D-naras
2013-09-25, 09:17 AM
For some time now, I have been fiddling with my own homebrew system. It aims to be skill-based, point-buy class-less system. As a player, I have played and GMed 3.5, M&M and L5R and I am currently trying out Mage:The Awakening. The working name for the system will be 3davrg for now because it uses 3 d10 to resolve rolls. Without further ado:
3daverage System
Dice rolling
The 3davrg system utilises the d10 as it's die of choice. No other dice are needed. The 2 most usual rolls are a 3d roll and a Hazard roll.
3d rolls
A 3d roll uses 3 ten-sided dice and comes in 3 types. 3dlow, 3dmid and 3dhigh. Whenever you roll a 3d roll, you pick whichever die the roll tells you. For example, if you rolled 3, 5, 7, a 3dlow keeps the 3, a 3dmid the 5 and a 3dhigh the 7. Under normal circumstances a 3d roll is a 3dmid roll. Beneficial conditions may upgrade the roll to 3dhigh while penalties may downgrade it to 3dlow.
3d rolls use modifiers like skill level or trait to determine the total amount of the roll.
The most usual 3d roll is a skill roll. More about those later.
Hazard rolls
Whenever damage is inflicted, you roll a Hazard roll to determine how much. This roll also uses 3 ten-sided dice. The difference from a 3d roll is that you keep at least 2 dice. The severity of the Hazard determines which dice you keep:
Very Small: the low die twice
Small: the low die and the middle die
Normal: the middle die twice
Dangerous: The middle and high die
Very Dangerous: the high die twice.
Add the sum of the dice used for the total Hazard amount.
Unusual Hazards
Sometimes unusual hazards occur, that may have more erratic values. Keeping the low and high dice, keeping all dice, keeping a die 3 times are all unusual hazards.
Target Numbers and Total Success
Target Number (TN) is the number required to succeed at a roll, and is usually used when a single action is required to succeed. For example, jumping over a gap is a single action, therefore only a TN is provided and success is binary, you either cross the gap or fall in it. An other example is combat. Usually hitting a character requires beating his Reflexes Defence.
Total Success (TS) is a bit different. When a single action is not enough to accomplish a goal, TS is employed. Each TS must have an associated TN. Any amount that exceeds the TN is added to the TS pool. If the TS pool equals or exceeds a goal's TS, the goal is achieved. TS should only be used when there are stakes involved. Forcing a player to roll 10 times to climb a tall ladder when there is no rush or chance of failure, is counter-productive to a good story. To make TS interesting, it should be combined with Hazard rolls. For example, roll a Small Hazard for each third of the total TS to see how much energy was expended during the rolls or whenever the TN is not met. This works for exploration like mountain climbing or even in social situations, like trying to convince a guard to let you through in time, or wading through red tape all day before having to face your mother-in-law.
For example: Bob wants to convince the bank to give him a loan right now otherwise he will not be able to buy the car of his dreams before his evil neighbor. This is a TS of 5, with a TN of 10. Bob rolls his skill to convince the bankers and results in a 12. 12-10=2 is added to his TS pool. This is a nervewracking experience however, and Bob suffers a Very Small Hazard to his Composure Pool (more about pools later). His next roll is 9 which means he didn't make the TN this time so its another Very Small Hazard for his Composure. His next roll is 13! This means Bob reached 5 in his TS and succeeded in getting the loan, so he exits the bank irritated and edgy but with the money in hand.
Characters
Creating a character in 3daverage is pretty straightforward. All characters have Traits, Defences, Pools and Skills, while optionaly, Player Characters and important NPCs can also have Distinctions, Clout and Interventions.
The Traits are Strength, Agility, Awareness and Intelligence. This have values between 1 and 10, with 1 being almost inept, 5 being regular and 10 being the peak for your kind. When rolling a Skill, you almost always add an appropriate Trait as a bonus. Strength and Agility are the physical traits and Intelligence and Awareness are the mental traits.
