Midgard Workspace

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Midgard Workspace

Post by Prak »

Going to start compiling the almost solid stuff here, as much for my own reference while writing as other peoples' when figuring out what I'm ranting on about.

Midgard Skills
Strength Based
Athletics (Climb, Jump and Swim)
Brawl (Melee)
Wrestling (Grapple)

Dexterity Based
Accuracy (Ranged, Finesse)
Tumble (Balance and Acrobatics)
Stealth (Hide and Move Silent)

Intelligence Based
Craft (Appraise, Craft, Know)
Disable (Break and Rig)
Transformation (Magical Changing and Chemistry)
Binding (Demons and Summons)

Wisdom Based
Healing (Mundane and Magical)
Perception (
Divination
Runes
Naturalism

Charisma Based
Handle Animal
Necromancy
Negotiation (diplomacy, sense motive)
Skald (bluff, perform, music magic)
Trickery (Illusion, Charms)

Just playing with some ideas after seeing Battle of the Five Armies.

Midgard- a game of Epic Sword and Sorcery Adventure

Midgard is a game inspired by High and Heroic Fantasy works such as Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Norse myths.

The intent behind Midgard is for martially oriented characters to have a variety of options as wide as a spellcaster, and for both sorts of characters to be able to contribute equally in the game, with a focus on martial combat as the primary means of resolving conflicts, with magic as more of a utility tool, but still allowing spellcasters to feel like spellcasters (a problem I ran into with the d20 Conan).

Midgard Flow Sheet
Step One- Name the PCs
In Midgard, the PCs are wandering Iron Age heroes, better likened to mercenaries and freebooters than anything explicitly heroic. As such, they are called a Company, as in a mercenary company, or the Adventuring Company of Thorin Oakenshield.

Step Two- Outline a Six Person Party
Midgard is largely based on stories where parties easily outnumber six members, and most of those members are martial characters. A sample six person party is as follows-
  • Burglar: Probably a lagrkin, skilled in stealth, infiltration, trap-finding, and stabbing things in the voolnerables. Some mobility, but primarily of the "moving around the enemy and not getting stabbed" variety. Iconic weapon- Dagger
  • Skald: Like a bard, but hopefully at least somewhat more fun to play. If nothing else, they tend to be poets/singers, so they should be able to swing a sword while doing their magic music thing. Buffs, faces, maybe some debuffing. In fact, definitely some debuffing, since curses are such a big thing in norse myth. Also the person you call upon to get you out of contracts. Iconic weapon- Nidr, which is to say, hexes. Like, they literally fight by fucking dissing and cursing you.
  • Noble: Like, actual nobility. They obviously have weapons training and some study of tactics and strategy, but they also hand out morale buffs, a good deal of courtly knowledge and can call for backup (though this will be a pain to write). Iconic weapon- Longsword and Shield
  • Woodsman: Skilled in tracking, survival, wilderness knowledge, the typical ranger stuff. May have an animal companion, if I figure a way to make that work. Iconic weapon- bow, knife
  • Wanderer: Sages and wisemen, studious sorts who primarily contribute to adventure by being a walking encyclopedia, and secondary contribute by being able to use magic while still swinging a longsword and a staff. Notably, Gandalf is based heavily on Odin's Grey Wanderer aspect. Iconic weapon- Magic/Staff
  • Alchemist: The Alchemist seeks immortality through "science." Except that they do science that involves boiling shit in dangerous chemicals to purify it into a higher specimen of it's form, ie, lead to gold. When not locked up in their lab huffing fumes and muttering about elixirs and philosopher's stones, they toss dangerous, volatile chemicals at people and melt walls and shit. They can also tell you if that gold idol you found is actually gold, or lead with a thin gold veneer.
Though not explicitly stated, all the characters are proficient in combat, and those who focus on combat excel beyond mere proficiency.

Sample Adventure Tasks
  • Fight a magical beast, possibly a dragon- The burgler is not the strongest combatant, but should be able to hold his own, and the Skald's main shtick is talking, but he can lay down curses and debuffs. The Wanderer may have to primarily resort to mundane combat, but importantly, the system should, based on the things inspiring it, allow that to be a viable option, and he may be able to tell the company a specific weakness of the beast. The Noble, Woodsman and Alchemist should be fine, really.
  • Sneak into a Darkhold undetected- Burglar, and perhaps Skald will excel in this situation, being the designated sneaks. However, Woodsman, being a ranger-sort, will have some stealth ability, even if it's primarily forest-oriented, Wanderer may or may not have some stealth-aiding abilities, depending on spell selection, and Noble has nothing that explicitly suggests skill in stealth. However, Wanderer and Noble could make a distraction, and Alchemist can concoct invisibility potions, so their presence does not automatically make the company fail.
  • Navigate an Alfkin court- Noble leads the day here. He has connections and inherent respectability as a peer. The Wanderer can probably curry favour from the court wizard, the alchemist from the same or a court alchemist. The Skald has talky powers, so he acts as the Noble's herald, and faces it up. The Burglar...cases the joint? I don't know. Burglar probably uses their bluff and disguise shit to pretend to be NotABurglar.
  • Find Ancient Treasure- The Burglar stars here, with Alchemist helping take down doors and walls. The noble contributes by possibly getting the quest, but otherwise through handing out morale boosts and just being a sword that's present. Wanderer dishes out knowledge about ruins and treasure and maybe has a form of battlefield control that works best in confined spaces? (I'm think "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" stuff). Woodsman and Skald handle monster and legend knowledge respectively, maybe there's a "Hey, I know this sword from a story!" thing that basically is free identify. And of course, everyone can fight.
Step Three- Outline a Three-man Party
Using Frank's original Warp-Cult example, we take out every other character for two three man companies:
Burglar, Noble, Wanderer- This party is fairly well rounded if it can get by on the Burglar's less than expert social skills, but outside of social missions, it has sneaking, combat, and magic challenges pretty well covered.
Skald, Woodsman, Alchemist- If this party can get by on the Woodsman's woods-focused stealth (such as if he gets an inherent bonus when he's in the woods, or suffers only a minor penalty outside them) it has social, stealth, and combat well taken care of, with magic it's trouble spot. Fortunately for them, problems only solvable by magic aren't as common in Midgard's source material as they are in games such as D&D.

Step Four- Outline a Sample Four-Hour Adventure

The Southron Durskin (orcs) tribe has broken the tenuous gentlebeing's agreement of Midgard, electing to lay waste to an entire settlement to take all it's wealth and food for themselves, rather than a more typical raid that may have decimated the town, but left most of the citizenry alive.

