummy.

[erik]

From my never to be finished RPG:

CONDITION TRACKS
Fear Track
Shaken
Frightened
Panicked

Sleep Track
Fatigued
Exhausted
Sleeping

Maim Track
Bloodied
Staggered
Crippled

Disease/Poison Track
Sickened
Nauseated
Diseased/Poisoned

Charm Track
Distracted
Fascinated
Charmed

Grapple Track
Entangled
Pinned
Unconscious (Choke out)

Movement Track
Slowed
Checked
Prone

Sanity Track
Confused
Hallucination
Cowering

Brained Track
Dazed
Stunned
Unconscious (K.O.)

Track generalizations:
Tier 1: Minor penalty, short duration
Tier 2: Major penalty, often temporarily dropped out of combat 1 round
Tier 3: Removed from combat, potentially long term penalties

[tussock]

For a while now, I had been considering a system to standardize how named bad statuses - stuff like shaken, sicken, etc - are removed and what they effect to make a theoretical new game run smoother.

Don't forget Star Wars Saga edition. It folds all the conditions onto a single condition track for penalties with a standard method for all characters to use up actions to walk back up it. Run for cover, take some deep breaths, and get back into the game, standard tactics. Track is -1, -2, -5, -10; any action is one step better. Add spell failure for D&D unless everything has DCs and whatnot.

It's not greatly flavoured (but nor are all but a couple of the most complex 3e ones, mechanically), and any action denial is incidental because it's all under player control. Also adds to the track for any damage beating a critical number, so crits and grenades automatically give some abstract condition which you might describe as "bleeding" or "on fire".

Or use the track for penalties and the specific condition for removal requirements, rather than having that abstract condition removal. Not needed and much more fussy, but also more flavour.

Fear is likely the most common status type, but I don't want it to remove control.

I've tried large standard penalties (-10, high spell failure) that go away when you act afraid, but it ends up forcing the player's hand anyway. Ideally it should all be tied into a common per-team morale track (to save fiddly per-figure tracking). PCs and leader NPCs immune to morale (and fear) until low on HP.

Weaken is ass. They're called hit points, use 'em. The Rogue doesn't give up damage to weaken you, he is weakening you with the damage, which you'll notice when you run out of hit points. Always tempting to tie it to encumbrance though, with the stone-weight system (not a good idea, but tempting anyway).

Persistent damage effects really need a spot

.
Overlapping and not stacking. To some extent they're like a higher-damage attack that you can self-heal if you do so quickly. Maybe that should just be standard, heal a sword blow by binding the wound next round, heal a fireball by putting out the flames, heal the acid burn by adding chalk: it can all just be fairly abstract.

Slowing effects ... Stuns

More action denial, persistent or total. Very powerful either way. The condition track would at least give characters an option (or not really, depending on the penalties).


And the end-combat stuff. Yeh, they're called hit points, use 'em. If you don't want damage to stack with Charms, you'll end up nerfing charms to the point of uselessness like late-3e and 4e did. Take your pick.

I quite like a separate Charm damage pool, which if it's higher than your current hit points you swap teams and take -10 to everything and 70% spell failure and randomise your targets of attack and can't use any options like PA or Cleave or anything. Morale boosts can heal it and provide a buffer against it. Lets Charmed PCs have some fun attacking their allies without much chance of hurting them, when they were nearly down anyway.