Building things from scratch: Design Principles.
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2004 12:24 am
OK, I've been working on some stuff for a while now. Here's a big chunk of it:
Statistics: I'm dropping things down to four statistics. Strength, Quickness, Intelligence, and Charisma. There is no "Wisdom" or "Constitution". Quickness helps you hit your enemies and avoid being hit with a physical attack. Strength helps your physical attacks hurt your opponents and helps you resist being hurt by other physical attacks. Intelligence helps you hit your opponents and avoid being hit with a magical attack. Charisma helps your magical attacks hurt your opponent and helps you resist being hurt by your opponent's magical attacks.
Unified mechanics: Everything, and I mean everything is handled by rolling a d20, adding bonuses, and looking for a DC. Success/Failures scale by meeting/failing the DC by units of 2. Most everything in terms of bonuses are simply adding a skill to a stat bonus (for example, hitting with a saber requires adding a quickness bonus to a melee skill bonus).
Feats/Spells: Feats and Spells are the same thing. The prereqs for all of them are skill-based, and you don't spend experience to get them! That is, that in order to learn a Web spell you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in climb. In order to learn proficiency in the duom you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in melee combat.
Attacks and Damage: When you make an attack, you roll to hit. If you hit, your opponent rolls to reduce damage. Everyone has the same number of hit points. Having more strength makes you take less damage from a physical attack because you add your strength to your soak roll - but there is no variance in the number of hit points between an elephant and a grasshopper. Every two points you fail your soak roll against a physical attack causes you to take one wound level. If you have 10 or more wound levels up you need to make a Will check (which is Charisma based) in order to take an action on any given round. If you have 20 or more wound levels you are totally unconcious and bleeding to death. If you have 30 or more wound levels you are dead.
Magic attacks are similar, but are resisted with Charisma instead of Strength. Also, they tend to not inflict wound levels, but separate Effect Levels. So your petrification gaze attack leaves you with a separate wound track than does a sword, but still 10 levels requires a check to act each round, 20 leaves you incapable of acting, and 30 levels makes you tear your character sheet in half.
Damage Types: There are 14 different types of damage, because there are seven elements which can be physical or mental in nature. Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Life, Death, and Void - physical or mental. People have a base physical resistance (Strength), and a base mental resistance (Charisma) - they also have seven different resistances, one for each element. So you have essentially nine defences, and fourteen types of attack, for the whole game. All physical attacks cause wounds to accumulate into the same box, but each magical attack form fills up its own box. Thus, you have 8 total kinds of damage available. The cut offs for incapacitating and killing your character are the same regardless of type, however.
Materials of weapon change the damage type of an attack. An obsidian dagger inflicts fire damage, an iron sword inflicts void damage, and a silver weapon inflicts water damage. Creatures with "damage reduction" are handled by simply having very large elemental resistances to several different elements. A werewolf, for instance, most probably has a lot more resistance to earth than to water - which in turn makes a thrown rock largely bounce off without effect while a silver sword hurts badly. A magical "flaming sword" counts as either fire or void depending upon which would be more advantageous.
Armor increases physical resistance as well as elemental resistances. So some armor does, in fact, make your character braver by dint of increasing air resistance, for example.
Magic: There are no non-magical people anywhere. There is no ability to detect magic, or dispel magic in a general sense, because nothing is "non-magical" at all anywhere. People who can whirlwind attack are considered to have "sword magic" and people who can strike madness into people are considered to have "fire magic", but there's no distinction between magic and non-magic for anything that anyone can ever do.
Learning: There needs to be a requirement of diversification of expenditure of skill points. First of all, skill points come in several different flavors, and you get them separately. "Active Skills" and "Knowledge Skills" are acquired distinctly and you can't use points for one on the other. Furthermore, there is an expanding requirement of minimum ranks in a number of skills before the maximum rank of skills goes up. So you can't simply put all your Active Skill Points into "melee" forever, you have to raise other active skills to advance the rank maximum.