Now the alfkin and dverkin call for all durskin blood to be spilled, claiming to have known the like of they were never to have been trusted. The Company is hired by an interested party who feels that such a crusade would be detrimental to his interests (perhaps he's a half-durskin business man, or a human business owner that employs durskin) to bring the elves around on the subject--if the alfkin change their mind, they may be able to convince the much more tradition bound dvurkin to not throw out the entire agreement for the actions of a single tribe. The Company must navigate the court, avoiding insult while convincing various key alfkin to vouch for them and bend the alfkin jarl's ear. The company relies on the diplomatic skill of Skald and the peerage ties of Noble before the king, but can each use their particular area of expertise to talk up elven treasure finders and aristocracy, captains of the guard, sages and alchemists. If anyone is an Alfkin, he kind of acts as a second Noble, due to the racial respect. Skald may have disguise skills or magic that allow him to pass for an alfkin, but without a falsified lineage, that may not mean much.

Step Five- Outline a Sample Campaign
  • The Company convinces the alfkin to not declare a crusade on all dvurskin, just the one specific tribe-
  • Provided the company can recover an alfkin artifact stolen by another tribe of orcs and held in a Darkhold, without being discovered or tied back to the alfkin.
  • Once in the Darkhold, the company finds the artifact is most likely held in a dungeon at the center of the Darkhold...
  • Where they find that the Darkhold is actually a barracks for a dragon's personal thrall-army, and the artifact was stolen to satisfy his greed.
Step Six- Decide on a Base System
So Midgard wants a robust tactical combat minigame, and it wants to be reasonably low-powered in the grand scheme of things, but with a possibility of growing to a higher power. Given it's Iron Age/Psuedo-Medieval Milieu, something like D&D, but restricted to a lower power level, would be good. The thing which would not work using regular D&D would be the magic, but that can be corrected for.

I don't think I want to use D&D precisely, but I think d20+mods v. variable TN is a good jumping off point, levels, races, classes, etc can work or be made to work. So I'm choosing d20, broadly speaking.

Moving Step seven to a new post.
Last edited by Prak on Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:21 am, edited 11 times in total.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

Party Size: If parties are supposed to generally outnumber six members, how many characters does each player control?

Character Redundancy: It looks a lot like each of the characters in the three-man party is split into two for the six-man party, but both members of the pair get most of the relevant qualities? Both Legolas and Boromir are masters of a variety of weapons; the only distinction between them seems to be that Legolas knows some things, and the Bravo gets beaten up a lot. Both Bilbo and Loki are skilled in talking and walking around.

Non-Interaction: The role division seems to favor characters alternating who's solving the current encounter. Need to sneak? It's Bilbo's turn. Need to fight? It's Legolas and Boromir's turn. Need to read something obscure? It's Gandalf's turn. Downtime? Albertus is now the person doing things.

That's not necessarily a problem, so long as each of those encounters are only a few minutes long and it's the overarching strategy that matters.

Albertus and Magnus: I thought you were trying to go down to Lord of the Rings-level magic. These characters make me confused.
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Post by Prak »

I'm reworking things looking at Frank's original example. Plus we all constantly do this wrong, concepting characters rather than specific roles, but whatever.

The intent is not that companies will actually be as large as they are in LotR/The Hobbit, it was more a remark that a couple of the source materials happen to have huge companies.

Non-interaction: In the source material, everyone fights. Albertus merely fights with Alchemist's Fire, and Bilbo makes use of the flank and unseen attack rules to compensate for having a low attack ability. Also, still working on the flow sheet, and things are developing as I work.

Albertus Magnus- As was pointed out by Erik in Annoying Game Questions, LotR has more mortal spellcasting than LotR and The Hobbit show (though in An Unexpected Journey, Sarumon does mention mortal sorcerers). Also, since I haven't actually read LotR, let alone the rest of the stuff (I only read most of the Hobbit, and most of Fellowship, because I was 12 and the constant breaks in the narrative for history lessons was very deadly to my attention span), I branched out into Norse myth as a sort of grandfathered source material via LotR, and, in trying to get a good idea of the broader game style looking up literary terms, added the Sword and Sorcery genre and epics in general, which includes Conan.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Prak »

Got down to step seven. Not entirely done, but I'm calling it a night
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Prak »

Step Seven- Do the Math
This is lengthy and somewhere between a stream of consciousness ramble and meandering analysis, so I'm chunking it up in it's own post

Determining Typical Level Span
The first thing I need to do is figure out the level span. Looking at monsters already in D&D, I can pull a few that are roughly equivalent to challenges in the source material, mostly Norse myth, but some shallow pulls from Tolkien:
  • Fafnir, a dwarf cursed with a dragon form, and slain by the mortal hero Sigurd
  • The Lindwurm, a wingless biped dragon more akin to an enormous, venomous constrictor
  • Grendel, essentially an ogre that's hard to hurt (large, consumes many non-warriors) with poisonous blood, and unable to pierce Beowulf's armour
  • Grendel's mother, an advanced ogre
  • The unnamed dragon of Beowulf
  • A colony of ettercapsgiant sapient spiders
  • Smaug
Fafnir is essentially a large or huge green dragon, slain by Sigurd with a called shot from concealment with an adamantine blade. This could make Fafnir between CR 8 and 19. Sigmund specifically kills Fafnir from inside a pit in the dragon's path to water, which could speak to a sneak attack. An eighth level rogue with a high strength and magic sword could, under optimal circumstances and high rolls, kill a juvenile green dragon in a single round.

The Lindwurms of tales can eat entire oxen when they are old enough to be threats, and intelligent enough to demand one a day. Taking a giant constrictor and giving it a poisonous bite makes it maybe CR 6. The Lambton Wyrm was, as Fafnir, slain through cunning, rather than force of arms, but we can still measure the relative level of the man who killed it by how long it would take to kill and survive the constriction. Basically, the Lambton wyrm and the noble who slew are trading damage rolls of a bite and constrict and spiked shield (lets say two) and armor, for 28 and 19+(thrice str, let's say str is 14 for a nobleman soldier). Dealing an average of 25 dam. per round would kill a giant constrictor in three rounds, while the hero takes 72 damage on average. Putting the nobleman at a d10 HD and maybe a 12 Con, he gets 6hp/lv past first and thus needs to be level 10. If we give him two weapon fighting for that pair of shields I assumed, that gives him an extra d6+str mod each round, for an average 11 more damage in the first two rounds, for 61 damage after two rounds, close enough to consider it a two round win, and allowing him to get by with as little as 57 hp, allowing him to be level 5 or 6. If he's level six, he could have Improved Two Weapon Fighting and 5d6+5Str per turn, or 39 dpt, meaning an easy two round win. Of course we all pause a moment to mourn D&D combat rules turning a legend about an hours long struggle into a 12 second combat.

