Dasick
2023-01-24, 12:18 PM
I've always found the character making part of playing RPGs the most tedious, and I've always liked playing different characters, so this is why I've made this system. The idea is that you start as a level 0 commoner, and you build yourself up to whatever class or archetype through your actions. It's also very much heavily ties all your bonuses to personality traits, so it encourages more roleplaying to get good rollplaying. It's also meant to be simple so that someone who doesn't have much experience can just pick it up
Six attributes, you roll a d6 for each, or have 18 points to distribute
Strength, Agility, Endurance for physical, Charisma, Intelligence and Wisdom for mental (they're mirror images)
One of the core mechanics is that you exhaust ability points throughout the day. So for example, if your character is "hit" in combat, you can exhaust Agility to make a last moment dodge, or Endurance to absorb the hit. If you know Shadowrun, all your attributes are basically edge points you get every day, and each has a number of rules on how you can spend them, either for rerolls, or crits, or something else. Your END and CHA are health and "sanity" respectively. Four hours of rest give you back 3 points, you can distribute them however you like. Instead of health damage, you take on injuries which give a persistent ability debuff until they are treated and healed (and then you restore the ability score naturally)
Skills go from a scale of 1 to 4.
1 - unaware, incompetent
2 - aware, incompetent
3 - aware, competent
4 - unaware, competent
To go from 1 to 2, you need to fail at a skill and spend an Int point, to go from 2 to 3 you need to succeed and spend an Int point, to go from 3 to 4 you need to make a critical success (and spend an Int point).
There are also criteria for maintaining skills, or prerequisites for going up. If you fail it, it goes back to the previous level.
No criteria to go from 1 to 2. You need to exercise the skill at least once two weeks.
To go from 2 to 3 you need to exercise the skill at least twice a week
To go from 3 to 4 you need to exercise the skill every day for three months
To maintain 4 you need to make a crit every day and spend an Int point, and any failures using that skill set you back to 3
All rolls give the amount of d6s equal to the sum of two attributes (its pretty flexible which attributes the players decide to use) multiplied by skill level. Level 4 also grants appropriate magick modifiers - any skill done at that level is done with the intensity and focus to do intuitive magick. A way to avoid quadratic wizards and linear fighters. Level 4 represents short bursts of genius and inspiration, getting into "flow" state.
Various bonuses and modifiers change the target number, giver rerolls, exploding dice (crits). System is similar to Shadowrun.
Your character's personality is made up of different systems.
Weapon preference - each weapon has a pair of attributes associated with it, attributes its most likely to affect, and some bonuses depending on the level of skill with it. Someone who is good with clubs gets bonuses to intimidation, someone good with daggers gets bonuses to stealth. Swords are more of an int/cha weapon, as you need to be more educated and/or better off materially to use it, they give bonuses to social standing. Etc etc.
MBTI - whenever you role play one way or another using the four pairs, you gain different bonuses, with a scale that goes three steps each way. I/E pair gives an extra CHA whenever you're either practicing a favored skill or doing social things on first step for example. When you have at least two in every pair, you get a "personality set" bonus.
Dark triad - goes from 1 to 4, with different modifiers on each level. A 1 psychopathy means the character can only be vegan for example. To kill a living thing in self defense you need at least 2. To kill a thing unprovoked for good reasons you need a psychopathy of 2 or 3 and some points in Machiavellianism (and a successful int/cha roll). Narcissism is more or less required for mages and clerics, you need 3 or 4 to not think that you're going nuts and actually have special powers. Machiavellianism is a must have for rogue types. Levels 3 and 4 is when your character starts getting unstable and dangerous to party members. Going up and down the scale requires some kind of an altered emotional state (for example, for 1 NAR to go to 2 NAR and eat some meat would require intense hunger, for 2 NAR to attack someone would require intense anger) or continued actions and desensitization, and its mostly int/cha governing it. Making it go down usually requires some practice of virtue (prayer, mortification or asceticism, charity) or embracing vice (heavy drinking or gambling) or deep emotional catharsis. It naturally goes up over time from adventuring.
