The Campaign Builder's Guild

Xev20 - The Start[note]I have been playing a LOT of Skyrim lately. It's method of action economy has got me considering drawing some influences from it for a PnP game. Forgive me.[/note]

Action economy is very important in a game. A game where characters are balanced across a whole day can find imbalances if the day runs longer or shorter than expected. Balance in a single fight can fall apart for the same reason, leading characters to nova and then letting the fight drag on boringly towards the finish. Perfect balance would be achieved if everyone could do the same thing, but I don't think anyone wants that. Instead, making sure that people are largely equivalent in what they can do in a single round is what I will be striving for.

Many games now a days operate with a move-attack round structure. I am considering altering this standard round structure, possibly going with a two-action structure with the actions focused around "hands"; it may be easier to start with two actions and then have certain attack styles consume those actions rather than having some styles gain actions. If a character can do two things in one round, gishes could be better supported, as it won't feel like a waste to put your character resources into learning both magic and weapon attacks. This is immediately obvious for two-weapon fighters, but a shield user can benefit from this too; if attacks can be traded in to up defense, then a shield's attack can be traded in for more defense, a trade for the shield attack being weaker (and one may assume that defense is the standard mode of the shield). A two-handed weapon user trades their off-hand action for the extra damage granted by the larger weapon, and the systems math can ensure that a TWFer's attacks on a single target average out the same as the two-handed weapon user (I feel twfing should have higher possible damage but have more variance, so their means would be the same but the ranges would be different). People who wield a single weapon and leave their off-hand empty could gain some benefit too (aside from the versatility of being able to grab their weapon in two hands, or the ability to still use their hand to aid in movement), even if it is simply an accuracy boost because they aren't focusing on multiple actions (but the same could be said for the THFer).

Gishes would benefit the most from this, as I said. Gishes are not supported in L5R, the system I am currently using as a template, so I need to consider the impact the system will have on them.

This one is very high in the air, but it is something I have been thinking about recently and would really like to discuss.