MRPG New System Theorycraft

Should anyone stumble across this page and be confused; this is the sort of ridiculous stream-of-consciousness crap that comes out of my head and is, by necessity, very confusing.

Class Overhaul

The thought-process here is to replace the initial "class" system with something much looser and more open. Ostensibly these are "Combat styles" but will end up retaining the "class" name because it is semantic and re-writing half the wiki over a semantic change is not something I do.

A "combat style" is a set of active and passive facets that a character receives for being in that style, meant to provide guidance on how to play that class.

Examples

The "Archer" combat style provides bonuses to firing ranged weapons while moving and at intermediate range.

The "Warrior" style provides bonuses to heavy armor

The "Rogue" style provides access to trapping, etc.

It ultimately serves the same function, but will be faster and simpler to create and balance. Some effects will be gated by level, and some proficiencies will require specific styles.

But the ultimate goal is to give players more freedom. For example, if you wanted to wear heavy armor and carry a big sword, but still disarm traps, you'd take the Rogue Style(class) but then take heavy armor and weapon proficiencies over more traditional rogue abilities.

Casters

Spells are no longer stratified by level(except more powerful spells, but those can be gated in other ways). Instead, spells "scale" with level - but only class levels, and class levels gate the number of spells. Facets can then unlock scaling by character level.

So, for example, a character could take 1 level of wizard, get access to one really good spell, say fireball. They then take a facet that lets them scale fireball by their character level. Hey presto, you now have a warrior that knows fireball. He's still a fully kitted and capable fighter, but can also throw out a spell when he needs to. The tradeoff to know one or two spells would me minor but the tradeoff for a few really good ones would be big.

"Buff" spells overhaul

I like a good buff as much as the next person, but they are irritating to maintain even in a PnP game. So now "weave" spells will work as toggles. You "turn on" a weave and maintain the effects of it indefinitely until it's switched off, the tradeoff being that having it running permenantly consumes one of your active cool-down slots.

Card System

the game is going to need cards to accompany it. These will represent abilities and be used for tracking cool downs. Players can play without them, but it will make life easier. These shouldn't be tough to prototype.

Original

The goal here is to produce a new system to replace "There is no Twelve" - while this was fun, it was shamefully lifted from Exalted.

Coherent Description

The new system uses percentage rolls for hit and specially constructed hit dice for damage calculations.

Attack Stages

Attack and Defense are still uses, as is star rating(with greater variability). On an attack, the attacker rolls percentage dice to try and beat the target's defense. Percentage dice use two 10-sided dice, one with 00-90 and the other 0-9 as the first and second numbers respectively. On a successful attack, they roll a hit dice.

The hit dice is assembled customer for each character. The idea being to use a six-sided dice with the different sides assigned to values on a table. What kind of hit they land determines what damage the weapon does. A similar system can be used for certain types of spells.

Attack Order:

• Roll Attack
• On success, roll Hit Dice
• Apply damage

Weapon damage is still variable, but this reduces the need to roll 3 separate times for each attack. Instead, we will put an emphasis on multiple attacks.

To-Hit - to hit is the sum-total of bonuses you receive from various factors such as facets, skills, etc. This is added to the attack roll.

Vorpal - any attack where the dice show 100% counts as a Vorpal hit and instantly kills the target. This does NOT include To-Hit.

Combat Hit Dice

Sides and costs:

• Glancing Blow - 0
  • Base weapon damage only, no bonuses for quality or + values, or special effects

• Light Strike - 2
  • Base damage + special effects, no bonuses for + values or quality

• Full Hit - 3
  • All weapon damage counted

• Crit - 6
  • Damage Multiplied according to some other factor

• Additional Dice - 6
  • On attack, roll a second Effect dice

Characters start with 6 points to spend. On an attack that hits, they roll the dice, check the table, and roll for damage. This is the base table upgrades; individual character classes will have specialized upgrade paths that add extra effects.

Sidebar - take the exact same concept of weapon + values and apply to spells, invent mechanics to add +s to spells.

Further Thoughts

A Thought

What if instead of letting it be customized via point system, its by facet?

E.G. everyone's basic table looks like this:

Side	Effect
1	Glancing Blow
2	Glancing Blow
3	Glancing Blow
4	Strike
5	Full Hit
6	Critical Hit

And then you earn facets to modify it, like:

• Extra Strike - a 3 on the effect dice counts as a Strike.

The end result is the same: the dice is still customized, but there isn't a complex point system to keep track of. Crits can happen at lvl 1. And there can be much finer control over how a dice can be structured.

Another Thought

Multiple effect dice?

You have the table as above, you roll 3 dice, if any two match, that's your hit according to the table. Otherwise its a glancing blow(E.G. each attack that succeeds deals damage).

In this system, two 6s is a crit, 3 is a vorpal.

