Xev20: Brainstorming

[Xeviat]

I am starting to gather my ideas for my own tabletop system. I may or may not build a system from the ground up; I might just add ontop of the d20 system. But ultimately I need to find a system that is perfect for my setting, so I might have to build my own. So here are my basic ideas, followed by where I need immediate help.

Character Structure: Ability Scores, Defenses, Skills, Stunts, Talents, and Items.

Ability Scores: Since elementalism is very important in my setting, I want to expand the traditional number of d20 stats from 6 to 8; four physicals and four mentals. Each element has a physical and a mental ability score associated with it. I think this is how it will look now.

Air: Agility (speed and reflexes) and Perception (senses and insight)
Earth: Constitution (health and endurance) and Intelligence (reason and memory)
Fire: Strength (athleticism and power) and Charisma (presence and influence)
Water: Dexterity (coordination) and Wisdom (instinct and intuition)

I am currently fine tuning the mentals, mainly because I need to have them associate with my magic system properly.

Defenses: I haven't decided exactly which defenses to use, but I will probably have four (2 physical and 2 mental), something like Fortitude, Reflex, Awareness, and Will. The Awareness defense will cover things like illusions and seeing through lies. One thing I want to do with the system is make it so that no skills are required, as the sensory skills can be in many systems (oh look, you get sneak attacked again because you just couldn't hear that thief coming).

This brings up how I want to handle attacks (which are governed by weapon and magic skills): I want to combine attack and damage rolls into a single roll. When you attack someone, you roll your skill against the appropriate defense. The amount you beat their defense by determines the effect. I'll be using staged effects extensively (for instance, if you beat their defense by 1-5 you slow, 6-10 you daze, 11+ you stun). I may or may not use hit points, or I might have attacks reduce defenses so that targets eventually fail by large amounts.

Skills: I hope to balance the ability scores with a reasonably equal number of skills. Weapon skills and magic skills will govern attacks. What will be new is that every X ranks (4 or 5 maybe) skill points will grant a character a skill stunt with that skill.

Stunts: Skill stunts are additional uses for existing skills, or the negation of penalties for existing skills. For instance, a stealth stunt could be hide in plain sight (can hide while under observation), or fast stealth (no penalty for moving normal speed while stealthing). Characters earn stunts for free as they gain certain numbers of ranks in a skill, and additional stunts can be bought with talents. One idea I've had that will make weapon sskills more interesting is to have weapon stunts be used with any weapon, not just the group the stunt belongs to. This way a warrior who specializes in swords could train up their mace skill in order to learn a mace stunt to use with their swords. I hope this will make it so characters will be built with multiple weapon skills and not just a single type.

Talents: These will be the typical feats of d20. Special attacks and spells will be learned with these as well. Many will be stunts instead of talents. Talents are not tied to skills, except for attack talents (a fireball spell is worthless without the Fire Magic skill).

Items: I'd rather magic items be rare to non-existant. Magic items will not boost skills, but might grant special uses or special attacks. Items will probably boost defenses, but probably only like Armor (and I want to make it so armors are different but equal).

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So, mostly I need some help with my ability scores at this point. Here is the table for magic:

[th]Element[/th][th]Physical[/th][th]Mental[/th]

Air	Speed, Movement	Divination/Illusion
Earth	Defenses	Artifice/Binding
Fire	Destruction, Force	Emotions
Water	Energy Direction and Transformation	Healing/Corruption

So, earth's mental is the more book smart type of intelligence, and water's mental is the more insightful and instinctual type of intelligence.

Thoughts?

[Tillumni]

quik question: is defense a fixed number that have to be beated, or is it a opposed roll against the attackers roll?
either case, then the 2.nd option sounds like it might work pretty well for the system you have in mind. a sword defeating defense by 1-5 would give a -1 penalty to defense and attack, representing a would, defeating by 6-10 could mean a severe wound on a limp, either reduced movement speed, representing a leg wound, or heavy penalty using one of the arms representing a hit there.

it might make combat rather deadly though, as the culmulative penalty makes it harder and harder to defend.


will it be level based or point buy based advancement system?

overall, then it looks good so far.