Grendel is essentially an ogre, it's big and eats people, but with damage reduction. His mother is the same, but with extra HD. Let's say DR 10/magic, because a magic sword works when Hrunting fails (and that possibly due to a curse, those are big in Norse myth). Also, Beowulf was able to rip Grendel's arm off. This isn't really covered by D&D rules, but let's say it's a brute force sunder and that an arm has like 20% of the creature's total hp. So it's not really hard to sunder an ogre's arm, though there is the DR on Grendel, so Beowulf needs to deal 16 damage bare handed, and beat Grendel in an opposed attack roll. Two hands and size cancel out, so Grendel has +8. To have an even chance, Beowulf needs at least that much, and while it's reasonable to say that, as a mighty warrior, he has a 16 str or so, it does mean he needs to be fifth-ish level. Plus his unarmed attack does 1d4, so he needs to come up with at least 12 damage from strength. That would imply a str of 26. That's a lot. Unless we say that Beowulf has some way that he personally can overcome Grendel's DR, which seems likely, as he did fine in a lengthy fight, but his warriors couldn't do shit. Beowulf probably had a sword that bypassed Grendel's DR in some way, and we can say he's level 5 or so to beat Grendel. Grendel's mom may have as little as a class level, but the fight is much the same, with the added complication of an unfaithful sword given to Beowulf before the fight, and the discovery of a magic, possibly vorpal, sword in Grendel's mother's lair, which is lost due to Grendel's poisonous blood (because Beowulf's DM is a dick).

The unnamed dragon is bested by Beowulf and Wiglaf alone, and is big, but still on the smaller side of dragons, being possibly Huge. So norse myth dragons are usually between 16 and 32 feet long. This dragon had fiery breath, but I don't know of any magic it used, it was big and fierce and breathed fire. So it's like an advanced wyvern with fire breath, which is probably about CR 8. A level 6 character and his cohort could conceivably win that fight, though at great cost.

Bilbo faces a colony of ettercapsgiant sapient spiders that have captured the dwarves. This is one of the easiest changes to line up, since ettercaps are a thing in D&D, they're just portrayed as being more humanoid than giant sapient spider. They're CR 3, and a large-ish colony of them (12?) would be like EL 10. Bilbo of course is invisible and sneak attacking, and freeing dwarves who are better actual fighters. Bilbo has little trouble with individual spiders, so we can probably call him a rog4 with a magic item.

Smaug is a highly intelligent firebreathing dragon. This suggests he actually is a red dragon in D&D terms, and he's stated in The Atlas of Middle Earth to be 20m long, or 65', and Tolkien's drawing supports him being roughly that size. So the fucker is a colossal red dragon, just minus spells, and maybe spell-likes. Notably, he is taken out through guile and a bullshit weak-point that makes it possible for a human archer to kill him with a ballista bolt. But, this is notable in telling us that there are threats in the source material which are way higher CR than the heroes are usually going to be, and they can only be taken out by giving them major weaknesses.
So it seems that we're seriously looking at characters that are usually below level 10. Which is a handy round number to build a game to. However, a lot of the norse myth that people are familiar with deals with the exploits of the gods, to the point where it was actually difficult to find a decent number of monsters overcome by mortal heroes to use to determine a rough level scale because so many entries in the Wikipedia "Creatures from Norse myth" category were things fought by the gods or just part of the Asgardian ecology. So I'd like to have an "epic" tier for the game, where characters are dealing with gods, giants and god level threats. That could either be a span of levels beyond fifth, or represented by no longer gaining levels, but rather attributes which begin with a "must be this tall to challenge" attribute.

Race is your Class-
This was an interesting idea that came up in discussing a d20 LotR game. Fighter, swordsman, sneak, thief, that's just what you do, and can be primarily represented by your skills and feats. Lord of the Rings characters frequently matter more based on their race--what they are (with the exception of humans, because they're the least locked into what they were made to be, or something). Norse myth has this a bit too, where a powerful giant is dangerous because they're more giant-y, not because they've practiced sword-swinging. Since alfar and svartalfar aren't really mortal, they are more or less powerful depending on how "alfar-y" or "svartalfar-y" they are. So I think there's some mileage in a model where your Profession gives you a meagre pile of bonuses and minor abilities like a standard D&D race, and your Race is a leveled progression that gives you Real Power, and then you have Skills that measure your ability to Jump, Fight and Use Magic.

Because it would create a weird game state if humans had normal classes but all the other races used leveled progressions for their natural abilities, humans follow this same deal. However, if someone wants to gain powers that aren't tied to what they were born as, that should be doable, so rather than the leveled progressions being called Races, we'll call them Essences, and the concept covers both how elf-y you are, and the acquisition of dragon-powers from consuming dragon blood, as an example.

I also like the idea that Frank talked about in his Warp Cult where people have a basic HD with no bonuses, but just a pile of skill points, so everyone has a HD that defines their broad type (humanoid, undead, giant, etc). This doesn't give attack or save bonuses, everyone is just some hp, some skills, and maybe broad traits like undead not aging. Then they have a number of levels of Essence, which defaults to their race, but there are Advanced Essences. These essences describe the broad aptitudes of a character's race, as Essence Features, including their resilience in the form of HD and saves bonuses. Attack is a skill, as is magic, and some races are adept at one or the other, such as orcs and elves, respectively.

Skills
The Skill numbers are similar to Pathfinder, where an Essence Skill just means you get +3 to it, rather than in D&D where your out of archetype skills are more expensive and can't be mastered to the extent of your in-archetype skills.

In standard D&D, skill-based magic is bad because there's no correlation between your mod in a skill and your level. Midgard will be dealing with smaller numbers, and ideally fewer vertical power enhancers, and your access to magic will be based purely on your ranks in a magic skill, rather than your total mod--If your Elf5 sorcerer somehow has a +30 Evocation mod, that just means he's good at penetrating defenses and analyzing evocation effects, not that he has the highest level effects in the game.

So, numbers
So, we're looking at 10 levels in the main game, with some form of legendary/epic play. That means characters will have 10 HD, including their base HD, usually a d8, and base skill numbers, including attack ratings, ranging from 0-13.

