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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 8476496" data-attributes="member: 6704184">A lot of great stories here folks!  My own last session was a great success!  I’ve been building the third iteration of my homebrew TTRPG Quest For Chevar for the last year or so (working full time makes it hard to get the work done quickly), and on Friday we finally got to make characters and test out the new mechanics.  [spoiler=changes<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">changed from 2d10+(1d10 per skill rank) to 1d12+(1d6 per skill rank).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Reduced the skill list by combining some of the skills that struggled to justify themselves, and redesigned the character sheet to fit the entire skill list on the front page, along with the success ladder and the Trauma Track.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Changed from a DC based system to a success ladder with 5 steps; utter failure, partial failure, mixed success, total success, critical success.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ditched HP. Instead you gain fatigue, and you have a toughness score and a fatigue limit. Toughness is 8+an attribute (1-5), Fatigue limit is 3x Toughness. When you gain fatigue over your Toughness you gain Trauma. If the effect was physical, you gain Physical Trauma, otherwise it’s Mental Trauma. If you hit your Fatigue Limit, you are out of the scene. Trauma sticks around longer than fatigue, and inflicts a condition that gets worse as your trauma gets more severe.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fatigue is based on skill roll results, and you simply count the dice from your skill roll. Ie if you get a total success, you count the 2 highest dice from your pool. If you get a mixed success, you could the single highest. Critical success let’s you add an extra die of fatigue. All dice can be trades for a secondary effect like inflicting a temporary condition, gaining an advantage, or giving an ally an opening.</li> </ul>[/spoiler]<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"></li> </ul>So, character creation was about on the same level of ease as making a level 2 or 3 5e character, at the most complex. One player had a clear enough concept that it was much quicker for her.   The world is modern Earth, with hidden magic, crossroads between the 9 worlds, and lots of supernatural ancestries from Shifters (were-folk) to Fairies, to Dryads, Djinn, and trolls, etc. My wife made a “Skater Witch” Human Bridger (think shaman) named Teddy (Theodora) whose “Fetch” takes the form of a longboard, or the form of a large spirit fox. She is very athletic, good at divination and evocation (binding and cursing magic) and aeromancy, and makes weapons of air as well as using aeromancy and geomancy to do sweet skateboard tricks. From a family of witches and Rangers in Humboldt County, Ca. My buddy John updated his first QfC character, originally a 1930’s era character. She’s a Jewish pilot and adventurer from the East Coast, with a gun she doesn’t know is magic. She was the only one who didn’t know about magic and the 9 worlds in the group. She was there as a favor for Bernadette Colson, the local Ranger Captain. Her name is Shayna (not sure of the spelling). My other friend Drew made a Shifter Benedanti (werewolf, or in his case weredog, supernatural mediator and investigator who protect the world from void creatures in the Night Battles), named George. He’s a very good boy, from a family with a long history of fighting evil. I made a companion PC who is a protagonist from a story I wrote set in the same world, Garret Ayala. He’s a Human Alchemist who is a skilled fencer and track and field runner who has been Wise for about 2 years, and is still catching up. He isn’t too exceptional outside of being very good at learning new skills and adapting to new circumstances.  His best friend, a Dryad Slayer named Iathella, was with them but just as a second source of exposition. The session began with all the PCs in Garret’s heavily customized VW Bus, which serves as his “Sanctum”; which he gets as an Alchemist. It contains a small library of copies of rare books, alchemical tools and ritual tools, and a small kitchenette, with loads of tiny house design stuff where you unfold a thing into another thing, packing more than you'd expect to fit into the space. The player gets to design their sanctum. They're driving up Ca Highway 58 from Bakersfield to Tehachapi, a beautiful mountain town with lots of apple orchards nestled into the Tehachapi Mountains, in the South Eastern corner of the southern Central Valley. They've got about an hour, and Garret starts asking them questions to establish a strategic understanding of their skills, while letting them in on what's happening. He doesn't know that Shaina isn't Wise, and doesn't notice her confusion. The job: A team of Rangers got rekt up in Tehachapi, including Bernadette herself and Garret's friend Iathella, when they got ambushed by a pack of void wolves lead by 3 void witches in a mountain hiking pass. Bernadette has called in some favors to get a team well suited to the task to come up and take care of the somewhat weakened pack before they can hurt more people and "recruit" more members to replace those they've lost. The Preparation Phase: Before a conflict scene, if the team has time, they can each make one roll to prepare for what's coming. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Garret is making a Command (Strategy) roll to give the team bonus dice they can use during the scene to add to a roll. He gets an 18, which is just short of a Total Success, so he spends an atribute point from Wits to push the check one step. This means he gets to give everyone a bonus die, rather than just 2 characters.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Shaena asks about the terrain, and Garret has Iathella share a tactical map Bernadette gave them with her. She makes a Shooting (Tactical) check to determine where the best position is for her and for the close up fighters, and try to find a good ambush location. She gets a 30, with 3 6's on the dice. All she needed for a critical success was to succeed and have 2 or more max results on the dice. So, she finds exactly the spot, and will be able to start the fight exactly where she wants to be. She also will roll her initiative check with a 1d bonus.