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<blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9209521" data-attributes="member: 70468"><p>Characters are assumed to be adventurers with skills appropriate to adventuring. A skill is a method you can use to achieve an outcome you want. Characters also have proficiencies (for interacting with weapons and armor) and specialities (for additional customization and capabilities). For reference, these are the skills and proficiencies available. The specialty list occupies a space similar to feats in D&D, but specialities have also have ranks.</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="Lots of Homebrew System stuff"]</p><p>A 1st level PC starts with 50 EXP. You don’t start at 0 EXP. As part of character creation, some choices will tell you to take certain things. The rest is available for you to spend as normal (or not). You could spend it all to get one thing really high, but that’s dumb. It’s better to spread it around a bit. A rank +1 skill or speciality costs 4 EXP. Increasing it to +2 costs an additional 7 EXP. A rank +1 proficiency costs 3 EXP and 5 EXP more to go to +2. Your group may provide a discount. Warriors can get lots of cheap proficiencies and combat specialities. Experts get cheap non-combat skills and specialities.</p><h3>Skill List</h3> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Athleticism:</strong> running, jumping, etc</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Camouflage:</strong> disguises, hiding</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Coercion:</strong> force, threats</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Construction:</strong> structures (typically but not always permanent)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Crafting:</strong> items (handheld, wearable, etc)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Deception:</strong> trickery, deceit</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Entertainment:</strong> dancing, singing, pantomiming, etc</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Investigation:</strong> direct inquiry, examination (to gather information / introduce facts)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Leadership:</strong> command subordinates, authority</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Manipulation:</strong> entice, seduce, tempt (they have to want what you’re offering)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Negotiation:</strong> parley, offer consideration</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Persuasion:</strong> convince, flatter, reason</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Rapport:</strong> relationships, connections, chemistry (personal)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Research:</strong> analysis, fact-finding (to gather information / introduce facts)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Rituals:</strong> ceremonies, rites</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Sabotage:</strong> damage, destroy</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Sneaking:</strong> creeping, slinking, prowling</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Survival:</strong> foraging, navigation, camp sites (fire, bivouac shelter)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Tampering:</strong> tinker, modify (traps, etc)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Tracking:</strong> follow, trail</li> </ul><p>Note that certain skills require an appropriate Experience. You can’t just take Crafting to make swords. You need to acquire the appropriate experience, which is a project that can be undertaken and advanced during weekly downtime activities. An Experience is something character-defining. Aside from providing permission to use skills like Crafting, Entertainment, Rituals, etc; you can call upon your Experience to use Wisdom as your approach when making a check.</p><h3>Proficiencies</h3><p>Armor proficiency is used to determine your defense when being attacked, which is <proficiency> + Block / Dodge / Parry. Block is equal to the rank of the shield you are using. You can block a number of times per round equal to your shield proficiency. Dodge is equal to your armor’s dodge rating plus Dexterity. Parry is a speciality with additional specialities you can buy (such as the Unbalance and the Riposte combat specialities). The quality of the armor may limit the maximum benefit you can get from your proficiency rank.</p><p></p><p>Armor also has mitigation (typically ballistic, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing). For example, a buff coat has is light armor with a proficiency limit of +3 with slashing 1 mitigation and dodge +1. Breast plate is heavy armor also with a proficiency limit of +3 and ballistic 1, piercing 1, and slashing 1 mitigation. For budgeting purposes, I am treating every +1 to dodge as two points of mitigation.