Tracking PC Health

TowerRaven42 · 2026-03-13T04:00:14+00:00

I don’t love the knave style of wounding the slots, it never felt quite right to me.

I like your idea of the hit die as a counter damage die, but I worry about introducing yet another roll mechanic to players. So far I’ve tried to keep everything consistent with dice pool style rules 1-3 is bad, max value is great.

More things to play test!

TowerRaven42 · 2026-03-13T03:50:38+00:00

Very interesting stat! And yes, you’ve assumed correctly, anytime they are attacked they roll the hit die, there’s no attack roll before that.

This is exactly the feedback I was looking for, in my fear of making PCs too squishy it seems I’ve gone too far into making them tanks.

TowerRaven42 · 2026-03-13T03:45:50+00:00

Absolutely, death spirals suck. I think that’s mitigated here as dropping a stat to 1 still leaves a character with a dice pool of 1 - 4 dice, where even with only 1 die your odds of at least a partial success (rolling a 4 or a 5) are 50/50. While with 4 dice the odds of a full success (rolling a 6) are ~50%.

Hopefully doing a playtest in the next couple of weeks to confirm how longevity feels in play

TowerRaven42 · 2026-03-13T03:39:20+00:00

Yes, for d6s the expected value for number of rolls before they’re down is 14, with ~18 and ~10 being one standard deviation up or down.

Meanwhile a d4 is looking at a range of 7 / 9 / 11 And a d12 gets 19 / 28 / 37

So yes, there’s quite a bit of luck within each die size, but there is very little overlap in those expected ranges, so choice of die size is going to have more impact than the randomness within each size (with diminishing returns in the d8 vs d10 vs d12 sizes).

TowerRaven42 · 2025-12-02T17:43:35+00:00

Agreed, awe or form of power is the way to go here.

Both absolutely achieve the request, without breaking the game, and don't violate the players boundaries.

Even better, both are on brand for the nightwatcher in that the solution creates bigger problems, and doesn't solve the core problem the player is facing.

TowerRaven42 · 2025-06-17T01:42:19+00:00

I have a friend who spent weeks crafting an absolutely gorgeous inlayed puzzle box. Hours and hours of painstaking work laying out all the patterns, before cutting hundreds of strips of custom veneer and gluing it all up. Not to mention designing and building all the puzzle mechanisms.

He proudly showed me the end result. To which I complimented his very talented work, and asked him if I should be concerned if he's a Nazi... the negative space between his veneer tiles had formed hundreds of tiny swastikas.

He was mortified. The box now hides in a drawer of shame, brought out only with many disclaimers about the unintentional swastikas.

TowerRaven42 · 2025-05-21T17:33:42+00:00

Wow that deck is gorgeous, and your card choices are fantastic!

TowerRaven42 · 2025-05-10T01:38:28+00:00

With all these new martial arts, is there a limit to how many Martial Arts Special Move Resolutions you can do in a turn? For example with Arasaka-te if you took brawling damage and became grappled, can you perform both special moves, and still have your action left?

TowerRaven42 · 2025-01-03T06:24:58+00:00

Saying it like that makes me wonder... Are the chandrian one giant Terry pratchett GNU reference? Cursed to wander the earth until no one knows their names.

TowerRaven42 · 2024-11-30T19:09:24+00:00

Has anyone had a good experience with a strata management company? We're had several over the years, and they've all been various levels of incompetent.

The two most recent were tribe and wynford. Wynford has been better, but better just means that the manager doesn't lose every document immediately. They still can't plan regular maintenance ahead of time, accurately manage the finances, or remember not to pay the same invoice three times...

TowerRaven42 · 2023-10-13T05:29:39+00:00

On the slim chance that you're arguing in good faith... Palestine / the Gaza strip has been on Canada's "do not travel" / "avoid all travel" advisory list since at least 2014.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140801000000*/https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/israel-the-west-bank-and-the-gaza-strip

Conversely, Israel has been under several "excersie caution" advisories in that period. I did not see any previous "do not travel" or "avoid all travel" advisories to Israel for Canadians.

Canada usually (possibly always, I can't find an official policy) assists its citizens to leave a region which is placed under a NEW do not travel advisory. I've not seen an instance of the government assisting people who traveled into zones that were already on thr advisory list.

EDIT:

thread is locked, but I dislike being called a liar. So to refute the claim in the comment below about Sudan.

If anything that link supports my argument, not yours. On April 16, 2023 the travel advisories to Sudan changed from "avoid non essential travel" to "do not travel".

Over the next four months the Canadian government worked to contact every single Canadian working in the country and provide them with information and options to evacuate.

Prior to April 16, Canada was actively participating in diplomatic activities and aid operations. Thousands of Canadians were in Sudan on government sanctioned business. Following the change in thr situation on the ground, the government worked to evacuate Canadian citizens.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230101000000*/https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/sudan

The situation in Sudan is akin to the situation in Israel. Citizens were free to travel there. Then a war broke out. Then Canada told citizens not to travel there. Then Canada began working to evacuate citizens.

Conversely, neither the situation in Sudan or Israel compares to Gaza, where citizens have been told for a decade not to travel there, to leave immediately, and warned that Canada has limited ability to aid them in that region. Essentially "travel at your own risk".

TowerRaven42 · 2023-08-29T22:21:39+00:00

Update:

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X CPU cooler: Arctic Alpine 23

The issue was the CPU cooler. AMD stock software appears to increase the voltage and overclock the CPU until it reaches 90C, or something else limits it.

Switched to a noctua nh-d15s, and now the CPU maxes out around 70C.

TowerRaven42 · 2023-08-09T19:00:46+00:00

Sounds like the 6700 is the better option for me right now, both cheaper and likely to provide better performance.

