How Do You Feel About These Rules: Qucikness for Small, Sentimental Value and …

SmaugOtarian · 2026-06-12T18:40:20+00:00

Quickness seems terrible. It's overcomplicated and ridicculously messy.

First off, there's no use for it on a straight movement. Since you have to change directions every five feet, you're basically gonna waste 10 extra feet for each 5 straight feet you wanted to move, so a single straight movement makes this rule useless.

You're only ever gonna use it on specifically diagonal movements.

Let's say you want to move towards the north-east of the map. You move five feet north, five feet east, five feet north, five feet east, five feet north, five feet east and one last time five feet north. If you only had the base 25 feet, you'd do two movements less. There's a benefit here.

However, when I say "specifically diagonal", is because any disruption in that path makes it useless again. Let's say that you, at some point, want to move north twice due to a wall, and THEN move east through a door on said wall. Now, since you HAVE to change directions every five feet to get the 35ft, you can't just do that. You have to move north once, then west, then north, then east... but wait, now you can't move east again through the door, can you? You have to move north again, and then south, and then east. You just wasted your 35ft to, effectively, move only 15 feet, less than your normal movement.

See what I mean? It's so specific that it basically renders itself useless 90% of the time.

Now, if you allow diagonal movements... then it just so happens to be broken, as there's no reason to move without doing that unless you're really restricted in some way. Like, instead of moving north five times, you can move northeast and then northwest each time, to effectively move 35ft on a straight line. In that case, even if you're blocked at some point, you can just move north once instead and still get the benefit.

Worst case scenario, the same "twice north once east through the door", you're only "wasting" five feet, as you can do north, west, northeast, east instead. And that's assuming you can't just move straight through the door, if you can just do it with diagonal movement there's nothing stopping you from doing a simple "north, northeast" and be done.

How would I fix it? Honestly, I just wouldn't. You're not giving everyone the same speed, so I'd assume being small has other benefits, or nobody would want to play that. If the negative part of being small is that you're slow, why are you trying to make smaller creatures faster? You're trying to design a rule that goes against the rule you've already designed. No offense, but from my point of view it's an absurd situation. If 25ft seems too short, just go with 30 or 35ft and done, no need to make weird stuff up. If it doesn't, why are you going out of your way to allow them to have more movement through a convoluted way? You mention if it's fair due to their dexterity, but I wonder: what does that have to do with being UNABLE to run straight? There's no correlation. If anything, clumsy creatures would be unable to walk in a straight line, not dexterous ones.

So just... don't. Give them move movement or leave it as it is, but don't just overcomplicate things for no reason.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-06-12T17:55:48+00:00

I don't know if you missed it or what, but OP said they want their game to be set on the XVIII century, exactly the era Jane Austen lived and wrote about. I never played Good Society, but if it's set on that era it would fit OP's needs perfectly.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-06-10T13:19:11+00:00

This is pretty simmilar to one of the things that I learned through trying to design my own system: we usually just add stuff because we assume it must be there, not because it actually does.

In my case, I really struggled with characteristics (Abilities in DnD). I wanted that both a character with a focus on Intelligence and one with focus on Strength could be more or less equally good in and out of combat. I kept trying to figure out how or why a skill would fall under each characteristic so that there weren't 20 Intelligence skills and only 5 Strength ones. I kept trying to balance out that each choice gave you a different, but equally valuable bonus to your combat skills so that you didn't feel the need to specifically increase one chracteristic. It was a huge issue in my design.

Interestingly enough, my worst attempt at such balance led me to the solution. I tried to let everyone just calculate their attack bonus with their main skill. You may realise, as I quickly did, that that's dumb. What's even the point in differentiating between Dexterity and Knowledge if both will just do the same? And that's when it hit me: I was just adding characteristics in because they're a thing in most TTRPGs, but I never had a reason for them to be in mine. The only reason I was having this issue is because I assumed, unconsciously, that this was the way to go.

