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Post by paulooshun on Aug 9, 2014 14:37:40 GMT -8
Nice. I'm thinking of eliminating the unconscious aspect of dying completely though.
Characters could struggle on right up until the grim reaper takes them. The reason being I want them to feel like they are extremely tough, and I think just spending a turn flipping the card to see if you inch closer to death robs them of that control. I want them to always be assessing what they can do about it, and literally gambling with their life.
I think I need a better understanding of how armour plays into this though. I don't want people to experience a Black Knight or simply wearing away a mountain of hit points. I want to achieve fast, brutal combat, while making it survivable for the players to engage in extended conflict.
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Post by Arcanet on Aug 9, 2014 16:56:27 GMT -8
Life Points = Build + 3 Wounded Points = (Resolve or Strength) + 3 Dying: 3 That is a very nice idea, which I may test for my setting, with one little addition. "When you lose a Wounded or Dying Point, exchange it to a Prolonged Complication. These Complications stack and are removed when you are healed to full Wounded (and Life?) Points." When you're nearly dead, you won't be jumping over fences and breaking down doors quite so easily. |
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Post by paulooshun on Aug 10, 2014 13:05:50 GMT -8
You know what? Oddly I'm going to turn that assumption on it's head.
I plan to *reward* characters in the Wounded/dying state with a bonus (probably to damage). Crazy? Well my reasoning is this - have you ever fought for your life? In a life or death struggle you will find your brain has never raced so fast, your muscles have never worked so hard, and your body as never felt so capable as right then. It's do or die, and the body has a lot up it's sleeve when it comes to not dying. We evolved to survive.
Plus on a game side I want to encourage it through a conflicted gauge. I want tension and risk, a real roll of the metaphorical dice for players. It's intrinsic to the setting I have, but I don't want the cowardice and caution of a dungeon crawl - I want to reward players for being courageous, foolhardy and badass. Right up until they die from it, because hey, there's gotta be a hard line somewhere.
I'll use Prolonged Complications for when enemies inflict crippling blows or other nastiness on the players, as less of a disincentive for conflict and more of a way to spice it up. I'm also toying with the notion of sacrificing a card (life or dying) to temporarily ignore a Prolonged Complication of a physical nature ("you run on that broken leg, sending searing flashes of pain tearing through your body in protest"), but not sure if that'd just trivialise them too much.
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Post by Arcanet on Aug 10, 2014 15:00:29 GMT -8
It all is part of how I've currently planned my setting. As the players are as likely to have access to a quick-fix Medstim, or a capable healer in their party, going to low Wounds is supposed to be punishing. On the other hand, a skilled Templar in the party can Inspire them, letting them ignore complications for a round. I really do need to make a Project thread soon, if only to have a place to consolidate my disjointed ideas.  |
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Ziphion
Full Member
Resident Mathematician
Posts: 132
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Post by Ziphion on Aug 12, 2014 16:55:44 GMT -8
Hello! I tested out the "Rapid Regeneration" power that DI mentioned in a previous post, and I thought I'd share my results. Here's how I implemented it: the user of the power expends one Power Point, flips a card, and recovers Life Points equal to that card's pip result corresponding to that character's Build score. If the character's Build is greater than 3 (red), they flip multiple cards and choose the one with the largest pip result (similar to how attempts work). I actually tested two versions of this power, one in which the character was free to make an attempt (attack) in the same turn they used the power (call this "Free RR"), and another in which the power actually counted as the character's attempt for that turn (call this "Action RR").
I could foresee three strategies for using this power. 1) The user is afraid of death, using the RR power any time they lose even one LP. 2) The user wants to conserve Power Points (PP), only using the power once they have lost at least enough LP to be recovered by the maximum possible pip result for that character's Build; in this way they never have "overflow" healing, and never waste a point of recovery. 3) Middle of the road: the user waits until they've lost LP equal to the average pip result for their Build before using RR. Results!
Build test character vs dummy (all stats at 0), altered derived stat calculation (LP = B + (R || S) + 5), blue weapons, no armor
I thought it was very interesting that the "Conserve PP" was so much lower than the others. I haven't tested this yet with armor, but I'm willing to bet that the "Conserve PP" strategy becomes a little better in that case... Anyway, it seems like taking the "Average Pip Value" strategy is the most effective here, so I used that going forward. Here's how it measures up to Strength and Agility vs. dummy, as well as a Build character who never uses RR at all (only benefiting from the extra LP):
I find it very interesting that this one power, when used "freely" instead of as an attempt, makes Build just as good at beating down all-zero "dummy" characters as Strength or Agility in a trading-blows kind of combat. Since Build has other combat utility like helping you sprint and keeping you from dying when unconscious, maybe it should be implemented as an attempt instead of freely, but it kind of depends on how potent other powers are. It's hard to say without playtesting along with other powers.
That said, here's how a pure Build character with "Free RR" measures up in head-to-head combat against a pure Strength and a pure Agility character:
So that means as enemies get stronger to match the party's level, Build is less powerful that Strength or Agility even with Free RR. This same graph with Action RR doesn't look very different from Strength or Agility vs. dummy; versus stronger opponents, the power hardly gives any utility to Build characters if they have to trade an attack to use it. Like I said, I think play-testing at different levels of play is necessary to figure out what feels right.
This post is mostly unfiltered brain dump, and doesn't have much point beyond "this power is kind of interesting", but I had this data and figured someone might be interested in seeing it, so... here you go.
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Post by paulooshun on Aug 13, 2014 12:48:59 GMT -8
Actually really interesting for me, since I need to understand frequency of healing etc. for my game idea, so thank you.
Makes sense that it's a skill which helps prolong the fight but damage is still king, and that's good to know. Bing tirelessly worn down by a regenerating enemy is no fun for anyone in a flat out combat.
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Ziphion
Full Member
Resident Mathematician
Posts: 132
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Post by Ziphion on Aug 30, 2014 10:16:41 GMT -8
Interesting. I'll have to see how that would look on the character cards.
I've been preparing for a Simple System Demo play test for next week (finally!), and I thought I'd share the altered character card I made in Photoshop:
What do you guys think? |
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Post by Arcanet on Aug 30, 2014 10:55:28 GMT -8
Very nice, I like how you made it easy to grasp the 'or' with the logical OR |.
I will likely use a similar card for my setting.
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Post by paulooshun on Aug 30, 2014 12:40:29 GMT -8
Love this.
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