-Username17
Statistics: I'm dropping things down to four statistics. Strength, Quickness, Intelligence, and Charisma. There is no "Wisdom" or "Constitution". Quickness helps you hit your enemies and avoid being hit with a physical attack. Strength helps your physical attacks hurt your opponents and helps you resist being hurt by other physical attacks. Intelligence helps you hit your opponents and avoid being hit with a magical attack. Charisma helps your magical attacks hurt your opponent and helps you resist being hurt by your opponent's magical attacks.
Unified mechanics: Everything, and I mean everything is handled by rolling a d20, adding bonuses, and looking for a DC. Success/Failures scale by meeting/failing the DC by units of 2. Most everything in terms of bonuses are simply adding a skill to a stat bonus (for example, hitting with a saber requires adding a quickness bonus to a melee skill bonus).
Feats/Spells: Feats and Spells are the same thing. The prereqs for all of them are skill-based, and you don't spend experience to get them! That is, that in order to learn a Web spell you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in climb. In order to learn proficiency in the duom you spend some time practicing it, and meet the minimum amount of ranks in melee combat.
Attacks and Damage: When you make an attack, you roll to hit. If you hit, your opponent rolls to reduce damage. Everyone has the same number of hit points. Having more strength makes you take less damage from a physical attack because you add your strength to your soak roll - but there is no variance in the number of hit points between an elephant and a grasshopper. Every two points you fail your soak roll against a physical attack causes you to take one wound level. If you have 10 or more wound levels up you need to make a Will check (which is Charisma based) in order to take an action on any given round. If you have 20 or more wound levels you are totally unconcious and bleeding to death. If you have 30 or more wound levels you are dead.
Magic attacks are similar, but are resisted with Charisma instead of Strength. Also, they tend to not inflict wound levels, but separate Effect Levels. So your petrification gaze attack leaves you with a separate wound track than does a sword, but still 10 levels requires a check to act each round, 20 leaves you incapable of acting, and 30 levels makes you tear your character sheet in half.
Damage Types: There are 14 different types of damage, because there are seven elements which can be physical or mental in nature. Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Life, Death, and Void - physical or mental. People have a base physical resistance (Strength), and a base mental resistance (Charisma) - they also have seven different resistances, one for each element. So you have essentially nine defences, and fourteen types of attack, for the whole game. All physical attacks cause wounds to accumulate into the same box, but each magical attack form fills up its own box. Thus, you have 8 total kinds of damage available. The cut offs for incapacitating and killing your character are the same regardless of type, however.
Materials of weapon change the damage type of an attack. An obsidian dagger inflicts fire damage, an iron sword inflicts void damage, and a silver weapon inflicts water damage. Creatures with "damage reduction" are handled by simply having very large elemental resistances to several different elements. A werewolf, for instance, most probably has a lot more resistance to earth than to water - which in turn makes a thrown rock largely bounce off without effect while a silver sword hurts badly. A magical "flaming sword" counts as either fire or void depending upon which would be more advantageous.
Armor increases physical resistance as well as elemental resistances. So some armor does, in fact, make your character braver by dint of increasing air resistance, for example.
Magic: There are no non-magical people anywhere. There is no ability to detect magic, or dispel magic in a general sense, because nothing is "non-magical" at all anywhere. People who can whirlwind attack are considered to have "sword magic" and people who can strike madness into people are considered to have "fire magic", but there's no distinction between magic and non-magic for anything that anyone can ever do.
Learning: There needs to be a requirement of diversification of expenditure of skill points. First of all, skill points come in several different flavors, and you get them separately. "Active Skills" and "Knowledge Skills" are acquired distinctly and you can't use points for one on the other. Furthermore, there is an expanding requirement of minimum ranks in a number of skills before the maximum rank of skills goes up. So you can't simply put all your Active Skill Points into "melee" forever, you have to raise other active skills to advance the rank maximum.
-Username17