Started off as a vague idea for a damage system trying to get the best out of per encounter and per linear, and out of global and local hits. I'm subsequently adding other ideas for "bits for a LARP system" to this page. Not all of these bits necessarily belong in the same system.
Every character has a certain number of hits per location, and a certain number of (non-locational) wounds. #
Life is divided up neatly into encounters.
Whenever you take damage, you lose that many hits to that location.
When a location reaches 0 hits, it is Wounded, and unusable. If a crit is wounded, you fall unconscious.
At the end of each encounter, you regain all your hits, and lose one wound for each location that became wounded in that encounter (or possibly "for each location that is wounded at the end of that encounter" or "for each time that one of your locations became wounded in that encounter", but I think that someone who has their arm repeatedly zeroed, healed up to 1, zeroed again, healed again etc probably ought to lose 1 rather than 0 or many wounds).
Wounded locations become Unwounded between encounters (unless you're out of wounds).
If at the end of an encounter you would be losing more wounds than you have, that many wounded locations are destroyed (theoretically, it's possible for your leg to be broken, healed up, and then fall off at the end of the encounter - clearly you were running on adrenalin...)
Elaborations on the above
Healing powers mostly restore hits rather than wounds, on the grounds that playing someone whose healing powers are only useful in the heat of combat is much more fun than playing someone whose healing powers are only useful in betwen encounters and whose optimum strategy is to stay out of all fights.
If someone is unconscious then it is possible to inflict wounds (subtracting from their wound track, but not destroying locations) on them at a rate of 1 per ?2?5?10? seconds. Or you can just beat their other locations to 0, to add wounds. But if they have more than 7 wounds left, you'll need to do wounding rather than just hits to execute them.
Armour and DAC-equivalent both simply add hits.
There could potentially exist calls such as "sever" - which immediately takes a location to zero hits; "wound", which inflicts no hits but causes a wound to the target - but I'm not convinced their need to be.
No qualifier shall have an inherent meaning - things like "venom double" or "piercing double" or "magic double" or "eel double" can exist, but they have exactly the same effect as a normal double unless the target has an ability that says otherwise.
So, for example, Bob the ethereal wraith may be statted "immune to any damage that does no carry the tag "magic" or "holy"; take +2 hits of damage from anything holy", while Jim the Paladin may have the ability "inflict holy damage with your holy sword of holiness". But "holy damage does +2 hits to undead" is not part of the system.
Sally the golem may be "immune to venom, because you are not alive". But "golems are immune to venom" is not something people have to remember OOC
In this way, the system can encompass an effectively infinite range of damage types, but each individual player only has to worry about the very few that effect them.
OTOH, an purely-advisory bestiary can mention "when statting undead, these are standard; when statting golems, those are" and its entirely possible that IC people will know that usually venom doesn't work on golems. But if they forget this, the system still works just fine.
The days are Dark. The Demons wait on the frontier. Most men are rough, ruthless and live by the force of their arms, and many even make pacts with the Demons for Forbidden Power. A few, on the other hand, still struggle to hold back the Darkness through the light of their souls.
Some skills give you combat stat bonuses through simple physical training; some through pacts with demons, and some through faith, meditation and blessings.
You get more stats for your buck from demons than from physical stuff, and less still from blessings.
But most demonic pacts require you to add the type "unholy" to your damage, and make you vulnerable to "holy", while most blessings let you add "holy" to your damage calls and make you resistant to unholy damage.
So warriors beat witch-hunters, who beat cultists, who beat warriors.
An alchemy system that uses hard skills as a constraint: to use your alchemy, you have to have the correct number of bottles of coloured water; each must be uniquely labelled as which potion it is (so you can't just bring out the first bottle that comes to hand and declare "this is a healing potion", and the recipient actually has to drink at least half the contents to get the effect (requiring them to get the lid off and not spill any).
Or, alternatively, rather than coloured water each bottle has to have a rolled-up piece of paper in it, with the effects of the potion written on it; to use it you have to open it and extract and read the paper.
The flip side to this greater hard-skill challenge is that you can get potentially much more power per point than point-and-click magic.
A random setting, possibly to go with some of the above. Written because I am trying to reset my body clock, and need something to keep my mind off the desire to close my eyes...
- There is a Town in the Hoothills of the Mountains. Technically, it is a part of the Kingdom, but because it's so far away from the capital it has quite a lot of autonomy.
