Creating a new RP system [Part 6: Basic System Mechanics]

[drawingfreak]

It is time to start fleshing out the actual math based stuff. How do we define and resolve conflict with numbers and dice?

It is up to each of you to create a unique basic system. Nothing too complex right now. Just try to get the bare minimum out of the way. There are already a few suggestions out there. Re-post them here, please.

If you have nothing to offer, please do not post. This thread is going to get confusing very fast if we don't be careful. Also, if you find that someone else's idea is a step in the right direction and you have an idea that can push it even further...simply state that you approve. Once the votes are made, if the one you saw was chosen, THEN we can add separate elements to it. Basically, I want to see a different and unique system idea with each post. Little tomfoolery and shenanigans, please.
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Keep the following in mind when designing the system:
Races
Dinosaur (Troodontoids)
Human
Monkey
Emo Race (flavor still undecided)
Manly Men of Manliness (existence still undecided)
Robots (undecided if Race or Template)

Templates
Robots (undecided if Race or Template)
Zombie
Werewolf
Vampire (might become our Emo Race)

Other
It is pretty much decided we like the idea of Health Points or something that is akin to it being used to fuel abilities.
Incorporate Ninjas, Pirates, Vikings, and possibly Cowboys into the system.
The Forgotten Isle (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4607058&postcount=6) is our setting. Make adjustments to the geology while keeping these listed items in mind.
Incorporate the use of a d6 dice pool.
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This thread will cease on Wednesday night at 11:59pm EST.

[drawingfreak]

My current ideas for the system:

Creation

Players will begin with a Race of their choosing and a number of Creation Points.
If the player wishes to add a Template to his Race, he will need to spend Creation Points to do so.
Players will then decide on a Path of Destiny or two to learn from.
Players will need to spend Creation Points on the Base Abilities.


Races

This is your Human, Monkey, or Dinosaur.
Each Race will have a set number of Abilities unique to them. These will be minor and cost few Creation/Experience Points.


Base Abilities

Bod: Used for anything requiring your body, be it seduction or fighting. This will be fleshed out with the Abilities you have chosen from your Paths.
Brains: Used for anything requiring mind power, be it solving puzzles or finding lost items. This will be fleshed out with the Abilities you have chosen from your Paths.

Players will be restricted as to how many points they can spend for Base Abilities at Creation.

Derived Base Abilities

Awesome Score: This is your character's health points and magic points all rolled into one. If you using an Ability causes you to spend your last Awesome Point, you will deal THREE times the amount of damage but you also die heroically.
Speed: Basically, how fast you can move.
Reaction: How fast you can react to something that is happening to you.

I am still unsure how to come up with these. I think the Awesome Score will be both Base Abilities added together plus a bonus from your paths depending on your total amount of Experience.

Paths of Destiny

Paths will be where the Ninjas, Pirates, Vikings, Cowboys, Doctors, Brawlers and whatever else comes to mind will be. In short...classes.
Paths will contain a set number of Abilities starting with cheap and low powered ones and eventually building up to expensive and powerful ones.


Abilities

Abilities are the different powers available from your Race and your chosen Paths.
Some Abilities will need you to have lower powered Abilities before you can acquire them.


Non-Path Skills
I want them to exist but I am still working the details out. I think you will have a certain amount determined by your paths and your total acquired experience or maybe JUST the experience.

Mechanics
Say your character is a Ninja and you want to throw a ninja star. You use the Ability Shuriken Toss which costs # AP. You then roll a number of d6s equal to the character's Bod roll plus whatever modifier the Ability provides. The target needs to roll his Reaction to see if he can do something before hand. This number will be compared to the attack roll. If it is higher, he can try to defend himself by using an Ability, dodging out of the way with a pure Bod roll, or willing it to not happen with a pure Brain roll (just an example). If he succeeds these, the attack fails.

[KingGolem]

Ok, I was making a few notes based on stuff that you wrote, which address the very basics of characters. By the way, I think we should call the abilities as in "ability scores" attributes, and abilities that represent the character's class features should be called "abilities":

Base Attributes:
Toughness: Helps determine stamina, the rate at which your stamina recharges, and adds extra damage to physical attacks.

Agility: Helps determine Speed and Reflexes.

Wits: Grants extra creation points each level.

Charisma: Helps to "persuade" others (either by seduction, bluffing, or threats)

Derived Attributes:
Stamina: Your HP/MP; depleted with damage and use of abilities. Determined partially by Toughness. This name replaces your name of "awesome points," for I feel that Stamina is a more appropriate name.

Speed: How fast you can move. Determined partially by Agility.

Reflexes: How well you can react to attacks to dodge or use a protective ability. It also determines turn order in combat (like initiative). Again, I think this is a more appropriate name instead of "reaction."



Races:
Human: Extra Creation Points (We need some kind of penalty for these guys)
Monkey: Bonus to Reflexes, Penalty to Toughness
Dinosaur: Bonus to Toughness, Penalty to Wits

Race Templates:
Zombie: Bonus to Toughness, Penalty to Agility, Penalty to Charisma, Ability to pass the Zombie Plague, Maybe a toughened hide that reduces damage.