Saves are tied to your Essence, however. With 10 levels--'scuse me, 9--the difference between a high and low save in the late game is 3 points. Not large, it's seriously the difference between an in-archetype skill and an out-of-archetype skill, just at a lower number. I'm pretty comfortable with that, really, though I'm tempted to tweak the save progressions slightly so that you get at least one save increasing every level.

Because this system is more skill-based and intensive, I think I'm going to boost skill points, probably a lot, because, I also want to give players more opportunities to spend them. What I'm thinking is actually cutting the usual skill point packages by half (1, 2, 3, and 4 instead of 2, 4, 6, and 8), but giving them out every 1000xp. So if humans are a high-skill point race, they'd get 4+Int mod skill points, with max ranks equal to their Essence Level. This means that late game characters are probably pretty diverse in their skills, but given that I'm increasing the number of skills, I'm fine with that.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Prak »

New Midgard Skill List
  • Combat skills
  • Accuracy-The skill for ranged weapons, including thrown
  • Batter-The skill for taking something in your hands and introducing it to a person's face.
  • Brawl-Your tavern brawl skill, covers unarmed/natural attacks, improvised weapon attacks also covers thrown weapons
  • Dodge-Armour will give DR, this is your ability to avoid being hit. Synergy bonus to Parry.
  • Parry-Governs being able to redirect attacks. Synergy bonus to Dodge.
  • Proficiency-Not a skill in as such, but each skill point you put into Proficiency gives you proficiency in a weapon or group of similar weapons. No max, never rolled.
    Magic skills
  • Alchemy-potions and shit. Overlaps with transformation, but is specifically for use with your alchemist's lab
  • Divination-Basically, gives you some points which act like Fate points for the duration of the adventure
  • Elemental Magic-your skill for gouts of flame and freezing winds and shit
  • Esotera-Like proficiency, but for spell lists. Not a skill as such, more of how to determine how many spells you know. Each list costs 2 skill points, though.
  • Necromancy-Speaking with the dead, raising shit, consuming life force
  • Shapeshifting-duh
  • Transformation-turning shit into other shit without aid of psuedoscientific apparati, as well as temporarily augmenting things
  • Trickery-Illusions and charms
Notably, magic crafting is something you just do if you are sufficiently dwarfy/hard core and have crafting skills. Elemental magic is probably going to be vaguely Bending-based, so that elemental casters can at least have a basic elemental-attack. It will probably also cover non-elements like shadow.

Magic in Midgard
Magic in Midgard can be very effective, and powerful, but it still pales in comparison to that wielded by casters of other games.

Alchemy
Alchemy is the pursuit of the purification of the human form through (psuedo)scientific processes. A nice side effect of the search for the elixirs which facilitate this is discovery of a wide variety of compounds with other effects. With the alchemy skill you can make healing and restorative potions, augmentive compounds, and a lot of various effects. It kind of overlaps most of the other magical skills by specifically covering "make potions."

Divination
The use of magic and rituals to foretell the future and discern consequences. Looking at a few models here, 1- MC just gives the player info about the next adventure on a successful check, more ranks=more info, 2- Successful check gives Fate Points that can be used later in adventure, 3- Succesful check allows player to make a single prophetic-y statement at time of roll, to later call in when fitting to auto-succeed/otherwise benefit. Time to use will probably depend on your type of divination--runes can be cast in like five minutes, but entrails reading kind of needs a fresh corpse nearby.

Elemental Magic
The Bender skill, allows you to conjure flame, control air, earth and water, all of that. Also covers non-elements like shadow/darkness, lightning, ice/snow, light/sun, wood, etc.

Esotera
Not a skill. Esotera is your knowledge of spell lists, you buy spell lists individually for 2 skill points a piece.

Necromancy
Exactly what you're thinking- covers death magic, talking to the dead, and raising corpses.

Shapeshifting
The ability to turn into a specific sort of creature. Basically, there's a single spell list, and the spells act like the buffing version of polymorph. Each additional "spell list" you buy for it is another sort of creature. So Beorn from the Hobbit has Shapeshifting (Bear) and enough ranks to turn into a dire bear.

Transformation
Covers both physically changing something to something else, like straw into gold, as well as changing things from one quality to another, including temp-enchanting things.

Trickery
Everything that Loki does that doesn't involve shapeshifting or item creation. Covers illusions and magic lies.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

You seriously misunderestimate the sheer magnitude of Beowulf's anime-ness. He doesn't use pansy things like weapons or armor to defeat Grendel at all, no. Grendel is immune to all weapons anyways you see. He takes off his armor to go to sleep, then is woken up in the middle of the night, when he wrestles Grendel's arm off in a fight that involves destroying several metal-fastened benches. Grendel dies of his wound eventually, because surviving that would just be ridiculous.

Then, when he battles Grendel's mother in her underwater lair, it takes 9 hours for him to resurface. The sword he uses to defeat Grendel's mother is a giant's sword, larger than any man, and as we all know, that is an extremely anime thing indeed.

It's too bad the easily accessed translations are so difficult to read.
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Post by Prak »

And that the recent movie is so terrible and done by someone who admitted to hating the poem.

Hmm... now I'm wondering about the possibility of spending skill points for permanent stat boosts...
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Prak »

Midgard Setting Flow Sheet

1. Setting Elevator Pitch
Iron age heroes walk a low-magic earth with spell and sword, kicking ass and taking names. Mostly Norse inspired, with elves and dwarves, but Tolkien and other Iron Age cultures--especially those which had trade contact with the norse--also make appearances. (~25 seconds)

2. Talk about your setting for 22 minutes straight
(hoo boy)

Ok, so we have elves, dwarves, humans, orcs and little people living in an Iron Age world. There are giants, undead, dragons, sea monsters, giant wolves, and very cranky nature spirits, along with assorted chimeric magical beasts.

Midgard, as one might assume by the origin of the setting name, primarily focuses on Fantasy Scandinavia. Other Fantasy Lands exist, but they're splat book material that get covered in shallow detail in a single chapter.

Fantasy Scandinavia is a region called Nordr (lit. "Northwards"), and the people from there Nordvolk, which applies to elves, dwarves, orcs and smallfolk from that region just as it does humans. The non-humans also have their own regional names for themselves--elves are alfkin, dwarves are dverkin, orcs are durskin, and smallfolk are lagrkin. They each have their own villages, as well as representation in the populations of the more cosmopolitan towns.

The Five Races and the Gods
Midgard is one of nine worlds, and is the home of mortal man. The other worlds are Alfheim, home of the alfar; Nidavelir, also called Svartalfheim, home of the dvergar; Jotenheim, home of the giants; Hel, home of the dead; Asgard and Vanaheim, home of the Aesir and Vanir, or gods; Niflheim, the home of ice, and Muspelheim, the home of fire. All nine worlds sit in the branches and roots of the world tree yggdrasil, save Midgard which spreads around it's trunk.