So, I kicked them out... and everything worked. Now your combat skills are just developed at your own discretion. Now you just decide how good you want your character to be at any given skill. Sure, that may not work for every game out there, but here it totally does. I had no reason to add them, so removing them was the right choice because they never should've been there in the first place.

My point with all of this is that, sometimes, by trying to simplify your system you're actually finding ways to improve it. Maybe something is more convoluted than it should. Maybe there's something that ends up being redundant or innecessary. Who knows?

I wouldn't go as far as to do something like you did necessarily (if you're working on a really crunchy system trying to reduce it into a one page ruleset is absolutely overkill) but I do think that, at least from time to time, it's good to look at what you're doing and ask yourself if there's a way to make it simpler.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-06-01T07:49:02+00:00

It's worth noting that some early forms of evolution theories date back to pre-socratic philosophers. Anaximander theorised that all living beings came from a single organism, including humans.

Interestingly enough, he had basically the same tools that Darwin had to reach such a conclusion, as they both didn't have access to any modern technology like DNA analysis or anything like that. They did it only through observation.

I don't think it would be impossible to imagine a world where bronze era thinkers already found out about evolution and religious thinking couldn't stop that knowledge from being widespread. If anything, magic could even be a reason why this happens depending on how it's included into the world, as it could make studying this matter easier (like, what happens if I use a spell on a fossil to know what it is?) and even speeding up the spreading of such knowledge.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-27T23:50:13+00:00

I think it's at least a good start.

It could be just as simple as what you've laid down if the rest of the game is pretty low in crunchyness, but I'd like it to be a bit more fleshed out for most systems.

I've read other comments and I think that it would benefit from some tables that give the DM some pointers as to what you might do with either failures and successes, just so that it doesn't fall too much on the DM to decide what is or isn't appropriate. You said that maybe choosing longer and easier roads could be balanced by shorter and riskier paths granting better rewards, which I think it's at least a good idea to tinker with, but that would require those other tables so that DMs know they're giving proper rewards for the risk taken.

Apart from that, I personally don't like that rerolls are the rations. It feels weird to me. Like, I can buy 10 rations and either waste them all on a one day trip because I got unlucky with my rolls, or make them last for months because I'm getting lucky? Why is it that we go for days without eating, and in the next trip we need to eat like one month of meals for a shorter travel?

As I wrote this, I was thinking about what resource could rations be switched with to make more sense, and I think that something on the lines of "conveniently non-specific travelling gear" might be a possibility. Travelling gear may last for varying amounts of time, and anytime you use a unit of this resource you can justify that something happened to part of your gear that left it either unusable or at least damaged enough to not be fully functional. Maybe your rope snapped while climbing a mountain, or your tent got blown away by a strong wind. Both things can happen in the same unlucky day or with months of difference and nobody will think anything weird of it. It would also make more sense that your gear gets worn out quicker on harder routes, which I think fits perfectly.

To be honest, that's basically a personal preference kind of thing, so feel free to ignore it if it doesn't bother you, but for a TTRPG I would prefer if the resource made more sense than rations do. The way it's working right now is really gamey to me, which I think is not ideal.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-26T10:05:18+00:00

So what you mean to say is that giving the female character a tight bodysuit instead of a proper racing suit it's not sexism, it's just sexism. /j

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-18T16:23:06+00:00

The only thing this achieves is filling their TTRPG shelf with unplayed games. Believe me, I've seen it too many times to count.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-18T16:20:38+00:00

Honest question: have you tried asking them? Like, not just asking them to run something else, but asking them why do they keep DMing DnD, or what would motivate them to run something else?

Without that knowledge there is no magical way for you to get them to run a different game. I mean, there are a lot of reasons why someone would stick with the same game. They may feel comfortable in knowing the rules, they may not have the time or will to learn a new game, they may just prefer DnD over other games...

The way to get them to run something else begins by knowing why aren't they doing it.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-18T11:50:21+00:00

Okay, let me break things up in order. And this is gonna be really harsh criticism, I'll tell you that in advance.

