For contests of sheer muscle, the benefit/penalty is doubled, so a regular-sized mouse would roll at -8 while an elephant would be at +8. That's probably not enough of an adjustment to be truly realistic, but I don't want really big or small PCs to be too good or bad at stuff. They should all be fairly playable.
There are a couple of ways of handling shields. I want one that's simple and easy and makes them useful but hardly overpowering.
One option is that the shield adds a bonus to your defense; if you win the contest solely because of that bonus, then the attack hit your shield instead. If the attack is sufficiently powerful to blow through the shield, it does so; otherwise, you're safe. The larger the shield, the bigger the defense bonus. The more durable the shield, the bigger the hit it can take without breaking.
Another option is that the shield grants bonus dice for your defense, much like Ironclaw does it. This eliminates the whole "the shield can break" bit, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Also, we can have an optional rule: if the attack is too powerful compared to the shield (probably by comparing the attack's maximum damage on an unmodified roll), it takes a critical success to block it... otherwise the shield breaks. The same can be applied to parrying; superhumanly powerful blows might break your weapon if you try to parry.
If the attack is way too powerful, it takes an Extra to block. On anything else, the shield/parrying weapon is shattered or knocked out of your hand.
Heh. A minor bit about the Visions power... whenever something happens to another PC when your character is elsewhere, you can roll Visions to become aware of what's happening even though you aren't there.
For example, if the party scout got ambushed and captured by brigands, you could roll Visions to suddenly realize that. This should be reserved for important events, of course, but it can still be useful, especially if the party splits up a lot.
A mystic power of sorts, dreamwalking covers the ability of the shaman to lie down and dream themselves somewhere else in the real world.
Their dreamself appears to be them. A physical, real presence. They can actually fight, pick things up, etc., but the amount of energy that they can expend (the number of rounds that they can act as opposed to just observing) is very limited. Once they use up that energy, or take any damage, they just vanish into thin air and wake back up.
You have to dreamwalk to a person or place that you know extremely well. It generally can't be used just to scout out an area.
You can try stuff like bringing an object back with you, but it's very difficult and dangerous. You can damage your dreamwalking power permanently that way, but in an emergency it might be worth it. Leaving an item behind is easier, but still dangerous. Anything you drop or which is snatched from you while you're there will vanish from your real body and the real one will be left there instead.
In Ironclaw, this power was called Bilocation.
When you attack someone, they get 3 options:
The difficulty for a ranged attack is based primarily on the distance between you and the target. If they're actively running they can include their Speed, too.
The value in parenthesis is a default that you can use for purposes of speeding up combat, but it means that attackers with too low of a skill can never hit at that range without aiming.
Close range: 2d4 (3)
Short range: 2d6 (4)
Medium range: 3d8 (6)
Long range: 3d10 (8)
Extreme range: 4d12 (10)
Hm. Just a few random thoughts from this morning...
Dodge costs 1 AP as a Reaction and you roll Speed & Perception as your defense. Since this is based upon stats (there is no dodge skill in this variant) it advances much more slowly than parry and such. [Should there be a special trait like Agile that combines with Dodge rolls?]
Passive Dodge costs 0 AP and you roll Speed & Perception but drop the higher die. Sucks, doesn't it?
A melee attack normally costs 2 AP.
A "wild swing" costs 1 AP, but is -2 to hit. There might well be an Edge that reduces that penalty to -1.
Aiming in melee costs 1 AP for a +1 bonus and 2 AP for a +2.
An standard "aimed" shot costs 4 AP. Thus, you really don't want to have to dodge while using a ranged weapon.
A snap shot costs only 2 AP, but is -2 to hit.
A fast shot costs 3 AP but is -1 to hit.
You can get an extra +1 to hit with your next ranged attack by spending 2 AP aiming... or a +2 for 4 AP.
Moving a short distance costs 1 AP, a medium distance 2 AP, and a full run costs 4 AP.
Parrying/blocking an attack costs 1 AP as a reaction.
Initiative is no longer really an issue. You start at zero and add the AP cost of your next action. That's when you get to go. Naturally, dodging and such could delay you further. The GM just keeps counting up.
I want to list off some things that I like about the prototype Nuclear Beasts game system (not the setting, the system) and don't like. It was originally based on the Ironclaw system, so let's look at how it's different and why I wanted it that way...
So, let me think... really, it's going to be a bit of a balancing act.
Small PCs mustn't be so frail that they are easily killed outright... knocked unconscious, okay, but not crippled or killed. Otherwise, everyone eventually ends up playing big, strong types, because all of the smaller PCs will eventually buy it from some sort of ambush or area-of-effect attack.
