The Campaign Builder's Guild

A bit of history: I've been working on a system with dependent abilities since this thread (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?51574).  I put out something preliminary with NTSA (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?60108), but that was too narrowly focused.  Since then, I've read a lot more systems (and played a few too), and I've been working on a system based on NTSA but with a little more influence from other systems (the basic mechanics, however, are pretty similar).

My original plan was to get something "complete" and then post it, but I realized that this was dumb.  I've also been a bit exasperated lately by too many different mechanics and ideas - there's so much promising stuff out there, and it's hard to decide what's worthwhile and what's just a fun distraction.

At some point I decided that I was going to be developing this system with an eye towards using it with the Clockwork Jungle.  While it doesn't have any system-specific mechanics, I do try and craft it into something that works with the themes of the setting.  That said, I may or may not end up using it; there are commercial systems that I think would probably work out just fine.  Still, I'd like to make some kind of finished product out of the system.

[spoiler=Part 1 - The Basics]
I. The Basics

Attributes

Characters have a set of 7 attributes that indicate their general strengths and weakness (as opposed to skills, which describe specific activities that your character can perform well).

• Strength (Str) represents raw physical power.
• Stamina (Sta) represents the ability to maintain physical exertion over long periods of time.
• Coordination (Coo) represents the fine orchestration of physical movement.
• Perception (Per) represents the ability to discern reality and notice detail.
• Cunning (Cun) represents swiftness of mind and the ability to quickly think on one's feet.
• Aptitude (Apt) represents capacity for learning, memorizing, understanding, and applying new concepts.
• Charm (Cha) represents the ability to read and engage with others in a social environment.

Skills

A normal character starts out with all attributes at 1.  At character creation, attributes are modified slightly by racial bonuses, but they are primarily increased by synergy bonuses from skills.

Attributes are end products - you don't put any points into them.  Instead, your character assigns points to certain skills, which in turn influence your character's attributes.  As an example, consider the Observation skill.

Observation (Per|Sta)

Every skill is keyed to two attributes, a primary attribute and a secondary one.  The one listed first (in this case, Perception) is the primary attribute, and the one listed second (Stamina) is the secondary attribute.  Most specific tasks are accomplished with skill checks, which are made by adding a character's relevant attributes to their number of skill ranks.

[ic=The Skill Check]Skill Ranks + Primary Attribute + Secondary Attribute = Final Result[/ic]
Both primary and secondary attributes contribute to the dice pool, but a skill is considered to be in a category based on its primary attribute alone; Observation, for instance, is a 'Perception skill.'  In the Synergy system, skills contribute to attributes based on their category.  This, coincidentally enough, is called synergy.

[ic=Rule of Synergy]For every 4 points a character possesses in skills of a certain category, the attribute linked to that category is increased by 1.[/ic]
In other words, if a player puts 4 points into the Observation skill, their character's Perception attribute is increased by 1.  They need not spend it all in one place, however.  The same player could instead put two points in Observation and two points in Ranged Combat (Per|Coo), and this would also increase the character's Perception by 1 because the total ranks of skills in that category add up to 4.

Thus, spending points in skills of a certain category will boost your abilities in all skills of that category - if you hone your abilities of perception through observation, you'll become a better archer as well.  The implications go beyond that, however, because of secondary attributes.  Consider the skill Evasion (Coo|Per). Evasion is a Coordination skill, not a Perception skill, but its secondary attribute is Perception, so an increase to Perception by buying Perception skills will also increase a character's Evasion skill check result. In other words, Evasion is considered primarily a skill that uses and trains physical reflexes, but a character who is very perceptive will find that their Evasion attempts benefit from their perceptiveness as well.

A small number of skills have 'Apt|Apt' as their keyed attributes.  This is the only exception to the rule that skills must have two different attributes, and this is used only for certain academic skills that could not conceivably require the use of any other attribute.  A character using such a skill simply gains the benefit of their Aptitude bonus twice, as if it were both primary and secondary.

Some skills are 'multiple skills,' meaning that they can be taken multiple times to cover different sub-skills.  Examples include Craft (Apt|Coo) and Melee Combat (Str|Cun).  Each separate sub-skill tracks ranks separately and contributes to synergy as if it were an entirely separate skill, so a character who puts two ranks in Crafting, Blacksmithing and two ranks in Crafting, Carpentry would gain a +1 synergy bonus to Aptitude.

Alternate Attributes

The GM is encouraged to change a skill's secondary attribute if the situation merits it.  Such uses should be roleplayed by the character.  Some skills have an alternate secondary attribute already provided, such as Climbing (Sta|Str/Coo) and Intimidation (Cha|Str/Cun).  A skill's secondary attribute can be changed to anything, however, so long as it makes sense to the GM.

Often, a player will try to use attributes more advantageous to their attempt, and will try to roleplay a skill that they have more points in.  Keep in mind, however, that what attribute is used may have real effects on the situation above and beyond the simple calculation of success or failure.  For instance, a character may have strength as his highest score, but if he wants to interrogate a prisoner without roughing him up, the GM may decide that he needs to use another attribute (like Cunning) even if it's not his highest.

Randomness

Dice are thrown with the skill check to introduce some chance into the system.  A standard distribution centered on zero is ideal; in other words, something like Fudge dice or one of its variants.  d6-d6 is my current variant of choice (1d6 subtracted from 1d6, and treat results of +5 or -5 as 0 instead), as it is a bit simpler and has a bit higher variability.  For results closer to 0, standard Fudge dice are an option.

Attribute Checks

Skills cover a wide variety of specific tasks, but sometimes a character wishes to attempt something not covered by skills, such as kicking down a door.  In cases where raw ability is required and normal skills do not apply, a character makes an attribute check.  In an attribute check, or 'general roll,' a player simply uses their attribute bonus alone (adding random dice), either against a set difficulty or against another character's attribute check.

While you can't put skill ranks into "door kicking," putting ranks into Melee Combat (Str|Cun) or other Strength skills will build up your door kicking ability through synergy. Every 4 ranks in Strength skills increases your Strength by 1 - that's not a bonus to other Strength skills, but a raw bonus dice for Strength, and so it applies to attribute checks as well (as well as skills which have Strength as a secondary attribute).

Skill Limits

The number of points a character can spend on a specific skill is limited by her attributes.  A character's ranks in any one skill cannot exceed 2 + the character's primary attribute for that skill.  For example, a character with a Strength of 0 cannot have more than 2 ranks in any one skill in the Strength category, but if she puts a total of 4 ranks into any number of Strength skills, her Strength will increase to +1 through synergy, and she will be able to put up to 3 ranks in any single Strength skill.

During character creation and advancement, attribute increases from synergy are applied only after a character assigns all skill points.  Thus, skill limits don't actually increase until you're done assigning all your skill points, so you can't increase your maximum level in a skill and max out on that skill at the same time.

No matter how low a character's attributes are, a character is always allowed to have at least one rank in any skill.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Part 2 - Derived Attributes]II.  Derived Attributes

The seven attributes cover all skills - that is, what a character can accomplish.  There are, however, other measures of a character aside from skill alone.  Synergy has two additional mechanics that are derived from the main attributes a character has.

Derived attributes do not function in any way like standard attributes.  There are no skills associated with them, nor do they grant any kind of synergy bonuses.

Health

A character's health represents his physical integrity against wounds, diseases, poisons, and other sources of damage and/or toxicity.

Health is a derived attribute.  A character's health is equal to 2 plus the average of their Strength attribute and their Stamina attribute, rounded down.  Regardless of any penalties to these attributes, a character's normal health cannot be below 2.

Characters can receive Health damage from a variety of sources.  If a character's Health is reduced to zero, he slips into a coma and dies in 1d6 rounds.  A character heals Health damage at a rate of one point per day, but Health damage from systemic sources (like an ongoing disease or a poison still in the system) does not heal until the cause is alleviated.

Breath

Breath represents one's mastery of one's own life force.  Most Earth cultures have some concept of "spirit" or "life force," and often the word they use translates literally into "air," "breath," "wind," and so on.  For humans, it is breathing that distinguishes the living from the dead.  In the Clockwork Jungle, the Breath is universally recognized as that which makes mere dead matter alive.  All animals have it, the Forest has it '" even Cogs have it, in a limited sense, because nothing can be alive without it.
[note=Breath]Breath is the first really setting-specific thing in Synergy.  I won't go into too much fluff here, but any system for CJ needs to include something to represent this all-important force.  That said, Synergy could be reworked to omit this, or Breath could be altered to something else with a similar effect.[/note]
Breath is a special composite attribute.  A character's Breath score is equal to 1 + the sum of all their synergy bonuses to attributes (but not the attributes themselves, which may be modified by a character's race or other factors).

Breath is used either for Feats (an unconscious use of the Breath) or Channeling (a conscious use).  Both are detailed in Chapter 7.

There is a difference between Breath being used and being lost.  A point of Breath that is used for magic or focus is simply used '" the point is temporarily depleted, but it still exists.  Breath can also be lost, usually involuntarily.  "Used" points of Breath are lost before unused points are.  When a character loses all their points of Breath, they die.  Breath loss is uncommon but can be effected by spirit-draining magic and a few deadly creatures.

Depleted points of Breath are replenished each day.  Lost points of Breath are recovered at a rate of one per day.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Part 3 - Combat]
III. Combat
Combat in Synergy is handled by an assortment of combat skills:

• Melee Combat (Str|Cun)
• Throwing (Str|Coo)
• Ranged Combat (Per|Coo)
• Unarmed Combat (Str|Sta)
• Evasion (Coo|Per)

All other skills are considered to be non-combat skills. Depending on the skill and the goal, non-combat skills might not be allowed in combat; even if they are, the character suffers a -2 penalty to the skill check. 'In combat' is defined as any round in which one uses or is the target of any of the combat skills as listed above, regardless of what effect they have (a character being shot at is considered to be in combat even if none of the arrows have hit him - yet). The rare exception is if the character is targeted by one of these skills but remains unaware of it (a character is shot at, but the shot misses and the character does not notice it).

A character can use only one combat skill in a single combat round.

Checks Against a Fixed TN

Combat is performed either as an opposed roll or as a roll against a fixed TN depending on whether the target is actively trying to evade the blow.  A target who is unaware of an attack or chooses not to make any defense against it does not require an opposed roll to hit.

The standard TN for hitting a creature with an attack is 2.  This can be modified in a variety of ways:

• Size.  The Hit TN of a creature is increased if it is smaller than its opponent, and decreased if it is larger.
• Shield.  A creature holding a shield is harder to hit in combat even if it isn't actually trying to deflect your blow, simply due to its obstructing presence.
• Range.  The Hit TN of a creature increases as you get further away from it (this applies only to missile attacks).
• Environment.  A creature who is obscured by darkness or concealed behind dense foliage has a higher Hit TN.
• Movement.  A creature who is moving is harder to hit than one who is not (this applies only to missile attacks).

Opposed Checks

When a character is actively attempting to not get hit - generally, a good idea - combat is handled with an opposed roll.  The attacker's roll is not always opposed by the same skill; while Melee Combat is usually pitted against Melee Combat, a character without weapons will have to oppose with Unarmed Combat, and Ranged Combat attacks are always opposed with Evasion (if they are opposed at all).

Knowing the defender's Hit TN is still important here, because even if the attacker wins an opposed check, he does not score a hit unless his roll result is good enough to hit the target if it were not resisting at all.  Thus, a character can't actually become easier to hit by trying not to get hit (though it is possible to get no benefit from opposing the roll if you are bad or unlucky enough).

Melee Combat

Combat at melee range is handled using the melee skills (Melee Combat and Unarmed Combat), even if a missile weapon is being used - even if you're using a crossbow to fight the man next to you, you're still fighting in melee.

Initiative

Not all opponents get to attack every round.  When two characters engage in melee combat, one has the initiative and the other does not.  Initiative determines who is the aggressive party at any one instant during the combat.

The character with the initiative - the attacker - has a chance of hitting and wounding the opponent.  If his combat roll is successful (it is higher than the defender's opposed roll and Hit TN), he holds on to the initiative and is also the attacker in the following round, even if his hit caused no damage.

The character without initiative - the defender - usually has no chance of hitting his assailant unless he can gain the initiative for himself.  If the attacker's combat roll is unsuccessful (it is lower than either the defender's opposed roll or Hit TN), no hit is scored and the character who defended gains the initiative for the next round.

If the result of the attacker's combat roll is a tie - it is exactly equal to the defender's opposed roll or Hit TN, whichever is higher - no hit is scored, and the initiative is 'split' in the next round.  In a split initiative round, both parties are considered to be attacking, and both may hit and wound their opponent if they win the roll.  Any character who hits the opponent during a split initiative round has their margin of success increased by 1, as when both opponents are attacking, neither is defending especially well.

At the beginning of a combat round, either combatant may choose to forfeit the initiative.  A character who forfeits the initiative immediately becomes the defender, and must win back the initiative through a successful defense if they wish to regain it.  If both players forfeit the initiative, no attack occurs, and the combatants circle each other warily.

The first round of any melee combat is always a split initiative round, as is any round after both opponents have forfeited the initiative.  In either case, one or both opponents may choose to forfeit the initiative.

The Riposte

A character who succeeds in parrying an attacker's attack by a wide margin can make a strike of their own, called a riposte.  A riposte is only available to a character under the following conditions:

1.  The character is making an opposed combat check at melee range.
2.  The character is defending (does not have the initiative).
3.  The defender's check result is greater than the attacker's check result by 4 or more.
4.  The defender's check result is greater than the attacker's Hit TN.

If a character meets these conditions against a single melee opponent, he may choose to immediately make a riposte.  He not only gains the initiative for the next round, but scores an immediate hit with a base margin of success equal to 3 less than the difference between his result and the attacker's result (e.g. A defender who got a result of 6 against the attacker's result of 2 would score a hit with a base margin of 1).  This hit happens instantly, within the same round.

A character may make only one riposte per round.  If he meets the conditions against multiple melee opponents in the same round, he must choose one to make the riposte against.

Multiple Opponents

Fighting multiple opponents in melee at once is difficult.  A character must make a choice between concentrating on a single opponent or spreading his attention among multiple assailants.

A character may choose to oppose only one opponent.  If he does this, he suffers no penalty against that one opponent and makes checks against him as normal, but his other opponents need only roll above his Hit TN to hit him.

A character may fight against multiple opponents by splitting his skill points.  He can split his skill points in any way he chooses among his opponents.  A character with 6 ranks in Melee Combat, for instance, could choose to make opposed checks against three opponents simultaneously as if he had only 2 ranks in Melee Combat, or put 4 into checks against one opponent and 1 against each of the other two.  A character may not split skill points among a number of opponents greater than half his total points in the skill, rounded down (so a character with 7 skill points in Melee Combat could only oppose 3 opponents at most - any more would be unopposed and only have to surpass his Hit TN).

A character may only have the initiative against one opponent at a time.  If he gains the initiative against more than one of his opponents, he must forfeit the initiative against his opponents until he holds it against no more than one of them.  Though this means a character can only be the attacker against a single foe at one time, a riposte against another in the same round may still be possible.

Ranged Combat

Combat at range is covered by the Ranged Combat, Throwing, and Evasion skills.  Unlike the melee combat skills, which are used for both attacking and defending, skills for ranged combat are used only either to make attacks (Ranged Combat and Throwing) or defend against them (Evasion).

Ranged combat does not utilize initiative.  A character in ranged combat always decides whether he is attacking or defending in any given round, regardless of whether he has been hit by another or not.

Preparation Time[/b]

Aiming and firing a ranged weapon usually takes longer than swinging a fist or blade.  Most missile weapons have a 'prep time' that indicates how many rounds must be spent preparing the weapon before the round in which it is fired.  Usually, the prep time varies depending on how the weapon or ammunition is carried - a javelin already in the hand has only one round of prep time, while one carried on the back or strapped to a shield has two rounds.

A character can rush a ranged attack to try and make a ranged attack in haste.  Decreasing a weapon's prep time by 1 round incurs a -2 penalty to a character's Ranged Combat or Throwing check.  Prep time can only be decreased by one round in this way.

A weapon with a prep time of zero cannot be reduced any further; it cannot take less than one round to make a ranged attack.

Evading Missiles[/size]

A character can only oppose a ranged attack roll with the Evasion skill.  If the attacker's result is less than or equal to the defender's Evasion result, the attack misses.  As with melee attacks, the missile attack result must be higher than the target's Hit TN as well in order to score a hit (which can be quite high at long ranges).

