doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Good points.
Yeah fighting styles makes sense as a basis. I’ll have to do a couple write ups after work and see what they look like.
D&D 5E Combat Skills
- Thread starter doctorbadwolf
- Start date
Yeah fighting styles makes sense as a basis. I’ll have to do a couple write ups after work and see what they look like.
How about...
1) Magic Skills have Spells. Spells are specific effects that you learn and improve in. Like the aforementioned Pyromancy.
2) Martial Skills have Styles. Styles are broad but shallow benefits built around specific fighting methods.
That way investing in a spell makes that spell more powerful, but investing in a Style opens up more options or bonuses?
1) Magic Skills have Spells. Spells are specific effects that you learn and improve in. Like the aforementioned Pyromancy.
2) Martial Skills have Styles. Styles are broad but shallow benefits built around specific fighting methods.
That way investing in a spell makes that spell more powerful, but investing in a Style opens up more options or bonuses?
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Well that is actually a thing that can be done orthogonally to the Skill: Specialties setup.
Spells and techniques are already things in the game that you can learn and practice, formalizing specific complex skill uses
Cap'n Kobold
Hero
Tricky.
The issue I see is that those three Pyromancy specialisms are specific to pyromancy, whereas all melee weapons are likely to have the same specialities (1: Hurt, 2: Don't get hurt, 3: Stunts (trips, disarms etc) maybe?) or (1: one-weapon, 2: dual-weapons, 3: two-handed weapons maybe?)
Splitting between weapons wouldn't work so well; a sword and an axe may use different techniques some of the time, but the actual things that you are achieving with them are the same.
A straight split between Melee Weapons and Ranged Weapons as two different skills, then breaking down specialities could be the best option, but almost all Ranged weapon specialities are going to boil down to "hit a target", and multiple specialities might apply to a single shot.
How does the combat system in your game work?
The issue I see is that those three Pyromancy specialisms are specific to pyromancy, whereas all melee weapons are likely to have the same specialities (1: Hurt, 2: Don't get hurt, 3: Stunts (trips, disarms etc) maybe?) or (1: one-weapon, 2: dual-weapons, 3: two-handed weapons maybe?)
Splitting between weapons wouldn't work so well; a sword and an axe may use different techniques some of the time, but the actual things that you are achieving with them are the same.
A straight split between Melee Weapons and Ranged Weapons as two different skills, then breaking down specialities could be the best option, but almost all Ranged weapon specialities are going to boil down to "hit a target", and multiple specialities might apply to a single shot.
How does the combat system in your game work?
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Combat is fairly traditional in the basic set up, partly because what you can do is so much looser and player-driven than most traditional games.
You have an action on your turn, and 2 quick actions you can take at any time, and you can move up to your speed, however you want. If you want to go beyond that, combining actions, moving beyond your speed, etc, you make skill checks, with a ladder of success system.
Cap'n Kobold
Hero
OK. is there a roll to defend yourself for example?
What sort of different things to do with combat skills are likely to require a roll?
What sort of different things to do with combat skills are likely to require a roll?
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
You can choose a skill specialty to defend with, adding your ranks as a penalty to the roll to affect you.
The specialities are meant to be things that you have a basic set of parameters within which you can do what you want. The players says, I want to bring his shield down with my axe and attack high with my sword. They make a check, and get to basically decide what the roll means with the parameters of the specialties and the check result.
Let’s say they roll a 12, Mitigated Failure. So the main goal fails, but they can try to salvage the situation, set up a later action, or move the action one step up the ladder at the cost of either a limited resource or by facing a more dire consequence.
Perhaps they get the shield down and bone the follow up attack, but they set up their ally for a bonus rank die on thier next move against the shield guy. Or, perhaps they do succeed, but the cost of success is that they’ve overextended, taking 1d fatigue and granting 1d on the next action taken against them in the scene. Or, lastly, they can spend a Dexterity Point to dance around the enemy and turn the failure into a success with only a minor complication.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Do what I’ve landed on for now is fighting style based skills (Archery, Heavy Fighting, Throwing, etc) with simple specialties with generic names like Fast, Precise, and Trickshot for the ranged skills, and Striking, Defense, Utility, for melee skills.
Playtwsting will hopefully help us lock in some flavor on those specialties.
Thanks for the help!
Playtwsting will hopefully help us lock in some flavor on those specialties.
Thanks for the help!
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Note; the following is just to help me walk through some thoughts, feel free to ignore.
Ranged skills, basic concept is;
Ranged skills, basic concept is;
- Fast/Quick: you try to hit multiple enemies, or attack while doing something else, like running or parkour. Also allows for cover fire?
- Any success means do a hit that deals d6 base damage rather than the normal d12, with the additional action/secondary target.
- Mitigated Failure- You can either make the shot or do the move/jump/whatever, or can succeed on the most basic level with a significant consequence, like hitting and moving, but falling prone, getting hurt, opening yourself up to attack, etc.
- Partial success means there may be minor complication but you mostly succeed in what you are trying to do.
- Total Success means you do exactly what you wanted to, and can deal 1d6 extra damage or tack on an extra benefit like an extra target, applying a Trauma, creating an opening for someone else, etc.
- Critical Success - you can do 2 extra dice or effects.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
The downgrade to d6 is a general system thing. If you do a special hit rather than a normal hit, or hit multiple targets, you use the d6 rank dice to deal damage, rather than the d12 action die. Damage is dealt by counting the dice you rolled for the attack. So if you roll a 12, 4, 3, 2, which would be a total success, you’d count that 12, and could choose to either count the 4 as well, or do an additional effect.
