Thoughtbot360
2007-04-14, 05:13 AM
(This thread is going to sound a little home-brewish, but nothing I write here is set in stone and most of the content is sparse and sketchy. Its more of a conuundrum, a riddle that I've been working on, and everything below are my findings and attempts to solve that riddle.
I've been thinking, most fantasy games have a problem with balancing weapons with magic (see the never-ending fighter/wizard debate). But in Magepunk, Shadowrun, Warcraft, and recent Final Fantasy games, there is another thing to content with: Guns. Now, I've become convinced that if have a world where a Martial artist whose mastered many kinds of weapons, an expert sharpshooter, and a Mage with a library of spellbooks are equally powerful (at least in combat) and have different weakpoints the other two characters can exploit (but not too easily. I'm a bit of a fan of the idea of changing Save-or-Lose spells being more like the caster and the target grappling with their minds until the caster "pins" the mind of his Dominate Person victim.) would be a world where most archetypes across genres where assured.
Before I start talking about a hypothetical system that can balance such attack types, so ground assumptions need to be made:
-The goal of this excersice is to balance magic, martial arts that include Eastern and Western styles and the weapons used in those styles, and technological weapons like Bombs and Guns
-This system could ideally be a point-buy system, where you don't level up in a specific class, but rather exchange experience points for stats, skills, spells, and special abilities
-One of the barriers to balancing the last two subjects is that technology marched on and most gunpowder weapons were developed after a great reduction in viable melee weapons and have replaced all other projectile weapons on the battlefield
-Some weapons that have been used in fantasy and pulp and other genres were never even meant to be used as weapons, but were designed entirely to be cool or scary looking, or they were really tools that maybe, *maybe* could be improvised as weapons. "Ceremonial weapons" they are called and in some cases perfectly good weapons become Ceremonial weapons simply because they are produced in an age they are no longer used, like a sabre owned by a United States Marine. (see Musashi's Design Theory rant: weapons chapter (http://www.mu.ranter.net/theory/weapons.html) for my details)
-Shadowrun has some futuristic versions of melee weapons and pre-industrial projectiles weapons, in addition to magic. It also has armor and penalizes
-As for the attack type we listed first (magic), that we wish to balance, I'll let someone else do the talking:
]Another problem is the way that magic is approached by a typical RPG designer. Having resigned himself to the idea that magic just makes things happen for no good reason, he cannot stop himself from turning magic into an all-inclusive overwhelming technological advantage. Magic becomes air superiority, rifled barrels, and force fields, all in one package. Small wonder then that almost every character in any MMORPG is considered gimped unless he is a mage to some extent. Btw, read his magic section (http://www.mu.ranter.net/theory/magic.html), too. (or not, This is a long post with too many links, so I understand.) Anyway, the point is, magic ends up doing to many things, but they have largely counter balanced in the history of RPGs by considerations like: requiring Verbal and Somatic components, limited use of spells, and preventing magic users from wearing armor. The problem is, however, magic, threatens technology, including the development of melee weapons, so if mages become to common, or the mages that exist are able to spread their powers around so that enough peoples' lives are positively affected by their magic, certain things won't be developed. Before guns there was archery, before archery there were slings, before slings there were javelins, and before javelins there were thrown rocks. And theres the fact that weapons were made from progressively better material from the Stone age to the Bronze age to the Iron age. If you just make your entire tribe of cavemen Sorcerers, this threatens the later developments they could make. Make thier magic sufficently diverse and powerful and they will invent *nothing*. So is magic that diverse and powerful from how we understand it? The only thing no 20th level Wizard, Druid, or Cleric can do is change the past or grant immortality.
-Therefore, limited the scope of magic is important, and making attacks and other actions that require skill in the martial arts, technology, and magic balanced will require dictating that each categories is sufficently different so that they can play critical roles in the right situation.
-Also, within the three categories, its worth balancing all attack types, just because not only might someone bring a sword to a gunfight, but possibly *nothing* but their hands to a swordfight.
-Its worth deciding before hand the setting's technological standards, and factoring in magic after you are done figuring out what weapons are like.
