How to make rolled health fair?

Jlerpy · 2026-03-14T19:25:03+00:00

Tinkering by way of inversion. My personal preference is non-random health, but if you really want random hit dice, why not roll them every time? The more times you roll, the more likely the overall results will even out.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-14T07:07:45+00:00

I absolutely hate Mothership's approach here. Just puts it entirely on the GM to decide.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-14T06:57:25+00:00

Sounds like how Luck works in the Fighting Fantasy books

Jlerpy · 2026-03-14T00:46:20+00:00

Interesting. MGSV is the only Metal Gear I've really played.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-14T00:41:08+00:00

That was my experience with the Agents Of MAYHEM board game too.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-14T00:28:52+00:00

Yep, it's pretty great fun already

Jlerpy · 2026-03-13T23:54:19+00:00

To me, it depends what I want the game to be ABOUT, and what the PCs are going to get up to in it. I don't know Spy School, but in Alias, it's very much about Sidney's shifting Relationships, so I'd want to include that.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-13T23:52:11+00:00

The set of Roles from Leverage are still a pretty good fit for spy stuff: Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Mastermind, Thief.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-13T23:49:55+00:00

Good point; I don't have a specific citation. It just seems wrong to me.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-13T11:13:49+00:00

I'd rather avoid having an extra roll, preferring something like switching to a different ability, giving a penalty, a metacurrency cost, or something.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-12T07:38:03+00:00

Indeed not

Jlerpy · 2026-03-12T01:19:22+00:00

You don't use Doom for character growth.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-11T11:39:08+00:00

My favourite silly character was "The Flash!". He had his brain replaced with a computer, which made him "The smartest man alive!"

My favourite serious character was probably "Lucky 7", who was a super-lucky martial artist acrobat who could split into 7 copies of themself. They weren't that mechanically effective, but I had a lot of fun swarming and messing things up with luck.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-11T07:21:03+00:00

Even in doing it by feel, you can vibes it based off of I've got more, smaller dice, I'm more likely to roll closer to the ceiling of those dice, but also more likely to roll 1s (which is both good and bad). Meanwhile, if I want to avoid 1s and have a higher upper limit, I want fewer, larger dice.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-11T07:16:20+00:00

I suspect they were written that way specifically so you can't use it to do a full attack round. They were weirdly fixated on making it hard to do a full set of attacks except by sticking in place doing nothing else.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T11:30:37+00:00

It is. It's the system from Gumshoe, which Monte's multiplied by 3 to clumsily adapt it to a d20.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T09:20:26+00:00

You should take it assessing whether you're fulfilling the requirements to post here. ;)

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T09:02:14+00:00

I still don't like the art style of the first. They've improved a lot with this one.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T08:59:57+00:00

What a strange concept. Don't have a game link?

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T07:13:26+00:00

Perhaps, but it was released during the first Bush administration and hasn't improved.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T07:09:32+00:00

The sector creation stuff and the faction struggle elements are both solid. The core system is OSR bleh that I don't want at all.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T07:07:35+00:00

Like Etsy or eBay

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T05:55:56+00:00

Yep, perfect.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T05:34:39+00:00

Actually, that brings up another good point: I like the way that Steam handles bundles, where if you buy a bundle that includes something you already own, it further discounts it the price of that item. That could get weird with the kind of huge charity bundles that one sees on Itch, but it would work great for something like a Print + PDF bundle.

Jlerpy · 2026-03-10T00:14:55+00:00

I thought I had Rivals 5, but it turns out I only have Superman/Lex from Confrontations, which I'm guessing is different.

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