GaelofDarkness
2018-09-25, 06:09 PM
So I have this idea that is almost certainly terrible - but it's sticking around in my mind. If anyone has any thoughts I'd love to hear them, I'm really interested to see if there's any way of making this a workable mechanic just in general, and if not then that's OK. Because it's for a homebrew system that's fairly crunchy already, I don't think describing the whole thing is practical so we can keep the discussion pretty system-independent if possible. I'll just say that the main rule is 3d8+mod vs. fixed amount or opposing roll, we use turn based combat and it's made for high fantasy.
Relevant Background:
For my homebrew system, my group and I have discussed dividing up damage types between physical, psychic and ethereal. So physical damage would be cutting, fire and lightning damage. For psychic damage I'm thinking dread (causing panic and extreme fear), despair (effectively shutting down the will to live) and ecstasy (targeting the mind's pleasure centers) damage types or something like that. Ethereal damage is your holy, curse and chaos damage types (Not an exhaustive list, just a few examples). The original idea was to have each of the three categories affect a different defensive stat - armor for physical, protection for psychic or warding for ethereal. This way a mage could have strong warding and be better able to handle ethereal attacks than a martial character who can handle physical blows far better. We thought it'd be an interesting tactical aspect to try and incorporate.
My (Probably) Terrible Idea:
I was thinking that in addition to - or maybe instead of - these defensive stats we also have different hp-type stats for each, kind of inspired by the idea of sanity in some games. In addition to hit points, a character would also have health (physical), sanity (psychic) and spirit (ethereal). Whenever a character takes a certain damage type - they lose hit points as normal, but they also lose a single point from health, sanity or spirit - depending on which is relevant. As these gauges fall below certain thresholds, it triggers certain effects. The exact nature and thresholds is absolutely open for discussion but here's the general gist:
Below half health, you become shaken. Taking more sophisticated actions becomes more difficult for you - so picking locks or analyzing a situation for tactical advantage - but you have the option of using "desperation attacks". These are less likely to hit but do more damage when they do. I don't see why this wouldn't be expanded to other abilities - you might use a desperate plea to try and sway the merchant and if it works you get a great price, but it probably won't work.
At zero health, you are in shock. You fall to your knees and just don't have the energy to get back up. Essentially, you are stunned and defenseless. While in this state, on your turn, you have a small chance to rally and get back up with one health but a larger if still small chance to gain a lasting ailment - be that a limp or a cold that lasts several rests or something else. The longer you are in shock the worse the potential ailments you can get would be. Take to long and even without losing further hit points you could die. If you do not rally - regardless of whether you took an ailment or not - you remain in shock. An ally can attempt to get you back on your feet if they use their actions on you but a healer might be able to do this more easily and effectively - restoring you to more than one health for example.
Below half sanity, you become unstable. You are less able to communicate, persuade, deceive or discern motives of other characters - though not all social skills are affected because you could probably still really creep them out or intimidate them effectively. Each turn you can choose to be more aggressive or defensive or neither. Being more aggressive, you lash out more effectively, hitting harder with attacks and abilities but also be more susceptible to the same from others. Being more defensive you are letting a touch of fear or paranoia take the wheel and become harder to hit or affect but are less able to land hits and use abilities. If you choose neither - everything continues as normal.
At zero sanity, you become mad. You fall to your knees gibbering and screaming. You are defenseless and certainly not hidden. Each turn you will most likely do nothing, but there is a chance that you'll lash out at the enemy, your allies or do something random (no powerful spells or attacks while mad, to avoid risking the mage fire-balling everyone to death). As with being in shock, you have a small chance to rally and regain a sanity point but also a chance to gain an ailment - an insanity, an obsession or a tick. The longer you stay mad, the worse these get and you risk dying. Again, an ally can attempt to slap you out of it with their actions but it's more of a healer thing.
Below half spirit, you become grim. You become resistant or immune to various effects - like those that would frighten you or confuse you. You become more vulnerable to being charmed. When you become grim you can choose to become more uncaring and ruthless or more despondent and apathetic. This decision stands for as long as you are grim. If you choose uncaring and ruthless then you press your advantage against others - having the same chance of succeeding but a better chance of a critical hit, though others will have this same leverage over you. If you chose despondent and apathetic, you forego the chance of landing a critical hit at all in exchange for making it harder for others to land on you.
At zero spirit, you become crushed. You once more fall to your knees completely uncaring of your surroundings. You are defenseless and essentially stunned. Each turn you have your small chance to rally or gain an ailment. For spiritual ailments I was originally thinking of adding character flaws but maybe hindrances to certain skills or specializations - so you might be less charismatic in some respect or not be as good at making alchemist's fire at your workshop because your heart just isn't in it - and maybe also/instead you have a risk of having buffs and healing be less effective on you - as your mystical energy fades with your spirit. An ally can attempt to encourage you with their actions but a healer would have the best chance at doing so and doing it better.