Any way, here is how I've attempted to deal with the problem (The following rules allude to some poorly-established stats. This system is far from complete, so much so that most of what you see is):
Martial Arts
You're the best, arooound, nothin' ever gonna keep you down...
-The term "Martial Arts" brings to mind an image of flying kicks, aerial flips, the touch of death, and Austin Powers shouting out "Judo-CHOP!" whilst actually Judo chopping a minion:smallannoyed:. But Martial arts include really, every fighting style that ever existed in history, including european swordplay and horseback fighting (http://www.aemma.org/), boxing, wrestling, special forces training, French Savate, and basically any training with non-trigger weapons counts as martial arts.
-Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game is an out-of-print RPG by White Wolf that was actually quite good with its combat system. You bought special maneuvers (a lot, but not all, of which came from Street Fighter 2. They did a good job of translating those moves into a balanced RPG.) Sadly, the supplement books to Street Fighter break the game. Anyway, copying SF:STG lets assume that you buy special maneuvers based off of one of six techniques (skills that are wholly related to how much you've practiced in one form of fighting or another: Punch (hand techniques including headbutts and elbows), Kick (leg techniques, Block (Generic defensive techniques. You cannot move when you block, no matter what the nature of that block is. SF: STG had most blocks give a bonus to speed on your next maneuver.), Acrobatics (which improves aerial movement and allows you to learn various skills like Wall-jumping and evading projectiles. This technique did not exist in Street Fighter, but many of its coresponding maneuvers existed under the Athletics line), Athletics (Determines the damage for body slams, teaches you how to use certain maneuvers when climbing, prone on the ground, or underwater, and how fast you move on ground and in water) Grab (Grappling and Throwing techniques. Defeats Blocks, but has restricted movement, you have to enter you're opponents hex, and -typically-low speed. Sustained holds keep you in place and deals damage, but you have a chance to break free if you're strong enough, and these holds are limited to a maximum determined by the Grab technique. Click this link to learn about the Mr. Jab counter-measure and Musashi's house rule which allows Mr. Jab but gives the archetypically slow-moving wrestler a fair shake so he isn't totally screwed! (http://www.mu.ranter.net/rpg/rulescombat.html#misterjab))
-I wrote house rules for weapons in that system (even though I never really completed the attacks you could do with those weapons). Anyway, I've broken down melee weapons into four different categories by themselves. (Club weaponss include axes, hammers, and maces, Blades include Fans, knives and swords, Polearms include reach weapons like spears and quarterstaffs, and Rope weapons include nunchucks, whips, Ball-and-chains, and whatever that thing is that comes out of Scorpion's hand)
-Throwing technique allows you to throw small melee weapons and specially-designed projectiles like shurikens. Shurikens and darts can be thrown in quick succession in one turn with little reload time.
-Archery attacks are slow, and leave you vulnerable, and bows are weak to sundering, but you have a long range, can poison/set aflame arrows, and using Zen Archery can hit oppoents in heavy concealment.
-Projectile weapons from Martial arts are usually quite silent, even the crossbow (a tech weapon) goes "Twang!" when you pull the trigger.
-There used to be a Focus technique in the STG, but I left it out because the things that aren't too much like magic can be emulated by using chakra (detailed near the bottom of this post).
-I've decided to split the Athletics technique (which dictated many factors like how much damage body slam-like maneuvers did and how far your character can move in one turn) into two. Athletics evil twin is called Acrobatics. There's not much reason to do this, I just want aerial attacks to be their own seperate school. Also, some things that were in the Focus technique list of maneuvers, like Balance and Musical accompainment (which boosts your power if a particular music is playing. Kinda like Bardic music, only you buff yourself if outside music is present.)
-In addition to points you have in the a fighting technique, your prowess in martial arts is also improved by Strength, and the Dexterity/Agility stat is likely to help in some facets too. More than any other grouping, Physical stats are highly important.
-Every character is likely to invest in Athletics sometime, just to move faster.
Technology
She blinded me with science!