Because Evasion is a combat skill, however, using it precludes the use of any other combat skill that round, including making a ranged attack of one's own.  A character can move around while making an attack to raise his hit TN, but this is not Evasion (Evasion is watching and dodging a specific attack, not just running around to make yourself a more difficult target).

Evasion can be used against multiple opponents by splitting one's skill points.  Like fighting in melee against multiple assailants, a character can only split his skill points among a number of opponents equal to half his total skill points, rounded down.  All others need only exceed the character's Hit TN.

Evading thrown weapons is easier than evading shots from a bow, and characters using Evasion against attacks made with the Throwing skill gain a +1 bonus to their check result.

Equipment in Combat

Armor and weaponry is not part of the combat system itself, but the damage system - both the weapon used and the armor used against it may change the impact of a successful hit, but they don't actually make the attack more or less likely to succeed.  Some pieces of equipment, however, do affect combat skill checks directly.

Shields

Shields can be employed in both melee and ranged situations.  They may provide both a passive defense (raising a character's Hit TN) and an active defense (providing a bonus to a character's Melee Combat and Evasion checks).

A shield's passive bonus is applied to the character's Hit TN against all ranged and melee attacks; optionally, the GM may decide that attacks coming from directly behind a character ignore this bonus (combat facing is not covered here).  Ripostes ignore this bonus to Hit TN.

A shield's active bonus is applied to all Evasion checks a character makes, as well as all Melee Combat checks a character makes while defending.  A character does not gain the shield's bonus when attacking (making Melee Combat checks on opponents against whom he has the initiative).

A shield's effectiveness is based on its size:

Small: +1 active, +0 passive
Medium: +1 active, +1 passive
Large: +2 active, +2 passive

A small shield permits a character to hold objects and use certain two-handed ranged weapons (though not melee weapons) even while wielding the shield.  Medium shields are too large for this; the hand cannot be used for anything else.  Large shields likewise require the whole arm, and in addition impose a -1 penalty to Melee Combat checks made when a character is the attacker.

Reach (Optional Rule)

The length of weapons is not detailed in this system.  At the GM's option, however, a character's reach can affect his initiative.

A character with significantly longer reach than another, whether naturally or because of a weapon, automatically causes his opponent to forfeit the initiative at the beginning of any round that would be a split initiative round (at the beginning of combat or any round after both opponents forfeit the initiative).[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Part 4 - Wounding]
IV. Wounding[/size]

A successful attack in combat, among other things, can wound a character.  Wounding is primarily expressed in terms of skill and attribute check penalties, but it also can degrade a character's total Health, eventually leading to death.

Damage and Wounding[/size]

When a character is hit in combat, the damage of the attack must be determined.  An attack's damage is based on the attacker's margin of success, the difference between his result and the defender's opposed result (or Hit TN, whichever is higher), and modified by other factors including armor and weaponry.  Armor decreases the damage of an attack, while the weapon used by the attacker may increase or decrease it depending on its type and quality.

If an attack's damage is 0 or less, it is considered to be a glancing blow that does no harm to the target.  Though an attacker will still gain the initiative because of his success (see part 3 - Combat), the defender suffers no adverse effects from the hit itself.

If an attack's damage is 1 or more, it may cause two different effects - shock and wounding.

Shock

Shock represents the debilitating effect of sudden trauma and intense physical pain.  When a character is dealt damage by an attack, he suffers a shock penalty in the next round equal to the attack's damage.  This penalty applies to all skill and attribute rolls.

A shock penalty lasts for only one round.

Shock penalties do not stack with other shock penalties; only the highest penalty applies in any given round.  Penalties from shock, however, do stack with wound penalties (see below).

At the beginning of any round, if a character's shock penalty is greater than his Health, he must make a Stamina check against a TN equal to the difference or pass out.  This Stamina check is not modified by any Shock penalties.

Wounding

Wounding represents the loss of function due to actual physical damage, not just the sensation of pain or trauma.  When a character is dealt damage by an attack, he gains a wound with a severity equal to the attack's damage divided by two, rounded down.

A character suffers a wound penalty equal to the total severity of all his wounds added together.  This penalty applies to all checks with skills that have Strength or Coordination as their primary or secondary attributes, as well as all Strength and Coordination attribute checks.  Wound penalties only take effect after the initial shock has faded - in other words, a character wounded on the first round of combat will only begin taking wound penalties at the beginning of the third.  Unlike shock penalties, wound penalties persist until the wounds causing them are healed.

Though wound penalties are cumulative, wounds should be tracked separately for purposes of healing.  Three wounds with a severity of 1 each, for example, will heal much faster than a single wound with a severity of 3, even though they impose the same penalty.

For each point of wound severity a character has, he loses one point of Health.  A character reduced to zero health immediately loses consciousness and will die within minutes.[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Part 5 - Weapons and Armor]
V. Weapons and Armor

Equipment affects combat by adding to or subtracting from the attacker's margin of success, from which damage is derived.  Armor and weapons, however, do not have immutable modifiers '" their effectiveness depends on their type and their relative strengths.

Damage Types

Different weapons deal different kinds of damage.  The basic types of weapon damage are piercing, slashing, crushing, and striking.

Piercing (P) weapons rely on massive force behind a single point (spears, picks, daggers).
*Slashing (S) weapons rely on speed and an exceptionally sharp edge (swords, sabers, sickles).
*Crushing (C) weapons use tremendous weight to smash or chop (axes, maces).
*Striking (T) weapons are blunt (and frequently light) weapons that use swift strikes to pound an enemy (staves, clubs, punches).[/list]
A fifth type, caustic damage, is not a kind of weapon damage but can be caused by other sources.  Fire, severe cold, acid, quicklime, and other substances or conditions that burn or corrode all deal damage of this type.

Armor

Armor's protective value depends on the type of damage it is called to defend against.  The value of a defender's armor is subtracted from an attacker's margin of success, potentially reducing an attack's damage to zero.

[th][/th][th]Strike[/th][th]Slash[/th][th]Pierce[/th][th]Crush[/th]

