A Tactical RPG System

[MoleMage]

Greetings to my fellow Playgrounders. Over the last couple of months I have been off-and-on putting together a tactical RPG system because I am sometimes bored and enjoy toying with new game system ideas. This one has gotten a little farther than others and less far than others still, but it is far enough along that I am not ashamed to show what I have so far (see Google Site below):

https://sites.google.com/site/molemagegame/

So, I am just stopping by to ask for some feedback and maybe assistance from my fellow playgrounders. You can leave comments here or in the suggestions section of the Google Site as you like. I realize that parts of it are spotty (I haven't developed any of the classes beyond Base Class yet), but here are some of my "working on" notes.

Archetypal Classes: I'd like to have these finished before starting a playtest. Here are some descriptors of what I'm going to do with those in the near future.

Footman: Defensive front-line fighter.
Cavalier: Mobile mounted fighter. Can move after attacking.
Scoundrel: Melee rogue, can move without breaking Hide, daggers get more reliable sneak attacks.
Archer: Ranged rogue, bows get improved accuracy and longer range.
Wizard: Blaster mage, gets Effect Multipliers based on wielded gear.
Glyphbinder: Support mage, sets up field effects based on wielded gear.

Iconic Classes: Distant, but I have some ideas.

Skills: I need more variety in skills for base classes as well as coming up with skills for iconic classes.
Gear: I need more gear fleshed out.

Squad EXP: I haven't developed experience mechanics for individuals or for the squad mechanic (currently marked by strikethrough) yet. This is priority but not expected to be exceedingly difficult.

[MoleMage]

Update: Footman, Cavalier, Scoundrel, Archer, and Wizard class sheets added. Glyphbinder will be added by the end of today.

[Glimbur]

Warriors seem really strong. They can remove 1d6 of damage from every attack, and only warrior weapons do more than 1d6 damage. Also they can make extra attacks every couple turns. Rogues, by contrast, can have a ranged option and can hide, which is a hassle to understand and your enemy can try to spot you every turn for free. Rogue evasion could be useful, but it's only a 1/3 chance of making you slightly harder to hit and 2d6 isn't a very steep bell curve so it's not huge bonus. Strike Weakness seems like it could help, except that a Bonus modifier applies after the defense roll so warrior armor is very effective here too.
Mages have enough punch to really hurt warriors, every other turn provided your mage dice do ok. But you have to declare that before you roll to see if you hit.

For a level 1 throw-down squad v squad, I would run mostly warriors and some mages and forget about rogues. I guess rogues are supposed to snipe mages? I suppose that would work better, and you get sort of a rock-paper-scissors effect. Maybe you should run some trials. I might do some out of curiosity but my time is erratically available.

I might look at the next tier of classes sometime, but not right now.

[MoleMage]

The idea was that rock-paper-scissors (Warrior beats Rogue beats Mage beats Warrior) would be in effect, yes. I did a preliminary trial today with some friends and found a couple things:

Accuracy is skewed very heavily in favor of the defender regardless of class. The requirements to hit will be lowered to make evasive actions more important. (right now you start on top of the bell curve so any evasion or cover no matter how small makes you extremely hard to hit; if we move the initial point to below the bell curve then the first couple points of evasion become much more significant relatively speaking).

Rogues can kill mages extremely handily with Strike Weakness. Rogues generally do not deal damage to warriors (though running Piercing Shot helps). Warrior data was somewhat underwhelming; as it has the least amount of action options and no ranged option.

Mages spend a lot of time channeling and a lot of those dice are then wasted on missed attacks. Since accuracy is going to be adjusted this is going to stay where it is right now. Mana Barrier did not get used overmuch and might need to be adjusted to .

Hiding for level one is intentially restrictive, different rogue promotions improve hiding in one way or another so I didn't want to start out of the gate with hiding as a powerful feature.