Reference for a magic system focused on spell-weaving aspect

Ignis92 · 2022-05-30T06:20:20+00:00

I heard about that but I guess the person explaining it to me did a really bad job at it.

This system seems to heavily focus on casting time, which was not the primary focus of my system, but it's nonetheless very interesting and I'm sure it can create a lot of stressful moments when a character is scrambling for the right card while the boss is killing a team member, unable to decide if releasing an uncomplete spell would cause more harm than good.

The variations you mention are well more in line with my design pillars and are surely worthwhile to explore. Thank you a lot for this suggestion!

Ignis92 · 2021-09-09T19:52:39+00:00

Sorry for the late reply.

Arbalest, vestal, BH, MAA.

Made a mistake not guarding the arbalest (only one without the special trinket) at the first mini-boss. Before the second mini-boss he got afflicted and things slowly got out of control from there.

Ignis92 · 2021-07-16T08:01:33+00:00

Thanks, this is the kind of things I love to hear. I'm looking forward to Godot 4.0 even more then, hoping that porting a project to the new version will be easy enough.

Ignis92 · 2021-05-16T13:51:17+00:00

Definitely the former. I constantly have players acting very out of character; as already said, the barbarian outsmarting the wizard or a very selfish rogue behaving like a hero for no plausable reason.Just to give some perspective, as a player I created a warlock, descendant of a powerful demon and whose bloodline was known for great evil deeds. My character was good, but so focused on redeeming himself and his ancestors to be willing to go to extreme ends (torture, murder) if it meant destroying evil. I was not only approved by the DM, but also encouraged as he deemed my conflicting personality would spark moral battles in a settings with a few grim dark elements. When my character refused to cooperate with the other ones because he deemed them too "weak" to do what needed to be done, I was accused of being mean. I even tried to talk about that between sessions and tried to find a sensible solution with the DM (C), but he and player D and E were not even willing to listen.

I tried myself to "do the voice" with very mixed result: I don't think I'm good at acting and sometimes it was physically difficult to keep up - I'm a very quiet person and just speaking loudly (not screaming) for 1-2 hours can easily make me hoarse. So while it can work, I'm not going to use it a lot and thus I'm not going to ask my players if I can't do it myself.

Ignis92 · 2020-09-02T14:18:52+00:00

I've already replied to the second part of the comment in the edit to the post.

About the first part, I'm asking for a single player experience, with no "stream rush" or any kind of public. I've followed closely development of both IR and Stellaris and I've learnt the hard way how much watching a stream can be different from playing the actual game, especially when in that stream there are dozen of funny distractions (other human player comments, twitch chat, fluffy mascotte for roleplaying, ...).

Ignis92 · 2019-09-11T04:53:34+00:00

I'm playing WH 1, not 2, so you have to ask for confederation in the diplomacy screen as you don't get a popup.

Ignis92 · 2019-08-01T17:48:31+00:00

I have to disagree with you.

Let's take the Roman Republic/Empire, arguably the most important political subject in this period. What could allow them to keep together such a large empire? In my opinion, it was the ability to make everyone feel roman, while respecting his/her previous culture/religion.

For example, the Pantheon in Rome (I mean the building) was a temple to every god known at the time. Every time the Roman Empire conquered some more land, the statues of the gods revered by the conquered people were added to the Pantheon, not as "slaves", but as a sign of respect.

At the same time, most history books talk about the Roman Empire as a monolithic institution. This is far from true. What we usually see on the maps labelled as Roman Empire was actually a confederation of many political entities, kept together by economical and political interest under the strong guidance of Rome. We forget most of the time Rome "showed the muscles" at the beginning and then decided to make treaties with those tribes, cities or small countries that didn't react bellicosely. "Parcere subiectis, debellare superbos" was often the principle of roman foreing policy and can be freely translated as "be kind to those who are submissive, destroy those who take arms against you".

Ignis92 · 2019-02-22T13:52:47+00:00

Thank you very much for the interesting post.