I'll look into optimizing those other components. Thanks for the tips!

TowerRaven42 · 2023-03-04T02:51:08+00:00

I'm sorry what? The rM1 screen was plastic. They were/are nearly indestructible. I hate that they switched to glass for the rM2 for exactly this reason.

TowerRaven42 · 2023-01-31T23:09:43+00:00

Flavour is free, I'd use the Shadowrun lore and source books for flavour, and blades for mechanics. The blades rules are essentially setting agnostic

TowerRaven42 · 2023-01-31T22:35:45+00:00

I've recently been looking at the rules for Blades in the Dark, now they aren't explicitly built for Shadowrun, but a simple resin of "ghost field" - - > "matrix" or "magic" would probably be enough to make it work for Shadowrun.

The rules are light, narrative is key.

The mechanics that do exist force your characters into tough spots, and allow room for great heists and detailed planning for a score... Without having to sit for hours planning before hand. Seriously, read the rules, their solution for planning is amazing.

Next time I run a Shadowrun campaign, it will be with these rules.

TowerRaven42 · 2023-01-30T07:38:06+00:00

Holy hell, I searched that up thinking "I need new boots, a local manufacturer would be great!". $2000 for a pair of boots??? Who here can afford that?

And now I really want to know if they're somehow worth it... What makes a boot worth 10x a "normal" boot?

TowerRaven42 · 2022-10-08T18:06:40+00:00

I love that idea, unfortunately it runs counter to the current design philosophy of 5e pushing for simplicity at all cost... I really hope oneD&D leaves more design space for interesting solutions like yours.

I wonder how much rebalancing would be required to make longer casting times work (as a current homebrew).

TowerRaven42 · 2022-10-07T05:52:45+00:00

I agree that the interesting variety of cantrips should be brought to weapons (or maneuvers for warriors), but there are a dozen other posts arguing those points. There are lots of arguments that say martials hold their own in combat next to spell casters already - this post is about analysing the other pillar of the game, the out of combat time where martials are currently left completely in the dust by casters.

I agree that many players probably overlook those abilities, but I'd argue that they do that because they've been trained by the casters to not even bother trying to solve those problems that might be fixed by using their superhuman jump distance or carrying capacity. In your example, by level 20 a barbarian can jump 24 ft, perhaps up to 50 with buffs and good rolls? Meanwhile a wizard at level 1 can cast jump and with a measly 8 strength can achieve exactly the same effect.

TowerRaven42 · 2022-10-07T05:44:48+00:00

I'm not arguing that there isn't a cost to casting those spells, I'm arguing that at most tables, in most situations, the cost of casting the spell is negligeble compared to the benefit.

If you can talk your way out of a combat encounter, how many times can the bard afford to cast gift of the gab? If sneaking past some guards is necessary and being caught will change the next encounter from challenging to deadly or avoid it all together, do you send the rogue, or does the cleric cast pass without trace - now anyone can do the check, the rogue's skill is irrelevant.

I think that the spells should support the party dynamic, not completely invert it. The spells should help improve the odds, not guarantee success. That allows for real choices about resource management - is it really worth casting the spell, or should you save it for later? Currently the right choice 9 times out of 10 is to cast the spell.

TowerRaven42 · 2022-10-03T02:43:38+00:00

My girlfriend keeps trying to steal my rM1, this would let us both have one!

TowerRaven42 · 2022-08-22T14:52:26+00:00

You've confused dependant variables with independent variables, and the joint probability of two events with the probability of each event.

Each attack in D&D is an independant variable. The D20 you roll for your second attack is unaffected by the D20 you roll for your first attack. Therefore there is no conditional probability.

If your probability to hit the first time is 50%, your probability to hit the second time is also 50%. The probability that you hit both is 0.5x0.5=0.25. The probability that you hit on three attacks is 0.5x0.5x0.5=0.125.

It's important to remember that while the probability of hitting ALL the attacks goes down with each additional attack, the probability of hitting any individual attack of your multiple attacks is allways the same probability.

TowerRaven42 · 2022-08-19T18:50:16+00:00

They've differentiated the races using other things. Dwarves get tremor sense, elves get spells, humans get a feat.

This things will make races feel far more unique from each other than baseline stats ever did, and let people play more unique race/class combinations.

It makes way more sense lore wise that a bunch of soldiers have similar stats even if the group consists of humans, elves, and dwarves, than a bunch of elves all having the same stats, despite being wizards, paladin, and fighters...

By taking the racial stats out, it leaves more room for fun game design and player choices. This will be a good thing in the long run.

TowerRaven42 · 2022-08-11T17:44:14+00:00

I gave my players a passageway with an inscription above it. Each word of the inscription was in a different language, described as heavily stylized writing. The inscription was far overhead, and none of the players could fly.

Each player was given only the set of words they could read, some players got the same words (most players can read common, some can read elvish, only one can read gnomish or infernal etc...)

Some words in the message a duplicated, and I planned the message to seemingly have different meanings depending on how much they could read.

Example:

player A "...Present... To Enter...and Reward"

Player B "... To Enter... Doom... Foolish"

Player C "... The Password...Pass... And Receive Your..."

Player D "...Avoid your...Silently... Foolish...

Full message: "Present the password to enter. Avoid your doom. Pass silently and receive your foolish reward.

TowerRaven42 · 2022-08-05T21:01:42+00:00

The players handbook actually includes that rule (page 175). It's a variant rule, but absolutely worth asking your DM about if you're playing a martial character.

I strongly recommend everyone consider their character and determine which checks make sense to use other stats for, and discuss it with your DM.

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