[th]Padded Cloth[/th] 2 1 1 2 [th]Coat of Rings[/th] 1 3 1 1 [th]Beast Leather[/th] 2 2 2 1 [th]Yeske Bark[/th] 1 3 2 1 [th]Scale, Leather[/th] 3 3 2 1 [th]Saryet Silk[/th] 0 1 3 0 [th]Scale, Iron / Brigandine[/th] 3 4 2 2 [th]Lamellar[/th] 3 4 3 2 Padded Cloth: Soft cloth or leather, quilted and stuffed with animal hair.  Cheap and common. Coat of Rings: Metal rings sewn onto a soft leather or cloth backing; essentially, a primitive precursor to proper mail (which does not exist in CJ).  It resists slashes well. Beast Leather: A catch-all term for armor made from particularly tough animal leather, often made up of several layers.  It is stiffer than padded armor but more resistant to blades. Yeske Bark: The tough inner bark of the Yeske tree that has been cut into strips, soaked, and often lacquered or oiled once bent into shape.  The resulting strips are laced together to form a kind of laminar armor. Scale, Leather: Layered or lacquered overlapping leather scales sewn to a cloth backing.  A decent all-around medium armor. Saryet Silk: A layered fabric made from the exceptionally strong raw silk produced by the saryet (or 'whistling') spider.  The so-called 'arrow-proof cloth' can stop piercing attacks but is too thin to be useful against percussive blows. Scale, Iron / Brigandine: Like the leather variety, but with metal scales and better protection against sharp weapons.  Brigandine is similar, with smaller scales riveted to an exterior layer of cloth or leather instead of sewn on to an underlying layer. Lamellar: Metal plates attached to each other rather than to a backing.  Its construction makes it better than scale against thrusting attacks, but it is more rigid and inflexible as well. Toughness Most creatures do not wear armor.  Some creatures, however, are afforded an armor value because of their thick or scaly hides.  A creature with such defense is said to have toughness.  A creature's toughness value is subtracted from an attacker's margin of success, just like armor.  This value applies equally to all damage types unless the creature's description specifies otherwise.  Toughness and normal armor stack together. Though rare, it is possible for an exceptionally vulnerable or fragile creature to have negative toughness, which is added to the attacker's margin of success instead. Player races do not naturally have toughness, but may acquire toughness temporarily through certain channeling forms. Weapons All weapons have three important attributes - type, damage, and grip. Type determines its effectiveness against certain kinds of armor.  Weapons that can be used in multiple ways may have several types.  The wielder must decide which type he is using at the beginning of each combat round in which he is attacking.  When a character makes a riposte with a weapon that has more than one type, the type used in the riposte is determined randomly - a riposte represents a defending character seeing an opening and striking immediately, allowing little time to bring the optimum part of the weapon to bear. Damage, given as a plus or minus modifier (or zero), is added to the attacker's margin of success.  A weapon may have different damage modifiers for different types - for example, a dagger deals more damage when used to stab than when used to slash. Grip indicates how many hands are used to wield the weapon.  Unless noted otherwise, a shield cannot be wielded when also wielding a weapon with a two-handed grip.  Weapons with a variable grip (1-2) may be used with either one or two hands.  These weapons are given with their one-handed stats; if such a weapon is used two-handed, its damage increases by +1.  While a purely one-handed (1, not 1-2) weapon may conceivably be used in two hands, it gains no benefit from it. Melee Weapons Melee weapons have two additional attributes that ranged weapons lack, reach and throw. Reach indicates a melee weapon's striking distance.  An attacking character who has a weapon with a longer reach than his opponent automatically causes his opponent to forfeit the initiative at the beginning of any round that would be a split initiative round (at the beginning of combat or any round after both opponents forfeit the initiative).  This applies only to the target of the attacking character, not any other opponents who may be fighting him. Throw simply denotes whether a melee weapon may be thrown effectively. The melee weapons below are grouped by reach. [th]Short[/th][th]Grip[/th][th]Damage[/th][th]Type[/th][th]Throw[/th] [th]Beak[/th] 1 +2 P [th]Club[/th] 1 +1 T Y [th]Dagger[/th] 1 +1/-1 P/S Y [th]Fist Axe[/th] 1 0 S [th]Mace/Hammer[/th] 1-2 +1 C [th]Thicket Knife[/th] 1 -1/+1 P*/S [th]Trumpet Axe[/th] 1 0 C Y [th](Unarmed)[/th] 1 -1 T Beak: A narrow-bladed pick useful for piercing armor. Club: A short wooden club (or bone, perhaps).  A metal-shod club becomes a mace. Dagger: A dagger, either of the normal variety or the punching kind (a katar). Fist Axe: Like brass knuckles with a sharp crescent-shaped blade affixed. Mace/Hammer: A metal-shod crushing instrument. Thicket Knife: A machete.  Some may not have points at all (and thus can't make piercing attacks). Trumpet Axe: A small axe, often with a triangular or trumpet-shaped blade. [th]Medium[/th][th]Grip[/th][th]Damage[/th][th]Type[/th][th]Throw[/th] [th]Crescent Axe[/th] 1-2 +1 C [th]Cudgel[/th] 1-2 +1 T [th]Leaf Sword[/th] 1-2 +1/+1 P/S [th]Saber[/th] 1-2 0/+2 P/S Crescent Axe: A single-bladed battle axe. Cudgel: A larger club or short staff. Leaf Sword: A sword with a straight, tapering blade. Saber: A sword with a curved blade. [th]Long[/th][th]Grip[/th][th]Damage[/th][th]Type[/th][th]Throw[/th] [th]Greatsaber[/th] 2 +1/+3 P/S [th]Helmbreaker[/th] 2 +2/+1 C/P [th]Spear/Trident[/th] 1-2 +1/0 P/S* Y [th]Staff[/th] 2 +1 T [th]Warbeak[/th] 2 +3 P Greatsaber: An oversized saber, longer but usually with a thinner blade. Helmbreaker: A two-handed mace with a short blade or spike on the end. Spear/Trident: A normal spear or trident.  If it is used one-handed, it can't make slashing attacks. Staff: An ordinary staff. Warbeak: A large war-pick or 'dagger-axe.' [th]Very Long[/th][th]Grip[/th][th]Damage[/th][th]Type[/th][th]Throw[/th] [th]Polearm[/th] 2 +2/+1* P/C* [th]Polefan[/th] 2 +1/+2 P/S Polearm: Any number of long pole weapons; the posted numbers represent a halberd or other polearm with a spear point and an axe blade.  A lance (long spear) has only a piercing attack.  A sword-bladed polearm, such as a partisan or fauchard, deals slashing damage instead of crushing. Polefan: A polearm with a spearhead on one end and a crescent or fan-shaped blade on the other. Missile Weapons Melee weapons have one additional attribute that ranged weapons lack, prep. Preparation (Prep) indicates the amount of preparation time needed to fire a ranged weapon.  Preparation time is in addition to the actual round in which the attack takes place.  The figure given assumes that ammunition is readily available '" for example, a javelin held in the hand, arrows stuck into the ground, or a sling stone in the off hand.  If ammunition is harder to access '" for example, a javelin strapped to a shield, arrows in a quiver, or sling stones in a belt pouch, prep time increases by 1 round.  Crossbows are the exception to this rule, as you can't really have a bolt 'in hand' while loading a crossbow; the prep time given for crossbows assumes that the missiles are in a pouch or quiver. [th]Ranged[/th][th]Grip[/th][th]Damage[/th][th]Type[/th][th]Prep[/th] [th]Blowgun[/th]    2 -1* P 1 [th]Bola[/th] 1 0* T 1 [th]Bow[/th] 2* - - - (Short) - +1 P 2 (Long) - +2 P 2 [th]Crossbow[/th] 2 - - - (Arbalest) - +4 P 5 (Heavy) - +3 P 4 (Light) - +2 P 3 (Repeating) - 0 P 0* (Stonebow) - +1 T 3 [th]Javelin[/th] 1 +2 P 1 [th]Net[/th] 1 * P 1* [th]Sling[/th] 2* +1 C 2 [th]Throwing Knife[/th] 1 +1 P 1 Blowgun: A hollow pipe for blowing small darts.  A blowgun deals no damage in combat; if the attacker's result would indicate damage, the defender is instead afflicted with any poison or other toxin smeared on the dart. Bola: Three weights connected by rope, twirled and thrown in the hand.  Bolas cannot deal more than 1 point of damage.  They may entangle an opponent if they hit, even if no damage is dealt. Bow: A bow, long or short, usually made of grass (that is, bamboo-like plants) or cane.  A small shield can be wielded with a bow. Crossbow, Arbalest: A specialized armor-piercing crossbow favored by Iskites.  Arbalests have steel prods and are usually spanned by windlass. Crossbow, Heavy: A dedicated war crossbow spanned by a belt claw or cranequin. Crossbow, Light: A versatile crossbow used for hunting or skirmishing.  Light crossbows are spanned by hand with the assistance of a stirrup. Crossbow, Repeating: A crossbow that fires small, featherless bolts from a 10-round magazine.  It is weak, inaccurate, and short-ranged, but can fire extremely quickly.  Prep time between magazines is 5 rounds; this increases to 15 rounds if the magazine must be refilled. Crossbow, Stonebow: A stonebow is basically a double-stringed light crossbow that fires stone or clay spheres.  It is almost exclusively used for hunting game because its missiles will not damage an animal's pelt like a bolt will. Javelin: A light, flexible spear designed for throwing.  If a javelin is used as a melee weapon, treat it as a spear with medium reach (instead of long) and no slashing attack. Net: A circular, heavy-duty net made for combat.  These nets have a rope attached to them that the thrower keeps in the hand, and usually have lead or stone weights around the edge.  Nets do no damage, but may entangle an opponent if they hit.  Nets must be folded to throw effectively, and an unfolded net '" for instance, a net you have pulled back after a missed throw '" has its prep time increased by 2. Sling: A simple string with a pouch for hurling stone or lead shot at high speed.  A small shield can be wielded with a sling. Throwing Knife: A small blade designed specifically for throwing, often with multiple sharp edges to maximize the chances of a wounding hit.[/spoiler] [spoiler=Part 6 - Disease and Poison] VI. Disease and Poison[/size] Poison and disease are unique hazards that sap a character's Health and other attributes directly. A Note on Health Checks Health is not a primary attribute, and characters typically do not use Health to make checks.  Disease and poison are the exceptions - to stave off their effects, a character must make successful checks using his Health as if it were a primary attribute.  A character uses their current Health to make the check, modified as it is by any existing wounds, diseases, poisons, or other factors. Factors that impose penalties to attribute checks, including those caused by disease and poison, do not affect Health checks unless they specifically state that they do. Disease Disease is a common part of everyday life.  Though disease can be a serious matter, serious diseases are not always life-threatening.  Many ailments can disable a character but are not ultimately fatal unless the character was already wounded, diseased, or otherwise weakened.  Minor diseases are not covered here and should probably be ignored as an unnecessary complication. Diseases have different stages.  When a character is exposed to a disease, he must make a Health check against a TN that depends on the individual disease to avoid contracting it.  If he does contract it, he will move into Stage 1 of the disease after a certain incubation period.  A character must make a Health check at regular intervals; a failure will cause the character to progress to the next stage, while a success will keep him at the stage he is at.  Two successes in a row will move him back to a previous stage; if he was already at Stage 1, he is cured.  Some diseases have stages that require two or more consecutive failures to move on instead of one (fewer failures than this do nothing).  The effects of stages are not cumulative '" a character suffers only the effects listed for the stage he is currently in. A disease is defined by the following characteristics: Vector indicates the means by which the disease spreads. Contraction TN indicates the TN a character must make a Health check against to avoid contracting the disease if he is exposed. Incubation Period indicates how long the disease takes to begin affecting the character after the character has contracted the disease. Stage X indicates the symptoms of the stage, as well as the Health check TN for that stage and the check time (how often the character makes checks when in this stage). Notes includes any other comments. Two sample diseases are provided. Weeping Sickness Vector: Drinking water Contraction TN: 8 Incubation Period: 1 week Stage 1: TN 7, 4 days.  Itchiness and inflammation around the eyes. Stage 2: TN 8, 2 days.  Highly irritated eyes, which water continuously.  -2 penalty to Perception when sight is involved.  -1 Health. Stage 3: TN 7, 2 days (2 failures to progress).  Blindness, continued eye watering.  Perception and skill checks that rely on sight are impossible.  -1 Health Stage 4: TN 5, 1 day.  Searing eye pain, permanent blindness.  -1 to all attribute and skill checks.  -1 Health. Notes: A character who progresses to Stage 4 remains blind even if the disease is cured. Saffron Blight Vector: Ingested spores (usually in corrupted fruit) Contraction TN: N/A.  Contraction is assured if exposed. Incubation Period: 4 days Stage 1: TN 8, 2 days.  Nausea and muscle tremors.  -1 Coordination, Health, and Breath. Stage 2: TN 8, 1 day.  Continued muscle tremors, severe nausea, and occasional hallucinations.  -1 to all attribute and skill checks. -2 Health and Breath. Stage 3: TN 10, 1 day.  Victim's skin turns a yellowish color.  Hair falls out.  Muscle tremors continue.  Continual hallucinations; victim is incoherent and completely unaware of his surroundings.  -2 to all attribute and skill checks, assuming they are possible. -3 Health and Breath. Stage 4: TN 12, 12 hours (2 failures needed to progress).  Saffron moss sprouts in patches from yellow skin.  Muscle tremors continue.  Victim is aware of his surroundings but now permanently insane.  -1 to all attributes and skill checks, in addition to  -3 Cunning, Aptitude, Charm, Health, and Breath. Stage 5: Death.  Victim becomes an Abomination under the control of the Saffron Moss within 6 hours. Notes: Three consecutive successful checks, rather than two, are required to move back to a previous stage.  Natural recovery is impossible; a character at Stage 1 cannot be cured of the disease naturally regardless of how many successful checks he makes.  Only Mosscutter Tea can cure a character afflicted with this disease.  A character who progresses to Stage 4 remains insane even if the disease is cured. Poison Poison is quite dangerous; it can fell a mighty warrior as easily as the meekest craftsman.  Unlike disease, which a character can often recover from on his own, poison typically can only be delayed by a character's robust health.  Poisons progress to their inexorable conclusion - whatever that is - unless an antidote can be found. Poisons work in stages, like diseases.  Unlike diseases, however, no amount of successful checks can cause a character to return to a previous stage.  Once the final stage is reached (provided that stage is not death), the victim begins to recover as soon as a successful check is made.  A recovering person ceases to be affected by the symptoms of the disease except for any Health loss, which must be healed normally as if it were Health damage caused by a wound.  Some diseases may also cause permanent effects that linger even after the toxin is no longer in the system. All poisons have a potency that indicates how strong this particular batch of the poison is.  A poison has a 'base potency' that may be augmented depending on how skilled the poison's creator was.  A poison's potency is the TN that the victim must achieve to delay the effects of the poison; in addition, a poison's stages have a minimum potency, below which the effects of that stage (and subsequent stages) fail to occur.  A poison's potency degrades over time, depending on the type of poison.  A 'dose' is considered to be a normal amount for the poison (e.g. the amount one could smear on an arrowhead for an injury poison); each additional dose increases the effective potency by 1, but may also make the poison easier to detect. A poison's potency may be reduced by an antidote; if a poison's potency is reduced below the minimum potency of the stage the victim is currently in, the victim regresses to the highest stage allowed by the potency as soon as the next check would be made.  If the potency is reduced to less than the minimum potency necessary for Stage 1 of the poison, it is cured completely as soon as the next check would be made.  Additional doses of an antidote decrease the potency by 1 per additional dose, but only up to the number of additional doses of poison (thus, more than two doses of an antidote are ineffective if the victim has only taken two doses of poison). A poison is defined by the following characteristics: Type indicates how the poison is introduced into the system. Dormancy Period indicates how long the poison takes to begin affecting the character after the character has been dosed. Base Potency is the standard, unmodified potency of a single dose of the poison. Decay indicates how quickly the potency of the poison decays under different conditions.  A poison with a potency of zero is inert and useless. Antidote notes whether there is a known antidote and by how much the antidote reduces the potency.  Some antidotes may completely counteract a poison regardless of potency. Stage X indicates the symptoms of the stage, the check time (how often the character makes checks when in this stage), and the minimum potency (MP) needed for the stage to take effect. Notes includes any other comments. Two sample poisons are provided. Boltwheel Poison Type: Injury Dormancy Period: 1 round Base Potency: 6 Decay: 1d6/week in a dry, airtight container.  1d6/day otherwise. Antidote: Boltwheel root paste (-4 potency), Weaver's Fern (-2 potency) Stage 1: MP 1, 2 minutes.  Dizziness, elevated heart rate, muscle weakness.  -1 Str, Coo, Per. Stage 2: MP 4, 5 minutes.  Victim loses consciousness.  -2 Health. Stage 3: MP 6.  Death. Notes: Boltwheel poison is a nearly transparent, slightly pinkish liquid that is fast acting and highly lethal.  Its use by assassins is uncommon, however, because of its instability. Arsenic Type: Contact or Ingested Dormancy Period: 1 minute Base Potency: 5 Decay: Does not decay in a dry environment.  1d6/month otherwise. Antidote: Garlic (-1 potency), Rot-lily (-2 potency) Stage 1: MP 1, 5 minutes.  Nausea.  -1 Sta.  -1 Health Stage 2: MP 3, 5 minutes.  Abdominal pain, severe nausea, vomiting.  -1 to all attribute and skill checks.  -2 Health. Stage 3: MP 4, 5 minutes.  Delirium, severe convulsions.  -3 to all attribute and skill checks.  -2 Health. Stage 4: MP 5, 5 minutes.  Victim loses consciousness.  -3 Health. Stage 5: MP 6.  Death. Notes: Arsenic is a common tool of the poisoner.  It is common, stable, deadly, and has few effective antidotes.  When derived from realgar, it typically appears as a red powder.  Roasting arsenic powder in air is a dangerous process, but it yields a compound known as 'white arsenic' which has a Base Potency of 6 but is otherwise identical to regular arsenic in its effects.[/spoiler] [spoiler=Part 7 - Powers of the Breath] VII. Powers of the Breath[/size] The Breath flows through all living things and makes all things possible.  Through the pursuit of mastery and quality, higher beings can cultivate an unconscious understanding of this universal force that propels their bodies to feats beyond expectations.  A select few seek a truly conscious understanding of the Breath, and seek to sense and manipulate its currents to exert power even beyond their own body; this art is called channeling.  Whether using Feats or Forms, however, all characters rely on the exercise of the Breath. As noted previously, a character's Breath is equal to 1 + the sum of all their synergy bonuses to attributes (but not the attributes themselves, which may be modified by a character's race or other factors). Feats A Feat is an unconscious use of the Breath to perform strenuous tasks better, more quickly, or heedlessly of pain.  Any character may use a Feat, barring special circumstances detailed below.  No particular skill is necessary. List of Feats A character may only spend one point of Breath on any particular Feat in a single round, but may spend points on any number of different Feats in a single round so long as the number of points spent does not exceed their Stamina attribute.  A character with a Stamina of zero may still spend a point of Breath on a single Feat per round. The use of a Feat must be declared after a character has decided their action for the round but before any rolls have been made.  A Feat's effects last for a single round. Swiftness: Ignore the usual -2 penalty for reducing the prep time of a ranged attack by 1 (this feat may only be used once for any single attack), OR gain a +2 bonus to Evasion rolls. Power: Gain a +1 bonus to all Strength attribute rolls and all skill rolls with Strength as a primary attribute. Endurance: Gain a +1 bonus to all Stamina attribute rolls and all skill checks with Stamina as a primary attribute. Reflexes: Add a +2 bonus to the margin of success of any successful riposte made, OR force an opponent to forfeit the initiative during a split initiative round following a tie roll (unless they also use this Feat). Fortitude: Decrease any shock penalty you suffer in the current round by 2. Feats and Encumbrance While wearing armor does not interfere with the Breath itself, extraordinary physical acts of strength and speed are difficult to perform in heavy or cumbersome gear.  Whenever a character uses a Feat while wearing any kind of armor, he must make a Coordination attribute roll for each feat used against a TN that varies according to the type of armor worn.  This TN is increased by 1 for each additional feat the character attempts in the same round.  If this roll fails, the feat has no effect but the point of Breath is still spent.   At the GM's option, a character with a heavy or otherwise cumbersome load may have their TN for this roll increased beyond what their armor would indicate. A character who is entangled (e.g. by a bola, net, vines, etc.) who attempts to use a Feat, assuming the use of a feat is even possible, has the TN of this Coordination roll increased by 4.  Even if they are wearing no armor, they must still make a Coordination check against a base TN of 4. The Fortitude feat alone is exempt from all the above.  It may be used regardless of a character's armor, encumbrance, or freedom of movement. Obstructing Feats With few exceptions, all uses of the Breath require a character to have free access to its currents.  A character that is drowning, choking, being strangled, or otherwise unable to breathe freely cannot use feats, just as they cannot use (most) Channeling forms. [/spoiler] [spoiler=Example 1: Character Creation] Let's explore the process of character creation now that we've got an idea of a character's basic statistics.  We'll begin with a written character background. Sseswa is a female Iskite from Valssasth, the 'City of Scales,' a large village in the Anath Archipelago in the Sea of Netai.  She was a child when the Iskites of the Right Orientation Alliance marched into her village, freeing it from alien rule, but their hopes were dashed when the Netai Confederation defeated the Alliance and conquered her home in the Third Netai War.  She had been the pupil of a warrior of her village, destined to become one of Valssasth's professional guardians, but the conquering Umbril abolished Valssasth's warrior caste, fearing that they could form the core of a pro-Alliance rebellion.  Sseswa became a wanderer among the Iskite villages of Sekah, telling tales and singing songs of her village and its stories to earn food and lodging.  When the Fifth Netai War began, she volunteered with the Alliance to free her home, but the Alliance was eventually defeated and dismantled by the victors.  Unwelcome in her homeland and scornful of the other Iskite communities that failed her village, she departed with her saber and lyra to the Black Circle, believing that she is one of the last vessels of her people's identity and has an obligation to share her heritage with others so the Valssasth she knew as a child will not be entirely forgotten. Race and Culture Sseswa's race is Iskite.  The attribute adjustments for an Iskite are +1 Per, +1 Apt, and -1 Cun.  Iskites are perceptive and quick learners, but tend to be inflexible and rigidly axiomatic and are  less equipped to deal with rapidly changing situations as a result.  Sseswa's attributes are now: Str 1 Sta 1 Coo 1 Per 2 Cun 0 Apt 2 Cha 1 Sseswa's culture is Sekah Iskite, which will inform our later decisions about which languages she receives, as well as how her player roleplays her in the game.  Presently, however, we're focusing on mechanics, so this does not come into play in this example of character creation.  The GM may decide that certain cultures also add minor bonuses to certain skills closely associated with them, but this is optional. Skills Now that our attributes have been modified for race, we are ready to buy skills.  For this campaign, the GM has ruled that characters begin with 15 skill points to assign as they wish. Sseswa is a skilled warrior, but also a musician and storyteller, who probably has some survival skills from traveling between the Iskite villages of the Netai.  Starting characters are given 15 skill points to assign as they wish.  Sseswa can have up to 3 ranks in Perception or Aptitude skills, up to 1 rank in Cunning skills, and up to 2 in everything else.  Our ultimate decision is: Melee Combat (Str|Cun): 2 ranks Survival (Sta|Apt): 2 ranks Evasion (Coo|Per): 2 ranks Observation (Per|Sta): 1 rank Music (Apt|Coo), Stringed: 3 ranks Herbalism (Apt|Per): 1 rank Oration (Ch

It seems really interesting...will keep an eye on it!

Keep it up... and once you finish you are obligated to run a CJ game online :P

Development Decisions

So I thought I'd go into a bit of "why."

Why not dice pools?
I got pretty enamored with dice pools since I learned about and then played Riddle of Steel some months ago.  It's a fun system if you've got the patience to learn it.  I decided, however, that ultimately the dice system was just too complicated.  In TRoS, you could alter probability in multiple different ways:

You could increase/decrease the number of dice in the pool.
You could increase/decrease the number needed for a dice to count as a success.
You could increase/decrease the number of successes required for a task or result.

The upshot of this is that you actually need a statistics major to understand the full implication of what you're doing.  Which is better, getting 1 additional dice in the pool, or making it easier for the dice to roll a success?  How does that change depending on the size of the pool?  What about multiple successes?  All of this is interesting but it's not really necessary, especially if all I'm interested in is replicating a moderately faithful standard deviation from a norm.

Standard deviations are what Fudge dice do best.  They come up +1, 0, or -1 most of the time, with the largest results (+/-4) much more difficult to achieve than rolling a 20 on a d20.  The d6-d6 method does make things a little more random than standard Fudge, but at least I can look at a probability table and know what the hell I'm doing.

Why 4?
"4 ranks per attribute advancement" is totally and completely arbitrary.  In NTSA, it was 5.  Too high and too low are both bad, but it's hard to know what is what without actual testing.  Since I'm nowhere near that point yet, 4 is really a placeholder.

What happened to hard/soft caps?
NTSA's soft and hard caps were needlessly complicated.  I recently learned about FATE's "pyramid" system in which you have to have a bottom-heavy skill assortment - if you have X skills at level 3, then you need X+1 at level 2, and X+2 at level 1 (that's not really how FATE works but you get the idea).  The idea behind all of it, of course, is to prevent super-specialization that results in someone being a god among men at one specific thing (usually this is combat) but absolutely sucking at everything else.

FATE tries to explain why you might need to take a totally unrelated skill (basketweaving, I think, is their example) before advancing a skill like swordfighting, and it's moderately persuasive.  I feel that my system is better, however, because it creates similar limitations in specific categories.  With Synergy, at least when you're taking other skills to better your combat skill, you are taking skills that are related to it instead of just grabbing any skill to meet your requirement.

But again, "attribute+2" is totally arbitrary.  It's another thing that will have to be borne out by playtesting in the distant future.

I am captivated. The system itself is intriguing, but the glimpse into the thought processes that support it is invaluable.

Development Decisions II

A Long Post Approacheth

More recent modifications to TRoS by the developers introduced a sort of static skill roll, where the number needed for a success is set and unchanging (6 or 7 out of a d10, don't remember exactly).  This takes one variable out of the mix... but if the odds of success on a die is now fixed to 50% or close to it, why are you rolling d10s?  Why not just flip a lot of coins?

I can't deny that there is a certain tactile element to dice that people enjoy.  I enjoy it too, which is why I'd never do a diceless system (well, there are other reasons, but that's one).  Reading the comments of the TRoS developers, however, were enlightening - there were forum comments like "we know more about probability than some of you assume."  No doubt, but the whole "fixed-number-for-success" mechanic struck me as something of a concession to the fact that the developers are probably the only ones who know how TRoS's dice mechanic actually works.