Strength measures a character's muscle power and physical durability.
Agility represents speed of movement and precision.
Intelligence is the direct application of thought to a problem and how readily a character recalls his knowledge.
Awareness is the character's ability to sense himself and his surroundings, the character's empathy with others and his insticts.
The Defences are Stamina, Reflexes, Perception and Willpower. The value of each Defence is calculated so:
Stamina = Strength + Agility
Reflexes = Agility + Awareness
Perception = Awareness + Intelligence
Willpower = Intelligence + Strength
Defences are the usual TN to affect a character. For example, in order to sneak past a character, you must roll Stealth that beats his Perception Defence. The base Defence values are a character's passive capabilities. A character can have 2 Defences active at any time. Usually a character must choose between Stamina or Reflexes and Perception or Intelligence to have as active Defences. An active Defence gains a bonus equal to half of a corresponding Trait (rounded down). Stamina gets Strength, Reflexes get Agility, Perception uses Awareness and Willpower uses Intelligence.
Stamina is the Defence tied to a character's physical condition so it is the result of the two physical traits. Healthy characters are harder to physicaly move, or infect with a disease.
Reflexes are the Defence of both instantly knowing the dangers and reacting to them physicaly, so Awaraness and Agility govern them. Characters with high Reflexes are hard to hit and harder to pin down.
Perception is the Defence of the senses, both in picking up dangers and recognizing them, being the result of Intelligence and Awareness. Perceptive characters are hard to hide from or lie to.
Willpower is the Defence that combines a character's physical fortitude with his inner strength, therefore Strength and Intelligence produce it. Strong-willed characters won't be intimidated or persuaded easily.
The Pools are a character's reserves of Action, Composure, Focus and Endurance. They are calculated similarly to Defences, with the difference of using the 4 Defences instead of Traits.
Action = Stamina + Reflexes
Composure = Reflexes + Perception
Focus = Perception + Willpower
Endurance = Willpower + Stamina
Action is how fast a character can move. The action pool is mostly useful in combat situations, and it determines how may actions a character can perform during his turn. Using many or heavy equipment lowers the action pool.
Composure measures a character's ability to keep it together. Characters with high composure can ignore negative conditions, can catch their breath faster and keep their cool no matter what.
Focus is a character's capacity for greatness. Characters with high Focus can perform better when it is absolutely needed, and can perform more spectacular feats. Essentialy Focus is a characters MP and it is used both for supernatural abilities as well as extraordinary.
Endurance is the measure of a characters toughness. The more durable a character, the longer he can perform physical activities. In combat, Endurance is a character's DnD version of HP. As long as you have more than 0, you are good. Serious injury is applied only after Endurance runs out. Only then should a character bleed. Important characters like PCs have a Wound Pool that must fill before they die. Unimportant characters should die whenever their Endurance runs out.
Pools are divided in levels, depending on how many points are stored in them. 0 points = level 0, 1-4 points = level 1, 5-9 points = level 2, 10-14 points = level 3 et c. Many effects care about the level of a pool. Points stored in pools are used to perform certain actions and may be depleted due to outside circumstances.
When creating a PC, the player distributes 23 points as he sees fit to the 4 traits. The maximum amount of a trait is 8 at character creation. Then calculates his Defences and Pools.
For example: Steve wants a strong and smart character so he allocates 7 points in Strength and 6 in Intelligence. The remaining traits get 5 each. So his character looks like this:
{table=head]
Trait |
Amount |
Defense |
Passive |
Active |
Pool |
Amount |
Level
STR |
7 |
STA |
12 |
15 |
ACT |
22 |
5
AGI |
5 |
REF |
10 |
12 |
CMP |
21 |
5
AWA |
5 |
PER |
11 |
13 |
FCS |
23 |
5
INT |
6 |
WLP |
13 |
16 |
END |
25 |
6 [/table]
Now Steve must pick skills for his character and then he is ready to play.
