D&D General Fantasy heartbreaker mechanics…

[Snarf Zagyg]

Somebody call @Snarf Zagyg, I think we found the perfect system for him.

But oh wait, it's made by BARD games? Wow, total monkey's paw situation.

OMG. I loved Talislanta, and I bought the Compleat Alchemist, Compleat Adventurer, and Compleat Spell Caster.

Good times! But yeah, seriously unfortunate name choice. Just have to pretend it's an acronym, I guess.

 

[DMZ2112]

I’ve homebrewed this to use honey ham and Mountain Dew, but the core mechanic still works great.

Psh, honey ham. What are you, some kind of simulglazionist?

(quoted from Turjan of Miir (The Dying Earth)) (Jack Vance) "I find herein a wonderful beauty," he told Pandelume. "This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity."

I remember saying exactly this to my AP Calculus teacher.

...Okay, not really, I mostly just swore a lot.

I have come all the way back around multiple times on race as class, from hating it, to seeing it as elegant simplicity, to finding it restrictive, to wanting it as an option alongside standard choices. (I'd probably rename "elf" to "elf mageblade" or something, though.)

I think it's less important to rename 'elf' to 'elf mageblade' than it is to also enforce race-as-class for humans. The dissonance is in the dichotomy. But I am a pedant.

I like the idea of games where there's a progression of abilities or skills based on different dice sizes (Kids on Bikes, Tails of Equestria), but the jump from d12 to d20 is way too big. If you're going to use that kind of system (and playing with more dice can be fun), you need to use the whole Zocchi dice spectrum for a smoother progression. I taught my youngest how to play RPGs with Tails from Equestria and the moment anyone got to the d20 level, it basically short-circuited the game, since that PC now could dominate adventures.

I've never liked Savage Worlds' 'd12+1, d12+2' solution, either; the statistical distribution is right, but when your target number is always 4, +1 is a lot.

Personally I just stop at d12. Had a real heartbreaker for a while that used a three-die pool for skills, using only d6 through d12. Beautiful, consistent, smooth, infinitely scalable. Guaranteed to have your playtesters starting at you blankly and asking if you've sought help.

 

[NotAYakk]

Mechanics to poach:
You roll 2 dice in your class area of expertise. So fighters roll 2d20 on weapon attacks, for example.

...

Alternatively always roll 2 dice and count successes. Doubles are crit (fail or succeed). This generates -1, 0, 1, 2 and 3 as levels of success and a nice curve.

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Everyone gets 3 classes. Typically these are background (raxe.etc), class and subclass.

Multiclassing is done by dropping one of these three for another primary class.

So Pirate background, Fighter class and Champion subclass.

Each grants about the same amount of oomph.

...

Power Sources. You have power sources which level up. These are why you are awesome.

Your class level is limited by your power source level.

Power Sources are capped. You have to find ways to boost them in game, or find new ones.

So that clearly cursed grimoir or sword or whatever? It also gices you a power source boost. Or swearing fealty to that church? Or that legendary scroll of ancient fighting techniques?

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Attributes don't give bonuses; they give rerolls. If the reroll succeeds you don't lose it.

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Fighters get an extra attack die every odd level. You can only hit a given foe once per turn; but you can burn attack dice to deal more weapon damage dice.

...

Anyhow, those are my random heartbreaker mechanics.

 

[LegendaryGames]

I don't know if it counts (I never played the game), but this comment made me immediately think of these ads from Dragon magazine:

View attachment 271939

I remember that ad well!

 

[overgeeked]

The big one I hope catches on is relational stats for monsters. That is, the monsters’ stats are not fixed and unchanging. Instead they are dependent on the characters’ level or a set relationship to the party. So you don’t have to have huge books fill with hundreds of stat blocks that are useless most of the time.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The definition of Fantasy heartbreaker is a game that doesn't acknowledge game design has advanced beyond 1981 D&D.

So the OSR.

Not really, amusingly.

A whole bunch of OSR stuff now is pretty shockingly advanced. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'd go as far as to say the design of Worlds Without Number, for example, is more advanced than 5E, and indeed solves a number of age-old D&D problems (including having a proper stealth-kill mechanic which also isn't OP).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Talislanta, of course, was famous for having "no elves," but a ton of elf-like species.

This was literally one of the first things I learned on the internet in like 1992 lol. I was talking to someone about Talislanta and going "No elves, cool huh?" and they were like "Actually there's loads of stuff that's Basically An Elf".

 

[MoonSong]

This was literally one of the first things I learned on the internet in like 1992 lol. I was talking to someone about Talislanta and going "No elves, cool huh?" and they were like "Actually there's loads of stuff that's Basically An Elf".

It is very hard to not make basically elves. It happened to me. It can happen to anybody, and it will happen to you.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It is very hard to not make basically elves. It happened to me. It can happen to anybody, and it will happen to you.

This is totally fair and last time I tried making a novel fantasy setting it did. James Cameron knows our pain, he managed to make elves and cat people at the same time.

 

[MoonSong]

This is totally fair and last time I tried making a novel fantasy setting it did. James Cameron knows our pain, he managed to make elves and cat people at the same time.

I started with foxes -I love foxes, I wish I could have one n.n-, but the result is the same.