azmodean
First Post
Quick rundown for people who haven't played it: Burnout is a racing game, any time you do something dangerous and get away with it (driving on the wrong side of the road, driving past an opposing car, swerving around an opposing car, "rubbing", "tilgating", etc...) you get "boost". You can then use "boost" to drive faster than usual, think nitro. What effect does this have on the game? It DEMANDS that you drive like a maniac instead of rewarding carefull driving.
I was thinking a system like this would have great potential for high fantasy roleplaying. Key features:
1. You get boost points for doing dangerous things.
2. You have a relatively low maximum number of boost points compared to how fast you get them.
3. You can only spend boost points to enhance individual actions.
4. Perhaps have boost decay quickly (on the order of minutes) to keep the scope of their use within one combat.
5. This system is a major game mechanic
And explanation:
1. This is the entire point of the system, this is a system that encourages your players to go "all out" instead of playing cautiously.
2. This encourages the players to use boost as soon as they get it, if they hold back and try to hoard it, they end out missing out on boost points. Also it encourages a vicious cycle (that we want to happen) where the players that burn boost like crazy can also GET boost like crazy.
3. This keeps the players from just assigning themselves some bonuses at the beginning of combat and then playing normally for the rest of the combat. If you want to keep your bonuses, you have to keep getting boost.
4. It might be necessary to have boost decay when the players aren't in combat, also this would discourage over-planning in some situations.
5. Important to note, if this system is implimented in the way I am describing, the aquisition of boost could quickly dominate all other tactical decisions.
Dangerous things examples:
tumbling past a major enemy or a group of lesser enemies, being the first to charge a major enemy or group of enemies, attempting potentially dangerous manuvers like power lunge, disarm, or bull rush, holding back a powerful enemy during a retreat.
Boost rewards:
bonuses to rolls(duh), ignoring/reducing damage from a single attack, using an feat or special power the character does not possess, casting a spell without losing from memory/expending a spell slot.
Balancing:
There is a fine line between assinging bonuses that are too small to really influence gameplay decisions and assignng bonuses that would break the existing system. The amount of boost a character could have should scale with their level. Also there should be a wide range of actions that have different boost values and many boost rewards with different boost costs.
If this is similar to an existing published system or house rule, let me know, I'd like to look at it
I was thinking a system like this would have great potential for high fantasy roleplaying. Key features:
1. You get boost points for doing dangerous things.
2. You have a relatively low maximum number of boost points compared to how fast you get them.
3. You can only spend boost points to enhance individual actions.
4. Perhaps have boost decay quickly (on the order of minutes) to keep the scope of their use within one combat.
5. This system is a major game mechanic
And explanation:
1. This is the entire point of the system, this is a system that encourages your players to go "all out" instead of playing cautiously.
2. This encourages the players to use boost as soon as they get it, if they hold back and try to hoard it, they end out missing out on boost points. Also it encourages a vicious cycle (that we want to happen) where the players that burn boost like crazy can also GET boost like crazy.
3. This keeps the players from just assigning themselves some bonuses at the beginning of combat and then playing normally for the rest of the combat. If you want to keep your bonuses, you have to keep getting boost.
4. It might be necessary to have boost decay when the players aren't in combat, also this would discourage over-planning in some situations.
5. Important to note, if this system is implimented in the way I am describing, the aquisition of boost could quickly dominate all other tactical decisions.
Dangerous things examples:
tumbling past a major enemy or a group of lesser enemies, being the first to charge a major enemy or group of enemies, attempting potentially dangerous manuvers like power lunge, disarm, or bull rush, holding back a powerful enemy during a retreat.
Boost rewards:
bonuses to rolls(duh), ignoring/reducing damage from a single attack, using an feat or special power the character does not possess, casting a spell without losing from memory/expending a spell slot.
Balancing:
There is a fine line between assinging bonuses that are too small to really influence gameplay decisions and assignng bonuses that would break the existing system. The amount of boost a character could have should scale with their level. Also there should be a wide range of actions that have different boost values and many boost rewards with different boost costs.
If this is similar to an existing published system or house rule, let me know, I'd like to look at it
