NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6044388" data-attributes="member: 2067">Some of these ideas are a little too abstract maybe, but I think we're thinking in the right direction. I was thinking a bit recently about what each dice roll represents, because I think that's kind of where the abstraction breaks down for me at least. Rolling dice is necessary for rules variety, but I need to have a clear view of what that roll actually is in the game world, and be able to strategically make decisions about which game-world elements to use. So I wondered, if we set it fairly abstract, we have one die roll representing one day's worth of travel (an 8 hour march) through difficult terrain, maybe about 24 in-game miles of travel. Much like you don't roll an attack roll if the thing is the broad side of a barn, you don't make any sort of skill check if the terrain poses no real obstacle: walking a well-trod path doesn't incur any sort of die roll. You just do it. At the end of each day, if the party has enough supplies, they take an extended rest, use some of them, and continue on the next day. "Supplies" could be more specific, but lets just put it in GP terms. 5 gp buys you "daily supplies," which include clothes, tents, bedrolls, tinder, firewood, food, drink, cloaks, whatever repairs you need done, etc. Each "Daily Supply" has some sort of encumbrance rating so that maybe an average character can only carry 1-5 Daily Supplies on them at any one time (encouraging the use of donkeyhorses and draft animals and hirelings! Perhaps your Encumbrance threshold is 1 + STR bonus?). Optionally, you could drill down to more detail, but it isn't necessary: "Daily Supply" carries all your abstract food, drink, and camping needs. So on a well-trod path, the party moves 24 miles in a day, and spends 5 gp per character on upkeep (gotta buy it before you set out, obvs), as a baselineThe interesting part comes when the DM rolls for a "random encounter" (or just picks one they had pre-planned). The exact method of generating these is open to a lot of flexibility (how many times do you roll? How random is it? What % is dangerous, what % is just annoying? do you even bother to roll "peaceful" encounters?), but the idea would be that whenever you move through difficult or dangerous territory, there's a chance of getting involved in something dangerous or difficult. It might be a raging river, it might be a bridge out, it might be angry orcs, it might be a ruined temple to Asmodeus, it might be an eerie song drifting through the twilight forest...whatever. Here, you could apply specific class abilities. Rogues, for instance, could use Stealth to avoid random encounters with creatures (though perceptive woodland beasts would be tougher!). Druids could use Natural Lore to avoid random encounters with fey, plant creatures, and animals. Rangers might move faster in forested terrain, while rogues might move faster in dungeons. The idea would be to keep to the minimum number of potentially dangerous encounters, because potentially dangerous encounters cost you things you can't get back.That's why it's important that this encounter be optional. IE, it's something you can avoid, and something that you might get more of in more difficult places, and it's something you can control as a player to a certain degree if you get into it or not. In each of those encounters, there's at least a chance of getting a Complication. A complication might be an injury (head wound! broken leg! disease!), or it could be a loss of resources (Your pack mule gets swept away in the rapids! All the days of supply you have on that critter are gone!), or both. Possibly your characters have ways to avoid or mitigate these complications if they are hit with them (clerics can make some food and water...rangers can hunt...fighters might not get injured so easy...rogues can climb over most of the obstacles...etc.). If the party runs out of resources (ie Daily Supplies), they risk further problems from exposure, starvation, thirst, etc. We determine if a character suffers a complication by playing through the "encounter" (even if it's with a washed-out bridge or a poisonous squirrel!), either free-form or through more rigorously balanced checks-and-rolls (I nominate 1 success/party member as a minimum threshold for success, with any failures resulting in possible complications). Either way employing unique character abilities. Now the wizard uses spells like levitate to help the party over the river, and the fighter uses a specific intimidation ability to freak out the squirrel.Traps, in this model, can be random encounters that have a high chance of injury. Might not kill you outright, but it'll lay you up and make you less effective for a while.And in "grittier" games, you can up the rate of injury, or up the severity of it, while in more heroic games you can ignore the whole swath if you want, or just lessen the injuries, or whatever.And spending extra days on the road are a problem, because it increases the likelihood of having extra encounters (and thus incurring extra complications, extra injuries, extra expenses...). So time becomes a factor even without some artificial time limit: you naturally do not want to sleep in the wilderness or in the dungeon if the DM is going to roll again to see if something untoward happens to you in the night. But then we have three possible parts where specific character abilities can come into play:a) In avoiding the possible encounter entirely, (controller/defender?)b) In completing the encounter successfully, (striker!)andc) In avoiding or mitigating complications that arise from failing (leader!). You can compare what a d20 roll is capable of compared to what a spell can do pretty easily in this mode. Okay, if Teleport helps you avoid encounters, and so does Stealth, we can make sure that a high-level rogue and a high-level wizard are capable of ignoring about the same amount of encounters. So then we have a rogue, whose ability suite is specialized in avoiding encounters (trap finding, spot, stealth) and completing non-combat ones successfully (climb, bluff, open lock, disable device). Injury mechanics themselves might impose penalties, restraints, or even limit your max HP (which is a pretty cool way to retain the old-school feel of whittling HP away over the longer term -- injuries stack, so if a broken leg gives you -5 max HP and a broken arm gives you -10 max HP and you have normally 15 max HP, you're going to be VERY HESITANT about wading into that fight with orcs later).And I might be able to be happy with that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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