-Tech uses skills more than attributes, being a tech-heavy character means knowing how to create, use, and carefully disable certain machines, but if you are without your tools or out of ammo, you are just hosed.
-Tech includes the ability to set and disarm traps, and pick locks, so if you were looking for a rogue character, spend a few points in tech.
-Crossbows, Bombs, and Guns do a set amount of damage, kind of like Shadowrun weapons (but then again, shadowrunners had a set amount of Hit points, too)
-Firearms in a pre-industrial setting are a bit innaccurate and take a long time to load. By the time of a western setting, theres a six-shooter. 1920s-WWII has the first machine guns. Present day guns are ridiculously numberous.
-In a modern game (or similar), a techie might be able to build and control Robots.
-Tech includes different gadgets, not just weapons, like climbing gloves, cybernetic enhancements, tools that aid skills, and anything you can create with the Engineering skill in World of Warcraft.
-For a medieval game, all one has to do to justify explosives is point to the bombs in the legend of Zelda games (Actually a lot of Link's tools can be counted as tech items, including: the clawshot, Zora flippers, that cannon that shot bombs in the Wind Waker, the mole mitts, and the Roc's cape from the minish cap could be said to be a type of hang glider, couldn't it? Also you could coat your armor with a reflective substance to create something like the mirror shield, so you can stand up to casters! For balancing this mirror substance, simply say the substance is as fragile as it is expensive to produce -which it is- and that while a shield has less ability protect you from magic and other energy attacks, reflective armor has no control and you might simply deflect the attack towards something or someone you don't want to get destroyed.)
-Trigger weapons (crossbows and guns) cannot arc like martial weapons projectiles (although the same is true of shurikens), so they cannot be shot over a shield or piece of covering (the same is true of shurikens, but you can pin a guy with shurikens)
-Tech may actually be the hardest to keep balanced when we transfer medieval
Magic
Let the bodies hit the flo'! Let the bodies hit the flo'!
-Actually, I just remembered that I wanted to get balance bewteen tech and martial arts fixed first before adding magic, so how about I come back to this later, ok? I'll still leave all that other stuff down below.
-Balancing magic is going to be tricky, because hypothetically, unless you want to say that magic scales up just like a technology, spells will be exactly the same in a medieval or modern setting, which we are trying to make rules for both types of games.
Hit points
-Loss of hit points represent damage to your body meats, via being shot, stabbed, Getting caught up in a free-for-all fight between Mr. T, Chris Rock, Chuck Norris, and a Ressurected Bruce Lee, or being scroched by a magical fireball. I might also add a relation between Hit Points and Strength (or a secondary strength attribute called natural Strength or permanent Strength-its a rather obscure and poorly documented attribute in the game world that characters with a certain merit might be able to get a discount on when buying more points for this Strength). Something without a solid body has no hit points, and also cannot manipulate solid objects (Ghosts can, however, attack a living creature that has an aura.). Ghosts can be attacked by simply dousing yourself (or your weapon if you want to fight armed) in holy water or attaching a suntra/charm or some holy symbol to the ghost (most charms are solid, but they will stick to the Ghost) and the ghost will become solid, complete with the hit points it had in life, and Mages that manifested on the ethereal plane can be hit by any martial arts weapon, including a thrown weapon or an arrow shot from a bow, but they require a roll based off of your Mental Power (or Chakra) to succeed (but an ethereal mage can leviate at will and move through solid objects, he cannot cast spells that would affect your hit points, though). A techie can also hit a ghost by lacing or crafting his bullets/crossbow bolts with silver, crafting a trap with a suntra/charm thrown in the mix before the bomb goes off works well two. Without a charm, a Ghost has 0 hit points, and any hit is an insta-kill, but Ghost just regerates until you either seal it or satisfy the need that keeps it from resting peacefully. There is a maximum number of hitpoints a character can reach, but physical damage is likewise capped off early.