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Teddy wants to stock her bomb materials, using her Bomb Maker trait which allows her to quickly make bombs safely, including when improvising a bomb from scavenged materials, and to mark the team with a sigil of protection. She spends an Atribute Point from Will and rolls Alchemy (Sigils) getting a partial success. She doesn't push it, so everyone has 1d Physical Armor (reduces incoming damage by 1d6) that will dissipate if they fail an Active Defense check. Total Success would make it last until the end of the scene regardless.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">George wants to get a read on the spirit world, and the location and strength of the enemy. Because void creatures are related to the spirit world and the Night Battles, he can use Animism (Trance) to do so. He gets a Partial Success and uses his bonus die from Garret, increasing it to a Total success (17 +4 =21). He finds the exact location, and combining his efforts with Shayna's, they find exactly the point to wait for them in ambush, and get the high ground.</li> </ul>Battle Begins. The team are in Tehachapi and in position in a place where a mountain ridge is about 6 yards away from a man-made ridge next to a gas station, with about a 6 yard drop and a curving path leading from up the ridge down into the kill box. It's a short span, but since they're in position already, it's an easy ambush. Initiative. George and Garret are using a Stealthy approach, while the others are lying in wait until the two hitters make contact. It's not the smart approach since they could have used the kill box to make the enemy come to them after a round of ranged attacks, but George and Garret both want blood, and so it goes. Both succeed on their Stealth (Sneaking) rolls, while the other two wait. Teddy rolls Aeromancy (Aerokenisis) to make a hammer of air, and Shaina rolls Perception (Examination) to take careful aim. Since all four succeed, the enemy would have to get very good Perception checks to have a chance of not being ambushed. They make Perception rolls (NPCs don't have specialties, just skills), and get a partial success. The team won't get automatic success on their first attacks (total failure), but the get to take their whole round of actions before the enemy can act, and automatically have the Initiative due to a successful ambush. Combat Phase 1, forward combatants and things that trigger at the start of conflict. Garret and George rush in from stealth and make their opening attacks, getting a bonus die of damage on a hit due to ambushing their targets. George targets the biggest void wolf, which is a monstrous hybrid form werewolf with inky black fur and the smell of decay around it. George is in dog form, something like a really big blonde sheep dog, and goes for the throat. Partial Success. He pushes it by taking a complication rather than spending AP, meaning he does 3 dice of fatigue, and fails to grapple the target, falling prone himself alongside the void wolf. He does 18 fatigue, which inflicts a trauma. The player chooses to inflict the Bleeding condition with that Trauma, which means the target takes 1d fatigue at the start of it's turn every round. Garret pushes a Partial Success to Total, and just wollops the void witch. As a Quick Action he enhances his strike with Evocation (Gaes) to inflict a Silenced binding on her. She gains a Physical Trauma and is at a 1d penalty to perform magic or communicate. Phase 2, passive and nuetral stance characters. Teddy is in a Readied Stance, which means she can go in any phase she chooses, and chooses to move to where she is close to the fray, and wait to take the rest of her turn. Phase 3, rearward stance characters go and complex maneuvers resolve. Anything that happens at the end of the round happens now. Shaina starts her turn by making an Active Defense check against shock. I don't recall what skill she used, but she focuses her mind on the tasks, concentrating on terrain, targets, allies, cover, trajectory, and nothing else. Partial Success. She gains a mental trauma, but won't be effected by it until the end of the scene or she gains an additional mental trauma. She takes aim now and shoots the second Void Witch. Critical Success, she adds her bonus die from Garret to the damage, doing something like 30 damage, and I rule that she witch just passes out, 30 being within a couple points of her Fatigue Limit, and thrice her Toughness score. Next the bad guys go. The uninjured 3rd witch tries to envelop our melee heroes in magical darkness, and fails due to Teddy using a Quick action to interrupt her with an Aeromancy attack, dealing minor damage but dropping the triggering attack to a partial failure, causing the heroes and their enemies to be in a haze of darkness. Teddy takes her actual turn next, and uses Geomancy (Inertiakenisis) to slow two void wolves. The Void wolves go, attacking George and Garret as a swarm, which means they roll with a bonus die for every 3 creatures in the swarm, but a penalty from the magical darkness, so they roll with 3 rank dice, but can't get a critical success. They get a total success, and our heroes have to make an Active Defense Check to mitigate the effect. We have since streamlined this process, so I won't go into detail, but they reduce it to where George takes about 6 fatigue, and Garret takes 12, which gives him a physical Trauma, and neither is pinned by the wolves. Lastly, the injured but standing witch uses a quick action and spends AP to successfully end the binding on her, and tries to bind Teddy in place and silence her, spending most of the rest of her pool of AP. Teddy spends 3 AP to do an Active Defense and activate her Defensive Curse spell, allowing her to counter the binding with a Evocation (Malisons) check to curse the witch. She still takes 10 fatigue, but neither binding effect come through and she successfully curses the witch with a Barbed Magic curse, making her take fatigue immediately and any time she uses magic. We ended the session there because it was midnight, and then talked for a bit about the mechanics and how they felt and all that, mad a lot of notes, and resolved to play again ASAP. Everyone really enjoyed their characters, the preparation phase, and once we dialed in the active defense mechanics they started to feel really good. A fun session and a lot of useful information for fine tuning this new version of thegame.</blockquote>

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