Robot: Bonus to Wits, Bonus to Toughness, Penalty to Reflexes, Penalty to

Charisma, Armor Plating (reduces damage), Natural Weapons (terrible metallic pinchers)

Werewolf: Bonus to Toughness, Lycanthropy Racial Ability

Vampire: Bonus to Reflexes, Bonus to Charisma (if they don't turn out emo), Various Vampire racial abilities


I'd like to see how people like this, and then we shall address the paths.

[Zeta Kai]

Here's a skill-based system to try:

Creation
Players will begin with a Race of their choosing and a number of Experience Points (representing the accumulated experience of their life up to this point).
If the player wishes to add a Template to his Race, he will need to spend Experience Points to do so.
Players will need to spend Experience Points on the skills, powers, etc.

Races
EmoVamp (HD:d12, +2 Charm & Magic, EmoVamp-exclusive Powers)
Human (HD:d8, +2 Faith & Wit, Human-exclusive Powers)
Manly Men of Manliness (HD:d10, +2 Appearance & Strength, MMOM-exclusive Powers)
Monkey (HD:d8, +2 Agility & Speed, Monkey-exclusive Powers)
Robot (HD:d12, +2 Stamina & Wit, Robot-exclusive Powers)
Troodontoid (HD:d10, +2 Courage & Speed, Troodontoid-exclusive Powers)

Templates
Zombie (-2 Courage & Stamina, Zombie-exclusive Powers)
Werewolf (-2 Magic & Strength, Werewolf-exclusive Powers)

Base Abilities
Assign 1 to each ability score, & then use a pool of 20 bonus points to boost any scores as you wish. Abilities range from Suck (0) to Average (3) to Wonderful (6). Ability scores are broken up into 2 types (with 5 abilities each):
Physical

used for manipulating one's environment, such as movement, combat, & physical skills
includes Agility, Appearance, Speed, Stamina, & Strength

Mental

used for intellectual, social, philosophical, & ethical concerns, as well as mental skills
includes Charm, Courage, Faith, Magic, & Wit

Jobs
Cowboys (Cowboy-exclusive Powers; skills: Cards, Cattle Herding, Projectiles, Riding, etc.)
Ninjas (Ninja-exclusive Powers; skills: Acrobatics, Melee, Poisoning, Stealth, etc.)
Pirates (Pirate-exclusive Powers; skills: Drinking, Melee, Projectiles, Swimming, etc.)
Vikings (Viking-exclusive Powers; skills: Boating, Drinking, Melee, Stealing, etc.)

Powers
Powers are purchased using Experience Points, & are exclusive to various Races/Templates/Jobs; meaning that a member of one Race/Template/Job cannot buy or use Powers from another Race/Template/Job. Some Powers have restrictions or requirements, such as Advanced Swashbuckling requiring a character to already have Basic Swashbuckling, or Shoot Around Corners requiring a high Projectiles ability.

Skills
A character starts out with 1 rank in all skills. With 1 rank, they have 1d6 in their dice pool, which they can roll against the Difficulty of a skill check. Characters can spend Experience Points to increase their ranks in a skill. Each rank adds 1d6 to their dice pool for that skill.
Acrobatics
Blasting Magic
Boating
Cards
Cattle Herding
Climbing
Crafting
Dodging
Drinking
Fisticuffs
Gadgets
Harming Magic
Healing Magic
Illusion Magic
Leading
Lying
Melee
Perception
Performing
Poisoning
Projectiles
Raping
Riding
Searching
Stealing
Stealth
Swimming

Mechanics
Say your character is a Ninja and you want to throw a ninja star. You’d roll your Projectiles skill, adding your Agility score to the roll. This would be rolled against the opponents Dodging score, adding their Agility score to the roll. If the Ninja’s roll is higher, then the shuriken hits; if the opponent’s roll is higher, then the shuriken misses.

[imp_fireball]

Man lion Manliness should be regarded with +1 int/+1 physical considering they wouldn't technically be 'men' if they couldn't even reason at all. Unless you want monkeys (I'm thinking the manly man race would be somewhat akin to the orcs of whatever universe you're thinking up).

Also, what will you do for the melee system?

And how does level adjustment apply within this system? Races who are naturally/genetically more inclined to be more bad ass?

[Zeta Kai]

Man lion Manliness should be regarded with +1 int/+1 physical considering they wouldn't technically be 'men' if they couldn't even reason at all. Unless you want monkeys (I'm thinking the manly man race would be somewhat akin to the orcs of whatever universe you're thinking up).
This system is a rough outline, & not meant to reflect final machanics. That being said, MMoM's physical benefits are designed to fit their concept & balance the equation of physical/mental bonuses. I may change that to grant bonuses to individual ability scores, but for now, the formula works.


