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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9322400" data-attributes="member: 7040941">So today in a fun bit of accidental design, I ended up solving some pretty key issues as I began the actual design work on this system. Namely, the balance between ranged and melee, and how I was going to differentiate between Wands and Staves when it came to Magic.Much of the overall system hasn't changed, though I have gotten a bit more clever in how I'm going to present the system from a UX perspective; while the system sounds very Crunchy, it actually is going to be incredibly smooth to engage. We're talking singular reference sheets that could fit not just the specific Sequences, but all of the applicable Materials you'd be able to use with those Sequences. Not exactly a one-pager system, but when we're looking at around 7 such sheets that will support the creation of an impractical number of possible creations? Its gonna be nice.But getting to the important part, as I know I can ramble, today I finished up the Sequences for both Bow Making and Arrow Making. When I started, I had known from when I first conceived of the Sequence Roll how Weapons and Armor were going to work, but Bows and Arrows were a bit nebulous.So like I initially did for melee stuff, I got to researching to see how Traditional bows and arrows are made. Distilling what I learned about bows down into a gameable Sequence was easy enough, and mechanically the Sequence ended being pretty close to Melee weapons, but modified, as Bows are used in tandem with Arrows, so I had to consider it from the perspective of the two together. As I decided that Arrows will be the weaker of the pair, this did make things a wee bit easier.For Arrows, like Bows, figuring the Sequence itself was easy, as Arrows aren't necessarily that complicated in terms of breaking down the process into 7 Steps. Mechanics are where I hit a snag, as one critical step was eluding me for a while on what to do with it: Nocking the arrow shaft.Traditional Arrows generally always have some form of nock or self-nock, and this is what secures the Arrow to the bowstring, and it typically adds some stability to it in-flight. So I wanted to add this as a Step, but as for what to do with it, given its a d10 step, I just wasn't sure.I won't bother trying to recount how I eventually arrived at the solution (beat my brain like a sibling), but what I came up with was to make the addition and selection of a Nock a matter of how the Player wants to balance their potential Damage.How this is rendered, for context, hooks into my Combat System. Specifically, my Momentum Mechanic. Momentum is a form of exploding dice, where each max value die rolled acts as a currency to do a number of different things. The main option being, of course, the typical usage of re-rolling the Die to do more damage.For Bows and Arrows, due to how they work for reasons of Durability (and what the extra rolled damage represents in general), this effectively means you're firing a new arrow every time you use Momentum for this.But now, with the new aspect to Arrows, Ranged users may have a limit to this. Their Nock will determine their Momentum Limit, effectively saying how many times in a row they can utilize Momentum for any sort of extra Damage, or Stance Breaking (two things that will be vital for winning combat scenarios that aren't about bullying mooks, alongside Wounds, which just rides each attack rather than being a new one), which in turn, affects how many Arrows they could potentially put out in a single Strike (Attack).For now, how I balanced this is that the lowest value in the d10 roll, 1, will give you a Momentum Limit of 0, but also +10 to your Damage, which is substantial even in my high-octane system. You won't be able to fire off a second Arrow without making a new Strike, but it'll hit like a dragon being suplexed into the mountainside (which you could also do).Go up a stage, and you get a limit of 1 but no Damage modifications. From there, your Momentum Limit goes up by 1 but also adds -1 damage.With Arrows that work like this, this actually does quite a lot for balancing the inherent advantage Range has over Melee, as Melee won't have such limits, but obviously, will be dealing with more incoming damage. Range will be at its best with singular targets, and Rogue Assassins are going to really enjoy these, what with the Skyrim style sneak archer gameplay that I built into them.But for those who will care more about their fire rate, because perhaps the Arrows are enchanted <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😉" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" title="Winking face    :wink:" data-shortname=":wink:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />, they'll be able to customize to that end.From a real-ish standpoint, it is a little shaky as the Limbs and even the String are a factor here, and I think I'll be toying with it over time, perhaps distributing these limits across bow and arrow, rather than having come purely from the Arrow but I am quite happy with it.As an added bonus, coming up with this idea also answered some critical questions about handling Magical Weapons, that have actually been holding me back from deep diving on that. As I wanted to support the creation of weapons like Wands and Staves, and have these carry meaningful difference, I was never particularly sure of what was going to end up being good for it.But now, its plainly obvious. Dual Wielding Wands are gonna excel at Momentum, but still have a limit plus the damage penalties, but Staves are going to trend more towards superior firepower with limited or even no Momentum.And the fun part is, imo, that because Magic was already going to be kookoo bananas in this game, just as Melee already is, these limits really shouldn't eat too much into the overall "fiction" of being a powerful mage, because the different ways to channel Magic convey a general and intuitive logic in how they affect what the mage can do. Of course these piddly little sticks are fast but not that strong, and of course the big honking stick is slow but has a lot of power.So, overall, just brilliant.And for some additional context, here are the two full Sequences for Bow and Arrow Making. Obviously envisioning what can be made without the Materials to look at will be hard, so I would suggest thinking about it this way: in each of these Sequences you'll see certain things that scale based on your roll, including the aforementioned Nock step.Materials are going to work like that, with each Material noting what kinds of Crafting (as well as what specific Steps, if it can be used in multiple ways) it can be utilized in and what effect it adds when doing so, scaling up and down based on the roll you use it with. For example, you could use Bone for both the Arrow Shaft and Arrow Heads. The specific kind of Bone Material will have a listing for a Shaft Effect and as Arrow Heads, among the other ways it can be used.A lot of these I'll end up finding ways to consolidate into each other; Bone for example is gonna be useable in a lot of different Crafting Sequences, so it might just have a listing that applies to many; for example, the Shaft Effect will probably be the same overall Effect Bone would give Armor.Anyway, here they are, formatted as best as ChatGPT and I could manage, given I write these in Excel. As an additional note, any Step that states it is refundable means it doesn't have to be used, and the roll can be used as extra budget to put somewhere else:________________________________________________________________________________________________________</blockquote>

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