At first, only men, monsters and spirits inhabited Midgard, it was home to no other mortal races. Mortal man was unique among the lower races in his freedom. All men may die, but they live as they wish, while all alfar protect their wooded home and all dwarves craft, and the Vanir and Aesir were not as they were.

It was humans who first created mead, and in sharing it with the alfar and dvergar, known to man as the old ones, they seduced those races to impart many secrets-those of the forge, of the forest, of runes and their nature. And in that seduction, they also bedded many inebriated alfar and dvergar, which gave rise to the alfkin and dverkin, though no-one knows what these men bedded to give rise to lagrkin.

No gods, neither aesir nor vanir, existed in this time, and men gave rise to them as well. Two men, Biflindi and Njorthuz, were taken with the lessons on the runes given by alfar and dvergar visitors, and while Njorthuz was content to commune with the forests and streams to meditate upon a greater understanding, Biflindi's mind was keen as an axe, and just as dangerous. He reasoned that, if all things are reflections of the runes, as the old ones said, then all things must hold some measure of runic power, and that one could potentially attune, say, a pear tree, just as they might attune a tree True Rune. Thus he contemplated finding the largest, most impressive specimens of each rune, and forging connections to these physical objects as one might search for True Runes, though the former would ideally be far easier. At that moment, his eyes turned towards Yggdrasil, the world tree, embodiment of all that is known, and he knew that he had found his target.

Njorthuz found many True Runes as he shepherded the wilds, and took them for his own power, becoming mighty and wise, but Biflindi had set his mind to a monumental task, and many did indeed call him mad for it, but he would not be turned from this goal.

Biflindi traveled for many moons, but eventually came to the massive trunk of the world tree at the center of Midgard, and he began to climb it. The already ferocious warrior fought many beasts that sought to protect the tree or make him a meal as he climbed, but he did find his way to the branches of Yggdrasil, and set to attuning it. No mere True Rune, the world tree did not yield to such meagre methods as touching and opening one's mind in contemplation, but as he grappled, splinters dug into his hardened fingers, and he found himself grasping small mysteries, such as that mingling his blood with the tree conveyed such understandings.

Biflindi took his great spear, feller of many men and monsters, and thrust it through his chest and deep into the wood of Yggdrasil, forging a connection of man, blood, wood, and sap that carried much greater wonders. He learned and was attuned to all the runes, though it took nine days, his mighty spear shaking from the power flowing between him and the world tree all the while. At the end of nine days, he knew the runes as if they were a part of him, for they were, and tore his spear free from the trunk, and climbed down.

He greeted his kin upon his arrival, and called himself the all-father, for he now was as a father to the world in his connection and wisdom. His people again called him mad, and furious, but also knew that much power requires one to be mad to wield it. In time he passed some knowledge of the runes to others, slowly forming the Aesir as Njorthuz formed the Vanir in his woodland home, and the two clans of gods grew in might until they desired their own realms, leaving Midgard as a son leaves his family when he has grown, and finding Asgard and Vanaheim, though neither realm was called such before the Aesir and Vanir took them for their own.

The Runes
Midgard is a world of physical laws, and acts, generally speaking, as you, a modern person with even a shallow lay understanding of physics, would expect, for roughly the same reasons that such things work in reality. Of course, there are no 14'+ tall giants, or fire-breathing hounds, or wall-building horses in our world. Fortunately, Midgard, in addition to our world's physical laws, has magic. Anything which violates the laws of thermodynamics, the square-cube law, or conservation of matter, does so through being magical.

Where the physical laws underlay and define the mundane reality of Midgard, the magical reality of Midgard and the other realms is underlain and defined through a series of magical laws, generally through the runes. A mundane 25m long beast with wings would not be able to fly without wings that are truly massive, on the order of at least 50m long individually. A magical dragon can have wings that are much more proportional to their overall body and fly simply because part of the magical makeup is the Air rune, which simply says "this thing flies." It is very difficult for a mundane person to deal death to another with a mere touch. A magical man can do so simply through attuning a Death rune. That's just the way it works, but that doesn't mean that Midgard is fucking lozenge-shaped, it's a damned sphere, like you'd expect a world to be, and it doesn't mean that you can fall upwards simply by being forsaken by the god of the ground--though you could be cursed, that kind of happens a lot, but even then, you have to be the target of magic.

There are two forms of runes that get talked about in Midgard, the lesser, or Futhark runes, and the True Runes. Futhark runes are runes used by mortals to write, True Runes are magical. There is some overlap in form, but they're not the same.

The True Runes
[insert table of 27 runes or something]

Mortals can attune True Runes, which merely takes time and a successful [] roll, and through this gain certain powers, either at random, or of their choosing, from those associated with the rune they're attuning. This is what Odin did when he hung upon Yggdrasil, just on a much smaller scale. Mortals can attempt to gain a full and true understanding of the magical laws of Midgard by emulating Odin, but it's very hard to survive. If a player does this, it's difficult to properly challenge the group, and it is perhaps best if the entire group decides to attempt this feat together, or if an individual character who wants to do this in a group of characters who do not be retired upon completion of the task.

Attuning Runes
True Runes are physical objects, typically composed of either the thing they represent, or something associated with it. They are difficult to find, but can be crafted, or even wrested from reflections of the rune in question. All True Runes have power ratings, defining how powerful they are, and by extension, how difficult they are to attune.

Ok, so the origin of alfkin and dverkin came from me realizing that norse myth elves and dwarves were more "mystic super being" and less "human level race" and thinking about the plan of making humans not "The Standard" but rather the "Hardy, Shock-Resistant, Toxin-Drinking-For-Fun, Adrenaline Nut Pursuit Hunter" race we've talked about, along with the thing in Tolkien where humans are supposed to be more individualistic and self-determining than elves and dwarves.

The story about Odin being a human came from me deciding in the shower yesterday that I want Midgard to be the Anti-Glorantha, so I'm taking shit that I liked about Glorantha, and putting it into a world that works and isn't some crusty old man fantasy written more as an exercise in mythopoeia than an actual world to play in, because I realized that it never occurred to me to use Glorantha's stupid "The Symbol is the Thing" bullshit about all the world (including the gods) just being reflections of the runes to justify picking up random shit and attuning it. Or it may have occurred to me, but I was told it was a special thing that some could do But Not Me(tm). I think the latter was the case. I don't remember, I played with that group for like five years.
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Post by Prak »

spewed more words upon the cyber-page. Part of it was inspired by a desire to piss on Glorantha.
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Hiram McDaniels »

Can you expand on the relationship between the Dodge and Parry skills? I mean, in what instance would you use one vs. the other? Is it dodge vs. ranged attacks and parry vs. melee?