Humours - four humours, go from 1 to 4. At three and four you start getting elemental effects. Goes along the axis of how long your response is vs how long it takes you to respond to something. Someone who holds a grudge is long response, if it's easy to make you hold a grudge you're choleric (fire). If you aren't very reactive at all and don't hold grudges, phlegmatic (water). Someone who takes a while to respond and who also maintains his response is melancholic (earth). Someone who is quick to respond, and quick to change course is sanguine (air)
Motivator pairs. Innocence/guilt (legalistic society, educated individuals), honour/shame (peer pressure, feudal society), power/fear (primitive society, harmony with nature). It's technically six. You can go up two steps in one of them (you automatically gain one step lower for the other pair), and one step in anyone else. Whenever something you do falls under one of these motivators, you get the appropriate bonuses (you can technically get all three so long as it aligns with it all). So for example, you can play a wizard whose major motivator is "innocence", that is, he believes that you can do whatever you want so long as it doesn't harm anyone. He automatically gains the guilt step as a minor motivator (he believes in rule of law). He can also have a minor power motivator. A paladin would have guilt as major motivator, as in upholding the law. But a paladin would also be motivated to defend those who do not break the law. The paladin can have a point in shame motivator, that is, the paladin does not want to do anything to scandalize himself. A paladin can also have a minor fear motivator, that is fear of upsetting her patron deity. A barbarian can have a strong honour motivator, she is determined to do something great for her clan. She has a minor power motivator because she believes that might makes right. Durkon is major guilt, minor shame. V is major innocence, minor power. Roy is major shame, minor guilt. Modern Belkar is major power, minor guilt (he is gaming the system). Tarquin is major guilt, minor power - probably.
Magick system is based on how people historically thought magick works, and requires more careful planning. I've always been annoyed that mages are high INT characters, but they use that INT to do brute force spells.
Some basics of magick are making hex or bless objects. They do a lot of enchanting and alchemy and potion brewing. Some energy manipulation, astral projections. If you want some marauding orc boss to die of a heart attack in his sleep, you need his hair or nail clippings or something like that, an object of intense attachment, or to hide a hex bag somewhere he is, or in a place of spiritual importance. Or you can astral project to invade his dreams and kill him in his sleep, but you would be fighting his subconscious with yours, so if he is strong willed, has shaman protection, etc etc, you could be a knight and he a dragon in his dreams. You can also do magick by making deals and contracts with various spiritual creatures. You can ask the fire spirits to go set torch to the orc encampment in the middle of the night, but they will ask something in return - and you're never quite sure if they're nature spirits, or demonic spirits. So its a heavy mix of support, diplomacy, and some sneaky stuff as well. Healing is done through herblore, healing crystals, reiki, or other quackery that works. Throwing fireballs is a very rare skill.
There's a wealth system as well which determines your equipment, ability to travel, recuperate. They're based on contracts, estates owned, doing travel merchant thing, or practicing a craft. All characters need to have something like this and it's based on the personality systems and further reinforces them - for example, being a mercenary requires a reasonably high psychopathy or machiavellianism. You need narcissism to be a traveling singer. The wealth system incorporates upkeep.
Combat is based on distance and advantage. It's all simultaneous and any conflict in turn order results in an opposed roll, usually AGI/WIS. All weapons have preferred reach. Ranged combat is the same except with cover or evasive maneuvering, and ranged vs melee is the melee trying to get into melee range while dodging attacks. Everyone can sneak attack, it's basically an unopposed roll depending on what you want to do with it, ranging from starting combat with some advantage, or outright killing someone. On your turn you can either maneuver, trade blows, or press an advantage. Trading blows gives an advantage point to whoever wins the opposed roll. If you decide to trade blows, but opponent is maneuvering, if you win you get advantage and opponent's maneuver fails, or opponent's maneuver succeeds and you dont get an advantage. Whoever has advantage can nullify maneuvering or trading blows with it. You can press an advantage, spending the advantage and depending on it, either deliver a debuff, deliver a minor wound (one attribute) or major wound (two attributes affected). It's either a dueling system of one or one, or you could have one group vs another (think shieldwalls for example), where you add the appropriate dice and use the appropriate tactics or leadership skill instead of individual weapon skills. Outnumbered, you would have to use tactics skills to try to create 1v1 situations - or maybe not. The system is deliberately open. So one player can be like "I want to maneuver with WIS/INT to find a weakness in my opponent's fencing style", another can say "I want to use my END/AGI to try to overwhelm the opponent with a flurry of blows" and so on and so forth. A shaman or barbarian archetype can use CHA/WIS to demoralize an opponent (do CHA damage). A barbarian can use CHA/STR to kill someone in a gruesome and horrific way to deal mass CHA damage. Etc etc. Think of how Roy fights Thog - that's how you have to fight to win pretty much any combat and not have it be a coin flip and have your character die and have to start over (the roguelike part of rogues and ruins :P )
Traditional healer roles and magick users are more about preventing damage and boosting morale while damaging enemy morale - or not. A mage can also prepare some molotov potions to throw at enemies for example. Or using various spirits to fight for her.
