Brainstorming changes to STaRS. (No prior knowledge required, hopefully)

[Grod_The_Giant]

Heya, guys. In my spare time, I've been working on a new draft of my long-suffering homebrew system, STaRS. In the process, I've had a few thoughts on things that I'd like second opinions on-- changes to things that, though they work fine now, could maybe work... better? I dunno. In any case, I'll try to summarize relevant rules here; check the link above/in my signature for more details. They go to the last draft, but about 90% of the rules are the same as in the new version. Maybe even 95%, since I back-ported the new character creation rules. Anyway...

tl;dr: Seeking input on some proposed mechanics/changes to my homebrew system.

Basics

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• The goal is to be rules-light, but not narrativist.
• STaRS is a d10, roll-under system based on 10 abilities. (Whenever you make a check, you roll a d10 and try to get under your rank in the appropriate ability).
• All die rolls are made by players. Enemies can modify the difficulty of the checks.
• Modifiers come in the form of advantage and disadvantage, where you roll twice and take the better/worse result.
• Degrees of success and failure exist. Difficulty is assessed in terms of Level-- if a task is a lower Level than your capability, you auto-succeed, and if it's at a higher level, you auto-fail. Two applications of advantage let you attempt tasks one Level higher than normal; two applications of disadvantage do the opposite.
• Character creation is point-buy, and pretty open ended. (Although the finished product will have lists of example traits that you could select from)

Damage

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Currently: There are three types of damage: mental, physical, and social. Damage comes in the form of numerical penalties to an appropriate ability-- Physique for physical damage, Will for mental, and Presence for social-- temporarily lowering your score. Each point of damage is about a 10% decrease in success rates, in other words. When the score hits 0, you're taken out, and your opponent dictates

The Original Thought: Damage in M&M makes you more vulnerable to taking more damage; that's pretty cool. Plus, this seems elegant. And maybe I can use the mechanism for other debuffy things? (I didn't).

The Problem: Damage making you less capable is still a good idea... but while getting shot may drop your Physique and leave you less capable of, say, wrestling, your other physical abilities are unharmed-- you can still sprint across the room and do cartwheels. Which is not quite the intention. And this is the only place that we deal with numerical penalties, so that's less good. Finally, since enemies don't have abilities, they need a different mechanic for health.

Also, I don't know if it's worth keeping the Fate-derived distinction between Mental and Social damage.

Proposed Change: I'm considering a more standard set of health boxes-- one per point of respective "health" ability. When... some number of the boxes are full-- half? 5?-- you take Disadvantage on all physical/mental/social checks. When they're all full, you're taken out. On the plus side, that mirrors the existing system for NPCs, and I think it's fairly self-explanatory. On the other hand, it's one more external mechanic in a system I'm trying to keep very simple.

...which kind of leads into Recovery

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Currently: You need time and an appropriate first aid/therapy check. On a success, you heal half your current damage; the rest returns slowly over time. You can't be healed again unless you're damaged more.

The Original Thought: Heal for half seems about right. Removing all penalties at once might be a bit too much.

The Problem: ...I just kind of don't like it. I mean, I guess it works? (Unless I use the above change to damage). But it's kind of hard to explain how

Proposed Change: For the original form of damage (ability penalties)... I really don't know. I'd like to work in degrees of success, I think-- half health +1 damage/degree?-- but beyond that, I've got nothing for the "repeated checks" thing. Beyond just saying "that doesn't work," I suppose. I don't want players to have to track separate wounds...

For the revised form of damage/health bar described above... the first aid check would remove the disadvantage, and maybe 1 damage/degree of success. The rest would clear over time. Or maybe, at the cost of more complexity, you'd clear all boxes at the end of the fight. Unless you had a wound, in which case you'd only clear the boxes above that until you got a first aid check to remove the wound.

Terminology Stuff

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• I need more elegant was of saying "make a Check at one Level higher than normal" and "one Level lower than normal," because that's a clunky phrase that comes up a lot.
• ...I could have sworn I had more. I'll just leave this open for when I remember...

I'm also happy to discuss other STaRS stuff here-- I'm not sure if the last thread is past the necro point. Suggestions for things to cover, other changes I should make, stuff like that.

[erikun]

Okay, so, thoughts.

Unfortunately, I haven't kept up much with the changes in STaRS. I see that the basics are the same, but I'm somewhat afraid that I might be mentioning something that turns out silly or uninformed given more recent changes. I hope you don't mind too much if I accidentally do so.

There are three types of damage: mental, physical, and social.

Note that damage only needs to be as specific as you want. You could include tactical damage if using rules for managing seiges or armies, or morale damage, or even both. It depends on what you are trying to model.

What are you trying to model with your physical, mental, and social types of damage? I realize you want to keep things simple, but this may be one instance where simplifying things just makes things more confusing for everyone.

The Original Thought: Damage in M&M makes you more vulnerable to taking more damage; that's pretty cool. Plus, this seems elegant. And maybe I can use the mechanism for other debuffy things? (I didn't).

The Problem: Damage making you less capable is still a good idea... but while getting shot may drop your Physique and leave you less capable of, say, wrestling, your other physical abilities are unharmed-- you can still sprint across the room and do cartwheels. Which is not quite the intention. And this is the only place that we deal with numerical penalties, so that's less good. Finally, since enemies don't have abilities, they need a different mechanic for health.

Also, I don't know if it's worth keeping the Fate-derived distinction between Mental and Social damage.

...which kind of leads into Recovery

Currently: You need time and an appropriate first aid/therapy check. On a success, you heal half your current damage; the rest returns slowly over time. You can't be healed again unless you're damaged more.

