Anonymouswizard
2017-03-08, 05:32 PM
Okay, so some people might remember that about seven years ago I began writing a system I eventually called Wraiths and Ruins (originally A20, original thread for anybody interested, but almost nothing is being reused as it's rather bad (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?130275-A20-(a-new-type-of-D20-not-low-magic)&highlight=%27wraiths+ruins%27)) as my attempt to fix d20. That was mired in the problems of having played very little outside of D20 and a little bit of Savage Worlds, but was designed to run the kinds of worlds I like, that being high magic where fighters don't need magic items to keep up. I thought that with the benefit of several years, including playing in and running a larger variety of games, I'd resurrect the basic idea for a sort of WaR 2.0. So this is essentially me going back over my first game and turning it into something that isn't a massive d20 rip-off, and hopefully something vaguely unique.
So with that out of the way let's start. Feedback is welcome, but bare in mind that this hasn't been playtested yet.
Core Mechanic
This part is simple, roll 2d10, add relevant Attribute, Skill, or Combat Skill bonus, and try to beat the difficulty. A natural two/double one is a critical failure and bad things happen, while a natural twenty/double ten is a critical success.
I choose 2d10 over the d20 again for a couple of reasons. The first was that I wanted a bell curve so that you don't have to have invested lots into a skill to reliably beat an unskilled person, and to reduce the chance of a critical to about a 2% chance of either.
Attributes
WaR currently uses seven Attributes which range from -5 to +5, listed below.
Strength
Agility
Dexterity
Constitution
Intelligence
Willpower
Empathy
Essentially I've gone for a slightly altered version of the D&D attributes, Dexterity was split in two to try and reduce it's influence and Wisdom and Charisma were bashed together and then separated into Willpower and Empathy
There are also four derived characteristics currently important to the game, Health Points (HP), Fatigue Points (FP), Initiative, and Speed.
Health Points begin equal to ten plus the character's Strength score, and allow you to absorb damage.
Fatigue points begin equal to ten plus your constitution score, and drop both from physical exerstion and casting spells.
Initiative is what it is in most games, and is equal to your Agility plus your Intelligence.
Speed is a rough measure of how quickly you can move, and is equal to ten plus your Stength and Agility scores.
There's no mana/spell points characteristic, I want mundane and magical characters to be running off the same resources at the moment for simplicity reasons. It also encourages magicians to devote some resources towards pumping their physical stats, to counteract the cost of rituals.
When HP hit zero a character is 'down' and starts bleeding out, PCs only die when they hit negative health points equal to their maximum HP. A character who hits 2FP is tired, a character who hits 1FP is exhausted, and a character who hits 0FP is unconscious. The game effects of tired and exhausted haven't been written yet, because the system is still in alpha.
Finally, here's the current skill list and an outline of combat skills. Each skill has ranks and is based off of an Attribute, I'll write up a decent explanation when I have a useable system.
Acrobatics (Agility)
Alchemy (Intelligence)
Athletics (Strength)
Bluff (Empathy)
Demonology (Intelligence)
Detect Lies (Empathy)
Endurance (Constitution)
Engineering (Intelligence)
History (Intelligence)
Intimidate (Willpower)
Investigation (Intelligence)
Magic (Intelligence)
Metallurgy (Intelligence)
Notice (Intelligence)
Persuade (Empathy)
Ride (Agility)
Sleight of Hand (Dexterity)
Stealth (Agility)
Woodworking (Intelligence)
There are four characteristics defined as 'combat skills'.
Strike is essentially your character's to-hit bonus, and is based off of Dexterity. Melee Strike and Ranged Strike are different combat skills, although I haven't come up with a better term for Ranged Strike.
Dodge is based off of Agility, and is your character's defence against Ranged Strike.
Parry is based off of Dexterity, and is your character's defence against Melee Strike.
That's the very basics, I plan to get a draft of combat finished and an explanation of how classes work by sometime tomorrow so you have an actual system to review rather than a basic outline.
EDIT: well I have a basic outline of combat, the class system will be coming later.
Combat
Rounds
During combat action happens in rounds, each encompassing approximately ten seconds of in game time. During a round every participant gets one turn during which they can perform an attack, move, and minor action. Characters during a round act from highest to lowest initiative, once the final participant has acted in a round a new round begins and turns start from the top of the initiative order.
Initiative
At the beginning of combat every participant or group of participants rolls 2d10 and adds their initiative bonus, with the higher initiative bonus breaking ties.
Actions
During their turn characters can move and perform one attack action. In addition characters get one minor action such as drawing or stowing an action, interacting with the environment, or assessing the enemy.
Attacking
An attack roll is simply an opposed roll between the attacker’s Melee Strike and the defender’s Parry, or the attacker’s Ranged Strike and the defender’s Dodge. Whichever side rolls a higher total succeeds, with the defender succeeding on ties.