Skills
Skills are measured in ranks and levels. Having ranks in a skill increases your level in it. Ranks range from 0-10 and levels from 0-6. Whenever you make a skill roll, you add the correspondind trait and your skill level to the die and figure out your total roll. You also may reroll once any die that resulted in less than your skill rank and use the higher of the two rolls.
{table=head]
Rank |
Level |
Modifier
0|
Basic|
+0|
1-2|
Beginner|
+1|
3-4|
Trained|
+2|
5-6|
Skilled|
+3|
7-8|
Expert|
+4|
9|
Master|
+5|
10|
Perfect|
+6|
[/table]
While there are numerous skills in 3daverage, they can be easily divided in the following categories:
Athletic: 9 skills
Climb(STR), Jump(STR), Swim(STR), Tumble(AGI), Balance(AGI), Sprint(STR), Contortion(AGI), Unarmed(STR or AGI), Ride(AWA)
Survival: 10 skills
Stealth(AGI), Swim(STR), Climb(STR), Track(AWA), Navigate(INT), Defense(AGI), Ranged(AGI), Treatment(INT), Ride(AWA), Forage(INT)
Social: 8 skills
Diplomacy(AWA), Deceit(AWA), Insight(AWA), Interogate(AWA), Intimidate(AWA), Flattery(AWA), Gossip(AWA), Society(INT)
Guileful: 8 skills
Stealth(AGI), Deceit(AWA), Sabotage(AGI), Sleight of Hand(AGI), Sprinting(STR), Contortion(AGI), Diplomacy(AWA), Poisons(INT)
Combat: 7 skills
Brawn(STR), Finesse(AGI), Defense(AGI), Unarmed(STR or AGI), Ranged(AGI), Tactics(INT), Intimidate(AWA)
Knowledge: Many Skills, feel free to add any extra knowledge skill that is not covered.
Meditation(INT), Treatment(INT), Lore(INT), Politics(INT), Society(INT), History(INT), Commerce(INT), Appraisal(INT), Decyphering(INT), Sciences(INT), Metaphysical(INT), Tactics(INT), Engineering(INT)
Craft: 10 skills, as knowledge skills, feel free to add any missing skills.
Appraisal(INT), Trinkets(AGI), Weapons(STR), Armor(STR), Cook(INT), Poisons(INT), Art(AGI), Engineering(INT), Sabotage(AGI), Medicine(INT)
During character creation, a PC chooses 7 primary skills. For each primary skill, he also gets a secondary skill from the same category.A skill can't be both primary and secondary, while a skill can be a secondary skill to a maximum of 2 other skills. He should note which skill is secondary to which, because whenever he raises level in a primary skill, he increases the rank of the corresponding secondary skill for free. This mechanic allows for skills to bleed to each other and make it easier to create capable characters. The cost to increase a rank in a skill is equal to the level it will reach after the increase(minimum 1). A Starting character has 30 points to spend among his skills. He may raise any skill, not just his primary and secondary skills, but he may not raise a skill to the Expert level at character creation.
For example: Steve wants his character to be a good warrior, so he picks Brawn, Defense and Tactics as 3 of his 7 primary skills. He notes that Unarmed, Ranged and Intimidate are his secondary skills for each of his 3 primary. Then he also picks Stealth, Treatment, Ride and Diplomacy as his remaining primary skills. Correspondingly, he picks Sprinting, Forage, Unarmed and Insight as his secondary skills for those 4. Now Steve spends 1 point on each of his primary skills, increasing his secondary skills by 1 for free. Because 1 rank takes him to the next level, he may increase the secondary skill by 1 rank for free. In the case of Unarmed it increases by 2 ranks because it's the secondary skill for 2 skills. Steve increases all his primary Combat skills to rank 3 for 9 additional points, reaching the next level and scoring 1 free rank in Unarmed, Ranged and Intimidate again. He spends the remaining 14 points among skills he didn't pick as primary, to cover as many bases as possible.