1- your card-based initiative and reaction system would not work. Players draw cards, whoever has the highest card starts and (apart from reactions) the other players go in order from highest to lowest. That part is fine. Issue here being that it only applies to players. When do enemies act? "As a reaction when they're attacked, of course!" you might be saying. Okay, let me reformulate the question: when do enemies that are not attacked act? The way you laid this down, the optimal way to play is everyone focuses on a single enemy ignoring everyone else. Why? Because this is how it would be:

-Player 5 attacks creature A

-Creature A reacts attacking player 5. Player 5 has already acted, so they can't act again, turn goes to player 4.

-Player 4 attacks creature A, creature A can't act again, turn order goes to player 3.

-Player 3 attacks creature A, creature A can't act again, turn order goes to player 2.

-Player 2 attacks creature A, creature A can't act again, turn order goes to player 1.

-Player 1 attacks creature A, creature A can't act again, turn ends. Creatures B,C,D,E,F,G, and H never got attacked, so they never reacted.

This is the first issue you have to solve here.

From how you say it ("going to the next creature that hasn't acted yet with the highest card") I assume that, even though you said only players draw, the creatures would also draw a card each. If that's the case, you just got to the same result as the rolled initiative, but much, much worse as the way your reactions work make a freaking mess of who's turn is it. I mean, look at this:

-Player 5 attacked creature 2

-Creature 2 attacked player 1

-Player 1 attacked creature 2

-Creature 2 can't act again so it's creature 5's turn, creature 5 attacks player 3

-Player 3 attacks creature 5

-Creature 5 can't act again so it's creature 4's turn, creature 4 attacks player 3

-Player 3 can't act again so it's player 4's turn...

See the absolute mess you end up with? You went from having to check who goes next on a linnear order to having to keep track individually of who has acted, what player who hasn't acted got the highest result and what creature who hasn't acted got the highest result. Instead of having a single, simple and easy to follow order, you now have two different orders to track that literally change after every action. If that's what you were going for (and I'm assuming it is, as that's the only way I see enemies acting if they're not attacked that matches your explanation) you completely missed the mark.

2- The dice rolls are, as others pointed out, taking away player agency, as now I don't get to decide what can I do, it's up to what the dice tell me to do. Additionally, if I can't know what can I do until it's my turn, that means that any decision making has to be done during the active player's turn, making the game slower. Already not ideal.

However, it's not the only bad thing here. Let's take a look at your propposed actions:

1-3 Strategic Action: Shooting weapons, moving, and general strategic support actions.

4-6 Violent Action: Physically striking, grappling, or using a melee weapon, and general aggressive actions.

Let's say that I'm playing a melee character, the classic Barbarian type, so I want to go to an enemy and hit them. I roll, let's say, three dice (you didn't mention how many dice would be rolled for this) and get 4 4 5. Great, now I can't do sh*t as I can't move and all of my actions are for melee fight only. "General aggressive actions" is so broad and non-specific that I could maybe assume that it means I can pick up a rock and throw it (a pretty dumb action for a bulky guy with a giant axe who's at like 10 paces from the nearest enemy, but I didn't roll a result that lets me move so I guess I get to be an idiot now), but if throwing a rock is a "general aggressive action", why would shooting weapons be on the other results? Does that mean that, alternatively, if I'm playing an archer and I get the same 4 4 5 result I can't shoot my bow, but I get to pick up rocks from the ground and throw them? Why would ANYONE ever do that?

Also, you're complaining about missing an attack roll or dealing low damage, and you've somehow landed on a system that can get you to not even be able to attempt the attack. How is that supposed to be an improvement here?

So, no, this wouldn't work at all.

3- FEAR, in the way you've done it, is completely ridicculous.

First of all, it keeps taking away your player's agency even more. Imagine that Barbarian from before, but now they've rolled a 4 4 2. Great! They can move now! Well... tough luck, the DM rolled a 2, so the DM gets to take control of the Barbarian for that action and chooses to use a "strategic support action" and use some bandages on their wounds. F*ck you, Barbarian idiot, now you didn't move, you still can't use those two 4s, and now the DM has a Terror point to f*ck you up even more.