- There are a great many 'Orrible Things in the Mountains (more on them later). The only bit safe to venture into is that kept safe by the Town. The Foothills are only marginally less wild.
- It stands in the Pass which connects the Kingdom to the Other Kingdom. There is a Road; there is also a River. This makes the Town significant, because it controls trade.
- Flanginium (C.F. Warpstone, Lyrium, Ghost Rock etc) is mined in the Mountains. It is immensely valuable, has magical properties, and is mined in the Mountains. This makes the Town significant because it controls the supply of Flanginium (Flanginium may be found throughout the mountains, but only this bit is safe enough to mine).
- There is no good farmland near the Town. It is entirely dependent on the Kingdom for food, and the population is severely limited by the amount of food that can be brought in through the Foothills on the Road and the River.
- There are three important people in the Town: the Burgomaster, the Duke and the Prince. They constantly vie against one another; at any given time two of them will be allied against the third, but this changes constantly. By far the most effective, and possibly the only, way to gain any form of power, status etc in The town is from one of these three.
- The Burgomaster is chosen by the miners and represents them. He has no official power, but if he tells them to they'll down tools and the supply of Flanginium will stop. He wants taxes on miners to be low, taxes on trade to be high, the price of Flanginium to be high, Flanginium production to be kept low, and autonomy for the miners from the Kingdom.
- The Duke is the legal ruler of the Town. He levies taxes. He wants taxes on both trade and mining to be high, the price of Flanginium to be high, Flanginium production to be high, and to maintain tight control of the miner in the name of the Kingdom.
- The Prince is the ambassador from the Kingdom. He's only a minor prince, and techically he's just a guest of the Duke, but he represents the King's interests and controls the food supply. He wants taxes on both Trade and Flanginium to be low, the price of Flanginium to be low, Flanginium production to be high, and the Kingdom to maintain tight control over the Town.
- There are five Gods.
- A god of anger, impetuosity, violence, lashing about in a blind rage, acting before you think.
- A god of appetites - primarily gluttony and lust, but to a lesser extent avarice and other forms of self-indulgence.
- A god of of cowardice, sloth, shame, jealousy, pettiness, envy, bitterness and inadequacy.
- A god of corruption - both disease and fungus and rot, and political corruption, dishonesty, moral corruption etc.
- A god of cruelty, malice, sadism and evil for evil's sake.
- The Gods claim they made the world and humanity to be their servants and playthings. They are widely believed to be lying, but no-one knows for sure. In the Past, at the start of civilisation, their then high priest InsertNameHere?, secretly sickened by the horrors he had performed in their names, tricked them out of the world and made it impossible for them to return. However, he had to go with them to do this.
- Worship of the Gods is forbidden; anyone caught doing so is put to death. The main religion is the Cult of the Betrayer, dedicated to keeping the memory of INH alive. It is widely believed - and the servants of the Gods certainly claim - that he is still alive and being tortured.
- When the Gods left, some of their servants went with them; others abandoned them and remained. The former are Angels; the latter are Demons. Many Demons still worship the Gods and are granted some power in return, but they are never allowed to forget that they forsook their masters. Angels and Demons can both take any form, and are hard to distinguish; the crucial distinctions are that Angels are totally loyal to their masters rather than free agents possibly in their pay; that they are hardly every able to enter the world - only when summoned, and they're hard to summon; they are technically possible to banish, although again it's hard; and they are an order of magnitude more powerful. Little demons are mook-level monsters (although they come much, much bigger than that; many big ones are worshipped as Gods in their own right, although they aren't); Angels are seldom less than arc-plot bosses, or linear bosses at minimum. If and when an Angel gets loose in the world, bad things happen...
- Technology is the steampunk end of fantasy and/or the fantasy end of steampunk - clockwork golems and huge bubbling things with lightning arcing between coils are potentially in, decent firearms are out. The PCs all know and agree that there are clear, defined laws of physics that can be studied, understood and exploited, and IC they know what these are, but OOC they are not defined, and what can and cannot be achieved through technology is defined by narrativium,. Magic, by contrast, does not have even notional laws - the PCs know that it runs on narrativium. Note that technological narrativium is intended to produce technology-feeling results, though, so e.g. if it's been done once it can probably done again, etc. Electricity exists and is used, but is inherently magical, and requires flanginium to generate, and is hence not generally used for mundane purposes.