Other abilities and features might be triggered by the shaken, unstable or grim conditions, either in oneself, their allies or their opponents. For example, frost wolves might instinctively target prey that shows physical weakness, so the pack leader can cause all frost wolves to move towards a shaken character for free. Maybe certain abilities let you trade health, sanity or spirit for significant effects. I was also thinking that falling to zero in any one of health, sanity and spirit leaves you more vulnerable to the corresponding damage type.
You restore your health, sanity and spirit gauges as you would your hit points, with rest and recuperation or help from a healer character or healing items. Though maybe it's harder to restore points above the threshold. So after a night at the inn, you can get your sanity back up to half-full+1 but getting any higher is a slow process over multiple rests unless there is some manner of intervention. To give a sense of scale, I'd be thinking that a character starts off with say 30 max hp and would have an average of maybe 4 in health, sanity and spirit. Maybe you'd expect a distribution like 5, 4 and 3. The hp value might go up by 5-ish points per level and the average for health, sanity and spirit might go up by one point per three or four levels. So a character with 100 max hp would have maybe 10 health, 7 sanity and 7 spirit or something like that. Getting up to 5/10 health is easily done but each point after that would be more gradual.
To make it more a bit more workable, I was thinking of dividing physical damage up between the standard damage types (that you get from weapons and claws) and more elemental damage types. Otherwise, health would go down reeeally quickly. So, for example, in my system that would make the division:
standard - blunt, cutting and rending
elemental - fire, cold, thunder, lightning, radiant and noxious(acid and poison)
Both standard and elemental damage would be defended against using the armor stat, but only taking elemental damage would cause you to lose a point of health. How I'm justifying this in my head is that there's a big difference between the effect of an injury like a cut, bruise or fracture compared to the body-wide effects of extreme heat, cold, electrocution or exposure to toxins. I should also point out that the system is designed so that there would be features, maneuvers, items and/or buff available so that martials have access to non-standard damage types in combat.
I'm really worried about this being just too many stats to track easily and unreasonably causing confusion or frustration. Tracking the loss of health, sanity or spirit is just marking an extra dot on the character sheet after getting hit with a damage type - but that can make a big difference in the minds of players. I don't intend on mooks having health, sanity and spirit stats that the GM would have to track. Instead, they're reserved for PCs and significant enemies like the BBEG or mini-bosses. I'd also say that the inhumanly powerful enemies can probably recover from being in shock or mad or crushed after one turn, jumping up to half-full in that stat maybe? When encountering these enemies, I wonder what people think health, sanity and spirit add or take away from the fight. It could be an interesting choice to try and deplete a single stat to zero in order to stun the foe for a round while risking them getting bonuses on their attacks and abilities OR to use a mix of elemental, psychic and ethereal attacks to prevent the enemy benefiting from the shaken, unstable or grim conditions - or any features that get triggered by those conditions.
Relevant Background:
For my homebrew system, my group and I have discussed dividing up damage types between physical, psychic and ethereal. So physical damage would be cutting, fire and lightning damage. For psychic damage I'm thinking dread (causing panic and extreme fear), despair (effectively shutting down the will to live) and ecstasy (targeting the mind's pleasure centers) damage types or something like that. Ethereal damage is your holy, curse and chaos damage types (Not an exhaustive list, just a few examples). The original idea was to have each of the three categories affect a different defensive stat - armor for physical, protection for psychic or warding for ethereal. This way a mage could have strong warding and be better able to handle ethereal attacks than a martial character who can handle physical blows far better. We thought it'd be an interesting tactical aspect to try and incorporate.
My (Probably) Terrible Idea:
I was thinking that in addition to - or maybe instead of - these defensive stats we also have different hp-type stats for each, kind of inspired by the idea of sanity in some games. In addition to hit points, a character would also have health (physical), sanity (psychic) and spirit (ethereal). Whenever a character takes a certain damage type - they lose hit points as normal, but they also lose a single point from health, sanity or spirit - depending on which is relevant. As these gauges fall below certain thresholds, it triggers certain effects. The exact nature and thresholds is absolutely open for discussion but here's the general gist:
Below half health, you become shaken. Taking more sophisticated actions becomes more difficult for you - so picking locks or analyzing a situation for tactical advantage - but you have the option of using "desperation attacks". These are less likely to hit but do more damage when they do. I don't see why this wouldn't be expanded to other abilities - you might use a desperate plea to try and sway the merchant and if it works you get a great price, but it probably won't work.
At zero health, you are in shock. You fall to your knees and just don't have the energy to get back up. Essentially, you are stunned and defenseless. While in this state, on your turn, you have a small chance to rally and get back up with one health but a larger if still small chance to gain a lasting ailment - be that a limp or a cold that lasts several rests or something else. The longer you are in shock the worse the potential ailments you can get would be. Take to long and even without losing further hit points you could die. If you do not rally - regardless of whether you took an ailment or not - you remain in shock. An ally can attempt to get you back on your feet if they use their actions on you but a healer might be able to do this more easily and effectively - restoring you to more than one health for example.