Six attributes, you roll a d6 for each, or have 18 points to distribute
Strength, Agility, Endurance for physical, Charisma, Intelligence and Wisdom for mental (they're mirror images)
One of the core mechanics is that you exhaust ability points throughout the day. So for example, if your character is "hit" in combat, you can exhaust Agility to make a last moment dodge, or Endurance to absorb the hit. If you know Shadowrun, all your attributes are basically edge points you get every day, and each has a number of rules on how you can spend them, either for rerolls, or crits, or something else. Your END and CHA are health and "sanity" respectively. Four hours of rest give you back 3 points, you can distribute them however you like. Instead of health damage, you take on injuries which give a persistent ability debuff until they are treated and healed (and then you restore the ability score naturally)
Skills go from a scale of 1 to 4.
1 - unaware, incompetent
2 - aware, incompetent
3 - aware, competent
4 - unaware, competent
To go from 1 to 2, you need to fail at a skill and spend an Int point, to go from 2 to 3 you need to succeed and spend an Int point, to go from 3 to 4 you need to make a critical success (and spend an Int point).
There are also criteria for maintaining skills, or prerequisites for going up. If you fail it, it goes back to the previous level.
No criteria to go from 1 to 2. You need to exercise the skill at least once two weeks.
To go from 2 to 3 you need to exercise the skill at least twice a week
To go from 3 to 4 you need to exercise the skill every day for three months
To maintain 4 you need to make a crit every day and spend an Int point, and any failures using that skill set you back to 3
All rolls give the amount of d6s equal to the sum of two attributes (its pretty flexible which attributes the players decide to use) multiplied by skill level. Level 4 also grants appropriate magick modifiers - any skill done at that level is done with the intensity and focus to do intuitive magick. A way to avoid quadratic wizards and linear fighters. Level 4 represents short bursts of genius and inspiration, getting into "flow" state.
Various bonuses and modifiers change the target number, giver rerolls, exploding dice (crits). System is similar to Shadowrun.
Your character's personality is made up of different systems.
Weapon preference - each weapon has a pair of attributes associated with it, attributes its most likely to affect, and some bonuses depending on the level of skill with it. Someone who is good with clubs gets bonuses to intimidation, someone good with daggers gets bonuses to stealth. Swords are more of an int/cha weapon, as you need to be more educated and/or better off materially to use it, they give bonuses to social standing. Etc etc.
MBTI - whenever you role play one way or another using the four pairs, you gain different bonuses, with a scale that goes three steps each way. I/E pair gives an extra CHA whenever you're either practicing a favored skill or doing social things on first step for example. When you have at least two in every pair, you get a "personality set" bonus.
Dark triad - goes from 1 to 4, with different modifiers on each level. A 1 psychopathy means the character can only be vegan for example. To kill a living thing in self defense you need at least 2. To kill a thing unprovoked for good reasons you need a psychopathy of 2 or 3 and some points in Machiavellianism (and a successful int/cha roll). Narcissism is more or less required for mages and clerics, you need 3 or 4 to not think that you're going nuts and actually have special powers. Machiavellianism is a must have for rogue types. Levels 3 and 4 is when your character starts getting unstable and dangerous to party members. Going up and down the scale requires some kind of an altered emotional state (for example, for 1 NAR to go to 2 NAR and eat some meat would require intense hunger, for 2 NAR to attack someone would require intense anger) or continued actions and desensitization, and its mostly int/cha governing it. Making it go down usually requires some practice of virtue (prayer, mortification or asceticism, charity) or embracing vice (heavy drinking or gambling) or deep emotional catharsis. It naturally goes up over time from adventuring.