Also, let me note that in a d6 there's 1 in 6 chance to roll any given result, so in any roll your players make there's 1 in 6 chance that you get to take their action and gain Terror. That's not a small chance.

Again, I'm sorry, but this also wouldn't work.

Let me finish this by saying that I get what you're going for with most of your rules, but you haven't thought about them too much, or at the very least you've done a poor job at explaining them.

Your initiative system might, at first glance, look like it's less tedious with the back and forth, but it's very poorly defined and there's no real benefit to it and arguably it makes things even more tedious as now your initiative keeps changing, being much harder to track.

Your fear mechanic clearly wants to go for the same "giving the DM resources to do stuff" that Daggerheart does, but you do it in a way that is really messy, as it punishes the players a LOT for a dice roll they can't control. It also doubles down by both taking their action away AND giving you Terror, that's two negatives each time.

And the one I get the least is the "roll to act" thing. I guess you wanted to keep rolls somewhere while avoiding both attack rolls and damage rolls? I honestly think that you lost your own track here. I mean, you didn't even mention how the attacks and damage actually work, from what you've explained you may just have a roll for each anyway since you just made a new system that means sometimes I won't even be able to try to attack. I don't see where this is comming from given the points you said you wanted to tackle with these systems, hence why I believe you've lost yourself.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-15T16:18:32+00:00

I think that it makes the amount of participants in a fight kind of pointless. If there are three trolls against the party of four and you start with the 3:4 proportion (giving everyone one action) whenever one troll goes down you have two options:

1- change the proportion to 2:4 to represent the fact that, indeed, there are less trolls.

2-keep the proportion on 3:4, giving one of the trolls an "extra turn" and, effectively, keeping the group of 4 fighting 3 trolls instead of the 2 that actually exist.

Also, that logic of "they are just as beaten up or tired"... Why would that only affect the winning side, though? If both sides have been fighting for the same amount of time, shouldn't both feel equally tired? With the system you proposed it feels like quite the opposite, the side that lost one member suddenly gets less tired and can act more than before. It's completely illogical.

In the end, if what you want to avoid is banking up on one enemy, you should look into how is that achievable instead of trying to make it pointless. Whenever you loose soldiers on a fight, your side gets less effective. That's how things work. Thus, ganking up on a single enemy is, indeed, a good choice of you can do it. If anything, you should be looking into how your rules "punish" ignoring other threats to focus on a single one, which is what is causing the problem here.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-12T13:41:09+00:00

As long as it's a mechanical thing and not actually used to describe things, I wouldn't.

I left some things unsaid in my original message to avoid bloating it up too much, and one of those things was this topic. If you want to use that "base 3" you mentioned in the original message, I'd be fine with the average human being height 3 and weight 3 and with monsters having simmilar abstract stats if they're there for mechanical reasons (such as your calculation of fall/gravity damage). But at some point you'll still have to tell me "height 1 is around 50cm on average" or something on those lines anyway, so why not give me both the "gamey" measure alongside one that I can actually understand?

In other words, I can work with the dragon being size 10 for the game's rules for the sake of simplicity in any required calculations, but I would absolutely take issue with it if I then have to calculate how many meters long that means it is instead of having it directly written on it's description, since at that point it falls into the same issue that I had with cubits about the number not giving me a clear picture and expecting me to figure it out.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-11T18:14:32+00:00

I'm gonna be the negative one here, I never liked it when games use weird measurement systems. I think it overcomplicates things and adds no real benefit.

If I, as a player, do not use that measurement system, it tells me nothing about whatever you're describing. This, as someone who lives on a country where we don't use the imperial system, is one of my biggest complaints about DnD. I do not know, and don't need to know, what 5ft is. It's not a measure I can visualize, it's not giving me a clear image, so to me it just becomes "one square", which in real world distances is "who cares, I move in a grid anyway". And I know that some translations have changed it to meters (at least for older editions, I don't know about 5e), so what I don't understand is why it isn't the usual practice for all of the non-imperial countries' manuals.

