SAME - Seiken series. Ideas?

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Artless
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SAME - Seiken series. Ideas?

Post by Artless »

Hiya, long-time lurker, first-time poster, yadda yadda yadda.

I really like the four-stat system composed by Mr. Trollman, and I'm working on providing rules for playing in my favorite setting of all time, that of the Seiken series, by Square.

This is what I've got so far:


Character Creation

Statistics

As per the SAME system, players start with 4 statistics to allot their abilities: Strength, Agility, Moxy, and Elan. At the beginning of the game, players will be given 10 points to allot to their stats in any way they want. Depending on statistic placement, they will be given a "class" designation. Each class will have more significant meaning later in the game, but at the start they're there simply to give players a secondary title.

Spent 3 points in... called...

Strength and Agility - Brawler
Strength and Moxy - Hunter
Strength and Elan -Swordsman

Agility and Moxy - Thief
Agility and Elan -Savant

Moxy and Elan -Apprentice

(I'd like to see everyone placing their abilities with two 3's and two 2's, but I don't know if I should enforce it.)

Mana Spirits

A major element of the Mana setting is, of course, the Mana Spirits.
Characters will start by picking the day they were born on, which will align them with a particular Elemental Spirit.

Born on...
Dyrad's Day - Wood
Luna's Day - Moon
Gnome's Day - Earth
Djinn's Day - Wind
Wisp's Day - Light
Shade's Day - Shadow
Undine's Day - Water
Salamander's Day - Fire

Players gain Resistance 2 with the element tied to their day. This resistance applies regardless of what armor they don.

They also gain 1 spell tied to their element they can use once per encounter/fight or once per hour if they're not fighting anything. Unless noted, these abilities can be called upon at any time, even when it's not your turn.

Dryad - Leafcut - This player may add their Moxy to their Agility for one physical attack. Even if the attack misses, this ability is used up.
Luna - Starlight - This player may heal an ally's physical wounds equal to 1/2 their Elan, rounded down, minimum 1.
Gnome - Stone Hammer - This player may target a single foe to receive 8 Earth damage + Elan, with a Moxy attack roll. This takes one turn to use and must be used on your turn.
Djinn - Wall of Wind - The caster may add their Elan to their Armor value against one attack. Even if the attack misses, this ability is used up after one attack.
Wisp - Healing Light - The caster may cure one ally's physical wounds equal to half their Elan, rounded up. This ability takes one turn to use and must be used on your turn.
Shade - Veil of Shadow - This character may add their Moxy to their Agility to dodge against one physical attack. Even if the attack misses, this ability is used up.
Undine - Crushing Wave - This character may add their Elan to their Damage for one physical attack. Even if it misses, this ability is used up after one attack.
Salamander - Burnt Offering - This player may target a single foe with a Moxy attack that deals (2 + 1/2 Elan rounded down) Fire damage for every attack that hits it. This takes one turn to use and must be used on your turn.


Later on, they will gain the knowledge of individual elemental spirits, and grow in their affinity to whatever element they choose. Greater affinity to an element grants a greater number of spells granted to a character.

Equipment

Weapons have a damage of 20 and a speed of 1 at the start of the game, and will grow in power the farther into the game players get. The damage is the base number of damage the weapon will do, and the speed value is the number of attacks one can make with that weapon with one action. Depending on the class given to them, players will be able to access different weapons. I'm thinking that all weapons types progress their damage and speed differently, but linearly. For example, a level one Knife will have damage 20 and speed 1, but a level 2 knife will have damage 20 speed 2 plus whatever elements and whatnot, whereas a level 1 sword would be 20 damage speed 1 and a level 2 sword would have 30 damage speed 1. Of course, weapon levels will mark a significant amount of progress through whatever campaign might be happening.

(I'd prefer to have weapons that start at the same values, then divert in style and power later in the campaign.)

I'm also thinking that classes should be assigned weapons.
Something like:

Brawlers - Fists and Nunchaku
Hunters - Bows and Spears
Swordsmen - Swords and Greatswords
Thieves - Knives and Shuriken
Savants - Shortswords and Darts
Apprentices - Staves and Hammers

Armor will have a starting value of 4 against physical damage. Armors later in the game will have elemental resistances, in addition or to the exclusion of physical resistance.

