Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Thaluikhain]

Hmmm...ok, going back a bit and just throwing this out there, suppose instead of 1d6 per level and add them up, it was 1d6 per level and take the highest and forget the rest. Each time you go up level that spell technically gets better, but after a while only by a tiny amount and your maximum damage doesn't improve. Maybe with an option later on to take more than 1 die, but keep the numbers small.

Anything is defensible if you have a design goal and it helps you achieve it. More often, people develop a mechanic and then try to implement it.

I'm not 100% certain what your suggestion is, but I can see it in one of two ways (assume level 10).

1) Roll 10d6 - look for your highest roll. If you get a 6 the total damage is 6; if you get a 5 the total damage is 5.
2) Roll 10d6 - if you get a 6 the total damage is 60; if you get a 5 the total damage is 50.

In the first case, the total damage (and difference between ANY ROLL) becomes insignificant. In the second case, you can see how 60 damage might be a significant increase over 50. The issue is how many times you roll before you see the difference. On 10d6, you have an 85% chance of getting at least one six. The odds of NOT getting at least a 5 are virtually nil.

I was thinking the first way. You're totally right that at level 10 it's too much rolling and doesn't matter, I was thinking of much lower levels. And probably just accept that whatever the system is it'll be broken when you hit higher levels anyway.

Possibly with something like "roll 1 dice per caster level, and pick one dice per X" where X is the level you are casting at, or your skill/knowledge of that kind of spell or something.

[deaddmwalking]

If you want level to matter but keep the output relatively small, you're probably better with 1d6+some value (Caster Level, Intelligence, Mojo, Knowledge, or some combination). In that case a 2nd level caster would do +1 damage over a 1st level caster, but you maintain the variability. Again, assuming that variability matters and/or the scaling is sufficient to remain level appropriate.

For us, a 1st level touch direct damage fire spell does 2d10 damage with no rider effects. If your highest level of spell you can cast is 2, the damage instead increases to 3d10. That caster could instead choose a 2nd level fire spell that is a ranged touch spell dealing 3d8 damage.

We like that there are tactical considerations. Would I prefer to use the lower level spell that does more damage, but requires that I stand toe-to-toe with my enemy, or use a higher-level spell that lets me stand 40 feet away.

When this caster gets 3rd level spells, they can do 4d10 with the 1st level spell, 4d8 with the 2nd level spell, or 8d8 with a 3rd level spell that is touch (like the first level spell) and has a chance to impart a status affect. At the point where you get it, casting a 3rd level spell is a relatively expensive proposition, saving the spell points by casting the lower level spells still becomes attractive (assuming the caster chooses to know 3 spells that all deal damage in roughly the same way). They could learn a limited version of flight instead.

[JonSetanta]

Also, while we're discussing damage output, it brings to mind for me the 3e "Take 10" option "when not in danger", which was then applied through some class abilities to select skills, and again with the Tome Fighter ability to (I'd have to check the texts) spend a Focus to Take 10.

What if a character could spend (1 resource pool of you name of choice) to Take 10 for any d20 roll they make, allowing at least an option to avoid crit-fails 5 or more times in a row?

As I had implemented in my heartbreaker, Mages can powerup spells with Stamina (the universal renewable resource for all characters, even Skill users can spend Stamina to boost their checks) to set all d6s to 6, also triggering the rider effects.

Player control over damage output and altering probability for a certain amount of in-game resource ensures that even the most unlucky of rollers can have their moment, and combat is shorter in duration overall.

[Thaluikhain]

Is there any real advantage to having a big list of weapons that are going to get seldom if ever used? If the fighters are most likely going use longswords, do you really need to have an option for someone who wants to have a glaive-guisarme and won't take a glaive or guisarme or guisarme-glaive?

I get having junk weapons to be ditched when you get the better one, and NPCs having junk the heroes' stuff outclasses, and maybe giving all the options with slightly different rules (IIRC, one D&D supplement had rules for a smilodon skull on a stick), but it seems a lot of that is unnecessary.

[Omegonthesane]

Is there any real advantage to having a big list of weapons that are going to get seldom if ever used? If the fighters are most likely going use longswords, do you really need to have an option for someone who wants to have a glaive-guisarme and won't take a glaive or guisarme or guisarme-glaive?

I get having junk weapons to be ditched when you get the better one, and NPCs having junk the heroes' stuff outclasses, and maybe giving all the options with slightly different rules (IIRC, one D&D supplement had rules for a smilodon skull on a stick), but it seems a lot of that is unnecessary.

Having multiple different weapons can be made to have a benefit, but it's going to have diminishing returns no matter what. Conversely, people should be able to pick their character aesthetic without being explicitly mechanically punished for it.

I don't think it's particularly controversial that Gygax's infamous polearm fetish was taking weapon variety a bit far. Especially in a tabletop RPG where people aren't signing up to trade up their main hand weapon every 3 floors.