</p><p></p><p>Mitigation reduces the margin of success on an attack, then it applies to the damage dice. For example, an attack with margin +2 against mitigation 3 would reduce the margin to +0 then reduce the damage dice by −1d6. If you are at 1d6, that becomes 0d6 (roll 2d6 and take lowest); 0d6 becomes 1 damage; and 1 damage becomes 0 damage. The reason for doing it this way is it means you’ll always do some damage if you roll damage dice.</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Armor:</strong> Light, Medium, Heavy, Unarmored, Shields</li> </ul><p>Weapons proficiencies are used with attack actions such as Melee Attack, Missile Attack, Thrown Attack, and Unarmed Attack. When you use one of those actions, they will tell you what to roll. For example, a Melee Attack has you roll <proficiency> + Strength versus the target’s defense. Damage is based on margin + weapon dice. A Missile Attack has you roll Bows or Firearms + Dexterity at +3 versus the target’s defense. You apply mitigation, but you do not get to add any remaining margin. To counter mitigation, you can use missile weapons and/or ammo with Armor Penetration (ArP).</p><p></p><p>Combat specialities and spells may have you use attack actions with modification. The Backstab speciality allows you to make one with ArP at +rank. Using Forceful Blow increases the margin of a Melee or Unarmed Attack by +rank, but you do not add margin to damage. Instead the target is knocked back margin meters, and then mitigation is applied to the margin to determine any reduction in damage dice. The <em>Smite</em> spell allows you to choose between making a Melee Attack or a Missile Attack using your Mage rank as your proficiency. Because <em>Smite</em> is lightning-aspected, the target must have lightning mitigation to reduce your <em>Smite</em> damage.</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Weapons:</strong> Axes, Bows, Clubs, Daggers, Firearms, Hammers, Polearms, Slings, Sticks, Swords, Thrown, Unarmed. (The omission of crossbows is intentional.)</li> </ul><h3>Specialties</h3><p>There are quite a few different specialities, though the list is currently biased towards combat. Specialities may give you new actions, passive benefits, or a new method you can use when making a check. For example, Followers is a speciality. When you take it, you gain a small crew. If they help you on a group action, they roll their rank. Otherwise, you can use your Leadership to direct them.</p><p></p><p>For example: Tama (the cleric) in my game has Followers at +2. The party is working on developing a settlement. They’ve hired an engineer to oversee construction while they are away. When you hire someone, they have a rank relating to their speciality. In this case, the engineer is +1 and rolls 2d6+1 for the weekly progress check on construction (tracked via multiple clocks). Tama has directed her followers to remain back at the settlement and help, which allows her to perform a group check in absentia to help the engineer on the progress check.</p><p></p><p>At one point, spells were a kind of magical speciality, but that is not the case currently. Spells are just things that mages have access to cast. A cleric gets a set of spells they cast based on their rank. Casting spells costs MP. Some spells have fixed costs (e.g., <em>Smite</em> is rank +1 and costs 2 MP), but some scale. <em>Cure</em> has rank *, which means you can determine the rank (up to your group rank) and pay the associated cost. A rank +2 <em>Cure</em> costs 3 MP and heals 2d6+3 while a rank +4 would cost 7 MP and heal 4d6+9. Characters have 3 MP per level. Mages gain 3 × Mage rank additional MP.</p><p></p><p>(Magical consumable items cost MP to use, and other classes also have ways of spending MP.)</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p></p><p>Skills can be used untrained. You take a −2 penalty when doing so. That means your average result will be 5 + attribute (depending on the approach). That’s a baseline 41.67% chance of Mixed Success on a roll. If you want to do better, there are ways to improve your odds (working together, sacrificing things, etc). Aside from certain skills requiring the appropriate Experience (see spoiler block), most can be used untrained. Proficiencies can also be used untrained at the same penalty, but specialities generally cannot be. The exception is Initiative, which you can use at +0 instead of the usual untrained penalty.</p><p></p><p>I settled on the current skill list after trying to use a smaller list that represented the core competencies of being an adventurer. Specialities were meant to pick up the slack. There were skill specialties in addition to the others</p><p>you could take to give you more things you could do. It ended up making resolution too confusing. Is this basic skill enough, or should it require a speciality? Skill speciality design also risked getting way too narrow at times. Plus, having a type of speciality that was used differently was needlessly confusing. Using a list (see spoiler block) that means what it means is a lot easier.