Your Aura and Life Force
-Every living thing has an aura, even if it is ethereal and has no hit points(this would be an extraplanar life form that happens to have evolved on the Ethereal plane and not a Ghost, because a ghost is undead.) This aura exists in Astral Space, which connects the ethereal plane to the material plane (which explains why you can punch an ethereal living creature in the face, but not a ghost) this aura produces life energy. Death Magic, employed by Necromancers and certain undead creatures, can drain Life force away, and sometimes can add it to its own (undead that absorb life energy do not gain life force points, but put it to some other use, usually feeding on it). Life force is basically a secondary set of hit points that is damaged by negative energy, but it serves another purpose: a fraction of your remaining life force determines how many hit points you naturally heal over the course of an hour. Also, some mages drain trade their own life force for Mental Power in a process called "Blood magic." Undead of all types and Constructs do not have Life Force, for they are not alive. One fluffy thing to keep in mind is that undead have souls (thats all a ghost is) and life energy in this world does not equal a soul. After you die, you slowly start to lose life force over the course of a few days. A low-level ressurection spell can re-animate your body, but it needs your soul to be carrying life force. If you have no life force, odds are the worms are already on their way and you'll need stronger magic to resurrect. Those that become intelligent undead use up life force in the ritual that created them. Martial artists can merge Life force with Mental Power into Chakra, which has the result of increasing your pool of Life force.
Force of Will: Mental Power (Why Mind shuffling when dueling Pegasus in the Shadow Realm is a bad idea, and why 4Kids won't censor it. (http://www.dailymotion.com/LittleKuriboh/video/x1gs2f_ygo-the-abridged-series-episode-18/1)...sorry, the joke I want you to see is 7 minutes into the video, but the video's good enough to make up for it.)
Also known as Magic points. If your body exudes abstract energy called life force, this is the energy your conscious mind exudes. Your current Mental Power score also represents your ability to discern illusions, strike an ethereal opponent, and resist magical manipulation of your mind. You can also take mental damage, which reduces your MP from certain Psychonic spells that specifically target your mind, staying up to late (I think its happening to me right now), not getting enough to eat, or when you see something thats too gruesome/C'thulu-esque/maddening/disturbing that you can't stand it (don't worry, its just a little mental damage, nothing permanent-UNLESS YOU COUNT THE ENDLESS HORRIFYING NIGHTMARES!!:smalleek: ) You heal MP at 1/3 the rate you heal HP via Life Force. There is no penalty to losing all your MP (but if you are lossing it to loss of sleep, you'll collapse due to said loss of sleep-DAMN, I'M TIRED). Ghosts have nothing but MP and cannot convert that into chakra. Constructs and other mindless creatures have no MP, but cannot be affected by illusions or psychonics.
Chakra
-Chakra is a unique disposable that some highly insular, religious, or just suicidal fighters have access to. After learning how to go into deep meditation, the years of study after joining the paladin's guilds, or even just going through a traumatic-enough event, a fighter can merge his or her Mental Power and Life Force into one value, called Chakra. After learning how to do it the first time, you can do it at will (but seperating them back up is the hard thing). You cannot use magic when you have converted your Mental Power into chakra, but certain abilities require Chakra to use (similar to Raging like a Barbarian, various Ninja tricks, Laying on hands like a paladin, or Infusing a weapon with raw chakra so that it can phase through any substance and cut down magic barriers. That kind of thing:smallbiggrin: ). Also, if you run out of Chakra, you die, just like you would had you run out of Life Force, but you also heal based on your remaining Chakra, would should be quite high if you haven't gotten into too difficult or too dangerous a fight. You can split your Life force and mental power back up once you've called down a bit (you split your LF and MP even, adding an odd point out to LF.). Martial Artists and that have learned to mold Chakra do not get a bonus to Discerning Illusions or fighting off mental control, that is to say, the bonuses for a high Mental Power do not increase, however, they also do not decrease until your chakra starts falling down to the number where a bonuses to those Anti-magic abilities would start to fall if the drained Chakra was the mental score. For example:
Lets say a chakra user has 20 LF and 20 MP. If he ever gets down to 10 MP, he starts to slip up and miss things like that assasin that drank a potion of invisibility.... Anyway, he merges them for 40 Chakra. After using up/lossing to damage 20 Chakra, if he splits his chakra, he will have 10 LP and 10 MP, and start slipping up, but not if he keeps his 20 chakra. If he gets down to 10 Chakra, he will suffer those penalties, however.