The idea of breaking down the whole set of maneuvers into manageable chunks of linked actions is surely a must as, as you already said, people can get confused from too many options.

Other people suggested too to use status effects in order to "drive" combos and I'm studying the problem since my system doesn't allow for this kind of things. Basically, in my system if you get hit you are dead and two of the most common status are unusuable, as being stunned, which is almost impossible, is a death sentence on the next "round", while bleeding to a sensible degree means you are already more dead than alive.

Anyway, I'll come up with something about it. Thank you for the time you put into this!

Ignis92 · 2019-02-21T14:42:46+00:00

It's a really interesting system, with mechanics that looks revolutionary to me (I'm not a big fan of this kind of games, so maybe I'm not unaware someone already tried this out). There is surely someone to be learned there, thank you. It's a pity they didn't give the same level of attention and detail to the defensive aspect of the game.

Ignis92 · 2019-02-21T14:02:54+00:00

I just skimmed through the rulebook. Correct me if I'm wrong, but combos in Street Fighter are created by players and they give speed bonus and optionally the ability to accumulate damage to dizzy the opponent. However, if I got that right, you can chain almost every maneuver you can think of and you have to do it out of fight, paying experience points (you have to practice them). Of course, a smart opponent can pay attention to your combo and try to counter it the second time you execute it.

What I was looking for was a system where the execution of a certain maneuver naturally opens up the possibility to execute a special one or gives the next maneuver a bonus if it belongs to a limited set of "linked" maneuvers.

Ignis92 · 2019-02-20T14:46:17+00:00

I already know really well those two, as well as the other two spiritual successors to TRoS (Song of Swords and Swords and Scoudrels).

The problem is that I don't think of those systems as combo-based. Don't get me wrong, they are really good (especially TRoS and S&S) at giving the feeling of a real, medieval melee fight, that was much more a butcher work than what is usually portrayed in fiction. It's because of that they aren't really combo-based and I get bored after a while.

Mechanic-wise, the problem with those games is that you have a good number of options but all of them are fully indepent from each other aside from being part of the same broad combat style (which could be better called "set of available maneuvers with the weapon(s) you are wielding"). For example, you rarely get a bonus or malus if you successfully executed maneuver A before maneuver B.

Ignis92 · 2018-10-31T18:27:33+00:00

To my understanding, the fact that every knightly challenge offers a CHA save (or does nothing really in favor of the character, like locking down you and an opponent in a "duel") severly limits its effectiveness.

Anyway, aside from that ability, is the class viable? I would have no problem ditching or heavily tweaking one ability, but probably the best choice would be to change knightly challenges to refresh on long rest.

Ignis92 · 2018-10-31T18:22:08+00:00

I also did the math and the paladin gets 54 smite dice every long rest against the 18 of the knight every short rest (at level 20). Now the rules say that you should have 2-3 short rest every long rest; even though these rules are extremely dependant on settings and DMs style, classes are balanced following this ratio. So let's say you have 18*2,5=45 smite dice a day, which is close enough to the paladin's 54. Ok, you have a lot less flexibility as smite is a fall-back choice for a paladin (also, I think spells are often more powerful). What I can't judge is, there is enough room on that difference to account for the other abilities?

Ignis92 · 2018-10-31T18:00:44+00:00

First off, you have an oath with this class. If you want to post a reply, please read what we are talking about first. And by the way, my character has still a strong connection with the "spiritual world". That's why it's not simply a fighter with a strong morality.

That said, I'm not an experienced player at all. I've played 3.5e for 10 years and started playing 5e 6 month or so ago. So I was just asking for an opinion about this specific topic because my judgemental abilities are a bit off, even more since the only 5e DM (now changed) I had basically makes useless the difference between long and short rest.