- Given that players love to advance technology, the tech level at the start of play will be at the very low end of the genre; it will be defined in advance how far it is possible to advance it, but only refs will know this.
- The only playable species is human. There *are* other sentient humanoid in the world, but the only ones you are likely to encounter in play are demons. There are no non-evil demons, so it's a fairly safe assumption that if it's humanoid and not a human then it's incurably evil by its very nature. Demons aren't born, they are spawned fully-formed; if a demon looks or acts like a baby it's doing so with the intention of deceiving. Golems may become a playable species some day, depending on player action.
Want sleep... eyelids heavy... maybe some stats would help?
All PCs are level 3. There are various levels available; you can mix and match as you see fit.
Default is 1 hit (i.e. 1 per loc), 6 wounds, single by blow with any weapon, cannot use a shield or call damage with an offhand weapon.
Armour physreps are purely cosmetic; anyone can declare themself to be "in heavy armour" or "not in heavy armour", but cannot change during the course of an encounter; this grants the "armoured" (generally disadvantageous) or "unarmoured" tag as appropriate, but by default has no other effect.
Any blow with a short weapon to the back of the torso is a backstab. One *can* backstab the same target repeatedly.
Effects:
- Counter - ignore 1 ranged effect, which need not be targeted on the caster. Must be cast within 3 seconds.
- Disarm - the target drops everything they are carrying; they can pick it up immediately.
- Encumber $duration- the target cannot move from the spot they are standing, although they can turn on the spot and can fight as usual. In addition, they count as "armoured" for the duration of the effect, but gain no bonuses from this.
- Evade - ignore 1 by-blow effect, including a damage call. No call needed.
- Jump - take seven steps quickly in a straight line, during which you are immune to damage. No call needed, but yell "hup" or similar and mime leaping...
- Heal - heals all hits to the touched location.
- Knockdown - the target falls over; they must stay down for two seconds (starting from when they reach the floor, not when they take the call).
- Maim - takes a non-critical location instantly to 0 hits.
- Mute $duration- the target is unable to speak or make any verbal sound for the duration of the encounter. Prevents casting.
- Purge (X) - removes all effects, or all effects with tag x, from the target.
- Sunder - the target loses all benefits from any armour they may be wearing, for the duration of the encounter.
- Weaken $duration - the target loses a damage grade for the duration.
Levels
- Warrior: +4 hits, shield use, double by blow. +2 hits when in armour. S
- Tank 1: requires warrior. +3 hits, +2 hits when in armour, triple by blow when only using a single weapon (with or without shield).
- Tank 2: requires Tank 1. +2 hits, +2 hits when in armour, quad by blow when only using a single weapon and no shield, triple by blow at other times.
- Swashbuckler 1: requires warrior. +3 hits. +1 hit when in armour. When not in armour, may use one of "Disarm" or "Knockdown armoured" 1/encounter by blow.
- Swashbuckler 2: requires swashbuckler 1. +2 hits. +1 hit when in armour. Gain an extra effect per encounter, and "Jump" and "Evade" are added to the list of known effects". Triple by blow.
- Archer: +2 hits. When armoured, + 2 hits and quad by bow, when not armoured, quin knockdown by bow.
- Stabbinator 1: + 2 hits, + 1 hit when armoured. +1 grade of backstab. When not armoured, gain "knockdown armoured" 1/encounter.
- Stabbinator 2: + 2 hits, + 1 hit when armoured. When not armoured, base damage of double by daggers, +2 grades of backstab (total), your choice of "jump" or "evade" 1/encounter.
- Stabbinator 3: +1 hits. +1 grade of backstab when armoured, +3 when not. When not armoured, gain base damage of triple by daggers, a second effect per encounter, and "encumber armoured 5 seconds by blow", "sunder by blow" and "weaken 30 seconds by blow" are added to the list of available effects.
- Wizard: +1 hit. Learns 2 level 1 spells and 1 level 1 potion. When unarmoured, can cast one level 1 spell per encounter. May carry 1 level 1 potion, and use it once per encounter. May cast more level 1 spells, at a cost of one wound per spell. May perform rituals.
- Caster 1: requires wizard. +1 hit. Learns 2 more level 1 spells. When unarmoured, may cast 3 level 1 spells per encounter for free. Can add the "magic" tag to any damage call they make.