The Original Thought: Heal for half seems about right. Removing all penalties at once might be a bit too much.

The Problem: ...I just kind of don't like it. I mean, I guess it works? (Unless I use the above change to damage). But it's kind of hard to explain how

Here's a thought: damage dealt is independent of the character's ability scores. Damage gives penalties. First aid can be used to remove penalties, but does not remove damage. That is, a character who has 7 Physical and takes 2 points of damage has a -2 penalty and is 5 points from being KO'd. First aid can be used to patch them up and remove the -2 penalty, but they are still 5 points away from being KO'd.

This would allow a character to successfully "heal" and remove the main negative aspect of damage, but the character still needs to rest and recover to remove the actual damage. It doesn't allow characters to just continuously go until their healing resources are depleted, though, as with D&D. It would also require some sort of "first aid" for damage other than physcial - not a problem with social damage (Rhetoric) but is somewhat tricky for mental damage or more exotic types. (morale?)

Terminology Stuff

I need more elegant was of saying "make a Check at one Level higher than normal" and "one Level lower than normal," because that's a clunky phrase that comes up a lot.

The problem is the use of the term "Level" in a very different context than most RPGs use it. You already have the term Scale, and it could be simple to say "make a Check with a higher Scale" or "lower Scale" while making sense. I'm not sure how badly that would mess things up, though, or if you need another term to replace the missing Level one.

[Dunkoro]

Basics

Spoiler

Show

• The goal is to be rules-light, but not narrativist.
• STaRS is a d10, roll-under system based on 10 abilities. (Whenever you make a check, you roll a d10 and try to get under your rank in the appropriate ability).
• All die rolls are made by players. Enemies can modify the difficulty of the checks.
• Modifiers come in the form of advantage and disadvantage, where you roll twice and take the better/worse result.
• Degrees of success and failure exist. Difficulty is assessed in terms of Level-- if a task is a lower Level than your capability, you auto-succeed, and if it's at a higher level, you auto-fail. Two applications of advantage let you attempt tasks one Level higher than normal; two applications of disadvantage do the opposite.
• Character creation is point-buy, and pretty open ended. (Although the finished product will have lists of example traits that you could select from)

I see nothing wrong in here.

Damage

Spoiler

Show

Currently: There are three types of damage: mental, physical, and social. Damage comes in the form of numerical penalties to an appropriate ability-- Physique for physical damage, Will for mental, and Presence for social-- temporarily lowering your score. Each point of damage is about a 10% decrease in success rates, in other words. When the score hits 0, you're taken out, and your opponent dictates

The Original Thought: Damage in M&M makes you more vulnerable to taking more damage; that's pretty cool. Plus, this seems elegant. And maybe I can use the mechanism for other debuffy things? (I didn't).

The Problem: Damage making you less capable is still a good idea... but while getting shot may drop your Physique and leave you less capable of, say, wrestling, your other physical abilities are unharmed-- you can still sprint across the room and do cartwheels. Which is not quite the intention. And this is the only place that we deal with numerical penalties, so that's less good. Finally, since enemies don't have abilities, they need a different mechanic for health.

Also, I don't know if it's worth keeping the Fate-derived distinction between Mental and Social damage.

Proposed Change: I'm considering a more standard set of health boxes-- one per point of respective "health" ability. When... some number of the boxes are full-- half? 5?-- you take Disadvantage on all physical/mental/social checks. When they're all full, you're taken out. On the plus side, that mirrors the existing system for NPCs, and I think it's fairly self-explanatory. On the other hand, it's one more external mechanic in a system I'm trying to keep very simple.

I was kinda thinking more in terms of leaving the damage as-is, but whenever you take the appropriate type of damage, it applies to ALL attributes of that type (Agility, Dexterity, Physique, Speed for Physical damage; Awareness, Will, Smarts and Wits for Mental; Avareness, Manipulation and Presence for Social).
Also, in my (currently somewhat limited) testing experience, current dual roll for defense allows players to basically steamroll through hordes of weak opponents without ever taking damage.

...which kind of leads into Recovery

Spoiler

Show

Currently: You need time and an appropriate first aid/therapy check. On a success, you heal half your current damage; the rest returns slowly over time. You can't be healed again unless you're damaged more.

The Original Thought: Heal for half seems about right. Removing all penalties at once might be a bit too much.

The Problem: ...I just kind of don't like it. I mean, I guess it works? (Unless I use the above change to damage). But it's kind of hard to explain how

Proposed Change: For the original form of damage (ability penalties)... I really don't know. I'd like to work in degrees of success, I think-- half health +1 damage/degree?-- but beyond that, I've got nothing for the "repeated checks" thing. Beyond just saying "that doesn't work," I suppose. I don't want players to have to track separate wounds...

For the revised form of damage/health bar described above... the first aid check would remove the disadvantage, and maybe 1 damage/degree of success. The rest would clear over time. Or maybe, at the cost of more complexity, you'd clear all boxes at the end of the fight. Unless you had a wound, in which case you'd only clear the boxes above that until you got a first aid check to remove the wound.

I like both ideas for healing.

Terminology Stuff

Spoiler

Show

• I need more elegant was of saying "make a Check at one Level higher than normal" and "one Level lower than normal," because that's a clunky phrase that comes up a lot.
• ...I could have sworn I had more. I'll just leave this open for when I remember...

I've no idea here.

I'm also happy to discuss other STaRS stuff here-- I'm not sure if the last thread is past the necro point. Suggestions for things to cover, other changes I should make, stuff like that.

Thread is never past necro point for the person who started it AFAIK.