[Endless_Helix]

I think the best input I can give is: Keep it simple. One point in D20's favor is that there is now a lot of cheap (or free) material for it, and a lot of people grew up gaming with it, myself included.

I don't mind the extra stats that much, it doesn't add or take away much from the gameplay, I suspect.

I like the fourth save, actually, since it can basically replace Listen, Spot, and Sense Motive in the D20 3.5 system. I'd also fold Open Lock into Disable Device (and try to fold a lot of the skills that overlap into each other) if you go that route. I'd make Grappling a weapon proficiency skill, and maybe play with the synergy rules, which were great at low levels, but kind of lost their potency as you got bigger stats.

I'm not sure I agree with Tillumni's idea, as it could lead to a lot of confusion, especially once you start beating defenses of guardsmen by 20+. Do you just outright kill them? Does that change with each weapon? Does that change with the monster? And rather quickly we're back to having charts to decide how we hurt our enemies. I know when I tried to teach my players a graph-based system for combat, they screamed (in a manly fashion, I assure you) and ran away as fast as their legs could carry them...

[beejazz]

Good ideas all of them. It looks like we've got similar priorities in system design. Your combat ideas look similar to M&M. As a general rule, I avoid numeric bonuses and penalties for wounds and circumstances. But using a progression of descriptive conditions (like stunned/staggered/ko'd/killed or the slowed/dazed/etc. bit you're using) sounds like a good idea as long as there aren't too many and they're easy to remember.

I definitely think a perception save is long overdue. Training to see and hear is a weird convention in D20 IMO.

[Xeviat]

Thanks all.

Tillumni: Defenses will be fixed numbers, otherwise the range becomes very very large very fast. Dealing with 1-20 will be much easier than dealing with 2-40 like I would with opposed rolls. I'm still working out my thoughts for attack effects, but I might do something simple like having a smallish pool of HP.

The Awareness save won't entirely replace Perception based skills, just the passive reactionary uses of them. Like Beejazz said: training to see and hear is weird. But, training to know what to look and hear for isn't. So I'll have a Notice and Sense Motive skill, but they will be for active uses (searching, looking for an opponent's weak point, assessing the skill of an opponent). Ultimately, I don't want anyone to be immediately punished for not having a skill (like a sorcerer with low Wisdom always failing to spot/listen an assassin sneaking in for the kill).

Skills should be nice but not required.

Endless_Helix: The way I'll be doing the attack system is taken from Mutants and Masterminds (as beejazz noticed). For instance, damage is done in M&M like this: if your toughness save fails by less than five, you take an injury (-1 penalty to toughness saves). If it fails by 5 or more, you take an injury and are stunned for one round. If it fails by 10 or more, you are disabled. If it fails by 15 or more, you are dying. They don't have a dead result, but common progression would place that at failing by 20 or more.

It wouldn't change for each monster. It might change for weapons but only for damage type (and only if I want to make things more complicated, so probably not). I do want to keep things concise, which means keeping the list of conditions small enough to fit on a single piece of paper ("what is the difference between daze and stun" was a common question at my table back in 3E).

Beejazz: The only numeric penalties for wounds that I am considering is conditions when your HP reach certain thresholds. But yeah, M&M is really my big inspiration here. I think gameplay will be even faster by combining the attack and damage roll, I just need to make sure to distinguish the agile dodgy archetype from the armored or tough archetype.

[Xeviat]

I'm looking for new names for two of my mental stats. Again, Earth's mental is reason and memory, "book smarts" if you would. Water's mental is intuition and instinct, or "street smarts". I'm using Int for Earth and Wis for Water as placeholders, but I don't like those. I'm growing fond of Cunning for Water, but there are too many C stats (Constitution, Charisma ...), and abbreviating it "Cun" is dangerous ...