Big PCs shouldn't be able to casually shrug off anything but the weakest of attacks. It's okay if a Mouse can't harm an Elephant, but not if a heavy pistol can't harm an Elephant.
Combat should be fast, and involve minimal book-keeping. I don't care about hit locations. Wound effects are okay, but they should be vague (you cause some "impairment") and new ones should be easy to invent (smack him in the ear to cause temporary deafness).
I'd like to support different kinds of damage (e.g.- cutting has different effects from blunt which is different from stabbing wounds) but not if it makes stuff complicated.
Attacks need to be at least somewhat balanced. Again, I don't want oversized PCs with huge weapons to dominate the game. A smaller, more agile PC should have a shot at beating one. Maybe the bigger races should have maximum Speed ratings? Or actual penalties to hit folks? Balancing out size differences is tricky.
An Extraordinary hit (hitting by 8+) should be capable of killing someone, even if you're using a small and crappy weapon. On the other hand, a Critical hit with a huge weapon shouldn't mean instant death for the target.
Hm. Well, using some sort of multiples / thresholds would enable me to make it so that it's hard to kill folks outright, but usually at least possible, especially if the resistance roll is dice.
I'm ambivalent over whether or not attacks should be able to be bounced. I think I'm inclined to say that most hits should do something, but it's not that big of a deal if they sometimes bounce.
I'm thinking that there should be a "Willpower" skill instead of "Resolve". Resolve's name is just a holdover from Ironclaw anyway. With no Will stat, I can just call the skill Willpower and you'll roll Guts & Willpower to resist stuff.
Alternately, I can use the Brains & Guts check as a Willpower test, if I'd rather make it stat based instead of a skill.
I'm thinking of making most of the mental "Flaws" into Balanced Traits instead.
So rather than having Cowardice be a "pure" Flaw, it might be written like "Requires a Guts & Resolve roll to do something really dangerous" but you get a +2 bonus to attempts to flee from things.
Hatred could give you a -2 to attempts to deal peacefully with the object of your hatred (such as pretending that you don't hate them) but a +1 bonus to hurt them.
Basically, each one will have a penalty and a bonus and a description of when each one applies. If the penalty will show up a lot more than the bonus, then the bonus will be larger... if the bonus will show up a lot but the penalty rarely, then it'll have a small bonus and a huge penalty.
Got to play Red Dwarf at a con today. Pretty cute. One interesting bit (that I've seen in other games, but hadn't really thought about much lately) is their damage system.
Basically, when you get hit, the attacker does damage equal to their weapon's damage rating times their margin of success (I think Silhouette uses something similar). The target gets to subtract their "Shrug" (personal toughness rating) from the damage. The remainder is then divided by their Shrug and rounded up. That's how many wounds they take.
So a gun that does 6 points hits someone with Shrug 4 by 3 points. That guy is hit by 18 points, subtracts 4... gets 14... divides by 4 and rounds up... and takes 4 wounds. 8 wounds (total) will kill you, so that's a fairly deadly hit. It's a very simplistic system, but it could be made more detailed... and simpler to explain. Basically, they could have said "Divide by Shrug and round up, but you ignore the first wound done."
Anyway, I already have a margin-of-success system... I should think about using some sort of thresholds for determining how much damage you take.
What I really need, instead of just leaving entry after entry on possible ways of handling damage, is to decide what sort of "flavor" I want combat to have... are tough PCs just a little harder to take down than small and wimpy ones or immensely harder? Do tough PCs shrug off hits, or can they just take more hits without going down? Etc..
The term "Centaur" is certainly a more accurate way of referring to the High/Low mix than Chimera. I may mention that; after all, an even more common way of referring to them is probably "Freaks", so there could well be a "scientifically correct" term as well as what the common public calls 'em.
Just thinking about the Mutants & Masterminds damage save rules again. Someone on RPG.net talked about using them and discarding the "wound points" mechanism entirely, so that you didn't have any points to keep track of at all.
Let's see... in order of severity...
What about the damage check itself, though? In M&M, the damage for a given attack is pretty well set, thus giving you a set target number to aim for. In Nuclear Beasts, that would be kind of problematic. To ensure that it's always possible to beat the difficulty, it would have to be a random roll.
Hm. Soak vs Damage. Tie = stunned, fail = dazed, crit fail = unconscious, extra fail = dying. extra2 = dead. Might even drop Tie and do fail = stunned, crit fail = dazed, extra fail = unc., extra2 = dying, extra3 = dead.
The Damage roll would have to be Muscles & Weapon, possibly plus some sort of bonus from a critical hit. Soak would be Muscles & Guts & Armor. Hm. Damage would probably range from 2d4 (the punch of a really weak character) up to 2d12+X (the blow of a 2H sword from a huge character).