Should Steve roll a Brawn Skill Roll, he would roll 3d10, reroll once any die that came up less or equal to 3, choosing to keep the highest, pick the middle die, and add his character's STR and Brawn level, so +7+2=9. And that's the basis for any skill roll in the game. Either combat or social situations.
3daverage System
Dice rolling
The 3davrg system utilises the d10 as it's die of choice. No other dice are needed. The 2 most usual rolls are a 3d roll and a Hazard roll.
3d rolls
A 3d roll uses 3 ten-sided dice and comes in 3 types. 3dlow, 3dmid and 3dhigh. Whenever you roll a 3d roll, you pick whichever die the roll tells you. For example, if you rolled 3, 5, 7, a 3dlow keeps the 3, a 3dmid the 5 and a 3dhigh the 7. Under normal circumstances a 3d roll is a 3dmid roll. Beneficial conditions may upgrade the roll to 3dhigh while penalties may downgrade it to 3dlow.
3d rolls use modifiers like skill level or trait to determine the total amount of the roll.
The most usual 3d roll is a skill roll. More about those later.
Hazard rolls
Whenever damage is inflicted, you roll a Hazard roll to determine how much. This roll also uses 3 ten-sided dice. The difference from a 3d roll is that you keep at least 2 dice. The severity of the Hazard determines which dice you keep:
Very Small: the low die twice
Small: the low die and the middle die
Normal: the middle die twice
Dangerous: The middle and high die
Very Dangerous: the high die twice.
Add the sum of the dice used for the total Hazard amount.
Unusual Hazards
Sometimes unusual hazards occur, that may have more erratic values. Keeping the low and high dice, keeping all dice, keeping a die 3 times are all unusual hazards.
Target Numbers and Total Success
Target Number (TN) is the number required to succeed at a roll, and is usually used when a single action is required to succeed. For example, jumping over a gap is a single action, therefore only a TN is provided and success is binary, you either cross the gap or fall in it. An other example is combat. Usually hitting a character requires beating his Reflexes Defence.
Total Success (TS) is a bit different. When a single action is not enough to accomplish a goal, TS is employed. Each TS must have an associated TN. Any amount that exceeds the TN is added to the TS pool. If the TS pool equals or exceeds a goal's TS, the goal is achieved. TS should only be used when there are stakes involved. Forcing a player to roll 10 times to climb a tall ladder when there is no rush or chance of failure, is counter-productive to a good story. To make TS interesting, it should be combined with Hazard rolls. For example, roll a Small Hazard for each third of the total TS to see how much energy was expended during the rolls or whenever the TN is not met. This works for exploration like mountain climbing or even in social situations, like trying to convince a guard to let you through in time, or wading through red tape all day before having to face your mother-in-law.
For example: Bob wants to convince the bank to give him a loan right now otherwise he will not be able to buy the car of his dreams before his evil neighbor. This is a TS of 5, with a TN of 10. Bob rolls his skill to convince the bankers and results in a 12. 12-10=2 is added to his TS pool. This is a nervewracking experience however, and Bob suffers a Very Small Hazard to his Composure Pool (more about pools later). His next roll is 9 which means he didn't make the TN this time so its another Very Small Hazard for his Composure. His next roll is 13! This means Bob reached 5 in his TS and succeeded in getting the loan, so he exits the bank irritated and edgy but with the money in hand.
Characters
Creating a character in 3daverage is pretty straightforward. All characters have Traits, Defences, Pools and Skills, while optionaly, Player Characters and important NPCs can also have Distinctions, Clout and Interventions.
The Traits are Strength, Agility, Awareness and Intelligence. This have values between 1 and 10, with 1 being almost inept, 5 being regular and 10 being the peak for your kind. When rolling a Skill, you almost always add an appropriate Trait as a bonus. Strength and Agility are the physical traits and Intelligence and Awareness are the mental traits.
Strength measures a character's muscle power and physical durability.
Agility represents speed of movement and precision.
Intelligence is the direct application of thought to a problem and how readily a character recalls his knowledge.