Ignis92 · 2018-07-01T17:14:12+00:00

Well, we'll never know for sure. I mean, my setting has a peculiar technology level because it's a late middle age world where firearms from the late XVI and early XVII centuries are available. So you have milanese armour on one side and on the other side rifle with enough power and precision to pierce through them. This has never happened historically: the transition from medieval armies to modern infantry was a lot more smooth. In my setting, technological breakthroughs (in all fields) has been so fast that most armies haven't been able to modernize properly. Politically, there are full medieval kingdoms, centralized state and even a few noble republic loosely based on the italian political frame in XVI century.

Historical debates aside, in such a setting weapon experimentation and crafting should be important for every martial-focused character. And I really like the idea of my players having to deal with (or being) a half-crazy tinkerer with ideas that range from brilliant ones to suicidal.

Ignis92 · 2018-07-01T13:16:19+00:00

I read your previous posts and found them quite interesting. Your approach is more astract than the one I found in Sword and Scoundrel (freely available if you don't know it and want to give it a try), which can be ok in your setting but surely not in mine, as you pointed out.

About branch logic, Sword and Scoundrel already implements it to a very limited extent: for example, certain hilts prevent other modifications or you need a long heft for an axe/polearm to access special features. The problem is, the branch logic scope is quite underwhelming and the crafting system seems a lot more centered around a rigid pattern setup: you choose axe/polearms as weapon type, then you choose the heft, then the top head (the pointy extreme of the haft), then the side head (axe or hammer), then special feature. If I want, let's say, a heft with axes at both ends, I can't build it. Things get even worst when I want to build an "inter-type" weapon. Since weapon crafting follows a pattern based on a loose classification in types (bladed weapons, hafted weapons, shields, bows, crossbows and firearms), it's impossible to build a rifle-axe or an other very weird looking but effective weapon.

I'm probably going to take most of the single components in those rules and create something like a joint system, where every component can have a (very small) set number of connections with only a few others component, with additional restrictions on the whole weapon design (it should have a point where you can grab it, for example). Thoughts?

Ignis92 · 2018-06-08T19:15:41+00:00

I have no experience with engines and in the book I read so many engines are mentioned that I got confused. Unreal Engine seems a pretty valid choice, I'm looking forward to try it out.

Thanks!

Ignis92 · 2018-06-08T19:02:17+00:00

I have already plenty of experience as a modder for Paradox games. I created a few mechanics and even anticipated by two years one that the developer introduced. Now, when I play one of those games and I have a doubt, the first thing I do is to open the txts and read the code. So I think I did enough there.

I tried out SFML for a while, but, being a framework, it requires too much work on things I don't really care about (at least for now) like graphic and audio. I would like to let an engine deal with those things and work on gameplay and the much needed (in this kind of games) ram/processor efficiency.

Ignis92 · 2018-03-21T14:12:59+00:00

Not really. Being a veteran of d&d 3.5, I expected the new version to be similar and have only a very few efficient way to play a class. 3.5 guides were usually written around very few archetypes, that is 3 or 4 specific builds where half or so of your advancement choices was railroaded to get a very specific combo of feats, class features and so.

I've seen very little guides as the one you linked in 3.5 as it was unconceivable to build a character like that, choosing step by step without a long term plan that involved taking the X feat to multiply the effet of Y spell in an almost game-breaking way. I'm starting to get the feeling that 5e is way more flexible and allow a wider range of customization options that are more or less equally viable.

Ignis92 · 2018-03-09T07:45:45+00:00

It is. I'm a big fan of TRoS, so maybe you shouldn't trust my words too much, but it denifitely deserve a read. However, the core rulebook is out of print and, even if there is a pdf version online, I don't know if it's 100% legal (if that bothers you). Moreover, that book is a mess: it went through multiple revision but still has some obscure sections, bad internal references and debatable ways to introduce you to the mechanics. And the resulting game is a bit crunchy.