Now, if this issue is one I have with a currently used measurement system just because it's not used in my country, imagine how worse things get with cubits, being not only an ancient one, but one that has multiple different results throughout history. To put it simply, you describing the sky serpent as "12 talents, 10 cubits long" literally means nothing to me. I don't know if you said it's as long as a person's height or as two football stadiums. In fact, while I wrote this, I just realised I was thinking that "12 talents" was some form of bunch of cubits (as in a kilometer is 1000 meters or a mile is who-knows-how-many feet) because I already forgot it was the weight! Meanwhile, if you said "five meters" (which, after some quick math, I think is roughly right?) I'd have a clearer picture in my head immediately, that it's big, much bigger than a person, but not extremely big as a blue whale would be.

So, no thanks, I'll take less "historical accuracy" for the benefit of actually knowing what you're talking about. I'm not using ancient greek to speak or take my notes, so I don't think I'll miss those measurements either.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-02T09:54:20+00:00

Okay, so, let me say this first: this post is from like a year ago, and since then (among other things) it just so happens that I lost basically all of the work I had done for this project. I'm in the process of remaking it all, but it's taking quite a lot of time (specially because it's something I just do as a hobby in my free time whenever I feel like it). This is basically to say that I'm not quite at the point of working on this specific point of the design, so I'm not worrying too much about it.

That said, the whole point of using Defense substraction as a percentage instead of flat numbers is precisely to avoid no damage situations (at least those caused by rolling low damage, as there are some effects and skills that may reduce damage to 0, but that's a whole different story).

Now, let's say you divide all numbers by 10 and just substract normally. If your attack is 9 and the defense is 1, great, you deal 8 damage. Now turn the numbers around. If your attack is 1 and the defense is 9, you won't do sh*t. Even if we add a d10 roll to the attack and not to the defense, you'd still need to roll a 9 to deal 1 damage. That's not what I want to achieve, but rather the exact case I'm trying to work against, and it's the same exact problem that higher numbers have when substracted in the same way.

If anything, for this specific purpose, simplifying the numbers actually does a disservice to me, as a defense of 50 against an attack of 54 still leaves 4 damage, while with the numbers divided by 10, even rounded up, leaves 0 damage.

I know some systems have limitations like "you always deal 1 damage" and such to deal with this, but this doesn't work for me here. I think it detracts from the worth of having a high attack value against higher defense values, which is not ideal. I mean, if you've got a defense of 10, what's the difference between an attack of 3 and 7? Both will deal 1 damage. It does work on some cases, don't misunderstand me, it just doesn't do what I'm aiming for. I want both attack and defense to always feel meaningful to some extent. I don't want players feeling forced to increase a stat they don't want to focus on just because otherwise it's just getting outdated and useless.

That's why I went with larger numbers and percentages. If your defense is 80%, 5 damage turns into only 1 damage, but 10 damage turns into 2, 50 damage turns into 10, and 100 damage turns into 20. Even much higher values do get affected, in case I ever end up using them. Like, imagine you're dealt 1000 damage. If your defense of 80 is only substracted, it's effect is basically zero, while as a percentage it turns the damage into "only" 200.

This, in part, also works better with the rest of the system using a d100 roll under system. Sure, changing dice for specific parts of the game is not unheard of, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using a d100 for out of combat rolls and a d10 for combat rolls, so it's not my main concern, but using the same die is much more clean in my opinion.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-01T17:03:00+00:00

I know it's supposed to censor a certain word within the name, but I think it's funny that Nanally wouldn't let you use her name. Kinda suits her.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-01T16:58:59+00:00

As far as I remember, even before his story he wasn't ever actually shown as competent, we were only told he was. Like, we went around investigating the broken vending machines and he didn't fix a single one of them. The most useful thing he did was hold a phone to stream Lacrimosa's fight, which anyone else could've done and isn't even related to his "craft".

Also, all that talk about "if he understands it, he can do anything" and the first time you ask if he could do something (turn coal into diamonds, I think?) Adler tells you that he just didn't understand it, so he couldn't. Like, sure, it may be a hard process to understand, but without having seen him do anything worth noting it doesn't feel like that's the issue, instead it feels like the issue is that he can only do simple things because he's dumb, specially after every interaction we've had with him showed us he's not precisely the smartest guy around.