Awareness is the character's ability to sense himself and his surroundings, the character's empathy with others and his insticts.
The Defences are Stamina, Reflexes, Perception and Willpower. The value of each Defence is calculated so:
Stamina = Strength + Agility
Reflexes = Agility + Awareness
Perception = Awareness + Intelligence
Willpower = Intelligence + Strength
Defences are the usual TN to affect a character. For example, in order to sneak past a character, you must roll Stealth that beats his Perception Defence. The base Defence values are a character's passive capabilities. A character can have 2 Defences active at any time. Usually a character must choose between Stamina or Reflexes and Perception or Intelligence to have as active Defences. An active Defence gains a bonus equal to half of a corresponding Trait (rounded down). Stamina gets Strength, Reflexes get Agility, Perception uses Awareness and Willpower uses Intelligence.
Stamina is the Defence tied to a character's physical condition so it is the result of the two physical traits. Healthy characters are harder to physicaly move, or infect with a disease.
Reflexes are the Defence of both instantly knowing the dangers and reacting to them physicaly, so Awaraness and Agility govern them. Characters with high Reflexes are hard to hit and harder to pin down.
Perception is the Defence of the senses, both in picking up dangers and recognizing them, being the result of Intelligence and Awareness. Perceptive characters are hard to hide from or lie to.
Willpower is the Defence that combines a character's physical fortitude with his inner strength, therefore Strength and Intelligence produce it. Strong-willed characters won't be intimidated or persuaded easily.
The Pools are a character's reserves of Action, Composure, Focus and Endurance. They are calculated similarly to Defences, with the difference of using the 4 Defences instead of Traits.
Action = Stamina + Reflexes
Composure = Reflexes + Perception
Focus = Perception + Willpower
Endurance = Willpower + Stamina
Action is how fast a character can move. The action pool is mostly useful in combat situations, and it determines how may actions a character can perform during his turn. Using many or heavy equipment lowers the action pool.
Composure measures a character's ability to keep it together. Characters with high composure can ignore negative conditions, can catch their breath faster and keep their cool no matter what.
Focus is a character's capacity for greatness. Characters with high Focus can perform better when it is absolutely needed, and can perform more spectacular feats. Essentialy Focus is a characters MP and it is used both for supernatural abilities as well as extraordinary.
Endurance is the measure of a characters toughness. The more durable a character, the longer he can perform physical activities. In combat, Endurance is a character's DnD version of HP. As long as you have more than 0, you are good. Serious injury is applied only after Endurance runs out. Only then should a character bleed. Important characters like PCs have a Wound Pool that must fill before they die. Unimportant characters should die whenever their Endurance runs out.
Pools are divided in levels, depending on how many points are stored in them. 0 points = level 0, 1-4 points = level 1, 5-9 points = level 2, 10-14 points = level 3 et c. Many effects care about the level of a pool. Points stored in pools are used to perform certain actions and may be depleted due to outside circumstances.
When creating a PC, the player distributes 23 points as he sees fit to the 4 traits. The maximum amount of a trait is 8 at character creation. Then calculates his Defences and Pools.
For example: Steve wants a strong and smart character so he allocates 7 points in Strength and 6 in Intelligence. The remaining traits get 5 each. So his character looks like this:
{table=head]
Trait |
Amount |
Defense |
Passive |
Active |
Pool |
Amount |
Level
STR |
7 |
STA |
12 |
15 |
ACT |
22 |
5
AGI |
5 |
REF |
10 |
12 |
CMP |
21 |
5
AWA |
5 |
PER |
11 |
13 |
FCS |
23 |
5
INT |
6 |
WLP |
13 |
16 |
END |
25 |
6 [/table]
Now Steve must pick skills for his character and then he is ready to play.
Skills
Skills are measured in ranks and levels. Having ranks in a skill increases your level in it. Ranks range from 0-10 and levels from 0-6. Whenever you make a skill roll, you add the correspondind trait and your skill level to the die and figure out your total roll. You also may reroll once any die that resulted in less than your skill rank and use the higher of the two rolls.