Zero-ing dice

But there is another problem with dice pools.  Well, it's not really a problem, but calling it a feature seems a little euphemistic.  Consider d20 - a simple mechanic that can "zero" anywhere.  By this, I mean that the difference between a dude with a +2 modifier to something and a dude with a +5 modifier to the same thing is exactly the same, mechanically speaking, as if their modifiers were +0 and +3, +1,002 and +1,005, or -17 and -14.  A difference of 3 is a difference of 3 regardless of where you are on the scale.

That doesn't work for dice pools.  The difference between someone with 5 dice and someone with 6 dice is very, very different than the difference between someone with 1 die and someone with 2 dice.  Where you "zero" the system is very important because the statistics don't scale like d20 does; the more dice you're dealing with, the less important a single die is.

Negative Territory

And what if you want that guy with 1 die to get weaker?  What do you do, ask him to throw zero dice?  Negative two dice?  Yeah, sorry... 1 is the bare minimum.  You can find other ways to penalize people below 1 die, of course, like raising the threshold of getting a success on that lonely die, but you're throwing your curve of probability out the window.  The difference between 1 die and 2 dice is huge.  The difference between 1d10 success on 7 and 1d10 success on 6?  Not so much.  And there's only so long you can do this for, because eventually you just can't make things any shittier, while d20 laughs at you because they can take the negatives as low as they want.  Say what you will about d20, but nobody can make a character as theoretically bad as they can.

So the point is that dice pool systems have to zero themselves very carefully.  If PCs start with their attributes at 1, there is going to be a very steep curve in which PCs gain huge relative power (1 to 2 is twice the dice!) and then trail off.  It means the opponents they face early on will be really tough even with only one or two more dice, while later opponents will have to really pour on the dice to gain a substantive mechanical advantage.

But this, though it presents some difficulties, is attractive for low power campaigns.  So you improved your Strength from 6 dice to 7?  Well, statistically, that's not really that impressive compared to the boost that 1 to 2 gave you, and returns just keep diminishing from there.  There is definitely an intrinsic advantage to spreading out your skills, because improving bad scores is generally a better use of your effort than further pushing great ones.

Am I Reconsidering?

No, I'm not reversing on dice pools - I still think they're unnecessary.  I do, however, like the idea of a system that presents a power "curve" that levels off, and when I say this I mean that the actual mechanics level off, not just that higher levels take more xp/time/whatever to achieve.  World of Warcraft has made it clear to everyone that grinding is no obstacle to an interested player, and scaling advancement levels doesn't change the fact that once you actually get there, you're insanely powerful.  The fact that D&D 3rd ed has scaling experience point levels doesn't change the fact that epic level characters are gods among men.

So how can I retain the simplicity of a Fudge-style dice mechanic while getting some scaling out of the deal?  That, I think, is the primary dilemma here.  Fudge presents a bit of a kludge solution - you can't get better than a certain level.  It just doesn't exist unless you're playing a superhero campaign.  One can argue that this is realistic - there are certain limits to human capacity.  Real life, however, is closer to the scaling dice pool; the difference between the 10 best swimmers in the world is very, very slight compared to the difference between any of them and me, but they still do practice.  It's not that there's a hard cap, but that each "level" they go up gets smaller and smaller in terms of benefit, to the point where shaving a millisecond off your time is quite an achievement.

My opinion is that a system with Fudge-style simplicity and standard deviation randomness plus TRoS-style dice scaling with diminishing returns would basically be the most awesome game system of all time.  But how do I do that?  Synergy doesn't really have the answer.  (Yet?)

The Array System

Ok, this is a bit of a departure from Synergy as it currently exists, but I was thinking about the question I just asked myself.  How do I make a non-dice pool system, with randomness based on a normal distribution, that also scales to give mechanical diminishing returns?  Well, I think I answered that, though perhaps not in a very useful way.  The Array System is what you get when you combine the probability table of a dice pool system with a normal distribution dice mechanic.

The Array

The Array System is based on a probability table.  The numbers of the table are based on the probability that, if you roll X number of dice, at least one of these dice will show a "success" where success is defined as a chance equal to 1/N.  N is our "index number."  The higher N is, the "smoother" the curve - in other words, low index numbers will give us a very steep system in which higher levels fall in effectiveness dramatically, while a high index number will give us a system in which higher skill levels only gradually start to lose effectiveness.  Here's a sample table with levels 1-10 for an N of 6.[note]You can see the diminishing returns - the difference between level 1 and 2 is 14 points, while the difference between 9 and 10 is only 3 points.[/note]

[th]Level[/th][th]Score[/th]

1	17
2	31
3	42
4	52
5	60
6	67
7	72
8	77
9	81
10	84

The Randomness

Now we add our normal distribution dice.  Normally I'd ask isomage about this first, but he's not here and I'm lazy, so we're going to skip it and go with d20-d20 instead.  This gives us a probability distribution that's basically pyramid-shaped.  There would be significantly fewer outliers if we used a method that actually gave us a normal distribution, but we'll assume for this example that the GM and players want some really random results.

The Skill Check

In the Array System, the GM sets a target number.  The player notes what his skill level is, takes the score indicated for that skill level, rolls our random dice, and adds the result to this score.  If the result is equal to or higher than the target number, the skill check is successful.  With our current dice distribution, the player's score could be modified from -19 to +19.

Let's say the target number is 75 for a certain task.  A player with Level 1 skill can't hope to accomplish it; he can only get a maximum of 17+19=36 even with supreme luck (the chance to get +19 is 1 in 400 - not good).  The lowest level player who could manage it is one with L5 skill, and he'd have to get at least a +15 (15 out of 400).  Here's a rough rundown of everybody's chances to get that 75.

[th]Skill[/th][th]Chance[/th]

5	3.75%
6	19.5%
7	38.25%
8	61.75%
9	77.25%
10	86.25%

You can see how the scaling works.  Our weird d20-d20 dice warps it a little bit, but you can at least glimpse the concept here.  If we wanted to make higher levels pay off even less, we could always go back to the original table and decrease the index number we used to generate the array.

Conclusion

It seems like array mechanics would actually be fairly flexible.  It's just a matter of tweaking your index number until you're satisfied with the curve and finding a method of dice rolling that gives the distribution you want.  The array allows you to use the randomness of a system like Fudge with the diminishing returns of high levels that dice pool systems boast, without the massively complicated probabilities of dice pools that I find to be unnecessary.

What are the weaknesses of the system?  Well, the most obvious one is aesthetic - you have to look up the score for your skill level, which is a seemingly arbitrary number.  This may not be appealing to all people.  There may well be some statistical errors I've made or problems I've overlooked.  I blame the late night for any errors and take no personal responsibility whatsoever.
[note=(Un)originality]I also accept no responsibility if this, or something like it, has already been done.  I think it's likely that someone has indeed made probability tables like this before and used them for the same purpose.  Since I haven't seen it around, however, I thought it would be worth posting about.[/note]
Compatibility

This could conceivably work with a Synergy-like mechanic.  All the Array system does is tell you what to do with skill ranks; the main point behind Synergy is how you get skill ranks and how skill ranks interact with attributes.  I'm going to have to think about the Array System a lot harder, however, before I decide whether it's worth including.

Development Decisions III

Well, that whole Array thing is something for another time.  It was just an idea I got; now we let it stew for a while and come back to it later.  In the meantime, I've posted Part 2 of Synergy, a short little part about the "Integrity Attributes" of Health and Breath.

I've never been satisfied with the idea that Constitution/Stamina/whatever should impact how easily a character gets cut to ribbons.  One's physical constitution certainly impacts one's resistance to disease, but poison is a stretch, and you certainly can't take a sword blow any better because of it.  Stamina, which is what I use here, is even farther removed from health.  The upshot is that in Synergy, health is basically static, unaffected by either character advancement or abilities (though in Synergy, those are the same thing).  You can learn to defend yourself better, but if you get stabbed, you are in as much trouble as the baker's apprentice.  Such is the fragility of life.

Breath, as I mention, is a setting-specific concept.  You can read more about it in the thread/wiki, but in CJ the Breath is both the "life force" of the world and the actual, physical wind that living things breathe.  This leads to some rather interesting situations (for instance, you can't use magic if you're drowning).  Aside from being a "mana pool" of sorts, Breath points function a bit like Action Points, allowing even non-spellcasting characters to get some mileage out of them.

Breath advancing with attributes seems like a curious choice, but it works in the context of CJ.  In the setting, though all living things have the Breath within them, the truly great are believed to be more strongly imbued with it.  Mastery is intimately connected with mysticism '" the legendary blacksmith is not just legendary because of technical merit, but because the quest for mastery over metal has also yielded mastery over the self, and no true legendary feat can be accomplished without self-mastery.  Anyone who is good at anything is considered to be more strongly imbued with the Breath than a novice, even if they've never studied the control of the Breath formally.  That control is called Channeling (basically, CJ spellcasting), and it's a skill that uses Breath points.  Those who have no points in the skill can still have a strong life-force, they just don't have the expertise to do anything more with it than augment their mundane efforts (what the "focus" mechanic is supposed to represent).

Quote from: PolycarpDevelopment Decisions III

Well, that whole Array thing is something for another time.  It was just an idea I got; now we let it stew for a while and come back to it later.  In the meantime, I've posted Part 2 of Synergy, a short little part about the "Integrity Attributes" of Health and Breath.

I've never been satisfied with the idea that Constitution/Stamina/whatever should impact how easily a character gets cut to ribbons.  One's physical constitution certainly impacts one's resistance to disease, but poison is a stretch, and you certainly can't take a sword blow any better because of it.  Stamina, which is what I use here, is even farther removed from health.  The upshot is that in Synergy, health is basically static, unaffected by either character advancement or abilities (though in Synergy, those are the same thing).  You can learn to defend yourself better, but if you get stabbed, you are in as much trouble as the baker's apprentice.  Such is the fragility of life.

Breath, as I mention, is a setting-specific concept.  You can read more about it in the thread/wiki, but in CJ the Breath is both the "life force" of the world and the actual, physical wind that living things breathe.  This leads to some rather interesting situations (for instance, you can't use magic if you're drowning).  Aside from being a "mana pool" of sorts, Breath points function a bit like Action Points, allowing even non-spellcasting characters to get some mileage out of them.

Breath advancing with attributes seems like a curious choice, but it works in the context of CJ.  In the setting, though all living things have the Breath within them, the truly great are believed to be more strongly imbued with it.  Mastery is intimately connected with mysticism '" the legendary blacksmith is not just legendary because of technical merit, but because the quest for mastery over metal has also yielded mastery over the self, and no true legendary feat can be accomplished without self-mastery.  Anyone who is good at anything is considered to be more strongly imbued with the Breath than a novice, even if they've never studied the control of the Breath formally.  That control is called Channeling (basically, CJ spellcasting), and it's a skill that uses Breath points.  Those who have no points in the skill can still have a strong life-force, they just don't have the expertise to do anything more with it than augment their mundane efforts (what the "focus" mechanic is supposed to represent).

So do you see mastery in one skill allowing a person an easier path to mastery of the breath?

Quote from: NomadicSo do you see mastery in one skill allowing a person an easier path to mastery of the breath?

One skill, or many skills.  Once nice thing about it is that channelers can't be all-powerful.  A channeler must make a trade-off between power and resources; if he specializes in channeling to the exclusion of everything else, he'll be able to do a lot with Breath but will run out of it very quickly.  A more broadly skilled channeler won't have access to the same high-level forms, but will be able to use more forms and for a much longer period of time (and will have other skills to fall back on if channeling is ineffective).

The whole Breath thing is better covered in fluff terms here (http://www.thecbg.org/wiki/index.php?title=Breath).

First off, like everybody else here I like the idea behind this system. I have been interested in the concepts behind game systems and that mythical "ultimate system" for some time. Yours is a very elegant one, and the synergy feature is interesting and, I think, fun.
Are there any limits to how far you can take your synergy though? It might balance itself out over time, but is there an actual limit to how far an ability can go? Also, it's difficult to relate the ability scores to the actual physical capabilities of a character. What is the average of a person? Is a person with 4 in str strong and muscular or just somewhat well-trained?
I'm not sure about your arguments on the whole getting-stabbed thing. While I agree that you shouldn't let it scale with some ability (as you'll risk ending up with some kind of unkillable character), there must be some factors which have an influence on whether you'll die from getting stabbed, be they high pain tolerance, strong bones, or a vestigial kidney.
Will all character modification and advancement be in terms of skills/abilities? Or will you implement "feats" or something akin to that.
But looking forward to where you're taking this :)

I love how you can't use magic in CJ while drowning by the way; it's fun when there are some unforeseen consequences of your own design decisions.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowFirst off, like everybody else here I like the idea behind this system. I have been interested in the concepts behind game systems and that mythical "ultimate system" for some time. Yours is a very elegant one, and the synergy feature is interesting and, I think, fun.

Are there any limits to how far you can take your synergy though? It might balance itself out over time, but is there an actual limit to how far an ability can go? Also, it's difficult to relate the ability scores to the actual physical capabilities of a character. What is the average of a person? Is a person with 4 in str strong and muscular or just somewhat well-trained?[/quote]kinds[/i] of strength people have is needlessly simulationist for me; I consider that something that can fall under roleplaying.  A system is needed only to determine the outcome of attempts, not to reflect a character's physique in every detail.

QuoteI'm not sure about your arguments on the whole getting-stabbed thing. While I agree that you shouldn't let it scale with some ability (as you'll risk ending up with some kind of unkillable character), there must be some factors which have an influence on whether you'll die from getting stabbed, be they high pain tolerance, strong bones, or a vestigial kidney.

prevention[/i] - if you're skilled, whether in fighting, sneaking, or talking, hopefully you can avoid getting stabbed in the first place.  Once you are stabbed, it's the first aid/healing skills of your allies you must rely on.

QuoteWill all character modification and advancement be in terms of skills/abilities? Or will you implement "feats" or something akin to that.

I love how you can't use magic in CJ while drowning by the way; it's fun when there are some unforeseen consequences of your own design decisions.[/quote]
It also means that when against a powerful channeler, your best bet might just be to grab his neck - strangling works equally well.

I'm not sure I've fully grasped all the implications of this - for example, does that mean that fish aren't really living because they don't breathe air?  I suppose water-breathing creatures must have some means of taking the Breath even through water; I haven't thought of it much.  It gets especially weird for the Umbril, who don't have lungs - they breathe through their skin.  It's not possible to strangle them, but presumably one could drown them so long as they are fully submerged.  And how much skin is necessary?  If an Umbril can just stick its arm out of the water, can it still breathe?  What about a single tendril (finger)?

Well, then this might be the "ultimate system" for you :)
Don't you think there'll be a lack of advancement options if you can only really upgrade your skill? You could have certain "milestones" appear when your level in certain skills or abilities reaches certain levels.
if you can grab his throat you might as well perforate his lung with a knife i guess ^^ But true, if it comes to stopping him from throwing some nasty spell at your face strangling might be better than, for example, keeping him from gesturing with his hand.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowDon't you think there'll be a lack of advancement options if you can only really upgrade your skill? You could have certain "milestones" appear when your level in certain skills or abilities reaches certain levels.

if you can grab his throat you might as well perforate his lung with a knife i guess ^^ But true, if it comes to stopping him from throwing some nasty spell at your face strangling might be better than, for example, keeping him from gesturing with his hand.[/quote]Well, channeling right now requires only breathing - there are no gestures, no words, and no material components.  If the form that you're using has no obvious effect (most don't), there's no way for people to know that you're channeling unless they themselves are skilled channelers (in which case they may sense the Breath being used) or if they're close enough to you to hear that you're breathing rather strangely.  The only outward evidence of a powerful form might just be a deep, slow exhale.  Again, Umbril are weird here, as you can't really tell when they are breathing - Umbril channelers can be super-secret about it (but this skin breathing thing does have a downside - they can't just stop breathing like we can, so they automatically breathe in poison gas and other such nasty airborne things that you or I could just hold our breaths and run through).

This may sound powerful, but magic is pretty low-power in CJ.  There are virtually no flashy or direct-damage forms (and certainly no "save-or-die" kinds of forms).  Most create subtle effects or confer bonuses that, while useful, aren't overwhelming.

On a note unrelated to this discussion, but relevant to this thread, I hope to post the beginnings of a combat system soon.

Looking forward to the combat system! Usually one of the more complex parts of system design; of course depending on what way you take it.

