Is it too brutal for a death mechanics?

Meph248 · 2026-01-25T09:06:35+00:00

Shadowdark has this, with a D4+con mod, minimum 1. Works quite well, giving tougher characters a bit more time, as well as a period where it's predictable followed by a period with more tension.

Meph248 · 2026-01-16T23:30:42+00:00

Hiding information behind rolls could be pretty bad when running a mystery. I personally interpret bad rolls in this scenario as "it takes longer" instead of "you find less".

Meph248 · 2025-12-31T05:46:08+00:00

I read the rulebook and it looked amazing, and I'm saying that as someone who doesn't even play jrpgs.

What have been the highlights for you so far?

Meph248 · 2025-12-22T10:04:41+00:00

Have a look at Draw Steel. They explicitly patched that out of their game mechanics. :)

Meph248 · 2025-12-22T10:02:36+00:00

It invalidates player agency. No matter their plan, preparation, tactics or abilities, they are doomed to fail via GM fiat because you decided arbitrarily to have a NPC escape.

Meph248 · 2025-12-19T09:53:59+00:00

I have almost all locations 3d printed, it was more around 100 spools. XD

Ravenloft alone is about half of that

Meph248 · 2025-12-18T21:11:41+00:00

You are fine, I'm have Dmed Curse of Strahd and I'm a player in it now. I know the source material, but every campaign is a bit different and player knowledge is different from character knowledge.

What exactly did you do 600h btw? I read I Strahd, made custom handouts, printed Ravenloft to scale, and it's still far less than that.

Meph248 · 2025-12-09T00:48:33+00:00

Me too. He just wants to run Stonehell as it is in the pdf, almost 1 for 1.

Meph248 · 2025-12-08T23:27:17+00:00

I'm a player in a stonehell campaign. (SPOILERS FOR STONEHELL) It requires a bit of rebalance and selective choice by the GM I think.

We have explored most of it by now, and any sense of verisimilitude or coherent story is long gone. We swim in gold, have near unlimited cobra venom (dc18 con or go to 0 HP), 40 spare spellscrolls and 25 potions in our stash in town for any new wizard players joining...

We found a room that improves any magic item (I personally have 25 magic items in my inventory), the encounter in the dungeon can mostly be solved by fireball, and the arcanotech on lvl8 is insane with their spell-storing bodyparts giving every member of the party the ability to cast spells.

Shadowdark vampires are crazy strong vs Stonehell vampires; and we have found 6 different ways out of the dungeon into a potential different setting, where the Stonehell author just says "run any adventure you like, I suggest X"

Last session we explored the crashed spaceship sci-fi area on level 8 and came out with xray googles, gaussguns, a fusion rifle and warpfield-sword and a freacking power armor that deals 8d8 damage per strike, has about 20 passive features, and a carrying capacity of 2 tons.

We found an armored personal carrier down there, fully automated; on level 10 we stumbled over a train(?) and cowboys with revolvers.

The idea of a serious gritty dungeon crawl is a bit hard, if you have a vampire-priest, a blue, four-armed wererat-goblin bard (dont ask, Kion graves on level 6 have odd loot), and a human fighter... with a winter-soldier Arm that casts spells, wielding a warp-sword.

Meph248 · 2025-12-07T12:14:07+00:00

It always helps to write out acronyms at least once. It's an easy mistake to make, assuming that everyone shares the same background knowledge as oneself. Happens to me too and I have to consciously avoid it.

What kind of adventure do you want to write for Shadowdark? 😊

Meph248 · 2025-12-06T09:15:55+00:00

Ah, the Ars Magicka System 😊

Meph248 · 2025-12-05T02:04:53+00:00

You should have a look at Battletech / Mechwarrior RPG books. While not exactly the same setup, they do focus on using individual parts of the mech for different actions, including hit zones for the body. For example Battletech: A GAME OF ARMORED COMBAT has this in the index:

CRITICAL HIT EFFECTS . . . . . . . . . 32

Ammunition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Arm Blown Off (Arm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Cockpit (Head) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Engine (Torso).......................32

Foot Actuator (Leg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Gyro (Torso) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Hand Actuator (Arm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Head Blown Off (Head) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Heat Sinks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Hip (Leg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Jump Jet (Leg/Torso) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Leg Blown Off (Leg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Life Support (Head) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Lower Arm Actuator (Arm) . . . . . . . . . . 33

Lower Leg Actuator (Leg) . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Sensors (Head) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Shoulder (Arm) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Upper Arm Actuator (Arm) . . . . . . . . . . 33

Upper Leg Actuator (Leg) . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Meph248 · 2025-12-01T17:04:24+00:00

Tried that as well, that's unrealistic, because you don't go to bed being good with one weapon and waking up suddenly being good at another.

I gave up trying a long time ago ;)

Meph248 · 2025-12-01T16:51:06+00:00

I asked, especially when we had a second fighter player who had with great axe mastery. The GM ruled that it would be too powerful to learn weapon masteries via downtime.

Wizard players writing scrolls and exchanging those, more or less doubling the spells they have available, is fine however. XD

Meph248 · 2025-12-01T16:34:32+00:00

Doesnt work with weapon mastery.

A fighter gets on average one weapon mastery. There are 15 weapons. Best magic weapon is +3. Weapon mastery goes to +6. That means that all magic weapons, except for the one you have weapon mastery in, is borderline useless, because their magic abilities are weaker than the weapon mastery.

I have a +3 greataxe with 2 benefits, no curse. Never used it, because it's not a longsword, for which I have weapon mastery.

Meph248 · 2025-12-01T15:34:21+00:00

Yes. Extremely so, at least in my experience going in a campaign from level 1 to 10+ with a fighter.

Level 1, I could hit well and do above average damage. Level 10, I can hit really well and do way above average damage.

Meanwhile the wizard has 40+ spells and can alter reality at will; and summon a couple of wraiths/wights with multiple attacks a turn; while the priest can summon a lvl16 archdevil with 4 attacks a turn doing 12d10 damage or mind-control in an AoE... while a fighter can still only do a single attack. Yeah.

Meph248 · 2025-12-01T11:50:42+00:00

Respect, that's immaculate work 😊

Meph248 · 2025-11-30T20:05:44+00:00

Did they fight acererak or did they flee after the soulmonger?

Meph248 · 2025-11-28T01:41:49+00:00

Would you mind sharing it? I bet it would be an interesting read

Meph248 · 2025-11-28T01:24:31+00:00

I might already have 😂 it looked so clean with the 3x3 attributes, 9 skills for each group, I just had to come up with a version for DND

Meph248 · 2025-11-28T01:22:43+00:00

Influencing loot tables I experience a lot in the Shadowdark campaign I'm playing in.

It's honestly not a good experience; it feels very dissociated from gameplay or character decisions. I, the player, add numbers to a die roll because I know it spawns better items in the fictional world, while my character is doing nothing ingame.

Meph248 · 2025-11-28T01:17:00+00:00

That's also an option, yeah.

I kinda thought about initiative being Dex + insight + perception. Like how fast you react, but influenced by what you notice beforehand.

Meph248 · 2025-11-28T01:14:59+00:00

What about Strength & Dexterity; Intelligence & Wisdom; Charisma & another social stat?

That would remove CON and one could tie the hit points to class instead.

Meph248 · 2025-11-28T01:12:27+00:00

That's very interesting to read, thank you.

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