</p><p></p><p>Because of the way the resolution process works, there is no need for an “improvise action”. To initiate a check, the player says something they want: “I want to scout the area for trouble.” Okay, how are you doing that? “I want to climb up the tree and look around from the top.” That’s Athleticism. What approach? “Well, I spent time in the army as a scout, so I have a good eye for danger that could be hiding.” Great, that’s Athleticism + Wisdom. You guys know the raiders have been looking for you, so advancing the clock for when they find you is a potential consequence. (Unstated is falling while trying to climb the tree because falling while climbing is an obvious consequence.)</p><p></p><p>The player rolls and gets Mixed Success. They see movement in the distance, but they also see a glint from a spyglass looking back their way. They’re pretty sure they’ve been seen. The clock advances a tick and goes off. That means the raiders will be showing up soon. They’re not showing up <em>now</em> because that would be negating the PC’s success. Instead, they have enough time to plan how to respond. They decide to set up camp and hide in the trees (which would be Camouflage + approach with the desired outcome being surprise). They’re all doing that, so that would be resolved as a group check. If they succeed (and in the <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/commentary-thread-for-that-“describe-your-game-in-five-words”-thread.682741/post-9037989" target="_blank">session</a> this example is based on), they get the drop on the raiders. In our case, it was quite literally. After a good thrashing and some casualties, the raiders retreated (and the PCs decided not to pursue).</p><p></p><p></p><p>Things that are fixed are fixed. If those things want to develop or pursue an interest, that’s what clocks and faction checks are fore. The referee is constrained such that they can’t just pull out the rug from underneath the PCs and declare, e.g., the raiders are now more capable. I also want to have a process for stocking dungeons, but it’s not there yet. The idea is if you leave the dungeon, something else may have moved into it.</p><p></p><p>Outside of defined things, the consequences engine is there to pick up the slack. That’s why having a functional consequences engine is so important. I absolutely do not want to prep a massive key for my hex map. The subregion where we’re playing is 32,000 km². The full region is bigger (~120,000 km²). I have better ways to spend my time than keying all that. Settlements and stuff are noted, but there are a lot of blank spaces. Consequences provide a way to fill them in with details (you got lost and stumble upon a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa" target="_blank">statue garden</a> …). The other way is through information-gathering (Rapport, Research, etc).</p><p></p><p>We had that happen in my game where the PCs did research on stirges (since they needed to clean out a nest) and established that they tended to be lethargic after feeding. When it came time to deal with the stirges, I put two clocks on the table. One tracked their response. If you made noise (i.e., consequences), I could put ticks on it. If it goes off, the stirges are up and swarming. The other was for the overall health of the nest. Every time they attacked the test, it would go up. If it went off, the stirges would disperse because a predator was destroy their nests. They’d be gone for a while as far as hex-clearing goes, but they’ll eventually show up again as a problem.</p><p></p><p>I also sometimes use the <a href="https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Wilderness_Encounters" target="_blank">monster tables</a> from OSE after rolling an event check. The event check stuff is supposed to happen regularly, but it needs work. The event check is modified by the danger rating of the current environment. If you’re up and about making noise or causing trouble, expect to have a lot of things happening you probably don’t want. One of the things you do when setting up camp is making decisions that affect your danger rating. For example, concealing the camp will reduce the rating as will sleeping without a fire (but that makes setting up watches difficult because there is little natural light at night, and darkvision is not a thing).</p><p></p><p></p><p>Having separate pools (and maybe also a generic one separately) seems like it would be easier to manage. My concern would be that making it conditional on how you spend it will prove confusing for players. It’s probably not something they do often enough, so it seems like it would be a point of friction.