D&D General Fantasy heartbreaker mechanics…

[Vaalingrade]

Yeah, I know it's an extra layer of mechanics, but I miss when the ability scores did more. Bend bars/lift gates, open doors, determining how many spells a Wizard could have- there were reasons why a 15 could be better than 14.

Or we could add derived abilities, like say a Speed stat that's 1/2 Dex and 1/2 Con, I don't know. Seems like it would make ability scores viable again.

Personally, I am continually intrigued that the initiative passes in HERO and Shadowrun that create a space for speedsters in character design and items.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah, and threw in the Wild West as well... I will NEVER understand the success of that movie.

To be fair Wood Elves are very often loosely Native American-themed (sometimes quite inappropriately), and the theme-ing in Avatar is more "generically indigenous" (in the same way corporations in movies tend to be "generically corporate" and so on). I'm not saying that's better-better, but it's at least a little less obviously racist.

 

[Malmuria]

D&D fatigue is not a bad thing. As I stated at the beginning of this post, the existence of a larger roleplaying hobby depends, in large part, on people becoming dissatisfied with or tired of Dungeons & Dragons and creating and/or seeking out alternatives to it. Very few of those alternatives ever came close to rivaling D&D's popularity or sales – but they didn't have to.

D&D Fatigue

Except for a period in the 1990s, Dungeons & Dragons has always been the most popular and bestselling RPG (and, before anyone mentions Pathf...

grognardia.blogspot.com

 

[Undrave]

I really liked 4e's Healing Surges. A system where the maximum amount of damage you can take in a fight is different from the amount of damage you can take in a day. Maybe even make it that if you reach 0 HP with 0 Healing Surges you die automatically?

I also really liked the disease track system. It could be used to model a ton of stuff in addition to diseases such as long term injuries and curses. Put them on an easy to read card so you can hand them out to players and it could work.

I think I'd merge the concepts of Paragon Path/Epic Destiny and Prestige Class into a system where when you reach a certain level (say 10 and 20) you just pick a new class that starts at that level and your old class just no longer advances. Your first class would be more basic and then you'd pick a specialty to develop into, maybe go in a multiclass-like class. I'd personally be partial to a bunch of small narrow classes where you pick your concept and just be that concept instead of having to build your concept out of a bunch of choices at every other level. Instead of taking the Fighter and building an archer, you'd just get an Archer class. Same for Wizard and Necromancer.

Yep, love 3d20 take middle for D&D:

View attachment 271928

y = -0.075x2 + 1.575x - 0.775 is the equation for 3d20 take middle.

It doesn't generate a "bell curve" necessarily, but it is a nicely symmetrical distribution.


Sorcery was just an early name for mathematics after all.

That's nifty! Good to know!

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.)

You could make them something you can level up the same way a class is, and basically all character start multi classed?

I quite like the contemporary idea that monstrous people are just people. As we know from the real world, anyone can be evil or good, so there's no shortage of enemies to stick swords into, if that's what your players are after. If I were creating a monster book, I would make it clear that Bandits, Slavers, Cultists and others in the opponents section could be of any ancestry, either homogeneously or heterogeneously. I'm creating/reskinning a new monstrous people for my #dungeon23 adventure and, from the jump, I'm noting that while most of them believe in a demonic creation myth and are demon worshipers, there's evidence that they were a pre-existing people whose leadership have taken them down this path and killed anyone who acknowledged their previous identity. I'm even going to provide a way for players to play one as a PC, should they choose (and once they find out the secrets of this group).

Maybe make a whole section on 'People as Enemies' where you just give out a bunch of racial template and partial occupation based templates (Bandit, Guard, Cultists, Pirate Captain, etc) and just have people slap them together to build their NPCs.

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

Oh. My. GOD!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Personally, I am continually intrigued that the initiative passes in HERO and Shadowrun that create a space for speedsters in character design and items.

I've played both a fair bit, and I'd say that cause far, far, far, far more problems than they solve or cool ideas they introduce, on that particular front.

I will literally never play an RPG which takes a similar approach to either, to how they handle speedster types.