I've been thinking, most fantasy games have a problem with balancing weapons with magic (see the never-ending fighter/wizard debate). But in Magepunk, Shadowrun, Warcraft, and recent Final Fantasy games, there is another thing to content with: Guns. Now, I've become convinced that if have a world where a Martial artist whose mastered many kinds of weapons, an expert sharpshooter, and a Mage with a library of spellbooks are equally powerful (at least in combat) and have different weakpoints the other two characters can exploit (but not too easily. I'm a bit of a fan of the idea of changing Save-or-Lose spells being more like the caster and the target grappling with their minds until the caster "pins" the mind of his Dominate Person victim.) would be a world where most archetypes across genres where assured.
Before I start talking about a hypothetical system that can balance such attack types, so ground assumptions need to be made:
-The goal of this excersice is to balance magic, martial arts that include Eastern and Western styles and the weapons used in those styles, and technological weapons like Bombs and Guns
-This system could ideally be a point-buy system, where you don't level up in a specific class, but rather exchange experience points for stats, skills, spells, and special abilities
-One of the barriers to balancing the last two subjects is that technology marched on and most gunpowder weapons were developed after a great reduction in viable melee weapons and have replaced all other projectile weapons on the battlefield
-Some weapons that have been used in fantasy and pulp and other genres were never even meant to be used as weapons, but were designed entirely to be cool or scary looking, or they were really tools that maybe, *maybe* could be improvised as weapons. "Ceremonial weapons" they are called and in some cases perfectly good weapons become Ceremonial weapons simply because they are produced in an age they are no longer used, like a sabre owned by a United States Marine. (see Musashi's Design Theory rant: weapons chapter (http://www.mu.ranter.net/theory/weapons.html) for my details)
-Shadowrun has some futuristic versions of melee weapons and pre-industrial projectiles weapons, in addition to magic. It also has armor and penalizes
-As for the attack type we listed first (magic), that we wish to balance, I'll let someone else do the talking:
]Another problem is the way that magic is approached by a typical RPG designer. Having resigned himself to the idea that magic just makes things happen for no good reason, he cannot stop himself from turning magic into an all-inclusive overwhelming technological advantage. Magic becomes air superiority, rifled barrels, and force fields, all in one package. Small wonder then that almost every character in any MMORPG is considered gimped unless he is a mage to some extent. Btw, read his magic section (http://www.mu.ranter.net/theory/magic.html), too. (or not, This is a long post with too many links, so I understand.) Anyway, the point is, magic ends up doing to many things, but they have largely counter balanced in the history of RPGs by considerations like: requiring Verbal and Somatic components, limited use of spells, and preventing magic users from wearing armor. The problem is, however, magic, threatens technology, including the development of melee weapons, so if mages become to common, or the mages that exist are able to spread their powers around so that enough peoples' lives are positively affected by their magic, certain things won't be developed. Before guns there was archery, before archery there were slings, before slings there were javelins, and before javelins there were thrown rocks. And theres the fact that weapons were made from progressively better material from the Stone age to the Bronze age to the Iron age. If you just make your entire tribe of cavemen Sorcerers, this threatens the later developments they could make. Make thier magic sufficently diverse and powerful and they will invent *nothing*. So is magic that diverse and powerful from how we understand it? The only thing no 20th level Wizard, Druid, or Cleric can do is change the past or grant immortality.
-Therefore, limited the scope of magic is important, and making attacks and other actions that require skill in the martial arts, technology, and magic balanced will require dictating that each categories is sufficently different so that they can play critical roles in the right situation.
-Also, within the three categories, its worth balancing all attack types, just because not only might someone bring a sword to a gunfight, but possibly *nothing* but their hands to a swordfight.
-Its worth deciding before hand the setting's technological standards, and factoring in magic after you are done figuring out what weapons are like.
Any way, here is how I've attempted to deal with the problem (The following rules allude to some poorly-established stats. This system is far from complete, so much so that most of what you see is):
Martial Arts
You're the best, arooound, nothin' ever gonna keep you down...
