Wow. It's finally sinking in that I'm making serious progress on HMice.
Combat is almost done. Setting info is almost done. Sure, I could use more powers and some reformatting (in particular, I want to change Weapon Specialization to be "you get a crit per 4 you win by, not 5")... the big area left is the bestiary. I lack monster stats.
I could finish it this year. Yeesh, how pathetic that sounds. I'd love to finish it this month, but I don't expect my burst of productive energy to last that long.
Addenda 8/19- put up a copy of the PDF on the site and posted about it on RPG.net. So far the feedback has all been encouraging but very vague. Hopefully it'll help motivate me to finish it, though.
Aim
Brawn
Cunning
Speed
Magic
(cutting down on syllables)
Speed & Cunning work well together. Aim seems odd, but is quick to say. Cunning could be hard to abbreviate, though, and, like BRAWN, would probably be spelled out a lot.
Okay, so we're retiring our D&D4 game to go back to 3.5. Sorry, Rory. It's a pity; I rather liked the way that rogues worked in 4... rather than being skills-mongers, they were also fragile damage dealers, like wizards... dive in, uber-attack, then get the hell away before they get squished.
Does HMice support that?
Well, a rogue-type would be a high Agility, low Brawn character.
That gives them a bonus to hit in melee and ranged combat as well as dodge. So while they don't do as much damage, they are good at both defenses (Parry and Dodge) rather than just Parry.
High Brawn, low Agility gives +melee, +throwing, +courage. So they're more vulnerable to huge, unparryable attacks. There should be a note someplace that monsters of Size 4+ are unparryable by mice and rats.
Damage-wise, though... I like the idea that a +Agility character should be able to inflict as much damage as a +Brawn character, they're just more fragile (and probably do it with lighter weapons).
Possible implementations for that:
Seekers of Eve: cult that believes that the last human(s) is still alive in some technological ruin, waiting for the Beasts to find her and wake her back up. They say that the first clans of Beasts were told to come back once they had pacified the surface enough but they forgot how to find their way back before that. Want to explore all old ruins, but carefully lest they disturb the life-support equipment by mistake.
Manslayers: cult that believes that human civilization was evil and brought all of this destruction down on themselves (they're probably right). They destroy human records lest they contaminate Beast society and believe that they are operating under orders from Eve herself... she told the Beasts that they were to find their own path and to not try to emulate the ways of Man lest they make the same mistakes.
Caretakers: secret organization with cybernetic implants. Serve the Goddess, probably a surviving AI. Her location is kept well-hidden and may actually be erased from the memories of the rangers when they get their brain implants. The inner cadre have the implants and receive mental orders from the Goddess... they have an outer cult of recruits (Rangers) that get minimal cyberware but don't get to hear the Goddess's voice. Only the ones with implants are allowed to actually go anywhere near the shrine; others get put into a drugged sleep and taken there and brought back.
They Who Hear: dangerous cult that believes that the world-pain in the Anomalies is sentient and attempt to serve it. They may be right, because Anomaly Guardians generally spare them (killing them only if they are actively trying to fight the guardian) and while the anomaly's effects may sicken or mutate them, it never outright kills them. Beasts that go mad and wander into an anomaly often become convinced that the anomaly is speaking to them and wants them to punish the regular Beasts. The cult has been wiped out repeatedly, but appears spontaneously around major anomalies. Once in a great while, One Who Hears will encounter an anomaly that wants to be healed or at least changed and be encouraged to interact with it. Such anomalies tend to become different sorts of anomalies afterwards, often larger, too.
Purifiers: cult that considers the twinned and similar mutations to be sicknesses. They insist that such mutant Beasts never breed, lest the mutations accumulate. This is very true, but since most Beast towns have stopped enforcing those old rules, the ones who still believe in them have become more and more dogmatic about it. Purifiers tend to really hate hostile mutant creatures and are often the most determined to wipe out the enemies of the Beasts... it's just that they also pick on the Twinned and other people with birth defects and deformities.
Anomaly Guardians: anomalies are scars in space-time left by the most terrible of the ancient weapons. The world's pain is so great that something always finds an expression there, basically being "possessed" by the forces on the other side. This is the anomaly's guardian, basically a big monster or group of monsters. It generally needs to be slain before the anomaly can be healed via psychic powers. The distortions tend to create areas of mist or smoke that make it difficult to see very far. But you have to find the heart of the anomaly and repair it. This is time-consuming (days) and, yes, the guardian(s) will respond with murderous fury as soon as someone starts.
Mechanical Horrors: as before, but distorted enough that some folks think that the horrors are being manufactured by an AI factory that was turned into an anomaly guardian.
The Blight: alien ecosystem slowly spreading and poisoning the regular world. Rooting it out is dangerous but necessary. If you ingest any of it by mistake, you take damage... if this kills you, you tend to turn into a fungus-encrusted monster that spreads the parasitic growths further. It's all technically one organism, but it has multiple stages from the ground plants to the bubble spores to the wolf-like reapers and the larger hive-beasts which have vicious bird-things nesting in their backs.
Sentinels: huge ancient robot guardians still on patrol. Inescapably locked into their current programs... attempting to order them to do otherwise requires encrypted pass-keys, matching passwords and DNA/optical scans that are impossible because everyone on the list has been dead for centuries. Many carry nukes. Once in a great while, a Sentinel will be seen moving on a mission to a foreign nation. Generally if a foreign Sentinel reaches this area, it gets nuked by the local ones. Some have exhausted all weapons but can still squish people if antagonized. Equivalent of Death Machines, really.
Harpies and Dragons: as before. Lost clans of Beasts that are at war with the mammals and have their own legendary origins. Speak completely different languages (although some may know a smattering of common speech) and have different religious beliefs. The harpies scorn all cybernetic-style stuff, whereas the dragons have a lot of it and may not truly be free-willed.
The Twelve Voices: the Caretakers say that there are twelve ancient AIs left on this continent and all of them are mad. If you get a radio working, you'll hear them speaking. They argue, but it's not a human argument; they play ancient recorded orders, snippets of music, or even just staticky noises intended for other machine ears. This is apparently a war, as these signals are invariably loaded down with encoded viruses and Trojan programs. Each lives in a factory-fortress guarded by robots. The Caretakers say that all of them must be silenced, but sometimes the robot guardians seem to be semi-friendly towards Beasts. Only a handful of the 12 have actually been located and one of them detonated a nuke, destroying the surface area above it so that the Beasts couldn't get close anymore.
Twinned: term for Beasts who were born with doubled-limbs and such. These are realistic birth defects like having two paws at the end of your leg or a shriveled extra limb. These Beasts suffer physical penalties but get a mystical boost and are regarded as sacred by most.