- Caster 2: requires caster 1. +1 hit. Learns 1 more level 1 and 1 level 2 spells. When unarmoured, may cast 4 level 1 and 1 level 2 spell per encounter. May cast extra level 2 spells for 2 wounds per use.
- Alchemist 1: requires wizard 1. +1 hit, +1 hits when armoured. May carry 4 level 1 and 1 level 2 potions, and use three potions per encounter (cannot use the same potion twice).
- Alchemist 2: requires alchemist 1. +1 hit, +1 hit when armoured. May carry unlimited level 1, 2 level 2 and 1 level 3 potions, and use 7 potions per encounter (cannot use the same potion twice.
- Priest 1: +1 hits, +2 when armoured. +1 wound. Learns all level 1 spells and potions. Gains access to unholy spells and potions.Can cast 3 level 1 spells per encounter, whether armoured or not. May carry 1 level 1 potion, and use one per encounter. Gains double benefit from consumption of raw Flanginium. If using any power not available to a caster of the same level (casting in armour, casting extra spells in an encounter, casting more spells than a caster would know on a single linear, using Flanginium) then must append the tag "unholy" to the call. Can use wounds to cast, as wizard.
- Priest 2: +1 hits, +1 when armoured. +1 wound. Learns all level 2 spells. Can cast 4 level 1 and 1 level 2 spell per encounter for free. May add the "unholy magic" tag to any damage call they make.
- Priest 3: +1 hits, +1 when armoured. +1 wound. Learns all level 3 spells. Can cast 5/2/1 per encounter for free.
- Warlock: requires wizard and warrior. +1 hits, +2 when in armour. Learns +2 level 1 spells, which may be warlock spells. Can cast in armour. Can add the "magic" tag to any damage call. Can cast 2 level 1 spells per encounter for free. When using wounds to cast, may expend 2 wounds for 3 spells.
- Paladin 1
- Paladin 2
- Antipaladin 1
- Antipaladin 2
- Reaver
Spells:
Level 1 generic:
Knockdown at range, disarm at range, Counter, Magic single at range, magic triple armoured at range, magic triple by blow, "magic quin armoured" by blow, jump, fully heal one location by touch, sunder at range, grant a target +1 hits per location for the duration of one encounter by touch, take any number of wounds from a willing target by touch, give one wound to any target by touch. "Recognise magic" at touch range. Give a target the "magic" tag by blow, for an encounter. Magic Mute 10 at range. Magic Encumber 5 seconds at range. Magic Weaken 30 seconds at range.
Level 2 generic:
And level 1 ranged spell to any number of targets. Magic triple at range, magic oct armoured at range, fully heal all locations by touch, fully heal one location at range, give a target +3 hits per loc for one encounter, give a target +1 grade of magic damage by blow for encounter. Mute 30.
Level 1 Warlock only:
Gain a degree of resistance to any one tag (tag must be chosen when spell learned). Add any one tag to damage call for duration of encounter (tag must be chosen when spell learned.
Level 1 Unholy:
+1 degree of unholy damage by blow, for the duration of an encounter. Unholy double at range. Unholy quad by blow. Unholy heal all locations, by touch.
Level 2 Unholy:
Unholy double at range to unlimited number of targets, unholy quad at range,
Thoughts?