Also, I assume this is OGL based, so saves are Fortitude, Reflex and Will?
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Post by Prak »

It is broadly OGL based, so yes, unless I find a compelling reason to change them.

The difference I see between dodge and parry is in allowing people to redirect attacks into adjacent targets, but it occurs to me that that maybe shouldn't be a skill, given that it wouldn't necessary come up, so I might change that to a single Evade skill, with maybe a feat or something of that sort that allows one to do the redirection thing.
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You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Orion »

Boromir, from the short description, doesn't belong. Legolas apparently is good at both ranged and melee combat and also has noncombat schticks to do with tracking and maybe divination and social access to reclusive and powerful people. Boromir doesn't have any noncombat abilities mentioned at all.
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Post by Prak »

That's because I never finished the books, or even Hobbit or Fellowship- I read about 85%, give or take of each of those, a long time ago. And Boromir doesn't seem to have a lot going for him, anyway. From the descriptions of his character I've seen his character is just "I AM TEH GREATEST WARRIOR AND MY DADDY LOVES ME"

That said, his non-combat abilities would probably involve being nobility, so he can face some.
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

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Post by Orion »

You probably shouldn't make a character you don't like or understand one of your iconic PCs.
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Post by Prak »

Obviously I was pulling my iconics straight from my source material, but fair point. I think I am actually going to revisit all of the iconics, given that this has evolved somewhat from my initial inspiration.
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Post by Prak »

So, the iconics' roles haven't changed much--though Boromir went from being "hit me a lot" to something like a warlord/marshal in concept, with morale buffing. The Skald explicitly gets verbal smackdown powers, which maybe necessitates Perform being renamed Skaldi or Bragr or the like to cover the idea of performance, and the curses that Skalds can lay down.
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Prak »

I need to hit the sack, but I'm just about half-way through typing up skill descriptions (11/23). I'm going to just link for right now because it's a .doc and not formatted for bbcode, and I'm not about to do that formatting now*.

Of note are the sections towards the top that talk about the skill system (broadly D&D, just with defined task difficulty ranks) and what magic skills do, as well as the two magic skills which have been typed up- Binding and Healing.

Of course I need to do spell lists too, but this at least gives some impression of where I'm at with it. Critique would be appreciated. Mostly it's D&D skills that have been shuffled, but I've also pulled in Craft rules written by Lokathor. I'm currently undecided as to whether separate crafts must be bought separately, or if you can just have a number of mediums equal to your Int mod.

Edit: doc- https://www.dropbox.com/s/1j3hll361vh5v ... s.doc?dl=0

*anyone know a way to automate the whole reformatting thing?
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Prak »

Main Changes Between d20 and Midgard Combat
  • Attack Bonus is skill based. You buy training in Accuracy (ranged, precision), Batter (manufactured melee), Brawl (unarmed/natural melee, improvised), and/or Wrestling (grapple), and your "base" attack bonus is 1/4. 1/2, 1/1, or 1/1+3 of your level. Because attack rolls are skill rolls, Crit/Fumble rules now apply to anything tagged a [Combat] skill. You get bonus attacks based on your unmodified bonus with the relevant combat skill.
    ie, a 8th level character with Batter (Skilled, +8), Accuracy (Focused, +11, and Brawl (Proficient, +4) would make 2 attacks with a sword, 3 attacks with a bow, or 1 attack with his bare hands.
  • Evade is a [Combat] skill which takes the place of AC. As a combat skill, it can crit and fumble just like attacks.
  • A nat 20 evasion roll means you automatically succeed, and roll to confirm a critical evasion, which gives you an AoO chance on your attacker. A nat 1 evasion roll automatically fails.

    If attacker and defender both roll a nat 20, they compare rolls as usual. If they both roll a nat 1, they compare rolls as normal.

    If attacker rolls a nat 20, and defender a nat 1, the crit is automatically confirmed. If defender rolls nat 20 and attacker rolls nat 1, the critical evasion is automatically confirmed (and the defender actually gets two AoO chances, 1 for normal fumble, 1 for critical evasion).
  • Melee attacks naturally target a number of squares equal to the facing of the attacker, which must be adjacent. So a medium creature still only targets one square with a normal attack, but a large creature can target two adjacent squares with it's attack, a huge creature 3, and so on.
  • Armour is Damage Reduction, and ACP applies to Evade.
  • The number of Attacks of Oppotunity you can make is based on your highest Combat skill. So long as one Combat skill gives you iteratives, you can make more AoOs.
    • I'm considering making the +0 ability of Hordebreaker (+dex mod to number of AoOs) something everyone just gets.
Curses
It's not uncommon in Norse myth for someone to be pissed at someone in a position of power over them and so curse their ass to get revenge. An example would be Dansleif, a sword cursed to cause three great evils, and such that once unsheathed, it must kill a man before it can be resheathed.

Anyone can lay a curse, they simply need XP available to spend, and a target. Curses do not require spell knowledge as magic items do, but rather interact with Aspects and Fate Points. Laying a curse applies one or more aspects to a target, which can be Troubles, Hexes or Wyrds. A Trouble behaves exactly like a character's normal aspects, it can be invoked and compelled with normal fate points. Hexes are like the "must kill a man before resheathing" curse of Dainsleif, and are conditions and clauses which can be avoided--when a Hex is invoked, it takes effect, but also gives the target of the curse (ie, the player who bears the curse, or owns the cursed item) a fate point. Wyrds are curses which cannot be avoided, and give nothing. The three great evils of Dainsleif are Wyrds. Often compelling a Wyrd will involve spending multiple curse points as the person compelling the curse affects multiple discrete portions of a larger event.

Laying a curse is a full-round action. When a curse is laid, the cursing character applies one or more aspects to their target, and receives a pool of Curse Points. Each Trouble costs 250 XP to lay, each Hex costs 500 XP to lay, and each Wyrd costs 1000 XP to lay. Troubles cannot cause death, they are mere complications, like a sword which is less effective than normal against giants. Hexes and Wyrds can cause death, but they cost double, and Hexes can be denied if the target refuses the fate point and spends another fate point explaining how the curse is satisfied without taking true effect (an example would be Dainsleif shattering a previously unseen Mannaz True Rune--with the relevant effects of shattering a True Rune). Each Curse Point costs 200 XP. Curse points are not renewed. Also note that any curse meant to cause death may start a combat if it's not specially empowered to kill in a single blow, with the effect of the curse being to compel the wielder to fight a designated target until one or the other is slain.