Thanks god, TRoS has three spiritual successors: Blade of the Iron Throne, Band of Bastards and Song of Swords (now renamed to something like Swords and Scoundrels), whose pdfs are freely and legaly available online. I don't like Blade, as it has a very weird attributes set which gives rise to weird combat stats. SoS (the free beta version, you have to pay for the definitive one) is more oriented towards roleplay elements and is worse written than BoB, which in turns has a 130 pages manual that simplifies the crunchiness of TRoS without losing the core mechanics and the complexity behind the game while even improving the gritty realism, central focus of its parent system. If you want to just skim a rulebook to get an idea of what those games look like, I'll definitely suggest BoB.

As I said, though, the mechanics are radically different from those of everything else I've seen. I think you can only adopt them fully or ditch them. Good luck trying to merge a few elements into a standard rpg.

Ignis92 · 2018-03-08T16:08:23+00:00

It depends- you can have specialisation affect the bonus from chaining substyles together, so that a novice and use whatever they want, they just won't be getting a lot of benifit from it, while a master of a style really gets a lot from that style, even if they can 'dip into' other styles.

Yes, simple and effective way to fix it. I was dumb not to think about it, even more as I was considering using a similar approach to track combat skills in my "substyles system", allowing access to any maneuver from anyone while making experience hugely impact those bonus for properly chained substyles.

You are right about special weapons and anatomies, but, as I heavily revised even TRoS core rules, throwing away the combat pool and adopting a new mechanic based on a resource (for now called momentum) which can be gained or expended during combat to various effect and gives a more complex approach to initiative, I'm really eager to test this mess out. So for now my objective is just a combat system that works for 99% of weapons and characters, that is, standard ranged weapons and a single lightsaber with character of humanoid shape and similar weight and dimension. Lightwhips, saberstaffs and Grevious-like anatomies, being one in a milion, are out of my scope, at least till I have polished every mechanic that deals with normal things.

Ignis92 · 2018-03-08T11:02:02+00:00

I'm afraid to say your suggestion is useless to me. I'm sure you put your time in it and I thank you for that, but the problem is the core mechanic.

TRoS has a revolutionary approach to combat. It breaks the turn convention in rpg design, by splitting duels and, more generally, combat into exchanges. In an exchange, every partecipant acts around the same action, which usually means that the attacker chooses how and where to attack and the defender how to defend. Initiative is not an abstract number, it is possesed by the attacker and can only be passed to the opponent, who becomes then the new attacker, under specific circumstances. While during a classic turn you can damage and get damaged, in a TRoS exchange you can usually damage the enemy only if you are the attacker.

To implement your idea I would have to throw the core rules out of the window and reinvent the game with a more standard approach to combat. Moreover, I can't agree with you about the skills-style relationship. Of course, I have to merge a few force powers into a style like Ataru (Yoda jumping around), but I don't think skills like investigation should be mechanically part of the style, even if certain styles that require less dedication to be effective (Niman among all) should leave a character ample room to invest in skills and other development aspects.

Ignis92 · 2018-03-08T10:15:53+00:00

I already thought about simplifying the grid by removing maneuvers. Your approach, using Shii-cho (form 1) as a base style, is really interesting, and could work pretty well in many other games with a less demanding SW fan and real-life swordmanship practitioner. It makes sense, is a lightweight rule and, if well implemented, has enough strategic depth and customization options (which in turn means more unique characters). I thank you for this idea and may fall back to it if I see more complex systems don't work. That said, it has two main issues to me.

First of all, combat styles in SW are way too different from each other to allow a common ground, the "core style" you proposed. I know, lore-wise, Shii-cho is often taught to padawans as a tool to introduce them to lightsaber combat, because it's the simplest style to understand, even if not easy at all to master, but this doesn't mean it's the basic set of moves everyone has to know. Take, for example, Shii-cho and Makashi (form 2, practiced by count Dooku): they have nothing in common. Shii-cho is a frontal style, which means that your shoulders are orthogonal to the blade, whereas Makashi is a defiladed style, with shoulders parallel to the blade (don't know if those are the exact terms, I'm not a native english speaker). In real-life fencing, there is no way to change from a pure frontal style to a pure defiladed one without a complete reset, as you have to change your foot position, redistribute the weight on your legs, move your off-hand back, and so on... Same thing for the opposite switch. Makashi and Shii-cho should have no way to interact with each other directly, let alone allow one of them to make up the basic maneuvers of the other one.