</p><p></p><p>Blades in the Dark is an <a href="https://bladesinthedark.com/advancement" target="_blank">example</a> of a game that uses multiple tracks. When you make an <a href="https://bladesinthedark.com/actions-attributes" target="_blank">action roll</a> from a desperate position (or use training), you can mark XP in the track related to that action’s attribute (e.g., Insight for Hunt). When a track is full, you can increase the rating of any action under the attribute (e.g., Study for Insight). There is also a generic XP track that fills based on end-of-session XP triggers (and training). When it is full, you can take an advancement (special ability).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kenada, post: 9209521, member: 70468"] Characters are assumed to be adventurers with skills appropriate to adventuring. A skill is a method you can use to achieve an outcome you want. Characters also have proficiencies (for interacting with weapons and armor) and specialities (for additional customization and capabilities). For reference, these are the skills and proficiencies available. The specialty list occupies a space similar to feats in D&D, but specialities have also have ranks. [SPOILER="Lots of Homebrew System stuff"] A 1st level PC starts with 50 EXP. You don’t start at 0 EXP. As part of character creation, some choices will tell you to take certain things. The rest is available for you to spend as normal (or not). You could spend it all to get one thing really high, but that’s dumb. It’s better to spread it around a bit. A rank +1 skill or speciality costs 4 EXP. Increasing it to +2 costs an additional 7 EXP. A rank +1 proficiency costs 3 EXP and 5 EXP more to go to +2. Your group may provide a discount. Warriors can get lots of cheap proficiencies and combat specialities. Experts get cheap non-combat skills and specialities. [HEADING=2]Skill List[/HEADING] [LIST] [*][B]Athleticism:[/B] running, jumping, etc [*][B]Camouflage:[/B] disguises, hiding [*][B]Coercion:[/B] force, threats [*][B]Construction:[/B] structures (typically but not always permanent) [*][B]Crafting:[/B] items (handheld, wearable, etc) [*][B]Deception:[/B] trickery, deceit [*][B]Entertainment:[/B] dancing, singing, pantomiming, etc [*][B]Investigation:[/B] direct inquiry, examination (to gather information / introduce facts) [*][B]Leadership:[/B] command subordinates, authority [*][B]Manipulation:[/B] entice, seduce, tempt (they have to want what you’re offering) [*][B]Negotiation:[/B] parley, offer consideration [*][B]Persuasion:[/B] convince, flatter, reason [*][B]Rapport:[/B] relationships, connections, chemistry (personal) [*][B]Research:[/B] analysis, fact-finding (to gather information / introduce facts) [*][B]Rituals:[/B] ceremonies, rites [*][B]Sabotage:[/B] damage, destroy [*][B]Sneaking:[/B] creeping, slinking, prowling [*][B]Survival:[/B] foraging, navigation, camp sites (fire, bivouac shelter) [*][B]Tampering:[/B] tinker, modify (traps, etc) [*][B]Tracking:[/B] follow, trail [/LIST] Note that certain skills require an appropriate Experience. You can’t just take Crafting to make swords. You need to acquire the appropriate experience, which is a project that can be undertaken and advanced during weekly downtime activities. An Experience is something character-defining. Aside from providing permission to use skills like Crafting, Entertainment, Rituals, etc; you can call upon your Experience to use Wisdom as your approach when making a check. [HEADING=2]Proficiencies[/HEADING] Armor proficiency is used to determine your defense when being attacked, which is <proficiency> + Block / Dodge / Parry. Block is equal to the rank of the shield you are using. You can block a number of times per round equal to your shield proficiency. Dodge is equal to your armor’s dodge rating plus Dexterity. Parry is a speciality with additional specialities you can buy (such as the Unbalance and the Riposte combat specialities). The quality of the armor may limit the maximum benefit you can get from your proficiency rank. Armor also has mitigation (typically ballistic, bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing). For example, a buff coat has is light armor with a proficiency limit of +3 with slashing 1 mitigation and dodge +1. Breast plate is heavy armor also with a proficiency limit of +3 and ballistic 1, piercing 1, and slashing 1 mitigation. For budgeting purposes, I am treating every +1 to dodge as two points of mitigation. Mitigation reduces the margin of success on an attack, then it applies to the damage dice. For example, an attack with margin +2 against mitigation 3 would reduce the margin to +0 then reduce the damage dice by −1d6. If you are at 1d6, that becomes 0d6 (roll 2d6 and take lowest); 0d6 becomes 1 damage; and 