Could eliminate the percentage roll? Or do more with percentage role.

I like the idea of "Roll attack to defeat defense... succeed? now roll for how much you succeeded... now roll for damage."

What about removing damage rolls except on bonuses? E.G instead of having a damage dice, a weapon just has base damage:

• Longsword
  • Sub-type: Longsword
  • 1 handed
  • Base Damage: 6
    • Critical Threshold: 2
    • Critical Multiplier: x2
  • Size: Medium
  • Quality: Poor to Very Fine
  • Weight: 12
  • Minimum Level: 1
  • Special:
  • Base Value: 36

In this configuration, each + would add 1 point to the base damage, and you'd only roll if the weapon had special add-on damage features(like 1d8 fire damage). M

How about "Critical Multiplier" and "Critical Threshold"? In this system, the weapon has 2 effects on it: critical multiplier(how much the damage increases on a crit" and "critical threshold" how many dice have to match to get a crit. For most weapons this will be 2, but for some it may be 3 and for others it may just be 1(E.G. one 6 counts as a crit)

Will also add some feature where you can roll extra dice or if all 3 dice match that makes it extra special.

Coherent Description

Under this proposed system, weapons have a set damage with 4 different types:

• Base
• Quality
• + value
• Special Effects

There's no dice for any of these, just set values(will require some reworking but be easier in the long run). The types of "hits" determine which effects get applied:

• Glancing Blow: base damage only
• Strike: base + quality
• Full Hit: everything
• Crit: everything x crit multiplier.

On a successful attack, the player rolls 3 effect dice. If any two of them match, they get the corresponding hit type off the table; if not they get a glancing blow. The Critical Threshold determines how many effect dice have to be showing six for it to "count" as a critical hit. On most weapons this will be 2 or 3. Certain effects however can lower it but not bellow 1(meaning a 6 rolled on any of the dice counts as a crit). This would be most prevalent on weapons with a lower critical multiplier.

A roll of three sixes counts as a Vorpal hit, which will instantly kill most enemies. Some classes will have an ability where rolling any three of the same number counts as a Vorpal.

Dodge Idea

The new idea for "Dodge" - requires a facet, has bonuses; basically you roll defense once for regular, then again for dodge, and do whichever roll is higher.

Changes to Skills

Instead of having Proficiencies, everything you can do is going to be lumped together under the grand auspices of "Skills". The reason for this is to discourage min-maxing and incentive more diverse character creation. The percentage roll is used for everything, and stats still cap skills. The main difference is, now your ability to sneak around is also tied to your ability to use a weapon or smooth-talk a bar maiden.

To augment this system, we add in a concept of Backgrounds. These along with class provide bonuses to skills. This lets the character get a bit higher of attack and defense without sacrificing things like being able to read and write. The backgrounds will work a bit like Facets, providing bonuses as well as penalties.

Proficiencies Overhaul

Proficiencies are still labeled as such, and specifically mean you are "proficient" in using it. For weapons, you can use a weapon you are not proficient in, but you get no bonuses to attack. As in none, not even generic attack bonuses; your roll for attack is all you get to beat the enemy's defense.

For magic, proficiency is used to unlock spells and to improve their effectiveness. This will mean(yet another) overhaul to the magic system, but it's all for the best. Mages will get some advantages when it comes to unlocking spells, and we will probably heavily tone down the number of spell schools.

Spellcasting

Spells are going to be divided into "Attack Spells" and "Effect Spells". An Effect Spell is an auto-success based on Star Rating. And Attack Spell must roll for attack and beat the enemy's defense.

Stats

Stats now cap skills. In some situations, stats will also add bonuses to attack, defense, and star rating.

Facet Overhaul

The facets need to be overhauled in order to work with the new system. Along with this comes better organization. Facets can now be conceived of as two categories: "permission" facets that allow you to do certain things, and "bonus facets" that provided bonuses to different effects.

Armor Class

AC will need significant changes.

Notes

Concept and Thoughts

This provides numerous added build options. Building for attack power, reducing enemy defense, and extra points to spend on the hit dice, plus damage increasing effects. It makes the build aspect more complicated(which is desired) but simplifies combat and produces something a little more unique.

Other Notes

Along with this we are heavily overhauling the character classes and possibly ditching the pillar system. The idea is instead to move to a more multi-class friendly environment wherein X levels of Class Y grants Benifits Z. This includes Facets and otheraspects. This works similarly with the races, wherein you get a series of granted things based on race.

Also considering overhauling the magic system. Mages would still exist as a distinct class, but magic itself would become more open to other characters. The idea is anyone can learn magic, but mages are specialists and thus much more powerful.

Hit and HP System

Replace standard pool of HP entirely with 4 "classes" of hit points.

Remove damage dice entirely, keep to effect dice. Each "effect" does a particular type of damage.