{table=head]
Rank |
Level |
Modifier
0|
Basic|
+0|
1-2|
Beginner|
+1|
3-4|
Trained|
+2|
5-6|
Skilled|
+3|
7-8|
Expert|
+4|
9|
Master|
+5|
10|
Perfect|
+6|
[/table]
While there are numerous skills in 3daverage, they can be easily divided in the following categories:
Athletic: 9 skills
Climb(STR), Jump(STR), Swim(STR), Tumble(AGI), Balance(AGI), Sprint(STR), Contortion(AGI), Unarmed(STR or AGI), Ride(AWA)
Survival: 10 skills
Stealth(AGI), Swim(STR), Climb(STR), Track(AWA), Navigate(INT), Defense(AGI), Ranged(AGI), Treatment(INT), Ride(AWA), Forage(INT)
Social: 8 skills
Diplomacy(AWA), Deceit(AWA), Insight(AWA), Interogate(AWA), Intimidate(AWA), Flattery(AWA), Gossip(AWA), Society(INT)
Guileful: 8 skills
Stealth(AGI), Deceit(AWA), Sabotage(AGI), Sleight of Hand(AGI), Sprinting(STR), Contortion(AGI), Diplomacy(AWA), Poisons(INT)
Combat: 7 skills
Brawn(STR), Finesse(AGI), Defense(AGI), Unarmed(STR or AGI), Ranged(AGI), Tactics(INT), Intimidate(AWA)
Knowledge: Many Skills, feel free to add any extra knowledge skill that is not covered.
Meditation(INT), Treatment(INT), Lore(INT), Politics(INT), Society(INT), History(INT), Commerce(INT), Appraisal(INT), Decyphering(INT), Sciences(INT), Metaphysical(INT), Tactics(INT), Engineering(INT)
Craft: 10 skills, as knowledge skills, feel free to add any missing skills.
Appraisal(INT), Trinkets(AGI), Weapons(STR), Armor(STR), Cook(INT), Poisons(INT), Art(AGI), Engineering(INT), Sabotage(AGI), Medicine(INT)
During character creation, a PC chooses 7 primary skills. For each primary skill, he also gets a secondary skill from the same category.A skill can't be both primary and secondary, while a skill can be a secondary skill to a maximum of 2 other skills. He should note which skill is secondary to which, because whenever he raises level in a primary skill, he increases the rank of the corresponding secondary skill for free. This mechanic allows for skills to bleed to each other and make it easier to create capable characters. The cost to increase a rank in a skill is equal to the level it will reach after the increase(minimum 1). A Starting character has 30 points to spend among his skills. He may raise any skill, not just his primary and secondary skills, but he may not raise a skill to the Expert level at character creation.
For example: Steve wants his character to be a good warrior, so he picks Brawn, Defense and Tactics as 3 of his 7 primary skills. He notes that Unarmed, Ranged and Intimidate are his secondary skills for each of his 3 primary. Then he also picks Stealth, Treatment, Ride and Diplomacy as his remaining primary skills. Correspondingly, he picks Sprinting, Forage, Unarmed and Insight as his secondary skills for those 4. Now Steve spends 1 point on each of his primary skills, increasing his secondary skills by 1 for free. Because 1 rank takes him to the next level, he may increase the secondary skill by 1 rank for free. In the case of Unarmed it increases by 2 ranks because it's the secondary skill for 2 skills. Steve increases all his primary Combat skills to rank 3 for 9 additional points, reaching the next level and scoring 1 free rank in Unarmed, Ranged and Intimidate again. He spends the remaining 14 points among skills he didn't pick as primary, to cover as many bases as possible.
Should Steve roll a Brawn Skill Roll, he would roll 3d10, reroll once any die that came up less or equal to 3, choosing to keep the highest, pick the middle die, and add his character's STR and Brawn level, so +7+2=9. And that's the basis for any skill roll in the game. Either combat or social situations.