Combat

Combat starts with all players and characters aware of anything happening rolling their turn order. Roll a d20 and order monsters and players in order from highest to lowest. In the case of ties, re-roll to break the tie. On a character's turn, they may take two actions. Attacking is one action, moving 60 feet is one action, using a special ability is one action, etc. So in one turn, one player may stay still to attack twice, or one might move 120 ft, move and use a special ability, move and attack, etc. Anything that a normal human can do in 3 seconds is considered an action.

Every character starts the game with one special ability at their beck and call, available for use once every other turn.

Special Abilities

Backslash - You may attack twice in one action. (Available to Thieves, Hunters and Savant.)

Overpower - You cause 1 wound with a hit in addition to normal damage, regardless of your foe's soak. (Available to Brawlers, Hunters and Swordsmen.)

(Note: I'm wondering if Overpower is underpowered compared to Backslash...)

Spell Power - Your spell ability's value is doubled for this turn. (Available to Apprentices, Swordsmen and Savant.)

(Note: This too is causing me worry as to whether or not it's too powerful. But, I haven't worked on all of the spells yet, so I'll hold off on it for now.)

Swiftness - You may move 120 ft. as one action. (Available to Brawlers, Thieves and Apprentices.)

Wounds and Death

A character who suffers 10 wounds is incapacitated. They may not move, act or do anything besides roll around on the ground and sob. If all available party members are incapacitated they are "dead." "Death" is transitory, and players will warp back to the last town they visited, and awaken in the town's inn. The owner will tell them of how the townsfolk found them lying on the ground, sobbing, with monsters swarming all around them, etc.



As you can see, I've still got a lot left to work on, chiefly: everything after the start, including weapon stats, monsters, spells, advanced classes and the like. I don't know how I want to handle skills and other derived abilities, but any advice offered will be greatly appreciated. I tried to be conservative in what I'm giving players, but I'm neurotic about it anyway. Something else that I'm worried about is ranged attacks. I know there were other SAME writeups that dealt with them, but I don't know how they should work for this.

I don't want to start playing until I have more stuff to present, but I was hoping someone with more experience could point out what should be changed, or offer their own ideas on what could be done to make the game feel more like Seiken. I'm mostly basing this off of SD3, so if that helps, well there you go.

-Artless AKA "Oh my god I just hit submit"
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

This is a reaaally great combination of mechanics + SAME system, will have to build on it as this user is not active...
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JigokuBosatsu
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

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Artless
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Post by Artless »

I still lurk, but yeah I've abandoned this project for many years.

I have a couple notes on an updated-ish version I'd run through a few years ago, if you wanna look em over.

Here.

EDIT: I've enabled the wild-west of free editing, go nuts.
Last edited by Artless on Fri Sep 13, 2019 3:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

The lucky chest at the end is a cute mechanic. Zone mechanic is solid, nearly everything tying into the SAME stats keeps things simple.

Could even do without skills and only use SAME for the sort of storytelling Seiken Densetsu does. Paths look good.

The debuff list makes designing combat abilities, spells pretty straightforward:

Slow - [physical defense penalty]
Shaken - [magical defense penalty]
Weakened - [Strength penalty]
Addled - [Moxy penalty]
Depraved - [Elan penalty]
Crippled - [Agility penalty]
Silenced - [lock Magical attacks]
Disarmed - [lock physical attacks]
Stunned - [lock primary action]
Rooted - [lock Movement]
Drained - [magical attack penalty]
Fatigued - [physical attack penalty]
Cursed- [Penalty to skill tests]

----

Chrono Trigger has a similar tone and is of that era... maybe I can add on to this as the 90's anime RPG system
Last edited by OgreBattle on Wed Sep 25, 2019 3:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Seiken Densetsu has great "hit really hard, roll across the room" so some kind of dynamic impact system will be needed.

Got a 'universal' system in mind, might attach it to Seiken SAME
Artless
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Post by Artless »

The way I was going to model that was with critical effects, since the Zones abstraction I had in mind didn't lend itself to conveying any meaning to "knocking a dude across the room" for most cases.

When a Wallop happened it would apply an appropriate critical effect based on the attacker's weapon. I was on the fence on whether wallop thresholds would be based on the weapons themselves or to have a static wallop threshold and more aggressively vary the critical effects per weapon. At the time I wrote that doc you can see I was on the side of having weapons maintain their own thresholds with 2 or 3 possible base critical effects.
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