[Dogbert]

Is there any real advantage to having a big list of weapons that are going to get seldom if ever used?

Dopamine, mostly. It's like twitter or gaccha for trad gamers.

Personally I preferred to go KISS with my fantasy heartbreaker and give the same basic stats to all weapons in the "main three" categories of melee weapons. While there are exceptions, they are only listed in the Weapon Descriptions section and I only mention those with genuinely unique mechanics that'd warrant a price increase.

[deaddmwalking]

In modern games, people often use the term 'gun-porn', but it applies equally to fantasy weapons. Not everyone cares to dive into the mechanical differences between a sub-machine gun and a machine pistol (and differences in the real world are mostly depending on how you choose to define the terms), but there's going to be a sub-set of players that want to really dive in and consider the options.

In a sense, equipment optimization is a microcosm of character optimization. If there are differences, figuring out how to match a weapon to your build can be rewarding, but ultimately it is CONSTRAINED by what weapons do. If you get +1-2 damage because of optimization, that's relatively minor. Two-handed weapons that do more damage versus one-handed weapons that allow higher defense because of a shield are an example of potentially meaningful trade-offs - you can get rid of individual weapons and shields and abstract it all to character attributes, but a lot of people want their character to be different if they pick up a shield - the narrative changes DEMAND mechanical changes.

Once you decide that you're making a distinction between some weapons and others, it's really just a question of how far you want to go. A spear versus a halberd doesn't NEED to be different, but you can certainly make them different. For example, even if they have the same damage, making a spear a simple weapon and a halberd a trained-only weapon and giving it a trip ability means that a line of soldiers with halberds communicates something very different than the same line of soldiers with spears.

[JonSetanta]

Numeric values for weapon sizes to determine weight, how fast it can be used (like a kind of Magic card First Strike vs normal speed), how strong someone has to be to use one-handed or even lift it.

Build Points to allow one or more of B/P/S damage, effects, interaction with things like "Wide" to give bonus to defense options and "Long" to grant Reach, along with anything I can think of or scour the internet for. The limit would be universal, so that "great weapons" don't just slap on everything while hand-sized such as Dagger and Gauntlet aren't left lacking.

Lastly, the option to attach a (totally not Materia) Magem to a weapon to grant elemental or debuff effects on a strike, or utility effect like "Return", or even allow Warrior-types an item based spell use at the expense of Stamina.

That's what I dabbled with years ago but this time around it's better than before.

[JonSetanta]

I apologize, that last post was slapped out in 3 minutes tops.

Still researching what D&D, PF, and about a dozen non-mainstream TTRPGs have done for "weapon traits", then I'll just cherrypick what is most simple and synergistic.

[angelfromanotherpin]

If you haven't yet, I recommend checking out the Sword & Scoundrel beta. As a Riddle of Steel successor, it has a lot invested in technical simulation, but the S&S version is most committed to a standardized trait-based model.

[JonSetanta]

Thank you! Added to my extensive collection.

[Grek]

Does anyone know where to find that post Frank made about expanded Stellar Oracles lore? Not for the WoD splat, but for the Stellar Oracles as an organization in After Sundown, and how they thought prophecies worked.

[Kaelik]

Does anyone know where to find that post Frank made about expanded Stellar Oracles lore? Not for the WoD splat, but for the Stellar Oracles as an organization in After Sundown, and how they thought prophecies worked.

There's a very brief write up that touches on what you are talking about on page 11 of the expanding AWOD thread here:

viewtopic.php?p=204379#p204379 But that's probably not what you mean. It might all have been word for word ported into AS or not.

Aside from that and AS I can't find anything.

[erik]

Well, from the name, Stellar Oracles implies they get prophecies from astrology. And there is reference to "the secret charts of the Stellar Oracles" as a Rank 5 Destiny.

As for their inspiration/source...

Personally, I think I would like to see them more like Card Captor Sakura (even though I absolutely hate the dubbing on that), which is to say like a Final Fantasy Summoner (or a high end Disgaea magician). That while they can produce direct fire and forget magical effects, they do so by summoning a spirit that produces the effect and then fucks off.

Anyway, looking through the old notes for W:tT, we had five sub splats because it was on the nWoD engine. Those were:

• Sage Knights. These were like a combination of Rayearth and Utena. They had special weaponry they could pull out of their hearts called Athame, and could enchant their weapons to do stuff and change form through a process called Sanctification.
• Rune Seekers. These were unabashed Card Captor knockoffs, and had a thing called Rune Binding where they got themselves Clow Cards.
• Stellar Oracles. Yes, before they appeared in After Sundown they were here. Still Sailor Moon knockoffs.
• Spinners of Fate. These guys were Oh My Goddess characters, and had fate related powers called Weaving.
• Daughters of Gold. Based on Disney Princesses, they had access to Alchemy.