-The term "Martial Arts" brings to mind an image of flying kicks, aerial flips, the touch of death, and Austin Powers shouting out "Judo-CHOP!" whilst actually Judo chopping a minion:smallannoyed:. But Martial arts include really, every fighting style that ever existed in history, including european swordplay and horseback fighting (http://www.aemma.org/), boxing, wrestling, special forces training, French Savate, and basically any training with non-trigger weapons counts as martial arts.
-Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game is an out-of-print RPG by White Wolf that was actually quite good with its combat system. You bought special maneuvers (a lot, but not all, of which came from Street Fighter 2. They did a good job of translating those moves into a balanced RPG.) Sadly, the supplement books to Street Fighter break the game. Anyway, copying SF:STG lets assume that you buy special maneuvers based off of one of six techniques (skills that are wholly related to how much you've practiced in one form of fighting or another: Punch (hand techniques including headbutts and elbows), Kick (leg techniques, Block (Generic defensive techniques. You cannot move when you block, no matter what the nature of that block is. SF: STG had most blocks give a bonus to speed on your next maneuver.), Acrobatics (which improves aerial movement and allows you to learn various skills like Wall-jumping and evading projectiles. This technique did not exist in Street Fighter, but many of its coresponding maneuvers existed under the Athletics line), Athletics (Determines the damage for body slams, teaches you how to use certain maneuvers when climbing, prone on the ground, or underwater, and how fast you move on ground and in water) Grab (Grappling and Throwing techniques. Defeats Blocks, but has restricted movement, you have to enter you're opponents hex, and -typically-low speed. Sustained holds keep you in place and deals damage, but you have a chance to break free if you're strong enough, and these holds are limited to a maximum determined by the Grab technique. Click this link to learn about the Mr. Jab counter-measure and Musashi's house rule which allows Mr. Jab but gives the archetypically slow-moving wrestler a fair shake so he isn't totally screwed! (http://www.mu.ranter.net/rpg/rulescombat.html#misterjab))
-I wrote house rules for weapons in that system (even though I never really completed the attacks you could do with those weapons). Anyway, I've broken down melee weapons into four different categories by themselves. (Club weaponss include axes, hammers, and maces, Blades include Fans, knives and swords, Polearms include reach weapons like spears and quarterstaffs, and Rope weapons include nunchucks, whips, Ball-and-chains, and whatever that thing is that comes out of Scorpion's hand)
-Throwing technique allows you to throw small melee weapons and specially-designed projectiles like shurikens. Shurikens and darts can be thrown in quick succession in one turn with little reload time.
-Archery attacks are slow, and leave you vulnerable, and bows are weak to sundering, but you have a long range, can poison/set aflame arrows, and using Zen Archery can hit oppoents in heavy concealment.
-Projectile weapons from Martial arts are usually quite silent, even the crossbow (a tech weapon) goes "Twang!" when you pull the trigger.
-There used to be a Focus technique in the STG, but I left it out because the things that aren't too much like magic can be emulated by using chakra (detailed near the bottom of this post).
-I've decided to split the Athletics technique (which dictated many factors like how much damage body slam-like maneuvers did and how far your character can move in one turn) into two. Athletics evil twin is called Acrobatics. There's not much reason to do this, I just want aerial attacks to be their own seperate school. Also, some things that were in the Focus technique list of maneuvers, like Balance and Musical accompainment (which boosts your power if a particular music is playing. Kinda like Bardic music, only you buff yourself if outside music is present.)
-In addition to points you have in the a fighting technique, your prowess in martial arts is also improved by Strength, and the Dexterity/Agility stat is likely to help in some facets too. More than any other grouping, Physical stats are highly important.
-Every character is likely to invest in Athletics sometime, just to move faster.
Technology
She blinded me with science!
-Tech uses skills more than attributes, being a tech-heavy character means knowing how to create, use, and carefully disable certain machines, but if you are without your tools or out of ammo, you are just hosed.
