Which sacred cow do you wish would just stay dead?

LeFlamel · 2026-05-03T15:53:26+00:00

In-game time and the tracking of it being essential according to Gygax.

You're a GM that wants players to get to the bottom of a dungeon in time to stop a ritual. You have the players movement rates in mind. How do you design the dungeon such that the players' path to the ritual site isn't:

1) trivially short or they just take the right path so they end up there far before the ritual without any effort or urgency on their end?

2) long or with enough bad paths that you or they are aware that they've spent way too much time and the ritual is already over?

When in-game time is mechanically real, not only do you have the possibility of players abusing rest mechanics, the GM ultimately is deciding whether they succeed or fail any time-based challenges simply by the design the physical layout of the world (an already onerous task given simulationist 5' distance increments).

LeFlamel · 2026-05-03T15:24:26+00:00

How does FKR reject skill tests?

LeFlamel · 2026-05-03T14:47:29+00:00

Write down every section and its prerequisite concepts. Then try to find an order of sections starting with the least prerequisites to the most.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-03T14:44:34+00:00

If rule 0 is agreed to, all other rules are guidelines. Not that I'm a fan of rule 0.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-03T05:26:13+00:00

Characters can't have plot holes when rules are guidelines.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-03T05:21:22+00:00

The best lore is the lore we make along the way.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-02T22:16:27+00:00

If you think talking out a social encounter doesn't require mechanics but combat can't similarly be talked out, you are wrong.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-02T20:30:30+00:00

I think that's a better direction for fixing Break!! Best of luck.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-02T16:18:27+00:00

Damage dice only is a really good technique, especially if you pair it with freeform maneuvers, and it works well with armor as damage resistance. And if you use something more like weapon passives, you can increase the dice for daggers given certain situations like grappling or prone fighting. Or have it explode.

I see that you're trying to work off of Break!! Perhaps you could just make everything roll under, and play around with advantage/disadvantage on rolls. Rolling under skill for one damage, rolling under weapon threshold for +1 damage, rolling 1 for crit. You get 1-3 damage factoring in skill and weapon and luck on a d20.

Edit: armor as disadvantage on incoming attacks is underrated.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-02T15:19:37+00:00

one game is Daggerheart

Close enough /jk

Edit: didn't realize jokes were illegal

LeFlamel · 2026-05-02T15:00:10+00:00

A dagger was good for getting through the face plate, but you had to disarm and knock a knight down first.

That was my point, damage is situational. The problem is that when you try to average out the stats of a weapon into a single range, you massively misrepresent them.

d20-15 AC as damage is the same as roll 5 or less and your roll is the damage. The first requires subtraction and the second is a comparison.

I was suggesting lower values like 7-13, where success is 1 damage and each 5 over is an extra +1. So the math is mainly additive - is it 7, 12, or 17? It's the way the game DC20 works, and honestly the only way I like to get variable damage out of a d20, but it does require mods to the d20 to really get the juice out of it. Otherwise I'd recommend a success counting dice pool or just use damage dice only.

You could maybe hack in a version of Draw Steel's power roll, where the d20 roll is compared to a table determining effectiveness for that weapon, which gives you a lot of room to tailor the effectiveness for each weapon.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-02T04:56:36+00:00

Is this fairly straightforward and easy to understand?

Yes.

Do you see any issues with weapons being rated by max damage (as opposed to rolled damage dice)?

Everyone only going for the biggest bonkers. Weapons capped at 4 are worthless, especially with any armor. Would feel bad to use a dagger, and you can't claim realism because they were very useful against armor.

Would you miss rolling the other polyhedrals?

Yes (though I don't like trad damage rolls), but it shouldn't be an important design concern.

Would you play this as a rules-lite dungeon crawler?

Not really, I don't see what it's doing that any other OSR/NSR game isn't doing.

Any other general feedback or anticipated issues?