Curses may be broken, lifted, or even simply run their course. When such happens, the XP used to pay for the curse is returned to the character which placed it (assuming they are alive), just as if a magic item they'd made had been destroyed. XP returned in this manner is not considered accumulated.

Dying Curses
Upon dying, a character with at least 250 xp per hd may lay a dying curse on a target (or targets, with each additional target requiring only 125 xp per HD of dying character). Such a dying curse is an immediate action taken in response to being killed. Dying Curses frequently confer conditions and statuses, and are more in line with the more narrative effects of Bestow Curse and Greater Bestow Curse. The true cost of laying dying curses, however, is that a character who opts to do so may never be returned to life, even if someone finds one of the rare few methods for such resurrection and Hel or Odin themselves would allow it, for the character has embraced their death and spent their remaining essence to avenge themselves on their killers. Little, if anything, remains to be returned to life, or even taken to a hall of the afterlife.

Dying Curses are difficult, but possible, to remove, and attempting to do such will frequently take the form of adventures. If a dying curse is broken, the character who laid it does not regain the xp used to create it, because usually they're dead.
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Post by TarkisFlux »

After seeing your excessive spell roll thing in the other thread, I went looking to see if it had been discussed elsewhere. And it isn't. But this is older, and likely the root of that nonsense, so we'll pick this up here.
Prak wrote:Main Changes Between d20 and Midgard Combat
  • Attack Bonus is skill based. You buy training in Accuracy (ranged, precision), Batter (manufactured melee), Brawl (unarmed/natural melee, improvised), and/or Wrestling (grapple), and your "base" attack bonus is 1/4. 1/2, 1/1, or 1/1+3 of your level. Because attack rolls are skill rolls, Crit/Fumble rules now apply to anything tagged a [Combat] skill. You get bonus attacks based on your unmodified bonus with the relevant combat skill.
    ie, a 8th level character with Batter (Skilled, +8), Accuracy (Focused, +11, and Brawl (Proficient, +4) would make 2 attacks with a sword, 3 attacks with a bow, or 1 attack with his bare hands.
  • Evade is a [Combat] skill which takes the place of AC. As a combat skill, it can crit and fumble just like attacks.
  • A nat 20 evasion roll means you automatically succeed, and roll to confirm a critical evasion, which gives you an AoO chance on your attacker. A nat 1 evasion roll automatically fails.

    If attacker and defender both roll a nat 20, they compare rolls as usual. If they both roll a nat 1, they compare rolls as normal.

    If attacker rolls a nat 20, and defender a nat 1, the crit is automatically confirmed. If defender rolls nat 20 and attacker rolls nat 1, the critical evasion is automatically confirmed (and the defender actually gets two AoO chances, 1 for normal fumble, 1 for critical evasion).
  • Melee attacks naturally target a number of squares equal to the facing of the attacker, which must be adjacent. So a medium creature still only targets one square with a normal attack, but a large creature can target two adjacent squares with it's attack, a huge creature 3, and so on.
  • Armour is Damage Reduction, and ACP applies to Evade.
  • The number of Attacks of Oppotunity you can make is based on your highest Combat skill. So long as one Combat skill gives you iteratives, you can make more AoOs.
    • I'm considering making the +0 ability of Hordebreaker (+dex mod to number of AoOs) something everyone just gets.
Skill based is fine, but the actual skills list is has problems. Accuracy isn't unreasonable, and even applying it to ranged spells like you seem to want in the other thread is fine. But the manufactured / natural melee distinction is bullshit. Attacking with a dagger / mace / punching dagger uses one, attacking with a broken bottle / broken chair leg / fist uses another. The line between improvised and manufactured is just too thin to support two skills. Similarly, being a hook horror / sword spider means you use brawl, but swinging a sickle / sword using means you use batter. It's just dumb. Combine them and lean on proficiency instead. Wrestling is maybe fine, depends on what you do with that whole subsystem I guess. Evade though? You're letting people invest in not getting hit, instead of solving problems with magic or swords or whatever else. Evade does not advance the story in the same way as other skills. You could very easily dump it and let people use their accuracy to dodge as AC or their batter to block as AC instead of evade, even giving bonuses to one or the other in various circumstances.

And then there's the resolution mechanic. Attacker rolls, defender rolls, attacker rolls damage, defender subtracts dr... for what? I have no idea what you think you're getting out of adding a defense roll to things and adding a previously optional step to every damage calculation. The opposed attack roll diverges from d20 attack roll odds as your bonus grows compared to your opponent in a diminishing returns sort of way, and I'm not sure if that's intended or even considered. because you don't say anything about it. Are you trying to keep people on the same RNG longer, because that's what this does.

Crit behavior is weird too, but for different reasons. You have a 19/400 chance of crit confirm and a 19/400 chance of evade confirm, with 1/400 odds of auto confirms. That's basically normal crit on 20, fumble on 1 odds. The extra 1 in 400 thing isn't different than what would happen on a d20 crit / fumble if you rolled it, so it's just a minor die reduction in your method. You've basically doubled your rolls for not different crit behavior. Yay? Seriously, WTF are you going for with an opposed setup?

The dr thing is the least additional work, but it's still extra work. If your damage and hit point numbers are small enough, it may be worth combining these into a defender rolled soak vs. some maximum damage value. That gets you the same thing since only one side is rolling, it just shifts the roll to the defender. It probably fits better if you dump the opposed roll first though.
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Post by Prak »

Part of the artificial division between manufactured/melee is my near-obsession with making things even, part is my roots in WoD, part is D&D emphasizing, to some extent, the split. In other words, you're right, there isn't really a good reason for, especially since the division of skills by ability score doesn't necessarily affect anything. When combined with the fact that giving martial characters more flexibility for less cost means they gain a little more power, your points are good. As hard as it is for me to break the even divide, that's not a good enough reason to split things like manufactured and natural. The evasion skill of course comes from WoD/Runequest, and the idea that it feels like you have more control, regardless of the fact that you actually don't. The extended crit/fumble thing was the natural result of rolling attack and defense.

I wanted some way to represent the difference between parrying and dodging, and the idea of using Batter and Accuracy to create a static defense value explained as those things is a good way to do that, so I like that.