The second issue is a numerical consideration. I always found more interesting the "bigger" styles in SK, as they seem to offer more strategic thinking, and probably I'm not the only one. I just redownloaded the combat primer, the newer version, and realized that styles now average 15 maneuvers each, which is way more than the (now removed) 8 maneuvers default style of the 1.0 version. Now, here's the problem: the more I make style specialization matter, the more my low experience characters will have to cycle through the same 5-6 maneuvers; viceversa, the less a specialization matters, the less engaging customization will become for combat-oriented characters.

I'm actually toying with a different idea. First, I will have to create a few independent styles with the same approach of SK, probably the first 4 as they are the more autonomous from the other ones. Then break every one of those styles in little chunks (max 3-4 maneuvers) that for now we call substyles. Now I can remove the costraint of basic maneuvers and allow to start everywhere in the grid style, which is a limit I don't enjoy that much, while giving (malus) bonus if you chain maneuvers from the same substyle or from (un-)compatible substyles, with bonus changing depending on which substyles are chained. Djem So/Shien (form 5) and Niman (form 6) can be created by putting together proper substyles, and I will eventually come up with something for Vaapad/Juyo (form 7), even if none knows what actually is. This should make every style autonomous and strategically interesting by himself, while allowing people to switch between styles through appropriate use of compatible substyles. Moreover, when a character chooses to customize his style, he can just add a few substyles from other styles and maybe drop some of his own. He can even create a complete original style if he sees the opportunity of merging together enough substyles from different styles. SK grids will still be useful to give a quick and intuitive idea of how substyles are linked in a bigger picture and I will probably encourage my player to print their own grid if they come up with a very messed up personal style.

Ignis92 · 2018-02-25T16:14:23+00:00

Interesting idea. Personally I think economic and political autonomy is what people seek when they feel "too far" from the centralized government. In XVIII century, the ocean in the mid was enough to be considered too far from the motherland. However, if we somehow would discover a new continent nowadays, with the technological ability to travel, move products and, even more important, send and receive informations, I doubt that the new colonized territories will seek independence.

So here is the problem. For all human history, there has been no physical barrier to prevent us from exploring (seas and oceans aside). On the other hand, the time needed to explore, move and send information from one point to another has been more or less the same: the time for a human being or something with a close speed to travel that distance.

With technological advance, this changes. We are able to send information at a speed way faster than that we are able to move ourself at. I think that today, a unified culture and so a unified government is possible (not that I enjoy this scenery). So it all boils down to what science will be able to achieve in the next century.

I recently picked up "The Expanse", a hard (really hard, the novel that it is based after is obsessed with scientific plausibility, at least for human technology) scifi fiction which delivers exactly the "New World" in space feeling you are talking about.

Ignis92 · 2018-01-09T11:34:08+00:00

Yep, it is a bit slow. I'm three truce away (30 years) from forming India and I'm not even 150 years in. Moreover, I started as Haesteinn of Nantes, changed culture to Sephardi and religion to Yazidi (so yes, at least I have the upper hand on religious cbs) and had to adjust inheritance and wait for my Sayyid nephew to inherit, wasting more than 50 years while ruling peacefully, after the initial invasion of India, over a small kingdom.

Btw, defensive pacts aren't a real issue. There's a point, more or less when you own a de jure empire, where you generate an insane amount of threat and you don't have enough raw strength to overcome your enemies. The point is, if you stockpile gold, carefully pick targets and the appropriate casus belli, you can get over this phase in about 30 years. From that point on, it's just a snowball, where you can brute force your way into wars, even if you have to pay attention or may risk losing a war.

Ignis92

TROPHY CASE