doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
So I have used a thing called Heat for special devices, vehicles, and weapons, in the past and I am considering using soemthing like it for characters.
Heat in brief: You have a Heat Die, let’s say d6. Most things with Heat have a Heat Score, usually starting at 1 with experimental stuff having higher base Heat.
When you use the device in a way that would otherwise be limited by charges or ammo or times per day or whatever, you rolls the Heat Die. If the roll is at or below your current Heat, your current Heat goes up by 1. The most stable a device, the higher the die, or a device might even reduce Heat by 1 at the start of the user’s turn, while an unstable device (or one that is designed to be quite limited) might have a small Heat Die like a d4, and might even give disadvantage on Heat checks when Heat is above half the max value of the die. (Eg, 2, on a d4)
So…
Heat for Characters: For obvious reasons the name would change but let’s explore the idea using Heat, for now.
One example would be using Skills to do advanced or especially powerful/difficult things. In my game, Crossroads, you currently spend Attribute Points for this, but what if each Attribute or each category of skill have a Heat Die, with size based on how good you are in that stat/skill?
So instead of points from a limited pool, you theoretically have infinite use of everything, but you’re effectively limited by the risk of maxing your Heat and taking an injury.
Another way to go could be to have Heat be the gate for long lasting injury. Rather than an Injury ladder like many games’ Stress, where you can max out Stress or Injury and suffer gnarly consequences if you do so, you would roll for Trauma every time, and the score increases every time you have to roll.
Meaning, if you get hit really hard, and your Trauma score is currently 3, it goes up to 4 even if you roll above that on the die, but if you roll below it goes up by 2 and you gain an Injury. (Injuries have general consequences and require care to alleviate)
This would have something of a “death spiral” element to it, however, which I often dislike.
This is super “back of the envelope” right now, so I really just want thoughts on the general principles. Does this sound fun to anyone here? I’m especially curious about the thoughts of people who play non traditional games, and thus are used to these things being thought of quite differently from D&D.
Heat in brief: You have a Heat Die, let’s say d6. Most things with Heat have a Heat Score, usually starting at 1 with experimental stuff having higher base Heat.
When you use the device in a way that would otherwise be limited by charges or ammo or times per day or whatever, you rolls the Heat Die. If the roll is at or below your current Heat, your current Heat goes up by 1. The most stable a device, the higher the die, or a device might even reduce Heat by 1 at the start of the user’s turn, while an unstable device (or one that is designed to be quite limited) might have a small Heat Die like a d4, and might even give disadvantage on Heat checks when Heat is above half the max value of the die. (Eg, 2, on a d4)
So…
Heat for Characters: For obvious reasons the name would change but let’s explore the idea using Heat, for now.
One example would be using Skills to do advanced or especially powerful/difficult things. In my game, Crossroads, you currently spend Attribute Points for this, but what if each Attribute or each category of skill have a Heat Die, with size based on how good you are in that stat/skill?
So instead of points from a limited pool, you theoretically have infinite use of everything, but you’re effectively limited by the risk of maxing your Heat and taking an injury.
Another way to go could be to have Heat be the gate for long lasting injury. Rather than an Injury ladder like many games’ Stress, where you can max out Stress or Injury and suffer gnarly consequences if you do so, you would roll for Trauma every time, and the score increases every time you have to roll.
Meaning, if you get hit really hard, and your Trauma score is currently 3, it goes up to 4 even if you roll above that on the die, but if you roll below it goes up by 2 and you gain an Injury. (Injuries have general consequences and require care to alleviate)
This would have something of a “death spiral” element to it, however, which I often dislike.
This is super “back of the envelope” right now, so I really just want thoughts on the general principles. Does this sound fun to anyone here? I’m especially curious about the thoughts of people who play non traditional games, and thus are used to these things being thought of quite differently from D&D.