Humours - four humours, go from 1 to 4. At three and four you start getting elemental effects. Goes along the axis of how long your response is vs how long it takes you to respond to something. Someone who holds a grudge is long response, if it's easy to make you hold a grudge you're choleric (fire). If you aren't very reactive at all and don't hold grudges, phlegmatic (water). Someone who takes a while to respond and who also maintains his response is melancholic (earth). Someone who is quick to respond, and quick to change course is sanguine (air)
Motivator pairs. Innocence/guilt (legalistic society, educated individuals), honour/shame (peer pressure, feudal society), power/fear (primitive society, harmony with nature). It's technically six. You can go up two steps in one of them (you automatically gain one step lower for the other pair), and one step in anyone else. Whenever something you do falls under one of these motivators, you get the appropriate bonuses (you can technically get all three so long as it aligns with it all). So for example, you can play a wizard whose major motivator is "innocence", that is, he believes that you can do whatever you want so long as it doesn't harm anyone. He automatically gains the guilt step as a minor motivator (he believes in rule of law). He can also have a minor power motivator. A paladin would have guilt as major motivator, as in upholding the law. But a paladin would also be motivated to defend those who do not break the law. The paladin can have a point in shame motivator, that is, the paladin does not want to do anything to scandalize himself. A paladin can also have a minor fear motivator, that is fear of upsetting her patron deity. A barbarian can have a strong honour motivator, she is determined to do something great for her clan. She has a minor power motivator because she believes that might makes right. Durkon is major guilt, minor shame. V is major innocence, minor power. Roy is major shame, minor guilt. Modern Belkar is major power, minor guilt (he is gaming the system). Tarquin is major guilt, minor power - probably.
Magick system is based on how people historically thought magick works, and requires more careful planning. I've always been annoyed that mages are high INT characters, but they use that INT to do brute force spells.
Some basics of magick are making hex or bless objects. They do a lot of enchanting and alchemy and potion brewing. Some energy manipulation, astral projections. If you want some marauding orc boss to die of a heart attack in his sleep, you need his hair or nail clippings or something like that, an object of intense attachment, or to hide a hex bag somewhere he is, or in a place of spiritual importance. Or you can astral project to invade his dreams and kill him in his sleep, but you would be fighting his subconscious with yours, so if he is strong willed, has shaman protection, etc etc, you could be a knight and he a dragon in his dreams. You can also do magick by making deals and contracts with various spiritual creatures. You can ask the fire spirits to go set torch to the orc encampment in the middle of the night, but they will ask something in return - and you're never quite sure if they're nature spirits, or demonic spirits. So its a heavy mix of support, diplomacy, and some sneaky stuff as well. Healing is done through herblore, healing crystals, reiki, or other quackery that works. Throwing fireballs is a very rare skill.
There's a wealth system as well which determines your equipment, ability to travel, recuperate. They're based on contracts, estates owned, doing travel merchant thing, or practicing a craft. All characters need to have something like this and it's based on the personality systems and further reinforces them - for example, being a mercenary requires a reasonably high psychopathy or machiavellianism. You need narcissism to be a traveling singer. The wealth system incorporates upkeep.
Combat is based on distance and advantage. It's all simultaneous and any conflict in turn order results in an opposed roll, usually AGI/WIS. All weapons have preferred reach. Ranged combat is the same except with cover or evasive maneuvering, and ranged vs melee is the melee trying to get into melee range while dodging attacks. Everyone can sneak attack, it's basically an unopposed roll depending on what you want to do with it, ranging from starting combat with some advantage, or outright killing someone. On your turn you can either maneuver, trade blows, or press an advantage. Trading blows gives an advantage point to whoever wins the opposed roll. If you decide to trade blows, but opponent is maneuvering, if you win you get advantage and opponent's maneuver fails, or opponent's maneuver succeeds and you dont get an advantage. Whoever has advantage can nullify maneuvering or trading blows with it. You can press an advantage, spending the advantage and depending on it, either deliver a debuff, deliver a minor wound (one attribute) or major wound (two attributes affected). It's either a dueling system of one or one, or you could have one group vs another (think shieldwalls for example), where you add the appropriate dice and use the appropriate tactics or leadership skill instead of individual weapon skills. Outnumbered, you would have to use tactics skills to try to create 1v1 situations - or maybe not. The system is deliberately open. So one player can be like "I want to maneuver with WIS/INT to find a weakness in my opponent's fencing style", another can say "I want to use my END/AGI to try to overwhelm the opponent with a flurry of blows" and so on and so forth. A shaman or barbarian archetype can use CHA/WIS to demoralize an opponent (do CHA damage). A barbarian can use CHA/STR to kill someone in a gruesome and horrific way to deal mass CHA damage. Etc etc. Think of how Roy fights Thog - that's how you have to fight to win pretty much any combat and not have it be a coin flip and have your character die and have to start over (the roguelike part of rogues and ruins :P )
Traditional healer roles and magick users are more about preventing damage and boosting morale while damaging enemy morale - or not. A mage can also prepare some molotov potions to throw at enemies for example. Or using various spirits to fight for her.