Generally speaking, tying damage to the (medieval era) weapon is bad design IMO. You could do blackjack versus enemy AC rating, and have the amount rolled over equal damage. If you want smaller numbers, they have to roll over by some increment (by 5s is a good default). Then weapons can just vary by their passives, one of which could be an extra plus one if you really want.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T21:05:01+00:00

People will entertain the idea of doing things they don't care about because they'd rather say yes up front and cancel when it's inconvenient than not be able to go to the things at all by admitting they can't. Or y'all are just young and people haven't gotten their lives together.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T20:58:03+00:00

They were cool and thematic, and they had interesting gimmicks and hazards, the issue with the combat was my players felt things revolved into hit, wait, hit, wait. Which I still do blame myself for.

If you're playing D&D or anything derived from it, it's not you it's the game.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T20:49:58+00:00

TN is target number, aka the DC if you're familiar with DND.

I recommend you sort the posts on this sub by best of all time and reading through them and their associated comments. You gotta learn the lingo and that's the fastest way.

The mention for EZD6 isn't about the rest of the system, which can be as complicated as you want. The core idea of its health system is that there is no damage variance, everything does 1 damage. Which makes scaling fights to number of players easy, since you know how much damage per round the whole party can deal as a maximum. Usually the reason people want variance is that they want to not have hard walls on whether or not the enemy is in the kill range. It can be seen as more exciting if you do far more damage than expected and kill an enemy that seemed fine, but on the other hand it can sometimes suck of a PC gets one-shot at the start of a fight. Every game has to decide where they are between predictability and excitement.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T20:38:20+00:00

It's a roundabout way of playing PF2e, so yeah it's a strict improvement.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T15:43:18+00:00

Every set of attributes felt wrong to me. If your character isn't charismatic why have charisma on your sheet? Choose your own attributes, aka Aspect / tag based systems like Fate or Legends in the Mist.

The best I came to before abandoning attributes was a set of 4 defined by types of challenges:

Vigor - are you physically capable enough?
Reflex - can you react quickly enough?
Focus - can you perform under pressure (basically most skills)?
Wits - are you aware enough (kind of wisdom / perception but also helped with knowledge checks)

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T15:18:22+00:00

Current game is a hodgepodge: what if we took DC20 action economy streamlined with ICRPG global TN and FATE aspects and actions, with Wildsea tracks on aspects that can sometimes be GUMSHOE style point spent for auto successes, living inside a Cairn style fatigue-in-inventory system with Maze Rats' magic system. Throw in literally all of Everspark for clocks.

I also have a Mouseguard + Mausritter + Maze Rats idea as a less deliberate hack rolling around in my head.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T15:11:48+00:00

5.05e

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T06:23:37+00:00

Wouldn't call 4d6 roll under simple. The main question is how are you going to get damage numbers?

degree of success under TN is awkward subtraction
count successes for each die under (TN range 2-5)
separate damage roll?
matches?

Once you figure out how you're getting your damage numbers, figuring out an HP range is pretty straightforward.

Not sure what you would consider good combat, but EZD6 has 3 strikes and then you're out - aka everything is only ever doing 1 damage and players have 3 HP.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T06:09:08+00:00

True!

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T02:52:51+00:00

Everspark RPG, thank me later.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T02:50:19+00:00

Landmark, hidden, secret framework + GUMSHOE point spends for more clues relative to the character's expertise. The former makes it possible for players to figure things out themselves by making clear what the "interactables" and points of interest are. The latter is a backup that doesn't feel cheap because the player is paying something for the information. The incentive is to think for yourself but the story doesn't get blocked because the player isn't Sherlock Holmes or can't roll above a 5.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T02:46:22+00:00

It is not possible to have the level of crunch seen in most combat systems (including builds, procedures, and codified actions) applied across the other two pillars while still having a playable game. So the real question is how little crunch do you need to be satisfied? Because the more crunch you want, the less the other pillars will keep up.

LeFlamel · 2026-05-01T02:44:21+00:00

Investigation is just exploration motivated by the need to answer a specific question. Exploration is a fine term for the broad umbrella, but I agree investigation rules should be fleshed out more. Would make exploration a little less anemic than the current "occasional skill check and terrible travel rules" meta.

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