1 damage becomes 0 damage. The reason for doing it this way is it means you’ll always do some damage if you roll damage dice. [LIST] [*][B]Armor:[/B] Light, Medium, Heavy, Unarmored, Shields [/LIST] Weapons proficiencies are used with attack actions such as Melee Attack, Missile Attack, Thrown Attack, and Unarmed Attack. When you use one of those actions, they will tell you what to roll. For example, a Melee Attack has you roll <proficiency> + Strength versus the target’s defense. Damage is based on margin + weapon dice. A Missile Attack has you roll Bows or Firearms + Dexterity at +3 versus the target’s defense. You apply mitigation, but you do not get to add any remaining margin. To counter mitigation, you can use missile weapons and/or ammo with Armor Penetration (ArP). Combat specialities and spells may have you use attack actions with modification. The Backstab speciality allows you to make one with ArP at +rank. Using Forceful Blow increases the margin of a Melee or Unarmed Attack by +rank, but you do not add margin to damage. Instead the target is knocked back margin meters, and then mitigation is applied to the margin to determine any reduction in damage dice. The [I]Smite[/I] spell allows you to choose between making a Melee Attack or a Missile Attack using your Mage rank as your proficiency. Because [I]Smite[/I] is lightning-aspected, the target must have lightning mitigation to reduce your [I]Smite[/I] damage. [LIST] [*][B]Weapons:[/B] Axes, Bows, Clubs, Daggers, Firearms, Hammers, Polearms, Slings, Sticks, Swords, Thrown, Unarmed. (The omission of crossbows is intentional.) [/LIST] [HEADING=2]Specialties[/HEADING] There are quite a few different specialities, though the list is currently biased towards combat. Specialities may give you new actions, passive benefits, or a new method you can use when making a check. For example, Followers is a speciality. When you take it, you gain a small crew. If they help you on a group action, they roll their rank. Otherwise, you can use your Leadership to direct them. For example: Tama (the cleric) in my game has Followers at +2. The party is working on developing a settlement. They’ve hired an engineer to oversee construction while they are away. When you hire someone, they have a rank relating to their speciality. In this case, the engineer is +1 and rolls 2d6+1 for the weekly progress check on construction (tracked via multiple clocks). Tama has directed her followers to remain back at the settlement and help, which allows her to perform a group check in absentia to help the engineer on the progress check. At one point, spells were a kind of magical speciality, but that is not the case currently. Spells are just things that mages have access to cast. A cleric gets a set of spells they cast based on their rank. Casting spells costs MP. Some spells have fixed costs (e.g., [I]Smite[/I] is rank +1 and costs 2 MP), but some scale. [I]Cure[/I] has rank *, which means you can determine the rank (up to your group rank) and pay the associated cost. A rank +2 [I]Cure[/I] costs 3 MP and heals 2d6+3 while a rank +4 would cost 7 MP and heal 4d6+9. Characters have 3 MP per level. Mages gain 3 × Mage rank additional MP. (Magical consumable items cost MP to use, and other classes also have ways of spending MP.) [/SPOILER] Skills can be used untrained. You take a −2 penalty when doing so. That means your average result will be 5 + attribute (depending on the approach). That’s a baseline 41.67% chance of Mixed Success on a roll. If you want to do better, there are ways to improve your odds (working together, sacrificing things, etc). Aside from certain skills requiring the appropriate Experience (see spoiler block), most can be used untrained. Proficiencies can also be used untrained at the same penalty, but specialities generally cannot be. The exception is Initiative, which you can use at +0 instead of the usual untrained penalty. I settled on the current skill list after trying to use a smaller list that represented the core competencies of being an adventurer. Specialities were meant to pick up the slack. There were skill specialties in addition to the others you could take to give you more things you could do. It ended up making resolution too confusing. Is this basic skill enough, or should it require a speciality? Skill speciality design also risked getting way too narrow at times. Plus, having a type of speciality that was used differently was needlessly confusing. Using a list (see spoiler block) that means what it means is a lot easier. Because of the way the resolution process works, there is no need for an “improvise action”. To initiate a check, the player says something they want: “I want to scout the area for trouble.” Okay, how are you doing that? “I want to climb up the tree and look around from the top.” That’s Athleticism. What approach? “Well, I