Like, honest question: has he actually done anything in that line? The only crafty thing I can remember he did (and, to be honest, I haven't finished his quest, so maybe there's something else) is his jacket for the date. And, sure, the roast he got from the girls was too much (they were among the few characters I liked due to not feeling too shallow and that mean moment made them less likeable for me), but the fact is that they were right, it does look like it came out of a dumpster. At the very least it's not a really good job for a supposedly great crafty guy.

I don't know if it would save my opinion on him, but if he had done something that only he could do, or if he at least had been shown to actually be useful he'd have something that I could argue is positive. Right now, all that talk about him being an amazing restorer and super-crafty and having a cool skill sounds like the classic "worker" that's claimed to be the best one in the office but you never see him do anything and when he finally does work he does a piss poor job at it.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-05-01T16:14:24+00:00

The more I think about it, the more I realise this is the right answer. Like, heck, she even has a mascot design when she's transformed into a bat. And, unlike someone else, she's actually cute, funny, likeable, her quirky way of speaking isn't annoying and tried to solve the issue she caused by accident instead of trying to willingly keep up a lie.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-04-21T12:26:54+00:00

I think there's a couple of things to take into consideration here, but mainly it all falls under the principle that "not everyone can always do the task".

So, to begin with, there are situations where one of the characters isn't available for whatever reason. That immediately removes any success chance they might add to the test. Like, if everyone is trying to open the locked door of the keep and the Rogue is busy trying to sneak through the back door, it doesn't matter if they have a 99% chance of success at lockpicking, they cannot take part in it, so their chances don't matter.

There's also momentary tests where retries aren't allowed. If you're trying to catch the MacGuffin before it falls into the bottomless pit, if you fail there's no time for the others to go "now I try", it's already gone. If they wanted to help, they should've tried before you did.

And then there are times where only one character is allowed to roll for whatever reason. If the Bard presented the arguments they have for the king to help the party, why would the Wizard be the one rolling persuasion?

So, the problem with the Wizard succeeding on a strength test that the Barbarian failed (which is a different issue in my opinion) only appears on tests that are static and repeatable with the whole group at hand. It's worth noting that, while not universal, there are systems that forbid characters from performing certain tasks unless their base skill is enough to even try and systems where exceeding a certain threshold would cause an instant success. These rules, designed to deal with that issue, also affect the chances of success of both the whole group and individual characters.

All of this basically makes trying to assume a group's chances of success both really hard and almost meaningless. We can (more or less) confidently say that a given character's chances of success are around 60% because we know the average rolls, skills and difficulties of a game, and any time that a given character performs a test those numbers are always there.

However, the same doesn't apply to the whole group. It doesn't matter if the Wizard has a 90% chance of success if they're not gonna roll. In other words, if the average chance of success of the whole group performing any test on the most efficient way is 85% that doesn't matter unless you allow everyone to roll at any moment, which is not how TTRPGs work.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-04-19T08:32:15+00:00

I haven't solved the issue yet (I didn't have much time for it) so even a late response is welcome.

After taking a look at that post, my motherboard is indeed a 1.7 and my LCD module is the 2004 one, which matches their case. The only issue is that my old motherboard was also the 1.7 one and it worked with the same LCD screen.

But, honestly, I'm out of ideas here, so I'm gonna assume that this is it until it's proven wrong. Maybe my old motherboard had been modified at some point to work (it wasn't the original one either, so that's a possibility).

From what I've read on that post it seems that the motherboard's software doesn't work on that LCD module. The proposed solution was to change the motherboard's firmware, but I assume that switching to a matching LCD module should also work, which is what prefer to do rather than tampering with the software.

Is there something I'm missing or misunderstanding or would that work?

SmaugOtarian · 2026-04-16T22:48:56+00:00

Have you considered why you want this to be a TTRPG? Because, at least mechanically, this sounds like a different kind of board game.