-Tech includes the ability to set and disarm traps, and pick locks, so if you were looking for a rogue character, spend a few points in tech.
-Crossbows, Bombs, and Guns do a set amount of damage, kind of like Shadowrun weapons (but then again, shadowrunners had a set amount of Hit points, too)
-Firearms in a pre-industrial setting are a bit innaccurate and take a long time to load. By the time of a western setting, theres a six-shooter. 1920s-WWII has the first machine guns. Present day guns are ridiculously numberous.
-In a modern game (or similar), a techie might be able to build and control Robots.
-Tech includes different gadgets, not just weapons, like climbing gloves, cybernetic enhancements, tools that aid skills, and anything you can create with the Engineering skill in World of Warcraft.
-For a medieval game, all one has to do to justify explosives is point to the bombs in the legend of Zelda games (Actually a lot of Link's tools can be counted as tech items, including: the clawshot, Zora flippers, that cannon that shot bombs in the Wind Waker, the mole mitts, and the Roc's cape from the minish cap could be said to be a type of hang glider, couldn't it? Also you could coat your armor with a reflective substance to create something like the mirror shield, so you can stand up to casters! For balancing this mirror substance, simply say the substance is as fragile as it is expensive to produce -which it is- and that while a shield has less ability protect you from magic and other energy attacks, reflective armor has no control and you might simply deflect the attack towards something or someone you don't want to get destroyed.)
-Trigger weapons (crossbows and guns) cannot arc like martial weapons projectiles (although the same is true of shurikens), so they cannot be shot over a shield or piece of covering (the same is true of shurikens, but you can pin a guy with shurikens)
-Tech may actually be the hardest to keep balanced when we transfer medieval
Magic
Let the bodies hit the flo'! Let the bodies hit the flo'!
-Actually, I just remembered that I wanted to get balance bewteen tech and martial arts fixed first before adding magic, so how about I come back to this later, ok? I'll still leave all that other stuff down below.
-Balancing magic is going to be tricky, because hypothetically, unless you want to say that magic scales up just like a technology, spells will be exactly the same in a medieval or modern setting, which we are trying to make rules for both types of games.
Hit points
-Loss of hit points represent damage to your body meats, via being shot, stabbed, Getting caught up in a free-for-all fight between Mr. T, Chris Rock, Chuck Norris, and a Ressurected Bruce Lee, or being scroched by a magical fireball. I might also add a relation between Hit Points and Strength (or a secondary strength attribute called natural Strength or permanent Strength-its a rather obscure and poorly documented attribute in the game world that characters with a certain merit might be able to get a discount on when buying more points for this Strength). Something without a solid body has no hit points, and also cannot manipulate solid objects (Ghosts can, however, attack a living creature that has an aura.). Ghosts can be attacked by simply dousing yourself (or your weapon if you want to fight armed) in holy water or attaching a suntra/charm or some holy symbol to the ghost (most charms are solid, but they will stick to the Ghost) and the ghost will become solid, complete with the hit points it had in life, and Mages that manifested on the ethereal plane can be hit by any martial arts weapon, including a thrown weapon or an arrow shot from a bow, but they require a roll based off of your Mental Power (or Chakra) to succeed (but an ethereal mage can leviate at will and move through solid objects, he cannot cast spells that would affect your hit points, though). A techie can also hit a ghost by lacing or crafting his bullets/crossbow bolts with silver, crafting a trap with a suntra/charm thrown in the mix before the bomb goes off works well two. Without a charm, a Ghost has 0 hit points, and any hit is an insta-kill, but Ghost just regerates until you either seal it or satisfy the need that keeps it from resting peacefully. There is a maximum number of hitpoints a character can reach, but physical damage is likewise capped off early.