Recent development. While I was trying to make sure that each ability score would have a suitable number of attributes attached to them, I stumbled upon a breakthrough. I am moving the Athletics skill (catchall for climb, jump, swim) from Strength to Agility. My reasoning is that the strong archetypes are not generally great at these, but the fast archetypes are. Agility is speed and movement, and thus movement related skills should be there. Now, a Strength penalty might apply as a penalty to Agility, but the way I see it a strength bonus is counteracted by the additional weight the added muscle brings.

[Ghostman]

I'm looking for new names for two of my mental stats. Again, Earth's mental is reason and memory, "book smarts" if you would. Water's mental is intuition and instinct, or "street smarts". I'm using Int for Earth and Wis for Water as placeholders, but I don't like those.

Sharpness, Knowledge, Sagacity, Keenness, Erudition, Smartness, Sapience, Discretion, Wit, Acumen.

Recent development. While I was trying to make sure that each ability score would have a suitable number of attributes attached to them, I stumbled upon a breakthrough. I am moving the Athletics skill (catchall for climb, jump, swim) from Strength to Agility. My reasoning is that the strong archetypes are not generally great at these, but the fast archetypes are. Agility is speed and movement, and thus movement related skills should be there. Now, a Strength penalty might apply as a penalty to Agility, but the way I see it a strength bonus is counteracted by the additional weight the added muscle brings.

I don't see how this would make sense for climbing.

[Xeviat]

Climbers are strong, don't get me wrong, but they aren't olympic weight lifters. I have a hard time imagining Hossein Rezazadeh climbing as fast as a rock climber. Perhaps there should be a strength skill that has a side use to let you perform Athletics related checks without the speed?

I am going to be intrinsically linking character's strength to their weight, mostly because I want a simple system for determining how far you can throw things and people. So someone with a 10 strength could still be a good climber because they won't be too heavy (unless they're overweight, but that would be a flaw).

[Ghostman]

What if you have to climb wearing armour? Or carrying a heavy load? Or with small NPCs hanging on to you?

I think the real issue here is trying to tie each skill to exactly one ability score, though.

[Xeviat]

It might be possible to do something like World of Darkness and have skills associated with multiple ability scores depending on the nature of the action (Athletics is Strength for lifting, Agility for speed, Constitution for duration ...). While that allows for a lot of variety, I worry that it will be difficult to make each score equally represented.

Quick fix is to have armor check penalties. Armor and Heavy Loads apply a penalty to most physical skills. Having higher strength gives you a higher heavy load, and likewise should help to alleviate some of the armor penalties (at least the portion of the penalty that is based on weight and not lost flexibility).

[Poseptune]

I'm looking for new names for two of my mental stats. Again, Earth's mental is reason and memory, "book smarts" if you would. Water's mental is intuition and instinct, or "street smarts". I'm using Int for Earth and Wis for Water as placeholders, but I don't like those. I'm growing fond of Cunning for Water, but there are too many C stats (Constitution, Charisma ...), and abbreviating it "Cun" is dangerous ...

Water: Intuition, Insight, Perspicacity, Ingenuity

Earth: Brilliance, Reason, Comprehension, Cognizance

[O Senhor Leetz]

I may have missed this on the thread, but is this system built for a specific setting or is it a generic system?

[Xeviat]

I may have missed this on the thread, but is this system built for a specific setting or is it a generic system?

Specific setting (mine, Three Worlds), but with an eye for keeping it fairly generic. For instance, the only part of the system that will be intrinsically focused on my setting are the magic skills (8 skills, four physical, four mental, one of each for each element). With those removed, it would be like a modified Mutants and Masterminds really.

[Xeviat]

Water: Intuition, Insight, Perspicacity, Ingenuity

Earth: Brilliance, Reason, Comprehension, Cognizance

Thanks Watery-one. I'm liking Reason and Ingenuity. I like the idea of not using broad terms like Intelligence and Wisdom, because the definitions of those can be quite vague. There's different kinds of intelligences, and when people say "that man is wise" they can mean many things.