If the attacker succeeds they roll their weapon’s damage dice (1d6 for a one handed weapon, 2d6 for a two handed weapon) and add their Strength before subtracting the total from their opponent’s Health Points.
Magic is still a relatively long way off, one of the core ideas of the system is that magic is very hard to scale down, so you'll begin by learning a spell that can raze a city by chanting for an hour and then learn how to tone it down to a useful combat spell. Magicians tend to be either rather specialised or take a long time to do anything.
So with that out of the way let's start. Feedback is welcome, but bare in mind that this hasn't been playtested yet.
Core Mechanic
This part is simple, roll 2d10, add relevant Attribute, Skill, or Combat Skill bonus, and try to beat the difficulty. A natural two/double one is a critical failure and bad things happen, while a natural twenty/double ten is a critical success.
I choose 2d10 over the d20 again for a couple of reasons. The first was that I wanted a bell curve so that you don't have to have invested lots into a skill to reliably beat an unskilled person, and to reduce the chance of a critical to about a 2% chance of either.
Attributes
WaR currently uses seven Attributes which range from -5 to +5, listed below.
Strength
Agility
Dexterity
Constitution
Intelligence
Willpower
Empathy
Essentially I've gone for a slightly altered version of the D&D attributes, Dexterity was split in two to try and reduce it's influence and Wisdom and Charisma were bashed together and then separated into Willpower and Empathy
There are also four derived characteristics currently important to the game, Health Points (HP), Fatigue Points (FP), Initiative, and Speed.
Health Points begin equal to ten plus the character's Strength score, and allow you to absorb damage.
Fatigue points begin equal to ten plus your constitution score, and drop both from physical exerstion and casting spells.
Initiative is what it is in most games, and is equal to your Agility plus your Intelligence.
Speed is a rough measure of how quickly you can move, and is equal to ten plus your Stength and Agility scores.
There's no mana/spell points characteristic, I want mundane and magical characters to be running off the same resources at the moment for simplicity reasons. It also encourages magicians to devote some resources towards pumping their physical stats, to counteract the cost of rituals.
When HP hit zero a character is 'down' and starts bleeding out, PCs only die when they hit negative health points equal to their maximum HP. A character who hits 2FP is tired, a character who hits 1FP is exhausted, and a character who hits 0FP is unconscious. The game effects of tired and exhausted haven't been written yet, because the system is still in alpha.
Finally, here's the current skill list and an outline of combat skills. Each skill has ranks and is based off of an Attribute, I'll write up a decent explanation when I have a useable system.
Acrobatics (Agility)
Alchemy (Intelligence)
Athletics (Strength)
Bluff (Empathy)
Demonology (Intelligence)
Detect Lies (Empathy)
Endurance (Constitution)
Engineering (Intelligence)
History (Intelligence)
Intimidate (Willpower)
Investigation (Intelligence)
Magic (Intelligence)
Metallurgy (Intelligence)
Notice (Intelligence)
Persuade (Empathy)
Ride (Agility)
Sleight of Hand (Dexterity)
Stealth (Agility)
Woodworking (Intelligence)
There are four characteristics defined as 'combat skills'.
Strike is essentially your character's to-hit bonus, and is based off of Dexterity. Melee Strike and Ranged Strike are different combat skills, although I haven't come up with a better term for Ranged Strike.
Dodge is based off of Agility, and is your character's defence against Ranged Strike.
Parry is based off of Dexterity, and is your character's defence against Melee Strike.
That's the very basics, I plan to get a draft of combat finished and an explanation of how classes work by sometime tomorrow so you have an actual system to review rather than a basic outline.
EDIT: well I have a basic outline of combat, the class system will be coming later.
Combat
Rounds
During combat action happens in rounds, each encompassing approximately ten seconds of in game time. During a round every participant gets one turn during which they can perform an attack, move, and minor action. Characters during a round act from highest to lowest initiative, once the final participant has acted in a round a new round begins and turns start from the top of the initiative order.
Initiative
At the beginning of combat every participant or group of participants rolls 2d10 and adds their initiative bonus, with the higher initiative bonus breaking ties.
Actions
During their turn characters can move and perform one attack action. In addition characters get one minor action such as drawing or stowing an action, interacting with the environment, or assessing the enemy.
Attacking
An attack roll is simply an opposed roll between the attacker’s Melee Strike and the defender’s Parry, or the attacker’s Ranged Strike and the defender’s Dodge. Whichever side rolls a higher total succeeds, with the defender succeeding on ties.
If the attacker succeeds they roll their weapon’s damage dice (1d6 for a one handed weapon, 2d6 for a two handed weapon) and add their Strength before subtracting the total from their opponent’s Health Points.
Magic is still a relatively long way off, one of the core ideas of the system is that magic is very hard to scale down, so you'll begin by learning a spell that can raze a city by chanting for an hour and then learn how to tone it down to a useful combat spell. Magicians tend to be either rather specialised or take a long time to do anything.