Your Aura and Life Force
-Every living thing has an aura, even if it is ethereal and has no hit points(this would be an extraplanar life form that happens to have evolved on the Ethereal plane and not a Ghost, because a ghost is undead.) This aura exists in Astral Space, which connects the ethereal plane to the material plane (which explains why you can punch an ethereal living creature in the face, but not a ghost) this aura produces life energy. Death Magic, employed by Necromancers and certain undead creatures, can drain Life force away, and sometimes can add it to its own (undead that absorb life energy do not gain life force points, but put it to some other use, usually feeding on it). Life force is basically a secondary set of hit points that is damaged by negative energy, but it serves another purpose: a fraction of your remaining life force determines how many hit points you naturally heal over the course of an hour. Also, some mages drain trade their own life force for Mental Power in a process called "Blood magic." Undead of all types and Constructs do not have Life Force, for they are not alive. One fluffy thing to keep in mind is that undead have souls (thats all a ghost is) and life energy in this world does not equal a soul. After you die, you slowly start to lose life force over the course of a few days. A low-level ressurection spell can re-animate your body, but it needs your soul to be carrying life force. If you have no life force, odds are the worms are already on their way and you'll need stronger magic to resurrect. Those that become intelligent undead use up life force in the ritual that created them. Martial artists can merge Life force with Mental Power into Chakra, which has the result of increasing your pool of Life force.
Force of Will: Mental Power (Why Mind shuffling when dueling Pegasus in the Shadow Realm is a bad idea, and why 4Kids won't censor it. (http://www.dailymotion.com/LittleKuriboh/video/x1gs2f_ygo-the-abridged-series-episode-18/1)...sorry, the joke I want you to see is 7 minutes into the video, but the video's good enough to make up for it.)
Also known as Magic points. If your body exudes abstract energy called life force, this is the energy your conscious mind exudes. Your current Mental Power score also represents your ability to discern illusions, strike an ethereal opponent, and resist magical manipulation of your mind. You can also take mental damage, which reduces your MP from certain Psychonic spells that specifically target your mind, staying up to late (I think its happening to me right now), not getting enough to eat, or when you see something thats too gruesome/C'thulu-esque/maddening/disturbing that you can't stand it (don't worry, its just a little mental damage, nothing permanent-UNLESS YOU COUNT THE ENDLESS HORRIFYING NIGHTMARES!!:smalleek: ) You heal MP at 1/3 the rate you heal HP via Life Force. There is no penalty to losing all your MP (but if you are lossing it to loss of sleep, you'll collapse due to said loss of sleep-DAMN, I'M TIRED). Ghosts have nothing but MP and cannot convert that into chakra. Constructs and other mindless creatures have no MP, but cannot be affected by illusions or psychonics.
Chakra
-Chakra is a unique disposable that some highly insular, religious, or just suicidal fighters have access to. After learning how to go into deep meditation, the years of study after joining the paladin's guilds, or even just going through a traumatic-enough event, a fighter can merge his or her Mental Power and Life Force into one value, called Chakra. After learning how to do it the first time, you can do it at will (but seperating them back up is the hard thing). You cannot use magic when you have converted your Mental Power into chakra, but certain abilities require Chakra to use (similar to Raging like a Barbarian, various Ninja tricks, Laying on hands like a paladin, or Infusing a weapon with raw chakra so that it can phase through any substance and cut down magic barriers. That kind of thing:smallbiggrin: ). Also, if you run out of Chakra, you die, just like you would had you run out of Life Force, but you also heal based on your remaining Chakra, would should be quite high if you haven't gotten into too difficult or too dangerous a fight. You can split your Life force and mental power back up once you've called down a bit (you split your LF and MP even, adding an odd point out to LF.). Martial Artists and that have learned to mold Chakra do not get a bonus to Discerning Illusions or fighting off mental control, that is to say, the bonuses for a high Mental Power do not increase, however, they also do not decrease until your chakra starts falling down to the number where a bonuses to those Anti-magic abilities would start to fall if the drained Chakra was the mental score. For example:
Lets say a chakra user has 20 LF and 20 MP. If he ever gets down to 10 MP, he starts to slip up and miss things like that assasin that drank a potion of invisibility.... Anyway, he merges them for 40 Chakra. After using up/lossing to damage 20 Chakra, if he splits his chakra, he will have 10 LP and 10 MP, and start slipping up, but not if he keeps his 20 chakra. If he gets down to 10 Chakra, he will suffer those penalties, however.