urikson
2012-10-01, 11:12 AM
Tovarichi!
I am working on a new RPG about mutant rats taking over the world (http://www.indiegogo.com/rats?a=395572) these days. We want to replace abstract hit points with an alternative damage and recovery system in this game.
Basically, every time you're hit, depending on the severity of the hit, some mutilation is applied to your character. Each mutilation is divided into a short term effect, which lasts throughout the encounter, a long term effect, which lasts until cured, and a complication which stems from crits or multiple hits on the same location. Complications fairly often lead to death.
For example, if you take a hit to the stomach, the short term effect would be nausea and a chance to lose each action and the long term effect would be ability loss.
Now to balance this, each time you roll a random mutation, its positive effect is significantly increased if you have the corresponding mutilation. For example, if you roll a mutation that allows you to grow a new hand while having the missing hand mutilation, the hand you grow is gonna be one hell of a hand!
I have posted a couple of abridged tables to my design blog (http://ratsrpg.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/mutations-and-mutilations.html) to illustrate this mechanic.
The idea is to make the characters grow stranger and stranger as the game progresses, but not so much as to make it unplayable. What do you think of this mechanic? What pitfalls do you think it can run into?
I am working on a new RPG about mutant rats taking over the world (http://www.indiegogo.com/rats?a=395572) these days. We want to replace abstract hit points with an alternative damage and recovery system in this game.
Basically, every time you're hit, depending on the severity of the hit, some mutilation is applied to your character. Each mutilation is divided into a short term effect, which lasts throughout the encounter, a long term effect, which lasts until cured, and a complication which stems from crits or multiple hits on the same location. Complications fairly often lead to death.
For example, if you take a hit to the stomach, the short term effect would be nausea and a chance to lose each action and the long term effect would be ability loss.
Now to balance this, each time you roll a random mutation, its positive effect is significantly increased if you have the corresponding mutilation. For example, if you roll a mutation that allows you to grow a new hand while having the missing hand mutilation, the hand you grow is gonna be one hell of a hand!
I have posted a couple of abridged tables to my design blog (http://ratsrpg.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/mutations-and-mutilations.html) to illustrate this mechanic.
The idea is to make the characters grow stranger and stranger as the game progresses, but not so much as to make it unplayable. What do you think of this mechanic? What pitfalls do you think it can run into?