The DR thing is just that I want armour to subtract damage rather than add to defense. It feels more versimilitudinous to me, at least for the most part. Might go with armour doing both, which is to say primarily lower incoming damage, but also have a defense bonus to represent deflecting blows and such.
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Post by TarkisFlux »

If you're sold on d20 + <relevant weapon skill> vs X + <highest weapon skill>, you can set X to push certain behaviors to help make those feel even more different. For example, set X to 7 instead of 10 and then give +3 bonuses per round for different behaviors. Anyone defending with accuracy might get the bonus if they move half their base speed or more in the round, and anyone defending with batter might get it if they move less than half their base speed in the round. And that mostly makes ranged people stay under cover or on the move, and melee people slow and lumbering when they're not giving up their defense to charge. But if Finesse lets you make melee attacks with accuracy, you still have some hit and run melee builds. It interacts differently with AoOs and iterative attacks than the bonus free non-encouraging model, and you may want to adjust those if the idea seems interesting to you.

You should also spend some time thinking about the niche shields occupy in this setup. While they could be a simple defense bonus, they could also be an off-turn attack action to deflect an attack, or an on-turn attack action to bash someone for a defense debuff, or lots of other things that are more interesting than numbers on an otherwise relatively even match between characters of similar skill.

I don't disagree with the armor as DR thing feeling more versamilitudinous, I just saw it as a place to work in the defense roll you wanted earlier. Static gear based damage number vs. gear based soak roll sort of thing. While I'll admit to kicking around the above stuff for a couple of years on and off, I haven't spent much time thinking about this part in the context of d20 style hit points. It seems a solvable problem though, if you were interested in making attacker and defender roll once in every attack. I would avoid setting it as a bonus against getting hit, because it diminishes the ability for naked Conans / gear stolen characters to run around in your world and not get hit all the time. They get hit harder when they do get hit, sure, but being missed by mooks because you're that awesome without gear anyway might be a nice change.
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Prak
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Post by Prak »

I think if I had armour both increase evasion and subtract damage, then it'd add to evasion in very small numbers, like "Wearing Armour-Y/N? Y=+[small number]" or "Leather gives +1, Chain +2, Plate +3." So naked barbarians aren't losing a lot.

I definitely like the AC Base=7, plus behaviour based bonuses, I'm going to have to think on that. It's a great idea.
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Post by TarkisFlux »

Since you're starting with a skill vs. skill setup, anything that you add to one side that isn't countered with other bonuses easily will shift odds from even into unlikely (or likely to even, if you set them up that way to start).

You could introduce/retain feats to boost attack rolls to counter it and just accept that people without heavy armor get hit more often as a result I guess. Or lean on magic weapons maybe, but then you can't lean on them to cancel magic deflection or whatever. Basically, accept that your odds are worse and your fights are longer -OR- give them a way to counter these new defense bonuses and watch everyone take them all the time.
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Post by Prak »

So, basically a character in Midgard consists of-

Ability Scores (Str, Dex, Int, Wis, Cha)
Skills
Feats
Essence (class)
-HD
-Saves
Spells if they have Magic skills

And of course, equipment, some of which is magical.

AC=7+(better/last used of Batter or Accuracy+Key Ability)+Behavioral mod.
Attack=d20+Batter or Accuracy and Key Ability, and your attack mod is 1/4, 1/2, 1/1 or (1/1)+3 of your level depending on how much you've trained up the skill (1-4 skill points).

So in a mirror match of a mid-level combat-oriented character (lv5, orc) you're looking at two guys with Batter-Focused and a str of at least 20. With nothing else taken into account, you've got them both swinging with a +13 attack against AC 20+Behavioral Mods. If they're content to stand in front of one another and trade swings, that makes their AC 23 each turn, meaning that they hit each other on an average roll all other things being equal. If either has a buddy or pet on the other side of their opponent, let's say the effect of being flanked is your skill drops by a training tier, so the flanked orc loses three to their AC.

Their armour could give a small bonus to their AC, as mentioned. If it's binary, a +2 or 3 wouldn't be too much, I don't think, and would mean that flanking a focused opponent compensates for their armour, and if you'er not flanked, armour means there's a 10-15% extra chance of avoiding being hit by any given strike. If it's a small bonus based on armour type, that means leather and chain are nearly trivial compared to flanking.

The only problem I'm seeing here is that the more trained and higher level you are, the more you lose when flanked. I suppose "when you're flanked you are distracted, and thus unable to properly use your dexterity or strength" sort of works.

There are three primary ways to add options here- Feats, Essences and Spells, and two possibilities to further add a bit of complexity- skills and equipment.

Feats and Spells are easy. If you have Corruption Necromancy, you make people sick, which lessens their abilities, and may even have an ability that buffs you against sick targets. Somewhere around level 7 or 8, it should be possible to get feats like Iron Roots (+3 AC when in contact with earth). Or maybe you get stuff like that from advanced Elemental essences. Either way, at 7th level and above, people should have their AC upgraded to 10 just by being in a certain terrain, or other broad, easily obtainable condition. As for spells, there could be something like-

Ice Armour
Water Magic 1, Hagalz 1
Somatic, Vocal
Casting Time 1 Full Action
Duration 1 round per Skill Rank
Resist No

Chilling the vapor of the air with your magic, you create thin plates of ice on yourself. This behaves in all ways as Full Plate. Enemies in melee also take 1 Cold damage per round they are adjacent to you. While this spell is active, you are unbothered by extreme cold.
Skilled: For each skill rank you possess beyond the first, you may increase one of the following Damage Soak by one point, increase the cold damage by 1 die type (1>1d4>1d6 etc). For every two skill ranks beyond the first you possess, you may increase the range of your cold damage by increasing your effective size one step, or increase the duration of the spell by 1 time unit (rounds>minutes>hours, cannot increase beyond 1 hour per level), or decrease the casting time by one step (Full>Std>Move>Swift).
Mighty- 7: A 7th level character who casts Ice Armour gives off a frightening pall, turning the terrain within the reach of their cold damage aura into difficult, Greased terrain, and receives +3 AC while they are in contact with the chill earth created by this spell.

I want characters to be able to be able to be just as powerful without magic as with it, which means that there needs to be a way for non-magical attacks to scale as you level, or rather, for there to be magic baked into all options. Maybe Nord Essence lets you resist Cold Damage equal to or less than your Level as one of it's basic features, and has a mid-level feature called Brittling Strike which lets them ignore Hardness/DR proportionate to their Level. There still, however, needs to be an organic, basic way that you increase sword damage, since spell damage will of course increase as you level up.
Last edited by Prak on Tue Feb 03, 2015 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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