Below half sanity, you become unstable. You are less able to communicate, persuade, deceive or discern motives of other characters - though not all social skills are affected because you could probably still really creep them out or intimidate them effectively. Each turn you can choose to be more aggressive or defensive or neither. Being more aggressive, you lash out more effectively, hitting harder with attacks and abilities but also be more susceptible to the same from others. Being more defensive you are letting a touch of fear or paranoia take the wheel and become harder to hit or affect but are less able to land hits and use abilities. If you choose neither - everything continues as normal.
At zero sanity, you become mad. You fall to your knees gibbering and screaming. You are defenseless and certainly not hidden. Each turn you will most likely do nothing, but there is a chance that you'll lash out at the enemy, your allies or do something random (no powerful spells or attacks while mad, to avoid risking the mage fire-balling everyone to death). As with being in shock, you have a small chance to rally and regain a sanity point but also a chance to gain an ailment - an insanity, an obsession or a tick. The longer you stay mad, the worse these get and you risk dying. Again, an ally can attempt to slap you out of it with their actions but it's more of a healer thing.
Below half spirit, you become grim. You become resistant or immune to various effects - like those that would frighten you or confuse you. You become more vulnerable to being charmed. When you become grim you can choose to become more uncaring and ruthless or more despondent and apathetic. This decision stands for as long as you are grim. If you choose uncaring and ruthless then you press your advantage against others - having the same chance of succeeding but a better chance of a critical hit, though others will have this same leverage over you. If you chose despondent and apathetic, you forego the chance of landing a critical hit at all in exchange for making it harder for others to land on you.
At zero spirit, you become crushed. You once more fall to your knees completely uncaring of your surroundings. You are defenseless and essentially stunned. Each turn you have your small chance to rally or gain an ailment. For spiritual ailments I was originally thinking of adding character flaws but maybe hindrances to certain skills or specializations - so you might be less charismatic in some respect or not be as good at making alchemist's fire at your workshop because your heart just isn't in it - and maybe also/instead you have a risk of having buffs and healing be less effective on you - as your mystical energy fades with your spirit. An ally can attempt to encourage you with their actions but a healer would have the best chance at doing so and doing it better.
Other abilities and features might be triggered by the shaken, unstable or grim conditions, either in oneself, their allies or their opponents. For example, frost wolves might instinctively target prey that shows physical weakness, so the pack leader can cause all frost wolves to move towards a shaken character for free. Maybe certain abilities let you trade health, sanity or spirit for significant effects. I was also thinking that falling to zero in any one of health, sanity and spirit leaves you more vulnerable to the corresponding damage type.
You restore your health, sanity and spirit gauges as you would your hit points, with rest and recuperation or help from a healer character or healing items. Though maybe it's harder to restore points above the threshold. So after a night at the inn, you can get your sanity back up to half-full+1 but getting any higher is a slow process over multiple rests unless there is some manner of intervention. To give a sense of scale, I'd be thinking that a character starts off with say 30 max hp and would have an average of maybe 4 in health, sanity and spirit. Maybe you'd expect a distribution like 5, 4 and 3. The hp value might go up by 5-ish points per level and the average for health, sanity and spirit might go up by one point per three or four levels. So a character with 100 max hp would have maybe 10 health, 7 sanity and 7 spirit or something like that. Getting up to 5/10 health is easily done but each point after that would be more gradual.
To make it more a bit more workable, I was thinking of dividing physical damage up between the standard damage types (that you get from weapons and claws) and more elemental damage types. Otherwise, health would go down reeeally quickly. So, for example, in my system that would make the division:
standard - blunt, cutting and rending
elemental - fire, cold, thunder, lightning, radiant and noxious(acid and poison)
Both standard and elemental damage would be defended against using the armor stat, but only taking elemental damage would cause you to lose a point of health. How I'm justifying this in my head is that there's a big difference between the effect of an injury like a cut, bruise or fracture compared to the body-wide effects of extreme heat, cold, electrocution or exposure to toxins. I should also point out that the system is designed so that there would be features, maneuvers, items and/or buff available so that martials have access to non-standard damage types in combat.
I'm really worried about this being just too many stats to track easily and unreasonably causing confusion or frustration. Tracking the loss of health, sanity or spirit is just marking an extra dot on the character sheet after getting hit with a damage type - but that can make a big difference in the minds of players. I don't intend on mooks having health, sanity and spirit stats that the GM would have to track. Instead, they're reserved for PCs and significant enemies like the BBEG or mini-bosses. I'd also say that the inhumanly powerful enemies can probably recover from being in shock or mad or crushed after one turn, jumping up to half-full in that stat maybe? When encountering these enemies, I wonder what people think health, sanity and spirit add or take away from the fight. It could be an interesting choice to try and deplete a single stat to zero in order to stun the foe for a round while risking them getting bonuses on their attacks and abilities OR to use a mix of elemental, psychic and ethereal attacks to prevent the enemy benefiting from the shaken, unstable or grim conditions - or any features that get triggered by those conditions.