spent time in the army as a scout, so I have a good eye for danger that could be hiding.” Great, that’s Athleticism + Wisdom. You guys know the raiders have been looking for you, so advancing the clock for when they find you is a potential consequence. (Unstated is falling while trying to climb the tree because falling while climbing is an obvious consequence.) The player rolls and gets Mixed Success. They see movement in the distance, but they also see a glint from a spyglass looking back their way. They’re pretty sure they’ve been seen. The clock advances a tick and goes off. That means the raiders will be showing up soon. They’re not showing up [I]now[/I] because that would be negating the PC’s success. Instead, they have enough time to plan how to respond. They decide to set up camp and hide in the trees (which would be Camouflage + approach with the desired outcome being surprise). They’re all doing that, so that would be resolved as a group check. If they succeed (and in the [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/commentary-thread-for-that-“describe-your-game-in-five-words”-thread.682741/post-9037989']session[/URL] this example is based on), they get the drop on the raiders. In our case, it was quite literally. After a good thrashing and some casualties, the raiders retreated (and the PCs decided not to pursue). Things that are fixed are fixed. If those things want to develop or pursue an interest, that’s what clocks and faction checks are fore. The referee is constrained such that they can’t just pull out the rug from underneath the PCs and declare, e.g., the raiders are now more capable. I also want to have a process for stocking dungeons, but it’s not there yet. The idea is if you leave the dungeon, something else may have moved into it. Outside of defined things, the consequences engine is there to pick up the slack. That’s why having a functional consequences engine is so important. I absolutely do not want to prep a massive key for my hex map. The subregion where we’re playing is 32,000 km². The full region is bigger (~120,000 km²). I have better ways to spend my time than keying all that. Settlements and stuff are noted, but there are a lot of blank spaces. Consequences provide a way to fill them in with details (you got lost and stumble upon a [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa']statue garden[/URL] …). The other way is through information-gathering (Rapport, Research, etc). We had that happen in my game where the PCs did research on stirges (since they needed to clean out a nest) and established that they tended to be lethargic after feeding. When it came time to deal with the stirges, I put two clocks on the table. One tracked their response. If you made noise (i.e., consequences), I could put ticks on it. If it goes off, the stirges are up and swarming. The other was for the overall health of the nest. Every time they attacked the test, it would go up. If it went off, the stirges would disperse because a predator was destroy their nests. They’d be gone for a while as far as hex-clearing goes, but they’ll eventually show up again as a problem. I also sometimes use the [URL='https://oldschoolessentials.necroticgnome.com/srd/index.php/Wilderness_Encounters']monster tables[/URL] from OSE after rolling an event check. The event check stuff is supposed to happen regularly, but it needs work. The event check is modified by the danger rating of the current environment. If you’re up and about making noise or causing trouble, expect to have a lot of things happening you probably don’t want. One of the things you do when setting up camp is making decisions that affect your danger rating. For example, concealing the camp will reduce the rating as will sleeping without a fire (but that makes setting up watches difficult because there is little natural light at night, and darkvision is not a thing). Having separate pools (and maybe also a generic one separately) seems like it would be easier to manage. My concern would be that making it conditional on how you spend it will prove confusing for players. It’s probably not something they do often enough, so it seems like it would be a point of friction. Blades in the Dark is an [URL='https://bladesinthedark.com/advancement']example[/URL] of a game that uses multiple tracks. When you make an [URL='https://bladesinthedark.com/actions-attributes']action roll[/URL] from a desperate position (or use training), you can mark XP in the track related to that action’s attribute (e.g., Insight for Hunt). When a track is full, you can increase the rating of any action under the attribute (e.g., Study for Insight). There is also a generic XP track that fills based on end-of-session XP triggers (and training). When it is full, you can take an advancement (special ability). [/QUOTE]
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