In both games, the grand total effect is that speedster gets drastically more spotlight time than any other PC in combat, literally multiple times as many, and in Shadowrun, it also means that they're so much more effective, due to acting multiple times, that if you're not one, but you're supposed to be a non-spellcaster, non-drone pilot (rigger) combat character, you're absolutely terrible and will have very, very little impact on the results of the fight. Especially as not only do you act most, you also likely act first (and definitely ahead of a bunch of anyone without boosts or low boosts).

So basically any failure to take nearly the maximum possible boost that that you can, regardless of anything else, is basically a trap option for those characters (the only thing preventing it being for casters is that casting faster is not always better because of what it costs you). You might live through the combat, but even then, if your "super tough" character gets shot 3x for the 1 shot you get off (and it can be worse than that!), the odds you get messed up a pretty high.

In Champions/HERO (and also the FUZION-based Champions: The New Era), all it does is make the game waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more tedious than it needs to be. Those are slightly better-balanced than Shadowrun, because a speedster probably can't afford super-good damage powers or the like (unlike SR, where they can certainly afford a great weapon/ammo), but a good min-maxer can still leverage extra turns to a really annoying degree, and god absolutely forbid you get anyone with the slightest degree of umm and erring, doesn't work out what he's doing before his turn comes, or has analysis paralysis playing speedster (and my experience is, for some hellish reason, those people seem most attracted to the idea! Perhaps because it's the opposite of them?), because they will make the game into an absolutely terminal slog. And again, the spotlight time is very annoying because you get a PC who is literally getting way more turns than everyone else.

(I do know some HERO/Champions GMs did as a result limit how much people could invest into speedster stuff, so that's a possible solution.)

But like, I totally get being intrigued. I was too. It was one of the reason I thought those games were cool. Until I ran them enough.

JMHO and so on.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For me, Fantasy Heartbreakers tend to be defined by having interesting, passionately expressed ideas, but particularly where those ideas will also ensure the game is barely played by anyone.

I kind of feel that's the case with Shadowdark, the upcoming RPG from The Arcane Library. The Arcane Library writes adventures INCREDIBLY WELL, like WotC's adventure writers should be forcibly sat down and made to see how writing a proper adventure is done. Everything they routinely screw up (100% including Chris Perkins, he's one of the worst), she gets right.

But Shadowdark, goddamnit, is the most Fantasy Heartbreaker RPG I've seen for like, a decade or more.

It's just chock-full of mechanics that cool on a certain level, but I definitely wouldn't want to actually use when I think about it, like "Real time passed = game time passed" (this is very poorly explained and inconsistent in the playtest, basically ending up as "Well I guess ignore it if it seems hard", but it's like, no explain it properly)/torch timers, randomized advancement tables (shades of early WFRPG, and not in a good way), an OD&D-but-much-worse mandatory alignment approach, an equipment system that's very neat, but also very simplistic and doesn't seem to fit great with the "back to the old school" vibe (though it does have a certain Fighting Fantasy/Lone Wolf charm to it), and so on.

The art is pretty cool though!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Fair.

How about: "Use it or lose it," then?

Very much in favor of taking inventory and dumping what's unnecessary and reworking what's the skill system.

 

[MoonSong]

My heartbreaker is an oddity. Originally it was skill based, but over time evolved classes, and then I stopped working on it. The core: it is d20 roll-under, but higher is better. Some abilities require spending "stamina", some turn it into "mana" to power supernatural abilities. Oh and it doesn't matter if one character is single-classed and another has a million classes, if both are the same level, they are considered equivalent (Because each class has its own requirements and qualifying for more classes means you have less ability to go deep into each). It is however geared towards urban/hidden and historic fantasy rather than high fantasy.

It, however somehow managed to capture the wizard/sorcerer divide largely by accident and pretty much early on.

 

[Composer99]

The Arcane Library writes adventures INCREDIBLY WELL, like WotC's adventure writers should be forcibly sat down and made to see how writing a proper adventure is done. Everything they routinely screw up (100% including Chris Perkins, he's one of the worst), she gets right.

I'ma check out the Arcane Library adventures, then.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'ma check out the Arcane Library adventures, then.

Yeah and just to be clear, I'm not necessarily talking tone, subject matter or other stuff (which is fairly mainstream in what I've seen of Arcane's work), where opinions will vary, but talking writing an adventure so you can read it through once or even just glance through it and actually run it. How you present the information, what information you have to include, and so on. Basic stuff that WotC often gets wrong.