Development Decisions IV

Inevitably, a combat system is needed.  There are a few important considerations here.

On Combat

First and foremost, this is a skill system; combat should be treated as a skill.  This is often not the case '" d20 and TRoS, despite their many, many differences, both use mechanics for combat that are completely different from their (non-weapon) skills.  The result can be somewhat disjointed, and in any case the idea of synergy bonuses requires that we integrate physical combat stuff (melee fighting, wrestling, etc.) with physical non-combat stuff (jumping, swimming).  If combat wasn't in the skill system it would destroy Synergy's most basic and integral mechanic.

That said, I think it's inevitable that combat skills are going to be more detailed and with more special rules than most other skills in any system that's not completely ultra-rules-lite.  Not that there's anything wrong with that '" but I imagine Synergy as ideally being sort of rules-medium.  CJ has a lot of odd weapons, weird poisons, and crazy fantasy armors (bark, spider silk, etc.), and I want that to be reflected in the rules.  Iskites can re-grow limbs, and I want that in the rules too.  I want a combat system that edges closer to TRoS, but isn't as meticulously simulationist and doesn't require an entirely different mechanic.

What we currently have is an opposed skill mechanic.  When two characters fight, they roll Melee Combat (or whatever).  Were this a normal skill, whoever had the highest number would win.  The major problem here is a lack of player choice.  We are dangerously close to d20 fighter territory ('I attack it with my sword.  Miss.  I attack it with my sword.  Hit.  I attack'¦').  We could solve this through combat actions '" maneuvers, feats, special moves, and other such things.  I haven't ruled that out yet, but I prefer to have some choice at the core of the system rather than just piling a bunch of maneuvers on top of it.

My Wager

My experience with The Riddle of Steel has made me a fan of the idea of having to choose between offense and defense.  In TRoS, you have a set number of dice in your dice pool for an entire round (which consists of two exchanges), and you must allocate those dice between attacks, defenses, and other special maneuvers.  Putting too much on an attack can be risky, because if it fails, you'll have precious little to defend with on the next exchange.  The 'Combat Wager' is a simpler arrangement that tries to preserve the same trade-off with a different mechanism.

That said, I'm not necessarily set on the wager system - it's just the idea that I like the most right now.  Combat probably requires the most playtesting of any part of a system, because if it's broken the results can be very discouraging to a player.  I've resisted putting too many concrete numbers in for this reason: I could put up a table for the exact modifiers that range and movement gives to the ranged attack TN, or examples of different grades of cover, but these things can always be done later once I'm sure the wager system is something I want to keep.

The Big Caveat

The most glaring drawback to the wager system is that our system is no longer zero-able anywhere.  When all you have to do is win an opposed roll, it doesn't matter if your respective modifier is -20 or +200 as long as the relative distance between your modifier and the opponent's is the same.  Once we start wagering points, however, we are now compelled to make sure characters have positive modifiers (because you can't wager negative numbers, and if your roll result is zero or less you aren't making an attack at all).

This is a bit unfortunate, but it simply means that I have to consider where I want zero to fall.  It may be that with this mechanic it is no longer realistic to start human-ish creatures at +0 for every attribute.  Maybe such creatures should start with, say, all attributes at +1 - this helps us ensure that most characters will easily have at least one point to spend in combat (barring extremely bad luck).

Damage and Wounding

Of course, the biggest omission here is damage.  The combat system at present is all about how one scores a hit - but what happens once that hit is scored?  That, I'm afraid, is something for another day.

Taking another look at Combat and Damage

I do like the combat system at present, though it's a little different from what I've seen before and might come off as a bit intimidating just because of the guesswork involved in the whole wager mechanic.  We shall see.

I've been beating my head against the wall trying to figure out a wound/damage system I liked.  On the one hand, I'm a fan of how TRoS does it (I'm more of a fan of the wounding than the combat itself '" combat in TRoS, with all the maneuvers, tends to require more of a time and research investment than I actually want to make).  On the other, I've been worried that a TRoS-like system might be too complex in comparison to the rest of the ruleset.

After some thinking and chatting, I think I'm leaning towards implementing something very much like TRoS '" but not the regular version.  TRoS also has a free 'Quickstart' version for introducing people to the game, which features simpler mechanics.  What's most relevant is that the Quickstart TRoS damage table is just that '" a table '" as opposed to several pages of them.  Regular TRoS specifies wounds and damage for different damage types and dice tables for hitting different parts of the body depending on what the angle/direction of your blow is; Quickstart TRoS just asks where you are attacking (which body part, as opposed to which vector in space your weapon is moving along).

For those of you who haven't played the system, wounds in TRoS cause three main effects.  Shock is a one-round penalty immediately caused by taking a wound, Pain is a long-term penalty that can only be healed over time, and Blood Loss is 'health damage' that can kill you if you accumulate enough of it.

The Health Problem

Speaking of 'health damage,' I'm not really satisfied with my current Health mechanic.  The problem came up when I was thinking about poisons.  In most systems, you roll to resist poisons based on your physical constitution; Synergy, at present, has no such attribute.  The reason it doesn't have such an attribute is because there are no skills associated with it '" stamina might make you a better runner, but there isn't anything you can 'do' with health.

That means that health, or whatever you want to call it, has to be a separate mechanic, as it currently exists.  But it's not actually something you can make a check with, so how do we do poison and disease resistance rolls?  In addition, since it can't advance by the same system other attributes to (by taking skill points), how do we decide who is more fit/resistant than others?

I'm thinking the answer might be some sort of derived attribute.  I mean, people who are more physically fit have stronger immune systems, and might be more resistant to physical harm and poisons as well.  Maybe Str+Sta or something like that; none of the other attributes are relevant to physical health at all.

Health as designed in most RP systems is what in real life is composed of a persons physical fitness combined with their willpower. No clue if that helps you at all.

I think in most instances that poison will have the same effect on different people. Resisting poison like it's usually done in DnD is fairly unlikely. So you could have poison effects be more inevitable. Perhaps use stamina to keep yourself conscious and alive (I'd say that was a physical exertion) until someone gives you the antidote or otherwise cures you of the ailment. This approach doesn't really help with disease I'll admit.
For wounds, I'd say that having to use tables in game every time someone is hit will take up a lot of time. Alternatively, you could pose some generic penalties during combat, and if severe enough wounds are dealt you can roll on a table when the wounds are inspected later. For instance, you take a warhammer to the chest and is dazed, taking penalties, but you keep on fighting. After the battle comes to an end the medic inspects your wound and the generic penalty instead becomes the penalty associated with "Broken Ribs" for instance. (this is the way Incapacitating Wounds are handled in Unhallowed Metropolis)

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowI think in most instances that poison will have the same effect on different people. Resisting poison like it's usually done in DnD is fairly unlikely. So you could have poison effects be more inevitable. Perhaps use stamina to keep yourself conscious and alive (I'd say that was a physical exertion) until someone gives you the antidote or otherwise cures you of the ailment. This approach doesn't really help with disease I'll admit.

For wounds, I'd say that having to use tables in game every time someone is hit will take up a lot of time. Alternatively, you could pose some generic penalties during combat, and if severe enough wounds are dealt you can roll on a table when the wounds are inspected later. For instance, you take a warhammer to the chest and is dazed, taking penalties, but you keep on fighting. After the battle comes to an end the medic inspects your wound and the generic penalty instead becomes the penalty associated with "Broken Ribs" for instance. (this is the way Incapacitating Wounds are handled in Unhallowed Metropolis)[/quote]
I took a look at Unhallowed Metropolis and the differences don't seem that great - even in UM you still need to look at how severe the damage is (scratch, flesh, serious, incapacitating) and where the damage is inflicted (e.g. a hit to the leg makes you roll to avoid being knocked down), the same two pieces of information used on the TRoS quickstart damage table.  UM damage is more standardized, which is probably good, but I'm not as fond of the idea of calculating penalties after the fact.  I'm sure it speeds up combat, but combat is also designed to be fairly lethal and short, so the use of a table may not be too much of a delay.

I'm going to look more at UM and take it under consideration, so thanks for bringing it up.

I see your point; I'm not saying that UM is the smoothest system ever or that the after-the-fact penalties won't cause complications (e.g. you are in a battle and is disoculated or get your throat slit but continue through the fight until somebody reminds you that you are blind or bleeding to death). But it does keep the in-combat rules few and easy to remember; if the combat is meant to be fast and visceral, looking up a table everytime someone is hit would only hurt that tone. That is, unless you can condense the damage table to a single table so you can employ it in a fast cheat-sheet-like way. Having to flip through a book everytime someone suffers a hit is a pain in my opinion (granted, I can't remember how much space the quickstart TROS damage table takes up, so this might be a superfluous argument).
An interesting idea for health (probably not useful though) would be to make it the average of all your abilities; in a way, most of your abilities could describe some kind of death resistance.
Strength, stamina and coordination are all aspects of physical prowess and bodily health; how well-trained and powrrful your body is. Perception, aptitude, and cunning all contribute to willpower and awareness; the ability to perceive, analyze, and face the situation head on. Charm might in a way either symbolize some kind of personal force of character, a lust for life, or it might simply be a sort of stubbornness allowing you to hang in there and perhaps convince yourself somewhat that you aren't dying. Probably not a useful approach as I said, but thought I'd bring it up.

EDIT: I remember one issue I had with the wager in a lethal system like tRoS: it was not worth it. Whenever you were faced with an enemy you would be an idiot not to put at least half your dice into defense unless you were fighting a particularly inept individual. In effect, being hit just once is so damn painful to your character that relaxing on the defense can only end badly. I like the wager, but this is an issue you should probably find a way around. Perhaps less lethality or some kind of backup defense or loss of advantage instead of instead dismemberment ^^  

So I've posted a damage/wound system.  It ended up looking a little less like TRoS than I originally thought, and there aren't any tables involved (though certainly the information could be put into a table if players found that to be easier).  It's a bit more forgiving than TRoS; the initial shock isn't nearly as bad as TRoS's steep penalties, and level one wounds are not nearly as bad.  I ended up putting the "fatal" level of wounds at level 5, like TRoS does, but that's a bit tentative - it could be shifted upwards if necessary.

CC, I do understand the idea of people being risk-averse when the stakes are higher, and to some extent that's a good thing - I've had plenty of experiences with players in other systems who never worried about going all-out until their hit points were perilously low, and I like the idea of actually caring about your defense from the start of a fight.  Whether the stakes are too high or not I think is something that won't really be known until I actually do some testing.

I think your idea about Health is very interesting, but I'm reluctant to do that here because Breath already relies on all attributes.  Though naturally more experienced characters will tend to have higher derived attributes as well, I want to avoid a situation in which characters necessarily have both a high Breath and Health.

Chiming in a bit late but anyhow... on the poison thing I am in agreement in that it should be more inevitable. Saves shouldn't cure poison, simply weaken it's effect until the next save.

In the case of a serious poison that doesn't go away until death or cure the save simple prolongs life so there is more chance for a cure to be administered (if the poison causes constant damage a save might temporarily shut it off or reduce the amount). Meanwhile with a less serious poison that has the chance to go away over time the save can keep them going until the poison wears off (reduce temporary penalties).

I'm of the same opinion, Nomadic.

I was thinking that poisoning could rely on two checks.  The first would be a check made ahead of time by the poison's creator to see how potent it is (since that can vary quite a bit, especially without modern instruments).  That will determine how far the poison progresses and how fast.  The second check, a Health check made by the target, will be capable of modifying the poison's spread, but not how lethal it will eventually be.

How does blood loss work for wounds taken to already damaged limbs and areas? The wound imparts no penalty by itself, but does it impart blood loss?
Also, when is blood loss rolled for? Right after getting hit? Otherwise the most common forms of death will be suddenly keeping over, exsanguinated, or having one's head chopped off (players tend to go for the head when they have a chance of hitting it). There'll be a lot of severed heads :P
Maybe you should refrain from mentioning actual severing, and just say that it is ruined and death ensues and occasionally describe how the head is severed from the body.
Also, bludgeoning weapons should get some credit; they yield less blood loss and result in no advantages when going for winding or knockout. Also, I'm not sure an arrow to the intestines would result in winding? But it's a nice addition; after all, it's often seen in movies and such.
otherwise it seems rather solid.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowHow does blood loss work for wounds taken to already damaged limbs and areas? The wound imparts no penalty by itself, but does it impart blood loss?

Also, when is blood loss rolled for? Right after getting hit? Otherwise the most common forms of death will be suddenly keeping over, exsanguinated, or having one's head chopped off (players tend to go for the head when they have a chance of hitting it). There'll be a lot of severed heads :P[/quote]not[/i] do this is hopefully going to be the reason people didn't always do this historically - because, the value of the head being what it is, the head was frequently the best protected part.  Plenty of soldiers in history wore a helmet as their only piece of real armor (partially because it was also generally a lot cheaper than body armor).  Wise players (and NPCs) will realize this, and hopefully have to make a choice between striking the tempting but better-armored head vs. the less "squishy" but more poorly protected limbs.

QuoteMaybe you should refrain from mentioning actual severing, and just say that it is ruined and death ensues and occasionally describe how the head is severed from the body.

Also, bludgeoning weapons should get some credit; they yield less blood loss and result in no advantages when going for winding or knockout.[/quote]Also, I'm not sure an arrow to the intestines would result in winding? But it's a nice addition; after all, it's often seen in movies and such.[/quote]Possibly not, though I can't help but think that getting shot anywhere in the torso is going to make breathing significantly more painful.  I could make it so piercing/slashing weapons only do winding to the chest, but I'm a bit wary of putting too many caveats in the system.

Thanks for the great feedback.  I'll be working on this some more soon, though probably not until next month, as I'm leaving shortly for a bit of vacation.

Quote from: PolycarpAs for the "going for the head" problem, I don't have any problem with it; we humans, at least, have a long tradition of going for the face/neck.

The reason that players might not do this is hopefully going to be the reason people didn't always do this historically - because, the value of the head being what it is, the head was frequently the best protected part.  Plenty of soldiers in history wore a helmet as their only piece of real armor (partially because it was also generally a lot cheaper than body armor).  Wise players (and NPCs) will realize this, and hopefully have to make a choice between striking the tempting but better-armored head vs. the less "squishy" but more poorly protected limbs.

If you're going to allow characters to target specific body parts, you might find it useful to somehow represent the creation of openings in one's defense throughout combat. Through my (admittedly meager) experience of sparring I've learned that it can be very difficult to protect your whole body at all times, especially when you're yourself making attacks. It's just a matter of time before some opening in your defense manifests, either through your own mistake or because of your opponent forcing you to block and dodge in a way that will result in one.

Perhaps characters could make a roll at the beginning of each round to determine which part they're failing to guard fully. Attacks to that bodypart would be easier to hit for that round. Higher results on the roll could represent optimal defense, where you don't present any easily exploitable openings.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowHow does blood loss work for wounds taken to already damaged limbs and areas? The wound imparts no penalty by itself, but does it impart blood loss?

That's not how bleeding out works :P

Quote from: NomadicThat's not how bleeding out works :P

wounds[/i] so much as wound states; if your arm is wounded to L3, a subsequent wound at L2 doesn't make the situation much worse.

This is really cool. It makes sense the way you did it, and i've always wanted a way for characters to be able to train in their skill to increase their level, or something like that. Anyway, good job.

Just looked over some more of this, and this + the clockwork junge=beautiful. If you don't mind, I would love to run a game using this system once the full list of skills and stats and stuff is up.

I have been reading over this the last few days, BTW.
I like going for the head, it smacks of the evolution of armor.
Which leads to that question...is armor cover?  
More thoughts later.  Suffice to say that as usual, I agree with LC and am enjoying the though process as much as the result.

Quote from: beautiful. If you don't mind, I would love to run a game using this system once the full list of skills and stats and stuff is up.[/quoteI have been reading over this the last few days, BTW.
I like going for the head, it smacks of the evolution of armor.
Which leads to that question...is armor cover?

I'm always grateful for your comments.  With regards to armor, right now armor works a little differently than cover - cover increases defense against missile attacks, while armor reduces the wound level dealt by a successful melee or missile attack (possibly reducing it to zero - no wound at all).  Cover right now is just an ad hoc bonus given on the judgment of the GM, while armor is going to be a fixed bonus based on the kind of armor you're wearing.

Armor/weapons will probably be the next phase of the project, so stay tuned for specifics on that.

OK.  I am all tuned up and in.  
How do you think your gradiation on skills will stand up to character growth?  
How about weapon damage vs health (vs armor)?
This was a huge question for me that took a decade to fine tune..no joke.