So a hit pool would look a bit like this:

• 0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,3

Where 0 is a glancing blow, 1 is a strike, 2 is a full hit, and 3 is a crit. Each glancing blow knocks off a 0, etc. Strikes and full hits bypass the 0s. In our sample above, a crit would instantly knock the target out.

Basically, the system more accurately replicates a realistic look at combat. You wear an opponent down with a series of known-damaging but painful blows, then ultimately deliver the ku de gra.

Thought: different weapons have multiple effect dice?

Nixing this whole idea and sticking with a basic hit point system

Proficiencies & Levels

I'm trying to avoid(for some reason) a simple point-system for proficiencies.

I also need to create drawbacks to multi-classing that don't make it more efficient to simply splash into as many different classes as possible for maximum effect.

The multi-classing drawback does not have to be huge, just enough so that pure classes are stronger but multi-classes are more fun.

The current idea is to supply a stacking bonus by level that peeks sharply at higher levels. The idea is you get the combined bonuses from your different classes. Multiclassers will always be at a disadvantage, albeit a small one.

Example Let's say the graph looks like this for the first 8 levels:

Level	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Bonus	1	1	1	2	3	4	5	7

You get the bonus added together from your multi-class split. So if you have 8 levels of Warrior, you get a +7 bonus to all percentage rolls. However, if you had say 5 levels of Warrior and 3 levels of Rogue, you would get +3 from the Warrior levels and +1 from the Rogue levels, for a total of +4.

This would apply to all proficiencies whether they are Warrior or Rogue.

Another Idea

Another idea is to simply stick with a points system(e.g. you have your list of proficiencies, and then points to spend on improving them). As in the above example, the number of points you get per level increases as you level within a specific class.

This has the advantage of front-loading multi-classes, since you don't start seeing bonuses for a few levels, splashing into another class early doesn't set you back as far.

Third Option

The third would be to just say "screw it" and make the limiting factor be the number of points you get. E.G. you get 2 points to level up regardless, and without putting significant points into proficiencies they are useless.

Under this system, every class would need the same number of proficiences and starting points. This can be difficult, but we could, say, let Warriors choose between bladed/blunt/martial so we aren't having to give them extra options. Then you get 8 points at character creation, but don't have to spend them right away.

The idea being you can say start as a warrior, save your points, take the second level as a wizard, and get both options. This would entail splitting magic into more proificincies but i am ok with this.

Over all I like this plan the best. It produces the fewest question marks for balance and hopefully still provides the fun multi-classing options I want.

Further, with gear this can open a lot of good oportunities. The idea being a multi-classer can make up for defficiencies with good equipment, while a pure classer will be strong even while naked.

Stats and Proficiencies

So the idea here is that each class has a set starting stats, these are then modified by racial modifications; then the player has a number of stat points to distribute. No rolling for stats, I hate that shit.

As before, the stat caps the proficiency. But while proficiency get to level up every turn, stats are much harder to increase. Basically, you'll either have to spend a Facet(very huge trade-off), or be granted some ultra rare item in game to increase the actual base amount.

Buffing them is another story. Under this system we'll use a modifier, and the modifier will be multiplied by the proficiency to produce the actual number.

E.G.:

• Strength 18 turns into mod x3
• Proficiency Blades of 7

7x3 = 21

So the character's "Attack" value is 21. On an attack roll, this gets added to the hit.

Translating the system over to magic will be a bit complicated but should be possible. Ideal each character would have a Melee AV, ranged AV, and Magic AV

Consider spliting DV into standard and magical? Could make a stat that worked around that.

Alternate Idea

Stat + profieincy

E.G. 15 STR + 7 profiency = 22

This means getting to add in other profiencies(like special profiency) makes for a much smaller(but still significant) bump.

Liking this plan best.

Subthought

Reduce signficantly the class proficiencies. EG warrior might get:

• Weapon Proficiency
• Armor Proficiency
• Shield Proficiency

And that's it, adding any other proficiencies later on. At higher levels, maybe provide a stacking bonus that's not limited by stats?

Stats Talk

Originally we had:

• Strength (STA)
• Speed (SPD)
• Intelligence (INT)
• Stamina (STA)
• Dexterity (DEX)

That ain't enough since I need a seperate stat for magical resistance. unless I just want spells to be avoided?

Ranger Rename

The Ranger class needs a new name that better describes what they are.

A "Ranger" is a class that focuses on the use of ranged weapons. However, the name "ranger" has very different connotations in gaming circles.

So the class needs to be called something else that better describes what they are, E.G. "a fighter who focuses on engaging targets at inermediate and long ranges". Might also take the time to rename "Warrior" but not set to it.

Here is the class dichotomy:

• Warriors are melees
• Rangers are ranged
• Rogues can do both but are not strictly combat-oriented.