Now, here's a breakdown of what the ability scores are related to as of right now. One thing I need to figure out are non-skill uses for each score, so that they're useful for everyone; a couple are lacking that still. I'm posting a value next to each, in mutants and masterminds points structure, just to help balance things. Each score should add up to 2, though I would love if they added up to 2.25 so they're balanced without my magic skills.

Strength
(1) Weapon Skills (most melee, and heavy thrown; multiple skills, my list has 7, but since few characters will have too many I'm lumping them together for point calculation)
(1/4) Physical Fire Magic Skill
(1/4) Carrying Capacity
I do not think carrying capacity will be a skill, as that could get out of hand. This leaves me with 1/2 a point ability, so two skills or something non-skill based.

Constitution
(1) Fortitude Defense
(1/2) Wound Points
(1/4) Endurance Skill
(1/4) Physical Earth Magic Skill
Constitution is easy to finalize here.

Dexterity
(1) Weapon Skills (most ranged, and light blades)
(1/4) Physical Water Magic Skill
(1/4) Thievery Skill
(1/4) Stealth Skill
(1/4) Ride Skill (separate skill for ride, pilot, drive, based on settings)
Dexterity is easy to finish as well. I still want it to have something non-skill based, because as it stands a melee brute warrior might not care about it at all.

Agility
(1) Reflex Defense
(1/4) Athletics Skill
(1/4) Acrobatics Skill
(1/4) Initiative Skill
(1/4) Physical Air Skill
With moving Athletics here, it finishes itself off well.

Charisma
(1/4) Bluff Skill
(1/4) Diplomacy Skill
(1/4) Intimidate Skill
(1/4) Gather Info Skill
(1/4) Mental Fire Magic Skill
Definitely needs more, especially a non-skill ability. I'd like to have a 1/2 point value non-skill ability here, and another skill (perform? might kind of be redundant). I've considered Action Points, but I might want to leave those separate (as they'd be more of a manifestation of unity, void, or aether).

Reason
(1) Will Defense
(1/4) Knowledge Skills
(1/4) Craft Skills
(1/4) Mental Earth Magic Skill
Since knowledge and craft have specialties, I might not worry about Reason seeming underrepresented. Also, for differing settings, skills like computers just fit in as knowledges or crafts, so that there aren't skills that are attached solely to the setting (other than the magic skills obviously).

Ingenuity (really liking Cunning still, but I don't like it's abbreviation ...)
(1/4) Heal Skill
(1/4) Survival Skill
(1/4) Intuition Skill (some sort of skill for getting hints or hunches about things, instinctual stuff)
(1/4) Profession Skill (maybe ... it's kind of never used, so I'd only use it if I could give it uses)
(1/4) Mental Water Magic Skill
Definitely needs more here. Still defining the attribute (mental flexibility and adaptability)

Perception
(1) Awareness Defense
(1/4) Notice Skill
(1/4) Insight Skill
(1/4) Concentration Skill
Needs just a little bit more.

[Tillumni]

some quik ideas at the top of my head, and not all of them completly thought through, so just take it as a shot-gun approach brain storming of ideas.

Strenght: bonus to physical skills perhaps? high str = higher jumps using athletic, faster running and such like, possible also physical crafting skills such as blacksmithing.

Charisma: inspirational? leadership? better at aiding and motivating others. initial contacts? easiness of forming bonds and connection with npc during downtime, or character creation.

dextery: recovery from attack?  basicly the ability to not get thrown off-balance and instead have fluent movement when swinging a weapon, especially in the case of more cumbersome ones. The physical aspect of multi-tasking? simultaniously coordinating the movement of ones weapon to fight off one opponent, while moving ones body in a way that makes it hard to hit by another opponent.

ingenuity: improvisation? ability to do things outside ones normal sphere of knowledge. such as not having carpentry as crafting skill, but still able to roughly figure out how to make a simple wooden barricade that works.


perception: bonus to ranged attack, or during combats over a longer period where a pattern can be seen? might fall under insight and notice skills though. Non-social gathering of information, like searching an area, combing through an archive, or reading the weather?