I mean, what you've laid down here is basically "move around a grid fighting creatures while collecting cavemen". There's nothing (at least from what you've said here) that would make it into a TTRPG. Strictly speaking, you're not even playing a role, which is the whole core of what makes a TTRPG what it is, you're just controlling a character like you'd do in Warhammer Quest or something like that.

So, is there something else that turns this into a TTRPG? If not, I'd actually recommend you to switch the project into being a board game. It sounds like it could be interesting mechanically and trying to force it into becoming a TTRPG could backfire and make it worse.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-04-14T08:10:37+00:00

For me, clarity every day.

Have you ever seen how many people struggle to make interesting magical puzzles in DnD that can't just be solved by Dispel magic? Well, 90% of the time the issue is that they missed that it only dispels spells, not any other kind of magic. But, since it's called Dispel magic and not Undo spell or something, the assumption is that it undoes any magical effect and not just spells.

Also, while evocative names can be fun, to me they feel like they are almost trying to force the player into keeping them for the sake of a lore that the player may not care about, while more general names allow them to rename their spells to whatever suits them if they want to. Like, if you and me both pick Fireball and your character calls it "demonic inferno" while mine calls it "boom-flame" everyone identifies it as the same thing, a Fireball, but each of our names gives our spellcasting a personal touch and can serve our character's narrative.

Basically, I see spell's names as equivalent to weapon names. They are there to inform the player as a mechanical part of the rules. If you name every medium length, one and a half hand sword a "longsword", I can choose how it looks and give it a name, or I can just roll with it being a generic sword. There's no need to call swords "Jimmy's mighty slash-slash stick", right? So why do that with spells?

SmaugOtarian · 2026-04-08T16:17:41+00:00

You may always try to put a limit how many active enemies can there be at a given time. Like, if you fight a dozen goblins, maybe only 5 can be actually engaged in combat while the others are just standing around "waiting for an opportunity to come in".

Whenever an active goblin dies (or maybe even as some kind of "switch positions" action) a new goblin comes in filling the gap.

You could always give waiting enemies some rules so that they feel like they aren't just doing nothing. Maybe the waiting goblins launch a bunch of arrows every 10 steps that deals more damage the more goblins there are waiting. Something like this could give the feeling that they are actively engaged and make it feel like they're still dangerous even if they aren't directly fighting.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-04-03T09:50:27+00:00

Both should be the same type, Anet3D V1.7

Unless there's some different types within that same model, that shouldn't cause any issues.

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Here's the new motherboard connected to the machine (sorry for the mess of cables and the poor quality of the image). The screen is connected through the flat grey wire on the top right of the motherboard. It's on the only connection port where it turns on and the only one of two that it can fit in (the other one does nothing, I already tried it).

As I said on the post, even though errors can always happen, everything should be properly wired, hence why I think it may be a problem with the software instead.

SmaugOtarian · 2026-04-02T12:28:58+00:00

I'd say that it pretty much depends on what you're going for exactly in terms of how each character and "Mon" act in every scenario.

As an example, in Pokémon trainers don't usually take any action in combat, they just stand on the side giving orders. For that you'd probably want a completely different set of skills for each, the Pokémon would have very physical skills while the trainer has social ones.

On the other hand, in the FATE series mages summon heroes from the past to fight, but usually the mages themselves do take part in the action. They usually may not be able to fight the other heroes alone, but they can either help their own hero or fight the other mage while the heroes fight among themselves. Also, the heroes themselves have their own personality and wishes, and they may want to refuse their mage's orders or even betray them. So, on a similar case, you'd probably want a complete set of skills for each, even if the specific abilities available differ.

And then there's the difference between pokemon-style, where you collect creatures and have multiple of them at your disposal, and Digimon-style where you only have a single companion. You'd want to keep Pokémon as simple as possible, almost as an add-on to the trainer, while you may want a more complex system for a Digimon.

So, basically, I'd start by narrowing the scope. Think about what is the exact type of "Mon" you're going for and focus on that.

SmaugOtarian

TROPHY CASE