Crits would have to provide some significant benefit, but I think that's a given.
What would it take to kill someone outright? Assuming that rolling all 1s isn't a botch, the target would have to roll 1 and you'd have to roll, let's see... 2-4 = stunned, 5-8 = dazed, 9-12 = unc., 13-16 = dying, 17+ dead.
So a d12 attack could do it, if it got a +5 bonus. A d6 would require a whopping +11... that's not impossible for an Extraordinary Hit, though.
How about the damage bonus per extra success varies by weapon?
I still like my idea of bigger weapons taking more actions to swing. I may have to go back and playtest that.
Hm. Crits that just do more damage are boring. How about crits that produce automatic impairment?
Say if the crit does at least 1 point of damage (and it should probably do at least that unless the target's armor beats the damage done by 8+), the target suffers some sort of -2 impairment. An extra does a -4 impairment. The impairments last until the wound can be tended, which generally takes at least 5 minutes or so.
Dunno. I'd like for the system to be exciting and yet simple. That's hard.
How about this? Each extra success (remember, a crit is 2 successes, an extra 3) can do +1 wound or -4 to their next action or -2 to all actions for the rest of the fight.
Hm. A regular hit does a wound. A crit can do a more serious wound, a really huge penalty that lasts one full round, or a lesser penalty that lasts the rest of the fight.
I'd kind of like a regular hit to just do damage, a crit to entail some sort of save, and an extra to require a nasty save. I wonder if a hit could increase the target's Risk? Of course, then they'd eventually start auto-failing... in opposed tests, should Risk be triggered if you succeed, or only if you fail? I'd tend to think fail.
One way to balance out small, light weapons (and claws) vs big, honking two-handed death dealers is crit limits.
Say that small weapons get a bonus success for every 3 points they beat the target by, medium for every 4 (which is the default for most checks) and really big weapons might get an extra success for every 5 or 6 they beat the target by.
Of course, the crits really ought to be something more useful than just "extra damage" unless the extra is enough to beat out the greater damage done by huge weapons.
The Riddle of Steel uses an interesting Spiritual Attribute system. It's probably not an appropriate fit for Nuclear Beasts, but it's nifty anyway.
How could I use the equivalent here? Let me think...
First, at character creation, you'd have to name 3 to 5 goals or drives for your PC. Whenever you make substantial progress towards one, you get a point. When you get X points, something good happens... probably you get to trade all of those points in for an Edge (in this system, you wouldn't be able to buy Edges with regular XP).
During a regular game, you could also use those points for temporary boosts, like a +1 or +2 to a particular roll. Another possible rule is to say that a Tie is won by whichever person cares more... thus, against inanimate challenges, the PC wins the Tie (which is the current system, too). Against foes, whoever has the more points in appropriate Drives wins.
Some possible Drives:
I was thinking a bit about half-actions and full-actions and such. Spycraft handles stuff by giving everyone a single "action" per turn, but defines most things that you'd do as half-actions. Thus, you can make 2 attacks per turn... provided that you don't do anything else other than free actions.
Here's a thought that occured to me:
Everyone starts with 4 Action Points (or AP). Actions can take from 0 to 4 AP, depending on how complex they are, so a "half-action" would basically be 2 AP.
You can also have Reactive actions... these are actions that you perform in response to something else that happened, outside of your own turn.
Dodge is a Reactive action with a cost of 1 AP. Passive Dodge (a crippled version of Dodge that drops your highest die result or is otherwise penalized) costs 0 AP. Full Dodge costs 4 AP and grants a +2 bonus to the roll.
So when you get attacked, you can lose one of your AP in order to dodge normally. If you're out of AP or don't want to spend one, you can still defend yourself but at a penalty of some sort (possibly just a -1 to the roll?). This means that you can make 2 attacks in one round (but only get passive dodge in defense).
We loop through the initiative once and everyone gets a single action of their choice. Afterwards, we loop through again until folks have used up all of their AP.
Dunno. It might be too complicated... I'd like to come up with a simpler way to describe it that still had much the same effect.
Go for the gold: your action is at -2, but if you succeed you'll get one extra Critical Hit Bonus.
You can negate 1 point of penalties to your roll by doing one or more of the following:
For every full 4 points that you manage to score beyond the minimum to get an Extraordinary Success, you get another Critical Hit Bonus. These results are refered to as an Extra2 (hit by 12+), Extra3 (hit by 16+), etc..
The critical hit bonus for a knife should include stuff like...
Stab repeatedly: make another attack on the same target this action at a cumulative -1.
And the bonus damage crit should probably halve their armor, too, so that you don't have to do the math to figure out whether or not a bonus damage crit is better than an armor-bypassing crit in this case.