Also, what will you do for the melee system?
Melee, like the Projectiles example, would be skill-based. Roll your melee attack (+Agility score) versus an opponent's Dodging skill (+Agility score); the higher score wins. Various circumstance modifiers could adjust either roll, taking into account terrain, weather, armor, weapons, magical enhancements, suffusions of Pure Awesome™, etc.


And how does level adjustment apply within this system? Races who are naturally/genetically more inclined to be more bad ass?
Level Adjustment is an artifact of the 3E system, & is not representative of RPG axioms or other nigh-ubiquitous mechanics. The simple solution to the problem of particularly-awesome races is to make the less-awesome races more awesome. Humans aren't the Useless Race that they are often depicted as being in some games. Our strengths might not be as obvious or potent as say, a Robot's or a Troodontoid's, but we are the only species with a proven RL track record for world-conquering (Humans: 1, Monkeys: 0). Sure, the average Human loses out to the average Monkey, but we have Monkey's in our zoos, not the other way around. I don't wanna sound like some 4E apologist/fanboy, but balancing the races/templates/jobs so that they each have roughly the same power level sounds like the most satisfying long-term solution.

[Dairun Cates]

To quote my own previous thoughts on it...


Okay. Once again. I'm going a little bit ahead here, and I might be crazy, but one idea for how this works might be to have a character have an offensive and a defensive score. Instead of skills, your offense can be your generally offensive nature and your defense could be your generally defensive nature with your abilities adding bonuses to some rolls. Basically, you'd have two stats that have modifiers at the right time.

Lifting things, attacking, insulting a foe, punching throw a wall, downing a beer, etc. These are offensive actions, and use your offensive skill.

Hiding, bluffing to conceal the truth, sense motive, noticing something, defending against an attack. These are defense actions, and use your defensive skill.

So, if a ninja wants to hide, it's a defense check versus a pirate's offense check.

The only thing that's iffy is some skills fit inbetween like knowledge skills. For these, I recommend taking the average of the two skills and rounding down. So for a pirate with 4 offense and 3 defense this would be 3 dice rolled. If he had knowledge in the skill as one of his bought abilities, he'd be rolling a 4, 5, or 6 based on his level in the ability.

On top of that, this allows for the idea of racial and class bonuses. Ninjas have a +2 to defense, pirates have a +2 to offense. Monkeys have their +2 to climbing. Dinosaurs have their +2 to breaking things. If you split class, you get HALF of that class's bonus. So, if you're a pirate ninja (God forbid) it's +1/+1.

There's really only two issues here. The words offense and defense aren't quite right for the concept, and it does have some minor issues that would need tweaking. Also, I think you'd still need capstones for the defensive and offensive score. Something along the lines of you can go over your total exp/10 in offense and defense at any time (minus your class bonuses). Otherwise, we might get some people who only focus on an impossibly high defense score.

It probably would work to take the whole white wolf thing and call 6's crits (2 successes), call 5's successes, and 1's failures (-1 success). The skill checks are just comparisons of who gets more successes and non-opposed checks are just checks that require a certain number of successes. So, climbing a tree is a 2 climbing check.

I don't know. It seems buggy, but I think breaking the thing down to 2 basic skills that can be modified streamlines the system and keeps the focus on the skills.

On the issue of Talent trees, I don't think we need to or should rely on them heavily. Normally, talent trees are there to keep someone from being over-powered and only picking powerful techniques, but since we're using the "Hp = Mp" style, the obvious backlash for only taking high level powers is that you might not have the HP to use it effectively, and if you focused all your points on high cost powers and hp, you probably don't have the offensive score to hit consistently or the defensive score to avoid dying after using your omega awesome death cannon.

I really only say avoid the Talent trees, because I think we want to allow a lot of freedom of character creation in the game, and Talent trees tend to lock a player in a path and restrict the amount of experimentation with lesser abilities.

On top of that, I personally think we could get away with a huge chunk of supplemental skills and talents that wouldn't fit well into a tree. Things that act as modifiers to skills for extra effects on an attack. Think of them in terms of D&D metamagics. Some skills just have no excuse being linked to other talents, and I honestly think that you should learn the skills of the dancing tiger school in the order you want to.

Don't get me wrong, I think SOME skills should have logical pre-requisites of other skills. Before you can shoot a 900 megaton fireball at a pirate ship, you SHOULD probably be able to shoot fire in the first place. I just think we should avoid designing the skills SPECIFICALLY with talent trees in mind. We should make skills that make for fun or interesting mechanics, and if we want to expand on those ideas a bit, we can add some advanced versions.

I also still think it's better to use a point buy system and include basic caps to abilities than to include the ideas of levels specifically. It keeps everything as one type of exp that buys everything from hp, to skill, to special moves. I find it a bit awkward to force the player to spend a specific amount of points on abilities each "level" and keep track of exp. That really only works primarily with solid class based systems in my opinion.

That's my 2 cents for now. I'll get working on a write-up and have it up either late tomorrow or early tuesday.

[drawingfreak]

http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/lens1315386_181px-Strong_Bad.png
IT'S OVER!!!

Voting thread to come.