Quote from: LordVreegOK.  I am all tuned up and in.  
How do you think your gradiation on skills will stand up to character growth?

How about weapon damage vs health (vs armor)?
This was a huge question for me that took a decade to fine tune..no joke.[/quote]
I don't doubt it.  The number of variables are already pretty overwhelming, and it's impossible to see how well balanced the system is just by looking at the design doc.  With weapon/armor stuff as my next project, the whole combat system (or at least, this draft of it) will soon be in place, and when that's done I can run a whole bunch of test matchups to see how health, armor, skill, attributes, weapons, and so on balance against each other.  That's not an easy task, but on the up side I believe I've got a system that I can tweak fairly easily as the situation demands it.

I'm a bit more confident than I might otherwise be because I've taken a fair amount of combat system influence from TRoS, which I've played with before and find to be pretty well balanced.  There are major differences, of course, but I think that sort of grounding in that and other systems that have been through a large amount of testing will be helpful in avoiding some of the major pitfalls I could encounter.

I really like this idea (skills increasing attributes). It seems fresh and new - far different than other roleplaying systems that I've seen. I also liked your explanation on different dice systems and probability.

When it came to combat, I'm sorry to say I got really confused (it seemed a little overly complicated, but that's just me).

Combat aside, You said you were having trouble coming up with a health system that didn't solely rely on Stamina, so here is a little thought for you to ponder:

Don't base Health off of Stamina. In fact, don't base it off of anything. Have each character begin at exactly the same Health. While this does make every character the "same" at character creation, it also grantees that no character will die after 1 hit in combat. The trick here is that when characters improve after character creation (I assume you award skill points instead of XP), a character's health can only improve by spending points in it (instead of investing those points into skill ranks). I imagine that 1 skill rank does not equal +1 Health, but the exact ratio is up to you (perhaps something closer to 4 points = 1 Health, making players choose between more health or a synergy bonus).

Is this idea perfect? No, not at all. But it is something to consider. I have learned that originality comes from breaking people's assumptions - like the idea that skills improve your attributes, Health does not necessarily have to be based off of Stamina.

Just a little something that might spark an idea. I hope this helps.

Quote from: SamuraiChickenWhen it came to combat, I'm sorry to say I got really confused (it seemed a little overly complicated, but that's just me).

choices[/i] in combat without being horribly bulky, that would be just perfect.  I'm still thinking about it.

QuoteDon't base Health off of Stamina. In fact, don't base it off of anything. Have each character begin at exactly the same Health.

I've wavered back and forth between this and Stamina-based health for a while, and I'm inclined to agree with you about having a fixed base health.  I'm extremely wary of making skill points translate into health, however.  The idea behind Synergy was always to create a more intuitive relationship between abilities and skills, and being able to use skill improvement to make oneself more resistant to wounds or poison doesn't seem very intuitive to me.

I really appreciate the comments, by the way.  The process of making Synergy work is probably going to take a while, and different viewpoints are really crucial.

For a variety of reasons, I think the wager system - like the array system before it - is going to be sidelined for a while.  There are plenty of other things to work on in the system, and I'd like to be able to move on to them instead of wrestling with an intractable combat system.  The wager was an attempt to be innovative, but originality doesn't automatically make something good (or playable).

So, let's do something simpler.

[spoiler=Synergy Simplified Combat]
III. Combat

Combat in Synergy is handled by an assortment of combat skills:

Melee Combat (Str|Cun)*Throwing (Str|Coo)*Ranged Combat (Per|Coo)*Unarmed Combat (Str|Sta)*Evasion (Coo|Per)

All other skills are considered to be non-combat skills. Depending on the skill and the goal, non-combat skills might not be allowed in combat; even if they are, the character suffers a -2 penalty to the skill check. 'In combat' is defined as any round in which one uses or is the target of any of the combat skills as listed above, regardless of what effect they have (a character being shot at is considered to be in combat even if none of the arrows have hit him'¦ yet). The rare exception is if the character is targeted by one of these skills but remains unaware of it (a character is shot at, but the shot misses and the character does not notice it).

A character can use only one combat skill in a single combat round.

Checks Against a Fixed TN

Combat is performed either as an opposed roll or as a roll against a fixed TN depending on whether the target is actively trying to evade the blow.  A target who is unaware of an attack or chooses not to make any defense against it does not require an opposed roll to hit.

The standard TN for hitting a creature with an attack is 2.  This can be modified in a variety of ways:

Size.  The Hit TN of a creature is increased if it is smaller than its opponent, and decreased if it is larger.*Shield.  A creature holding a shield is harder to hit in combat even if it isn't actually trying to deflect your blow, simply due to its obstructing presence.*Range.  The Hit TN of a creature increases as you get further away from it (this applies only to missile attacks).*Environment.  A creature who is obscured by darkness or concealed behind dense foliage has a higher Hit TN.*Movement.  A creature who is moving is harder to hit than one who is not (this applies only to missile attacks).

Opposed Checks

When a character is actively attempting to not get hit '" generally, a good idea '" combat is handled with an opposed roll.  The attacker's roll is not always opposed by the same skill; while Melee Combat is usually pitted against Melee Combat, a character without weapons will have to oppose with Unarmed Combat, and Ranged Combat attacks are always opposed with Evasion (if they are opposed at all).

Knowing the defender's Hit TN is still important here, because even if the attacker wins an opposed check, he does not score a hit unless his roll result is good enough to hit the target if it were not resisting at all.  Thus, a character can't actually become easier to hit by trying not to get hit (though it is possible to get no benefit from opposing the roll if you are bad or unlucky enough).

Melee Combat

Combat at melee range is handled using the melee skills (Melee Combat and Unarmed Combat), even if a missile weapon is being used '" even if you're using a crossbow to fight the man next to you, you're still fighting in melee.

Initiative

Not all opponents get to attack every round.  When two characters engage in melee combat, one has the initiative and the other does not.  Initiative determines who is the aggressive party at any one instant during the combat.

The character with the initiative '" the attacker '" has a chance of hitting and wounding the opponent.  If his combat roll is successful (it is higher than the defender's opposed roll and Hit TN), he holds on to the initiative and is also the attacker in the following round, even if his hit caused no damage.

The character without initiative '" the defender '" usually has no chance of hitting his assailant unless he can gain the initiative for himself.  If the attacker's combat roll is unsuccessful (it is lower than either the defender's opposed roll or Hit TN), no hit is scored and the character who defended gains the initiative for the next round.

If the result of the attacker's combat roll is a tie '" it is exactly equal to the defender's opposed roll or Hit TN, whichever is higher '" no hit is scored, and the initiative is 'split' in the next round.  In a split initiative round, both parties are considered to be attacking, and both may hit and wound their opponent if they win the roll.  Any character who hits the opponent during a split initiative round has their margin of success increased by 1, as when both opponents are attacking, neither is defending especially well.

At the beginning of a combat round, either combatant may choose to forfeit the initiative.  A character who forfeits the initiative immediately becomes the defender, and must win back the initiative through a successful defense if they wish to regain it.  If both players forfeit the initiative, no attack occurs, and the combatants circle each other warily.

The first round of any melee combat is always a split initiative round, as is any round after both opponents have forfeited the initiative.  In either case, one or both opponents may choose to forfeit the initiative.

The Riposte

A character who succeeds in parrying an attacker's attack by a wide margin can make a strike of their own, called a riposte.  A riposte is only available to a character under the following conditions:

1.  The character is making an opposed combat check at melee range.
2.  The character is defending (does not have the initiative).
3.  The defender's check result is greater than the attacker's check result by 4 or more.
4.  The defender's check result is greater than the attacker's Hit TN.

If a character meets these conditions against a single melee opponent, he may choose to immediately make a riposte.  He not only gains the initiative for the next round, but scores an immediate hit with a base margin of success equal to 3 less than the difference between his result and the attacker's result (e.g. A defender who got a result of 6 against the attacker's result of 2 would score a hit with a base margin of 1).  This hit happens instantly, within the same round.

A character may make only one riposte per round.  If he meets the conditions against multiple melee opponents in the same round, he must choose one to make the riposte against.

Multiple Opponents

Fighting multiple opponents in melee at once is difficult.  A character must make a choice between concentrating on a single opponent or spreading his attention among multiple assailants.

A character may choose to oppose only one opponent.  If he does this, he suffers no penalty against that one opponent and makes checks against him as normal, but his other opponents need only roll above his Hit TN to hit him.

A character may fight against multiple opponents by splitting his skill points.  He can split his skill points in any way he chooses among his opponents.  A character with 6 ranks in Melee Combat, for instance, could choose to make opposed checks against three opponents simultaneously as if he had only 2 ranks in Melee Combat, or put 4 into checks against one opponent and 1 against each of the other two.  A character may not split skill points among a number of opponents greater than half his total points in the skill, rounded down (so a character with 7 skill points in Melee Combat could only oppose 3 opponents at most '" any more would be unopposed and only have to surpass his Hit TN).

A character may only have the initiative against one opponent at a time.  If he gains the initiative against more than one of his opponents, he must forfeit the initiative against his opponents until he holds it against no more than one of them.  Though this means a character can only be the attacker against a single foe at one time, a riposte against another in the same round may still be possible.

Ranged Combat

Combat at range is covered by the Ranged Combat, Throwing, and Evasion skills.  Unlike the melee combat skills, which are used for both attacking and defending, skills for ranged combat are used only either to make attacks (Ranged Combat and Throwing) or defend against them (Evasion).

Ranged combat does not utilize initiative.  A character in ranged combat always decides whether he is attacking or defending in any given round, regardless of whether he has been hit by another or not.

Preparation Time[/b]

Aiming and firing a ranged weapon usually takes longer than swinging a fist or blade.  Most missile weapons have a 'prep time' that indicates how many rounds must be spent preparing the weapon before the round in which it is fired.  Usually, the prep time varies depending on how the weapon or ammunition is carried '" a javelin already in the hand has only one round of prep time, while one carried on the back or strapped to a shield has two rounds.

A character can rush a ranged attack to try and make a ranged attack in haste.  Decreasing a weapon's prep time by 1 round incurs a -2 penalty to a character's Ranged Combat or Throwing check.  Prep time can only be decreased by one round in this way.

A weapon with a prep time of zero cannot be reduced any further; it cannot take less than one round to make a ranged attack.

Evading Missiles[/size]

A character can only oppose a ranged attack roll with the Evasion skill.  If the attacker's result is less than or equal to the defender's Evasion result, the attack misses.  As with melee attacks, the missile attack result must be higher than the target's Hit TN as well in order to score a hit (which can be quite high at long ranges).

Because Evasion is a combat skill, however, using it precludes the use of any other combat skill that round, including making a ranged attack of one's own.  A character can move around while making an attack to raise his hit TN, but this is not Evasion (Evasion is watching and dodging a specific attack, not just running around to make yourself a more difficult target).

Evasion can be used against multiple opponents by splitting one's skill points.  Like fighting in melee against multiple assailants, a character can only split his skill points among a number of opponents equal to half his total skill points, rounded down.  All others need only exceed the character's Hit TN.

Evading thrown weapons is easier than evading shots from a bow, and characters using Evasion against attacks made with the Throwing skill gain a +1 bonus to their check result.

Equipment in Combat

Armor and weaponry is not part of the combat system itself, but the damage system - both the weapon used and the armor used against it may change the impact of a successful hit, but they don't actually make the attack more or less likely to succeed.  Some pieces of equipment, however, do affect combat skill checks directly.

Shields

Shields can be employed in both melee and ranged situations.  They may provide both a passive defense (raising a character's Hit TN) and an active defense (providing a bonus to a character's Melee Combat and Evasion checks).

A shield's passive bonus is applied to the character's Hit TN against all ranged and melee attacks; optionally, the GM may decide that attacks coming from directly behind a character ignore this bonus (combat facing is not covered here).  Ripostes ignore this bonus to Hit TN.

A shield's active bonus is applied to all Evasion checks a character makes, as well as all Melee Combat checks a character makes while defending.  A character does not gain the shield's bonus when attacking (making Melee Combat checks on opponents against whom he has the initiative).

A shield's effectiveness is based on its size:

Small: +1 active, +0 passive
Medium: +1 active, +1 passive
Large: +2 active, +2 passive

A small shield permits a character to hold objects and use certain two-handed ranged weapons (though not melee weapons) even while wielding the shield.  Medium shields are too large for this; the hand cannot be used for anything else.  Large shields likewise require the whole arm, and in addition impose a -1 penalty to Melee Combat checks made when a character is the attacker.

Reach (Optional Rule)

The length of weapons is not detailed in this system.  At the GM's option, however, a character's reach can affect his initiative.

A character with significantly longer reach than another, whether naturally or because of a weapon, automatically causes his opponent to forfeit the initiative at the beginning of any round that would be a split initiative round (at the beginning of combat or any round after both opponents forfeit the initiative).[/spoiler]

A lot about this is stuff you've already read, though in another form and with a fair amount of extra stuff that's since been trimmed.  My hope is that the initiative system will imbue the system with more of a TRoS feel of shifting advantage without actually being TRoS (as the wager system was trying to be).

I like your new combat system. The Initiative system is completely different than any RPG I've played, yet it seems to introduce more tactical combat. It also feels more like real-life combat, thus making combat in this system a little scary (which can be a good thing). One thing you might want to change is naming it 'initiative,' since people may confuse it for the combat turn order. Perhaps you could rename it to 'advantage' or even 'combat advantage.' Also, if initiative in your system determines who is the attacker in melee combat, what do you call the order in which each character takes their actions?

I really like how shields work. It makes perfect sense to be used in this way. I wouldn't worry too much about facing in combat, since facing rules seems to make RPGs too complicated in my opinion.

If you could, I would love to see the numeric adjustments for modifying a character's standard TN to be hit (is it always in +1 increments, or is each type of adjustment different from each other?)

I'm a little concerned on ranged combat's preparation time, but the more I look at it, it does make a lot of sense. While archers can choose to take a '"2 penalty to lessen the preparation time, those who don't become very vulnerable targets (since they already used up their combat skill in preparing for the attack). I would suggest that no ranged weapon (other than siege weapons) have a preparation time greater than 1 turn (1 round to prepare, and spend the following round to attack).

In the end, I really like what you did with combat. The tactics seem very realistic, which you don't see in RPGs all that often.

On a completely different note, do you have a completed skill list?

Quote from: Skill ListAcrobatics (Coo|Str)
Agriculture (Apt|Per)
Alchemy (Apt|Per)
Ancient Lore (Apt|Apt)
Animal Handling (Cha|Per)
Art (Per|Coo)
Artillery (Per|Apt)
Astronomy (Per|Apt)
Ballooning (Per|Coo)
Brachiation (Sta|Str/Coo)
Camouflage (Per|Cun)
Channeling (Apt|Sta)
Chanting (Cha|Sta)
Climbing (Sta|Str/Coo)
Commerce (Cun|Cha)
Crafting (Apt|Str/Coo)
Dance (Coo|Cha)
Deception (Cha|Cun)
Decipher (Per|Apt)
Diplomacy (Cha|Per)
Disguise (Cun|Per)
Evasion (Coo|Per)
First Aid (Cun|Coo)
Fishing (Coo|Cun)
Folklore (Apt|Cha)
Gaming (Cun|Per/Apt/Coo)
Herbalism (Apt|Per)
Interrogation (Cha|Cun)
Intimidate (Cha|Str/Cun)
Jumping (Str|Coo)
Language (Apt|Apt)
Lock Picking (Coo|Cun)
Mathematics (Apt|Apt)
Mimicry (Coo|Per)
Meditation (Sta|Apt)
Melee Combat (Str|Coo/Cun)
Music (Apt|Per)
Observation (Per|Sta)
Oration (Cha|Cun)
Philosophy (Apt|Apt)
Ranged Combat (Per|Coo)
Riding (Sta|Coo)
Rowing (Sta|Str)
Sailing (Per|Coo)
Singing (Cha|Per)
Sleight of Hand (Coo|Per)
Sport (Sta|Str/Coo)
Stealth (Coo|Cun)
Surgery (Coo|Apt)
Survival (Cun|Per)
Swimming (Sta|Str)
Taunting (Cha|Cun)
Theology (Apt|Apt)
Throwing (Str|Coo)
Tracking (Per|Sta)
Trapping (Cun|Coo)
Unarmed Combat (Str|Sta)[/spoiler]
Yes, you read that right, I do have brachiation as a skill. :)

I've revised the wound system into something that is very short and simple.  It's serviceable, but not complete.  I think we can separate what we're missing into three categories:

Core: Weapons, Armor
Secondary: Fatigue, Hit Locations, Damage Effects
Peripheral: Poison, Disease, Channeling

Core stuff is definitely in.  I need to come up with a list of weapons that provides their damage adjustments, as well as their reach relative to each other (so we can use the optional rule on reach) and their type (to compare against armor types).  Armor will be listed as well, varying in effect depending on what kind of weapon is used.