my thoughts are 1) Wounds system - I see where you are going with it and it is quite innovative but it still seems complex, and more counterintuitive than just counting down a total of hits. 2) I like the simplification of the damage call proposal but it seems very similar to what we have already got (although I realise this is hypothetical) and I don't think it will actually address the issue of some people learning that golems are immune to venom and other people forgetting that when statting them and then the golem-hunters complainig that the world isn't consistent...3) Witchhunter-cultist-warrior system - I love this. Also I want to play your setting :) 4) Alchemy - ideally this is the standard people aim for in TT already, fudges are usually down to issues like lack of armoury physreps, unwillingness to lose lots of physreps on linears and when you sell potions to other pcs without physreps of their own and the most critical, the sheer faff of having to remake physreps every week in your ooc life as well as your ic one/the need to own physreps for every combination of potions you could carry rather than just the ones you actually have on you today. Also, we started with a high insistence on making people actually use physreps by drinking/applying them in some way and it has got dropped for the most part partly because of allergies/food intolerances but mostly just because potion physreps tend to be so unhygenic after two weeks of LARP you wouldnt want one anywhere near your mouth. I do like the paper idea a lot, particularly for transferrable elixiers where the alchemist might not be there at the exact second to say 'the one with the flower on is actually poison, not a healing potion, mwhahaha'. I don't think that being able to buy lots of little glass bottles should have a mechanical advantage. --Zebbie
- Similarly, I worry about the hit system feeling complex, though the idea of healers being vastly more effective if they are actively involved in an encounter appeals to me. I also still like the demon/mortal/witch hunter dynamic, but how that panned out would depend a lot of the setting. If all the players are on one side, it makes a lot of sense for them all to play with hunters and have fun beating up the poor, defenceless cultists. A system where you have faith/physical/magic might not attach an ethical consideration to each power source, thus meaning papers, scissors and stones are all represented amongst the player base and character parties. Also, I note that over the summer we have time to playtest this if you feel like it. --TimB
- I'll look at it when I've slept, and see if any of it still makes sense...--Jacob
- I like almost everything on this page. The Cultists > Mundane > Witch-hunters > Cultists dynamic is great. Presumably each of these three groups also contains fighter, rogue, and wizard equivalents? The hit system, while complicated, has the feature of locational hits in combat without the irritation of having to remember locational hits between combats. The "typed damage has no inherent properties" thing is a wonderful feature which every system should have. I also like hard-skills alchemy but I think asking people to drink the potions is a bad idea, because those things get really unhygenic from being carried around in grotty larp bags (also allergies). Potion labels in bottles are better, as long as you have bottles you can easily get the label out of. Ideally, the society would buy a bag of 100 of these: http://www.sks-bottle.com/340c/fin59a.html (or something similar) and hand them out to alchemists for a few pence each. I love the setting, too - there seem to be ample built-in hooks for everyone, and a small number of clearly-defined factions. This page is, as expected, tempting me to put up my own ideas for system writing. --Valtiel
- Looking at the hit system again with a critical eye, it appears that you don't lose any Wounds unless you've actually had a location taken down to 0 Hits. This means that the fights have to be a certain level of nastiness (i.e. enough to take out a location on someone) before they start to sap per-linear resources. And there's a very fine line between an encounter taking out one person's arm and TPK because one of the characters suddenly can't fight as well. With TT's current system, if the party are fighting well and letting the warriors take all the hits on their armour, or if everyone is armoured, encounters have to be quite hard before they start sapping resources, and it can be quite hard to compensate for this as a linear designer. I suspect this system would make that difficulty even more severe.
- There is a way to get around this - accept that most encounters will be taking out limbs or rendering people unconscious, and give the characters plenty of access to quick and easy healing so that PCs knocked down mid-way through a fight isn't as much of a disaster as it can be in TT. That way, combat healing becomes much more common (and also becomes a vital hard skill), and wounds actually get used up over the course of a linear. --V
- A suggested modification to the death system: If at the end of an encounter you would be losing more wounds than you have, that many wounded locations are crippled and may not be used (but are still attached, and so can be fully healed later if sufficiently big magic is applied). A crippled head or torso is fatal. If an encounter ends and you would have a location crippled but it is not currently wounded (i.e. it has been zeroed and then healed up again), it counts as badly damaged. This has no mechanical effect, except that if a badly damaged location is reduced to 0 hit points, it is immediately severed or otherwise destroyed. --V
- My opinion's very similar to Valtiel's here, except that I don't like locational hits because I'm perverse like that. I agree that typed damage having no inherent properties is awesome. I agree about the system. --Requiem
I like the rock paper scissors mechanic, but agree that you'll probably want all three on a particular side, otherwise the cultists just make sure to hire mercenaries/mind control mundane soldiers to defend themselves. And then the best group to take down the mercenary/cultist gestalt is other cultists. Something possibly went wrong there. Would healing in this system insta restore all hits to a location or similar? And yeah, I can see glass cannon syndrome being the standard barrier to overcome, (though if you do, the systems brilliant) --Taxellor
WRT the Holy/Mundane?/Unholy? thing, I would try to make it work as follows:
- -If you are found out as a cultist, you become unplayable as a PC; being Holy is slightly socially advantageous.
- -Each of the three differences in power level is quite large.
- -Mundanes massively outnumber the other two.
- -NPC cults are, as Taxellor says, usually composed of a mixture of unholy and mundane; to take them down you ideally want a mix of holy and mundane.
- This gives the NPC Cultists the RPS advantage as both their character types can come up against PC characters they're good against. Which isn't a bad thing per say, just worth noting --Taxellor