[Omegonthesane]

I remember other things from that thread; I thought it was a full on "what if we made an Infernal sourcebook for a hypothetical AS release" which claimed that Nezumi were sometimes thought of as an Infernal type of zombie using some kind of logic that surely would also apply to other lycanthropes if not for the specific disease connection1 Can't find anything though.

[Hicks]

I was thinking the first way. You're totally right that at level 10 it's too much rolling and doesn't matter, I was thinking of much lower levels. And probably just accept that whatever the system is it'll be broken when you hit higher levels anyway.

Possibly with something like "roll 1 dice per caster level, and pick one dice per X" where X is the level you are casting at, or your skill/knowledge of that kind of spell or something.

To be clear this is just a legacy problem of spells being based around monsters having d8 hit dice, having waaaay less hit dice, and adding like a maximum of +6 to the total hit points actually rolled

10d6 is crazy bonkers meaningful and powerful when trolls have 6d8+6 (average of 27) HP and are found in packs of up to twelve.

[Dogbert]

Also, something I want to ask regarding a game I'm running now.

Perfectly valid animal behavior. Is your player the kind that reminds the teacher to give them homework too? Because I can't imagine the rest of the table sharing his opinion on how to better kill them.

[Foxwarrior]

It's been ten years
You have to let go

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I've been reading too much manga lately and an interesting question came to me: How many TTRPGs out there let you level up in the middle of a fight? Some straight-up "you have reached a new apex of power right now" kind of shit. Seems kind of annoying unless the GM's planned it out ahead of time, but knowing GMs... they would.

[Thaluikhain]

Maelstrom doesn't have levels as such, but you get experience rolls (roll over your attribute for it to go up by 1 point) mostly at the GM's discretion, but can also be triggered automatically for being in a fight (with bonuses for killing people), for taking serious wounds and for successfully casting a spell. Combat and wound rolls should happen immediately after combat, but the spell one should be done as soon as the spell is cast, and there's an example in the use of magic section that mentions being in combat.

So, rules as written, you could have gain a slight attribute bonus during combat. However, Maelstrom is something of a mess.

[Dogbert]

I've been reading too much manga lately and an interesting question came to me: How many TTRPGs out there let you level up in the middle of a fight?

The only game I know of that explicitly does that is... well, mine, since I wrote it specifically to emulate the shounen genre.

Mind you, it's not "level up" per se since the game does not have levels, it's more in the vein of HeroQuest or Cortex and only has one stat: Heart (because that's the only thing that matters in shounen), and your heart stat rises and falls when key events happen like losing a fight, scoring a 20 on the die, seeing your mentor die, scoring a 1 on the die, etc.

[merxa]

I've been reading too much manga lately and an interesting question came to me: How many TTRPGs out there let you level up in the middle of a fight?

The only game I know of that explicitly does that is... well, mine, since I wrote it specifically to emulate the shounen genre.

link goes straight to a pay wall...

anyway, leveling mid battle is a terrible user experience, even if leveling could some how, magically only take 30 seconds. If you wanted to recreate the anime experience, I would recommend that when characters do level and gain awesome new powers, they can't actually use it yet until the appropriate narrative stresser occurs, that way the player has already taken the time to select the new powers they want, have finished leveling, and now it is just about engaging it at the proper moment. You could even add an extra mechanic, something like after you level, the first time you drop to half health, gain back x hitpoints and unlock [new power], even throw in an immediate action to use the power etc depending on your system and whim.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

But that sounds fucking awful. Why would you want to blue-ball your players like that? That sounds like it would incentivize them to throw themselves into narratively dramatic encounters just to use the power they got. That's... fine, but it sounds like it can get real cheesy real fast.

[merxa]

I don't see it, if you're trying to emulate a genre, presumably the people playing will engage in that genre? Otherwise, why are they playing this game instead of another game?

Giving people 'hit points' one time also somewhat encourages players to sit on their get out of jail card until needed. you could also do this with a meta-narrative currency, so players use their power up when they are ready.

Also, it is important the player playing the character knows what their new powers ares and what they do, and they need to know it prior. Being given sudden new powers takes away their agency and redefines their character without their input, just huge unforced errors there. If it happened to me, i'd likely just hand by character sheet to the GM and tell them to keep playing my character for me since that's what they seem interested in doing.

[angelfromanotherpin]

In most of the Exalted games I played in, people were allowed to spend their XP mid-session, and frequently held onto enough to buy at least one new power on the fly when the need arose, which led to some very memorable moments that felt more like story than game. Being able to spot-address unforeseen needs was just worth more than the theoretical efficiency of having as much xp invested as possible at all times. Mind you, adding one or two Exalted powers didn't require anywhere near as much updating as a D&D level-up tends to.