Secondary stuff might be in depending on whether I can get it to work elegantly.  I'd like to have some way of measuring fatigue not only for purposes of 'realism' but because several of the offensive channeling forms I have in mind are fatigue-draining.  It's also a good counterbalance against wearing heavy armor all the time.  Hit locations would be nice but would probably involve the most complexity out of all of them.  By damage effects, I mean stuff like unconsciousness, knockdown, winding, bleeding, and other effects of different damage types and wounds aside from the general penalty and health damage.

Peripheral stuff is not directly related to combat, but does need to 'mesh' with the system.  Poison is going to be common in CJ, and it's important that it is both useful and not excessively so.  As I've mentioned, channeling will have some impact on combat, though CJ magic isn't really of the 'fire and lightning' sort.  Finally, while I don't expect disease to come into combat situations very often, it may produce similar penalties and deserves a bit of thought.

Sample Fight

But first I'm going to work on a few sample fights.  Let's begin with a simple sparring session '" two low-level Iskites sparring with staves (damage +0, for now) and no armor.

We will start with the following standard assumptions:

Base Attributes all start at 1*Iskite racial mods are +1 Per, +1 Apt, but it doesn't matter here as Melee Combat is (Str|Cun)*10 point skill buy*3 point maximum, or 4 point for Per or Apt skills

The possible range for a character like this is  +2 (no ranks in MC, base attribute bonuses) to +7 (3 ranks in MC, 4 each in Strength and Cunning skills).  Let's pit a total newbie against a practiced militiaman (+2 vs +7) and see what happens.  By the way, their names are Jeng (the newbie) and Ssaka (the warrior).

[spoiler=Round-by-Round Breakdown]Round 1:
Jeng and Ssaka close to melee range.  Initiative is split.  Jeng decides to forfeit the initiative, worried about that +1 damage bonus in split initiative rounds.  Ssaka opts to retain the initiative and is the attacker this round.

Now we roll.
Jeng: 5-4: -1 modifier, for a result of 1
Ssaka: 1-6: -5 modifier, for a result of 2

Ssaka's horrible roll is still enough to beat Jeng, but recall that attacks also have to beat the Hit TN of the enemy (which defaults to 2).  Jeng's result, being lower than his TN, isn't used.  The round result is a tie, which means no hits and another split initiative round.

Round 2:
Jeng, a little more confident, decides to retain the initiative this round.  Ssaka does likewise.  Both attack.

Jeng: 5-2: +3 modifier, for a result of 5
Ssaka: 1-5: -4 modifier, for a result of 3

Ssaka continues his horrible streak and Jeng picks up a nice positive.  Jeng wins the round with a margin of 2; this is modified by +1 because this was a split initiative round.  The total damage is 3.  Ssaka takes a -3 shock penalty in the next round; after that, he will retain a 1S wound.  His Health is also down to 9.

Round 3:
Jeng has the initiative and decides to keep it '" he wants to take advantage of that nice shock penalty to score another damaging hit.  Ssaka remains on the defensive.

Jeng: 6-3: +3 modifier, for a result of 5
Ssaka: 4-3: +1 modifier, -3 shock, for a result of 5

Another tie round '" but Ssaka is the real winner here, because he rides out that shock penalty without injury.  Now, he only has the enduring -1 wound penalty.  Another split initiative round is next.

Round 4:
Jeng decides to hope his luck holds and keeps the initiative, as does Ssaka.  Both attack.

Jeng: 2-1: +1 modifier, for a result of 3
Ssaka: 1-6: -5 modifier, -1 wound, for a result of 1

Ssaka, who at this point is starting to wonder if random.org is really that random, loses out.  The margin of success is 1, however, not 2, because Ssaka's Hit TN (which is 2) is higher than his roll.  The damage is increased to 2 because this is a split initiative round, so Ssaka takes a -2 shock penalty in the next round and gets another S1 wound.

Round 5:
Jeng is liking where this is going and keeps his initiative.  He is on the offensive, and Ssaka is defending.

Jeng: 6-6: +0 modifier, for a result of 2
Ssaka: 3-1: +2 modifier, -2 shock, -1 wound, for a result of 6

Ssaka successfully defends despite his penalties '" and defends by a margin of 4, which means that he qualifies for a riposte!  He immediately gets a free hit against Jeng with a margin of 1.  That's really just a scrape, but Ssaka seizes the initiative and Jeng has to deal with a -1 shock penalty next round.

Round 6:
Ssaka, having turned the tables, is now attacking.  Jeng defends and hopes for the best.

Jeng: 2-4: -2 modifier, -1 shock, for a result of -1
Ssaka: 6-3: +3 modifier, -2 wound, for a result of 8

Well, we all knew what would happen eventually.  Jeng had an impressive (and somewhat improbable) run, but Ssaka follows up his riposte with a monstrous 9 damage hit in the 6th round.  That's a -9 shock penalty next round and a -4 wound penalty thereafter, meaning that Ssaka is probably just going to be rolling against Jeng's Hit TN for the rest of the match'¦

Round 7:
'¦assuming, of course, the match doesn't end right now.  Jeng begins the round with a -9 shock penalty and his Health is now 6.  The shock exceeds his Health, which means he must make an immediate Stamina check against a TN equal to the difference between the shock and his Health (3).  This is handled before combat is rolled.

Jeng's Stamina check: 5-4: -1 modifier, for a result of 1.

Jeng collapses in a heap; Ssaka has won the fight.  This is a sparring match, so he immediately attends to poor Jeng; were it a real fight, Jeng would be at his mercy.  He walks away with only two S1 wounds '" deep and painful bruises, but nothing like the S4 he gave Jeng.  Jeng will live, however, and Ssaka will make sure to congratulate him when he wakes up for doing rather well against a professional.[/spoiler]

This is basically what I'd expect from this pairing - with good luck, the novice might be able to hold out for a while, but eventually he's going to get overpowered by a professional.

Of course, I need to do far more tests than this, but this at least gives you an idea of how Synergy combat plays out.  This is a super simple example - identical weapons, no armor, no shields, no ranged combat - but I hope it's at least a little illustrative.

Looks good. I like how the newbie seemed to have a fighting chance, but was eventually defeated by the more accomplished of the two.

For hit locations, perhaps you could roll 1d6 to determine which body part is hit:

Quote from:  left leg
2 = right leg
3 = left arm
4 = right arm
5 = torso
6 = head[/quoteYou could change the list however you want, but I prefer the concept of rolling a high number is better than rolling a low number. You could also roll a second d6 to determine the severity of the hit, or have the severity based on how much damage you deal.

I described weapons and armor as primary goals, so I should probably do that first.  The opening post has been updated with a new chapter.

Damage Types

I'm aware that using damage types, for whatever purpose, complicates a system.  I feel that the possible benefits outweigh the added complexity.

The only benefit immediately visible, of course, is expanded armor/weapon interactions.  Having varying effectiveness against different armors for different damage types requires more strategic thinking '" you can't just grab your 'best' armor and 'best' weapon and be satisfied that you're optimally prepared for any contingency.

Damage types also expand the possibilities for the effects of damage '" a slashing weapon might cause more bleeding or sever a limb, while a blunt weapon might be better at winding someone or knocking them unconscious.  I haven't touched that topic, but having damage types allows this to be added (as either an integral part or an optional one).

By the way, I know it's not quite the traditional pierce/slash/bludgeon system.  Honestly, though, the concept of "slashing" as it is often used is incoherent.  A two-handed axe and a scimitar don't have much mechanical similarity and really shouldn't share the same type.  It might seem weird to group sharp things (axes) with blunt things (maces), but in practice these weapons were used in a very similar manner.  I'd like to think that I've placed a little more emphasis on the kind of motions you make when wielding a weapon.

Armor and Such

Right now, of course, there's no reason to not wear the heaviest possible armor, but drawbacks - whether based on movement or fatigue or something else - can come later.  Additionally, if hit locations end up being used, it may matter what kinds of armor can be worn on specific areas.  

In case you didn't notice, I've got no mail or plate, and I'm probably missing a fair number of common weapons.  I've used only weapons and armor that would be common in CJ, but mail and such can be added easily enough.

Quote from: SamuraiChickenFor hit locations, perhaps you could roll 1d6 to determine which body part is hit:

I'm not fond of random hit systems.  I understand the argument - that your character is assumed to be taking advantage of momentary vulnerabilities - but wholly randomly determined strikes just don't sit well with me for some reason.  I prefer purposeful targeting, but that does present difficulties of its own.

Well, with the addition of weapons and armor, I think it's time for'¦

Sample Fight #2

Our previous fight was just a sparring session '" the same weapons and no armor.  It was also between two radically different combatants, one with the maximum possible Melee Combat skill (for a starting character) and one with none whatsoever.  For our second sample fight, let's make things a little more interesting.

Our first combatant is Tholun, a Tahr warrior.
+4 Str
+2 Cun
5 ranks in Melee Combat (total +11)
Beast Leather armor, Warbeak

Our second combatant is Shalek, an Ussik mercenary.
+2 Str
+2 Cun
4 ranks in Melee Combat (total +8)
Brigandine, Saber, Large Shield

Tholun has a few obvious advantages.  In terms of sheer combat prowess, he's 3 points up over Shalek, coming from both his superior strength and training.  Brigandine is better armor than leather, but Tholun's warbeak is designed to punch through armor and a saber isn't particularly good at punching through anything.  Shalek has only one possible advantage '" that big shield.  Still, if a novice can go six rounds with a veteran, then the Ussik has a fighting chance.

[spoiler=Round-by-Round Breakdown]
Round 1
Tholun and Shalek close to melee range.  Initiative is split, but Tholun's warbeak has greater reach than Shalek's saber (long vs. medium), so Shalek forfeits the initiative automatically.  Tholun keeps his and is the attacker this round.

Tholun: 5-6: -1 modifier, for a total of 10
Shalek: 3-5: -2 modifier, +2 shield, for a total of 8

Tholek's margin is 2, modified to 3 (+3 for weapon, -2 for armor).

Tholun lands a hit '" a rather minor hit, but Shalek is already the underdog and this doesn't help.  3 damage means a -3 shock penalty in the next round, and a -1 wound penalty thereafter for the S1 wound.  Shalek's Health is now 9.

Round 2
Tholun retains the advantage and is in a mood to press it.  He'll be the attacker again this round.

Tholun: 5-5: +0 modifier, for a total of 11
Shalek: 5-1: +4 modifier, -3 shock, +2 shield, for a total of 11

I'm not sure why the losers always seem to luck out in these practice fights, but Shalek has managed to break even with Tholun and ride out the shock round.

Round 3
Initiative is again split, but again Shalek forfeits it automatically because of Tholun's longer reach.  Tholun is the attacker again.

Tholun: 3-4: -1 modifier, for a total of 10
Shalek: 4-2: +2 modifier, +2 shield, -1 wound, for a total of 11

Shalek ekes out a successful defense, but it's not even close to what he needs for a riposte.  On the bright side, he can try to deal some damage of his own next round.

Round 4
Shalek has gained the initiative for the first time in the battle and intends to use it.  He is the attacker.

Shalek: 4-4: +0 modifier, -1 shield, -1 wound, for a total of 6
Tholun: 3-5: -2 modifier, for a total of 9

Tholun doesn't quite make a riposte but does ably deflect Shalek's attack, hindered as his opponent is by damage and an unwieldy shield.  Tholun is back in the driver's seat.

Round 5
Tholun is attacking again.  Are we going to go longer than the last fight?

Tholun: 1-5: -4 modifier, for a total of 7
Shalek: 5-2: +3 modifier, +2 shield, -1 wound, for a total of 12

Shalek defends with a margin of 5, which means he qualifies for a riposte with a base margin of 2.  Shalek has been slashing with his saber so far, which is the obvious choice, but ripostes require combatants with dual-type weapons (like a saber) to randomly determine which one is used.  A coin is flipped '" and Shalek rolls for slashing, which is rather good news for him.  With +2 for the weapon and -2 for the armor, the attack deals 2 damage.

Tholun takes a -2 shock penalty, an S1 wound, and 1 point of Health loss (putting him at 9).  Shalek gains the initiative.

Round 6
Shalek is attacking now.  It's time to face facts '" though Tholun now has a minor wound too, the Tahr is still the favorite in this match, and even Shalek's good luck has only just kept him in the game.  Next round, Tholun's shock will be gone, and it might be the last opportunity Shalek gets.  It's time to take a risk.  Shalek takes a deep breath and drops his shield at the beginning of the round '" not only does this remove the -1 penalty for a large shield, but his saber has variable grip, so he's now gripping it with two hands and swinging with a +3 damage mod.  A nice move, but if he doesn't make this hit he won't last long without that shield.

Shalek: 5-1: +4 modifier, -1 wound, for a total of 11
Tholun: 1-6: -5 modifier, -2 shock, for a total of 4

Shalek's margin is 7, modified to 8 (+3 weapon, -2 armor).

OH GOD WHY.  Thanks for nothing, Random.org.  With those rolls, Shalek probably didn't need to throw away that shield '" though if he hadn't, that damage would only be 6.  As it stands, Tholun takes an S4 wound and a -8 shock penalty to stack with the -1 wound penalty kicking in from his initial scrape.  Tholun's Health is also down to 5 '" and, as happened last time (in the exact same round, no less), he'll need to make a certain check'¦

Round 7
With a shock (8) higher than his Health (5), Tholun must now make a Stamina check against a TN equal to the difference between them (3).  We didn't note it initially, but Tholun's Stamina is +4.

Tholun's Sta check: 3-4: -1 modifier, for a result of 3.

Tholun stays conscious '" just barely.  But Shalek still has the initiative (and still has no shield).

Shalek: 2-1: +1 modifier, -1 wound, for a total of 8
Tholun: 4-4: +0 modifier, -8 shock, -1 wound, for a total of 2

Shalek's margin is 6, modified to 7 (+3 weapon, -2 armor).

Tholun, reeling from the last blow just seconds ago, takes another devastating slash.  That S3 wound means another -7 shock in the next round, plus a -5 wound penalty for previous damage.  The shock is again greater than the Health (which is now 2), so we're rolling again.

Round 8
Tholun makes another Sta check, this time against a TN of 5 (7-2).

Tholun's Sta check: 4-3: +1 modifier, for a result of 5.

Tholun, again, fights back the encroaching darkness, but there's little to be done at this point.  Shalek raises his saber for the presumably final blow.

Shalek: 1-3: -2 modifier, -1 wound, for a total of 5
Tholun: 4-3: -1 modifier, -7 shock, -5 wound, for a total of -2

Shalek's margin is 3, because Tholun's check result is lower than his Hit TN (2).  This is modified to 4 (+3 weapon, -2 armor).

We can safely forget shock and wound penalties at this point, because that S2 hit brings Tholun's health to 0.  He is unconscious and mortally wounded.  For Shalek, luck, a big shield, and a big risk helped him turn the tables on a very challenging adversary.[/spoiler]

What have we learned?

Firstly, combat is deadly '" maybe too deadly.  Both characters' weapon bonuses were equal to or higher than their opponents' armor bonuses, so every hit '" even a 1-margin hit '" dealt damage.  It might be better to either lower weapon damage across the board or increase armor values in the same manner.  That would tend to lengthen combats, because more blows would be blocked outright, preventing the 'shock cascade.'

That's what the real killer is here.  Had Tholun gotten even one round to recover after the first big hit (or even the second), it's entirely possible that he could have come back.  Shalek's rolls held steady, however, and those shock penalties were far too high for Tholun to block, let alone offer a riposte to those attacks.

Even a small hit can open the way for the shock cascade.  Look at Round 5 again.  If Shalek had rolled a thrust instead of a slash for his Round 5 riposte, his damage would have been reduced to zero, he probably wouldn't have thrown away his shield at the start of round 6, and the total damage of that attack would only have been 4 '" half what it actually was, and moderate enough to have given Tholun a chance to ride it out and come back.  Already 4 points up on Shalek, Tholun could afford to take some damage and still have an even fight.  That S1 riposte '" and Shalek's willingness to put everything he had into exploiting it '" opened the way for a catastrophic defense failure on Tholun's part that led to his death only seconds later.

