Quote Originally Posted by Dornith View Post
I like the idea. For defending you'd have to replace the armor class with an armor modifier or something, but that's doable.

The only thing I can think of is that this would make combat a lot more involved (which is probably what you're going for) but it could start to overshadow non-combat portions of the game.

Also, I read a variant somewhere about using 2d10 instead of a d20 to increase regularity. Something like that could work better to help it scale with normal modifiers. So instead of 6d6, you could have 4d10, thus a player could split into 2d10 for attacking and 2d10 for blocking which would be very similar to how D&D is at the moment.

Also, how would spells work? Would you allocate dice for that, but then not use them? Or would you have to roll a DC equal to the spell level?
This isn't actually a D&D mod, so defending is actually more like using a save; different skills are used on defense depending on the exact nature of the attack. They system really needs >=6 dice in your base pool, because you can easily have 4 or more things you want to do in a given action, and choosing how to allocate your dice is kind of the point of the system.

This is definitely a combat engine. I have some ideas of how one could adapt it for more social or intellectual feats, but it is a bit clunky.

The spellcasting system I'm currently mapping out (although I ultimately want two) is a bit... weird.

Sorcery (the spellcasting system) lets you learn new spells. Each spell has its own skill that you'll want to invest a bit in. Casting a spell increases your Flux, which makes your spells more powerful but harder to control.
There are two different spellcasting pools: power and concentration. Power is based on your Flux, and it the attack your enemy will need to defend against. Your control is based on your skill with the spell, and if your roll is less than your Flux, something bad happens.

(example: Jill the pyromaniac casts a fireball spell to hit everyone in an adjacent zone. Her current Flux is 11, and fireball adds 3. She decides to invest ONE dice in power, and rolls a 4. Her total power is (11+4). Her fireball skill is 6, so she decides to roll TWO dice in control, but only rolls a 1 and 2 (6 + 1 + 2). Since that's less than her Flux, she suffers Feedback, and the spell explodes in her face).

The other spellcasting system is designed to be more like Avatar the Last Airbender meets Naruto, based much more in existing skills and using elements in the environment to power effects, but is too much of a WiP for me to talk about right now.