And what about equipment?  Tholun's weapon was a good choice for damage, but a shield might have served him better in this fight.  In addition, Tholun's greater reach didn't amount to much, because Shalek probably would have forfeited the initiative in those rounds anyway.  Reach would have served Shalek better (here we see the potential advantage of a spear, the only Long weapon that can be used with a shield).

I do think this needs further revision, perhaps a lot of it, but I do like where the system is going.

After a bit of a creative break I'm trying to get myself back into both my writing and my mechanics work.  I've decided to take a break from tweaking the combat numbers, which was giving me a headache, and tackle a few issues peripheral to combat - fatigue, poison, and disease.  The first post has been update with a new chapter.

I have mixed feelings about the fatigue system.  On the one hand, it's easy to lose track of where you are - "have we been in combat for 6 rounds or 7?"  TRoS uses a similar sort of system and it's not always in the forefront of your mind when you're trying to beat up a guy.  Some sort of fatigue system with discrete points, however, is needed, because the Channeling system as it exists requires it.  That, by the way, will be what the next chapter is on, and I'm excited to finally tackle it.

The poison and disease systems are purposefully verbose.  Poison plays a big role in CJ combat (and, particularly for the Umbril, CJ life in general), and I need some nice crunchy disease rules for such vile afflictions as the Saffron Moss.  I've tried to make a system that's realistic; whether it's too realistic remains to be seen.

I figured as long as we've had sample fights, why not have a sample poisoning?

Sample Poisoning

Here we have an Umbril who its enemies have decided to off with some good ol' fashioned arsenic...
[spoiler=Round-by-Round: Ul-Than is poisoned]Ul-Than is an Umbril with a Health of 10 (as is our current default).  Because of their unique physiologies, Umbril are resistant to plant and animal toxins, but arsenic is a mineral poison.  It will have no special resistance to rely on today.

Our poisoner (who wishes to remain anonymous) has some powdered realgar in mind for this occasion.  As a mineral poison, arsenic is prepared with an Alchemy (Apt|Per) check.  The poisoner needs to roll the Base Potency of the poison.  With '" let's say '" a +6 total bonus from skill ranks and attributes, this shouldn't be hard.  He rolls his random dice and gets a result of +1, giving him a final result of 7.

The way the alchemy skill works for this particular task is that the base potency is altered by 1 for every two points one's result is from the base potency (which can become higher or lower depending on your result).  Our poisoner's result was 2 more than the base, so the potency of the poison is increased to 6.  It, of course, doesn't know this '" this roll is made in secret.  Satisfied that it's made a quality product, the poisoner slips two doses into Ul-Than's delectable rotting vegetable matter.  An extra dose increases the effective potency of the poison to 7.

Ul-Than, suspecting nothing, eats its hearty meal.  This is a poison, not a disease, so it doesn't roll to see whether it is affected '" the poisoning is automatic once the dose has been administered.  One minute later, after the dormancy period has passed, Ul-Than begins to feel a bit nauseous.  It thinks this is probably something it ate (maybe something in its last meal wasn't spoiled enough?) and decides to retire to its chambers.

The GM makes a check for Ul-Than after 5 minutes.  The TN is 7, and Ul-Than's health has been reduced to 9 by the first stage symptoms.  The random dice turn up +3, giving a result of 12, which is more than enough to resist the poison.  Ul-Than remains at Stage 1.

The GM continues rolling every five minutes.  10 minutes after the onset of nausea, the check turns up 8 '" another success.  15 minutes after, 10 and pass.  I'll spare you the intermediate details, but 30 minutes after initial symptoms, Ul-Than turns up a -4 on the random dice and fails the check with a result of 5.  It progresses to Stage 2.

Ul-Than is now very certain that something is wrong.  It has sullied the fine sculpture in its room with copious vomit and is experiencing a great deal of pain.  Though Ul-Than is no poison expert, it is an Umbril, and suspects the worst.  It leaves its room and begins to make its way as quickly as possible to the colony's herbalist.

Five minutes later, the GM makes another check.  Ul-Than's Health is now 8 due to Stage 2 symptoms.  The result of the random dice is a particularly bad (and rare) -5, continuing this thread's streak of phenomenally unlikely rolls.  Only halfway to the herbalist's den, Ul-Than passes into Stage 3.

Our victim now begins to stumble as convulsions overtake it.  Ul-Than collapses, delirious and trembling, unable to get any further under its own power.  Five minutes later, the GM makes yet another check and gets a total result of 8 (Ul-Than's health is still 8 in Stage 3), enough to stave off unconsciousness.

Fortunately for Ul-Than, another Umbril comes down the corridor at this time.  This Umbril, who we'll call Thels-Var, bears Ul-Than no particular ill-will and decides that the usefulness of saving it slightly outweighs the possible negative repercussions of foiling the poisoner's scheme.  It hauls Ul-Than, half carrying and half dragging, towards the herbalist's den while Ul-Than mutters some incoherent babble about poison.

Five minutes later, the pair has reached their destination, but Ul-Than must make another check.  The result of the random dice is +3, yielding a result of 11, and Ul-Than gets no worse.  They enter the herbalist's workshop but find that nobody is there '" the herbalist must be running some errand or visiting someone else.  Thels-Var, with no personal experience in poisoning, decides to leave Ul-Than here while it finds the herbalist.

In the next ten minutes, Ul-Than makes two more checks.  The first, with a result of 9, is successful, but the second is a measly 6.  Ul-Than reaches Stage 4 and lapses into unconsciousness.

Fortunately, Thels-Var returns with the herbalist at just this moment.  The herbalist can't exactly diagnose a patient from their unconsciousness alone, but Thels-Var informs it that it found Ul-Than convulsing in a hallway with vomit on the floor and on its mouth.  This could describe several common poisons, so the herbalist begins preparing antidotes for the most likely suspects.  One of these likely suspects is arsenic.

The herbalist knows that if the answer is arsenic, the patient's prognosis is dim.  Arsenic has no strong antidote; garlic is known to have a modest impact on its toxicity, but if Ul-Than ingested a large amount of the poison (or a particularly concentrated batch) it won't be enough to make a difference.  The herbalist's only option is to crush some garlic (along with other antidotes for a few other likely poisons), force it down Ul-Than's maw, and hope that the poisoner wasn't an expert.

This process takes another five minutes, so Ul-Than makes another check at Stage 4 '" if the check fails, it will progress to Stage 5, which is lethal.  Ul-Than's current Health is 7.  Fortunately, the dice show +1 for a result of 8, and Ul-Than stays at Stage 4.

At this point, the garlic has been administered.  As an antidote, it decreases potency by 1 for each dose, to a maximum of 2 doses (as there were two doses of arsenic).  We're going to assume the herbalist gave at least two doses worth, reducing the poison's potency from 7 to 5.  A potency of 5 is high enough for Stage 4, the stage Ul-Than is currently in, but not enough for Stage 5 '" death '" which has a minimum potency of 6.  Ul-Than will continue being unconscious until it rolls a successful check, after which it will regain consciousness and be free of the symptoms of the poison, though still at 7 Health.  Its Health damage will have to be regained naturally.  And once that's done, the hunt for the poisoner begins'¦[/spoiler]

Bear in mind that this response is based on reading ONLY THE LAST POST. I am unapologetically not bothering to read anything before that :P

But, if you want combat fatigue to be a factor without it just being a thing to keep track of and not much more, you could have something like "vigour points" that represent the freshness and energy of characters, that they can expend on bonuses on attacks, damage, et cetera, and will thus become depleted as combat goes on. If you stat is something that gives the players a bonus rather than a penalty, maybe they will be more keen to keep track of it?

Quote from: KindlingBear in mind that this response is based on reading ONLY THE LAST POST. I am unapologetically not bothering to read anything before that :P

This made my morning.

But Kindlings got a good idea. Having a pool of points similar to 3es subdual damage, that, as it depletes through using it's bonuses or getting hit, and therefore jarring the characters mental focus and making them physically tired, they increase the chance of taking real damage.

I really wouldn't penalize players that fight for a long time though, as penalizing players is really never a good call. There are other ways to represent battle fatigue and create suspense.

Quote from: typeI need some way to outweigh the obvious bonuses of heavier armor.  Any fatigue/vigor system I use must be able to help balance the armor system.*I need some way to add and subtract from a character's vigor in discrete increments, because there are several Channeling forms (spells, basically) that function by adding to, removing, or re-directing fatigue.[/list]

Having X number of vitality/vigor points that you can actively use in combat or other physical situations fulfills Purpose #2, because vigor points would be in discrete increments.  I'm not certain how it would fulfill Purpose #1, though.  I mean, you could have armor put a "cap" on your maximum vigor points I suppose, but what if you took off the armor?  Would your points just bounce back up or what?  You could make point costs higher I suppose (for example, something that costs 1 vigor point would cost 2 wearing medium armor, or 3 with heavy), though how effective that is depends greatly on the utility of the VPs themselves.  If they're not that useful, it won't be much of a negative; if they're very useful, the cost will be crippling to characters with heavy armor.

The other consideration is that "vigor points" sort of already exist in the form of Breath.  Since we've established that not everyone is reading the OP (again, no apology necessary!) I'll repost just that part here:

[spoiler=Breath]Breath represents one's mastery of one's own life force. Most Earth cultures have some concept of "spirit" or "life force," and often the word they use translates literally into "air," "breath," "wind," and so on. For humans, it is breathing that distinguishes the living from the dead. In the Clockwork Jungle, the Breath is universally recognized as that which makes mere dead matter alive. All animals have it, the Forest has it '" even Cogs have it, in a limited sense, because nothing can be alive without it.

Breath is a special composite attribute. A character's Breath score is equal to 1 + the sum of all their synergy bonuses to attributes (but not the attributes themselves, which may be modified by a character's race or other factors).

Breath can be used in a variety of ways. In CJ, it is the force behind the magic system. It can also be used as a means of focusing one's spirit on a task; one point of Breath can be used to add 1 to any skill or attribute roll. This must be done before the roll is made and can only be used once per roll. This is a comparatively inefficient use of Breath compared to using it as a source for magic effects, but has the advantage of being very versatile.

There is a difference between Breath being used and being lost. A point of Breath that is used for magic or focus is simply used '" the point is temporarily depleted, but it still exists. Breath can also be lost, usually involuntarily. "Used" points of Breath are lost before unused points are. When a character loses all their points of Breath, they die. Breath loss is uncommon but can be effected by spirit-draining magic and a few deadly creatures.

Depleted points of Breath are replenished each day. Lost points of Breath are recovered at a rate of one per day.[/spoiler]

Now, this isn't quite the same thing as pure "vigor" in the sense of physical endurance.  It's more of a holistic life-force thing that includes both physical and mental power.  Still, there's obvious overlap, and I already have a (very rudimentary) mechanic by which you can use Breath to give yourself bonuses to rolls, much like you guys proposed with Vigor.

The upside of using Breath for this is that it cuts down on confusion (fewer point totals to keep track of), and it expands the use of Breath so it matters to non-Channelers too - a purely combat character could have expanded uses for Breath in the manner of vigor points to counterbalance the "magic powers" that a Channeler gets from Breath.

The primary downside is that this still doesn't address how this will fulfill Purpose #1, balancing armor.  It makes sense that heavier armor should require more vigor/stamina/whatever to perform extraordinary physical feats, but does it make equal sense that heavy armor should be more taxing on one's physical-mental life-force?  Perhaps not.

Expanded Uses and Rules for Breath/Vigor

Regardless of whether I use Breath or some new Vigor/Vitality system I do have some ideas on how they could be used.

All these uses of Breath/Vigor must be announced at the beginning of a round, after actions are declared but before the actual rolls are made.

Exertion: A character may spend a point of Breath/Vigor to add a +1 bonus to any skill roll in which Strength or Stamina is the primary attribute.
Swiftness: A character may spend a point of Breath/Vigor to reduce the prep time of a missile weapon by 1 round without penalty.
Reflexes: A character may spend a point of Breath/Vigor to add a +2 bonus to the margin of success of any riposte the character may make in that round.
Fortitude: A character may spend a point of Breath/Vigor to decrease their Shock penalty by 2.

A character can't spend more than one point on a single one of these uses in a single round, but may spend points on multiple different uses in the same round (for instance, spending one point on Exertion and another on Reflexes).  A character may not spend more points in a round than their total Stamina attribute, with a minimum of one point per round.

Quote from: PolycarpThe upside of using Breath for this is that it cuts down on confusion (fewer point totals to keep track of), and it expands the use of Breath so it matters to non-Channelers too - a purely combat character could have expanded uses for Breath in the manner of vigor points to counterbalance the "magic powers" that a Channeler gets from Breath.

The primary downside is that this still doesn't address how this will fulfill Purpose #1, balancing armor.  It makes sense that heavier armor should require more vigor/stamina/whatever to perform extraordinary physical feats, but does it make equal sense that heavy armor should be more taxing on one's physical-mental life-force?  Perhaps not.

Okay, so if I'm not mistaken, breath is more-or-less like chi, right? If that's the case I see no real problem with using it as vigour, and having armour put a cap on it - the weight and restriction of the armour restricts the flow of breath to a certain degree, and this, coupled with the fact that the sheer exertion of doing stuff while covered in metal makes it hard to focus mentally, means you're able to use less breath both for magical and martial purposes.

EDIT: Noticed you said there's a minimum spend of one point per round. I like that idea, I'm guessing it's there to represent that using a certain amount of breath is just what any fresh combatant will be doing anyway, and you only don't use any once you've run out/become "fatigued"
It puts an idea in my head, though - the idea of the mighty hero making a desperate effort to keep fighting through their exhaustion. Maybe you could put in a subrule that you can keep using breath for combat bonuses (and maybe even magic too) even once you've run out, in exchange for some kind of horrible physical penalty as the forced continued activity takes its toll on your body. Perhaps once you're out of breath you can start spending HP to do these things instead, or something.
Maybe this idea doesn't fit with the way you envisage combat in your game, it just popped into my head and I thought I'd put it out there :)
EDIT 2: Maybe instead of HP you could spend permanently-lost stamina. That way it would be something done only in the most desperate situations where a heroic sacrifice is called for to win the day.

Quote from: higher TNyou could make the use of these physical feats more difficult with more bodily protection.

I am starting to come around to using Breath for this.  I like that it offers competition with channeling; I've been slightly worried that there's too little reason not to be a channeler since all it requires is skill points.

QuoteEDIT: Noticed you said there's a minimum spend of one point per round.

Making the Breath spending mandatory is actually pretty interesting, though I'd worry that it could get frustrating very quickly.  You fight some mooks who clearly aren't much of a threat but get completely depleted for the next, more serious challenge.  It might be realistic but I'm hesitant to require a player to use resources when I'd prefer that they be used purposefully and wisely.

QuoteIt puts an idea in my head, though - the idea of the mighty hero making a desperate effort to keep fighting through their exhaustion.

Well, there is a Health attribute, and potentially you could make it so that running through Breath requires you to start dipping into Health if you want to use physical feats.  I don't want to do that for Channeling but it does make a certain amount of sense for heroic exertions past the point of fatigue.

I'll put together some new rules for this later today perhaps.

Alright.  Fatigue has been cut (Chapter 6 is now just Disease and Poison) and I've added a new chapter on the uses of the Breath.

Conceptually, the idea is that all beings can use the Breath unconsciously; a specific use of this is called a Feat, and this is our replacement for fatigue as discussed above.  A player chooses when to use a feat, but to the character it would just be a moment of great determination and phenomenal exertion, not really an "activated" ability.  All characters have access to this, and not just characters - beasts and monsters of greater age and experience, even ones far less intelligent than the people of the civilized races, may also use feats.

Only a select few, however, have a conscious ability to perceive and manipulate the currents of the Breath, and this is Channeling.  Channeling is much less limiting than feats; there are many different effects a channeler can accomplish, many of them outside his own body.  Channeling, however, requires a personal investment of skill points.  In addition, forms (the term for a channeling "spell") require concentration, sometimes even to the exclusion of other activities, and thus entail a certain amount of risk.  And, of course, let's not discount the fact that channeling could wake up any number of hostile Cogs in your vicinity.

So far I've only put up the part of the chapter that discusses Feats, but Channeling is mostly written and soon to follow - though an extensive list of Forms may take longer.