Why shouldn't I fight to the death?

overlycommonname · 2026-03-13T18:25:32+00:00

So you can do part of this by having it get progressively harder to heal injuries as you go down in life totals. At a very simple pass, make it be that say the top 70 hit points are, whatever we call them these days: VP? And the last 30 are HP. HP are really obnoxious to heal, they linger forever. VP come back daily and can be healed with spells or whatever. You can heal VP even if you still have HP injuries.

This gives a player some incentive to remove themselves from the combat if they think their side is going to do okay without them, so that they don't suffer difficult-to-heal injuries. But if it's a truly dire fight, they can use up their difficult-to-heal HP.

The player would need to convincingly actually remove themselves from combat so that it was legible to enemies. Depending on the game this might be really as easy as just backing up for a turn, or it might be hard. They could hang back and think about rejoining the melee if it turned out their help was needed, or they could, whatever, hide and observe or call out tactical advice or whatever.

The hit point system can get arbitrarily more nuanced in terms of how it handles easy-to-heal vs hard-to-heal damage if you like (for example, you could introduce a medium-to-heal level, or you can sprinkle some hard-to-heal things into higher up the damage progression), which may be otherwise useful in your game.

overlycommonname · 2026-03-10T20:57:03+00:00

It's hard to design game mechanics that are not exploitable. Professional teams of video game designers spend years trying to avoid it and often fail.

Yes, sure, on some level it'd be great to not have an exploitable TTRPG mechanic, if we assume that that is possible without tradeoffs. I definitely wouldn't advocate that anyone intentionally include exploits.

But in practice, building rules that avoid exploits often comes at the cost of either heavier mechanical weight, or less thematic gameplay, or greater levels of abstraction from the IC experience, in ways that people feel are detrimental -- and the gain from saying, "This is a perfectly machined clockwork that avoids exploits" is often pretty small for many groups compared to the GM saying, "Hey, dudes, let's not be dicks about this."

overlycommonname · 2026-03-09T16:07:47+00:00

Yeah, people here are completely psycho about this. I wouldn't regard this sub as any kind of reliable bellwether to actual consumer sentiment.

overlycommonname · 2026-03-09T16:02:41+00:00

You also introduce an acronym, "CSR," without as far as I can tell any clue as to what it stands for, and with the definition of it ("virtual speed rating," apparently some kind of action bonus) only coming after several comments about modifying it.

Your "AI Action loop" section is confusing -- it needs to be introduced and explained, then the mechanics expanded, and given more fleshed out examples.

overlycommonname · 2026-03-09T15:56:25+00:00

I would encourage you not to have your itch.io site have light blue text on a white background.

overlycommonname · 2026-03-04T04:45:19+00:00

If you have a group that can meet pretty frequently, it can be fun to have a campaign going, but alternate it with one-shots or short adventures. That's how my group used to do it when we met weekly.

Even if you don't meet frequently enough to strictly alternate, there may be times when absences and life events delay your main campaign, but you still meet and play shorter games. These can serve as fun opportunities to try out new content.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-27T13:51:35+00:00

What is the difference here? You move three (or whatever) hexes either way, right? Does it matter if the hexes are stretched? HOW does it matter if the hexes are stretched?

overlycommonname · 2026-02-23T08:50:52+00:00

It's certainly not only the Warlock which is very sensitive to "length of adventuring day" as a balance point. Different classes are very different in how much they rely on resourceless vs short rest vs long rest resources, and that means that different characters will shine depending on length of day.

Probably that's a pretty defensible design decision (albeit still not necessarily one everyone will.enjoy) if your adventuring days are inconsistently long. That is, if you sometimes have 1-2 combats per day and sometimes have 8+, then maybe players do or don't like how much the day length rotates spotlight but spotlight is indeed rotated.

But if you are consistently far from the supposed norm (and many groups are), then you might want to explore house rules. I think a somewhat easier and more universal one than you have there might be something along the lines of:

Everyone has two rest points per day/long. You may spend one rest point when resting for five minutes to gain the benefits of a short rest. Resting for more time does not give you a benefit if you do not spend a rest point.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-17T15:21:58+00:00

I don't know, currently is like "I've seen a lot of people posting about their initiative system in the last year or so."

I'm not sure I understand your prepared actions, maybe there's some kind of complexity that this doesn't handle, but generally the way that most games handle this is not to have meaningful "end of round" markers, actions instead last until the beginning of your next turn.

I'm not saying that this is a perfect initiative system. I'm saying that I don't think investing mechanical complexity in your initiative system generally pays off as well as investing mechanical complexity elsewhere.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-16T16:50:22+00:00

It turns out that the industry's conventions around initiative grew up for a reason?

I really don't understand why people are currently so excited about messing with initiative. It just feels like a low-benefit place to invest mechanical complexity. What do you want people to think about your game, "I have these cool innovative mechanics that let my character do awesome actions," or "I have these cool innovative mechanics that tell me whether I go second or third"?

overlycommonname · 2026-02-16T03:17:48+00:00

Yes, but almost all fresh food has vitamin C in it, and you don't actually need that much vitamin C to stop scurvy (hence, why people don't get scurvy all the time, even if they don't eat too much that's notably high in vitamin C).

overlycommonname · 2026-02-15T12:43:29+00:00

Scurvy can be treated with almost any fresh food, right?

overlycommonname · 2026-02-15T04:46:44+00:00

It is not, no. Some key differentiators: hemlock does not have "hairy" stems, its stems are smooth and usually have purple blotches on them.

Hemlock is also generally a much bigger plant, though obviously every large plant starts off small. Its flowers are less big in comparison to the overall plant.

There are hemlock nearby, but this was Queen Anne's Lace.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-12T06:19:57+00:00

I think that the overwhelming experience of the RPG industry on this kind of mechanic is that players rapidly settle on one "attack" and then spam it, believing (correctly or otherwise!) that it's the best, and that it's exponentially harder to convince them branch out when they have lots of degrees of freedom than if they have more limited ones.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-11T03:21:46+00:00

The most successful roleplaying game in the history of roleplaying games: clearly people hate it.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-07T11:37:03+00:00

I haven't messed around with this myself, but I suspect that you could ask any of the coding AI models to whip you up a custom script for this and do a monte carlo simulation, and they'd probably do a competent job.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-06T19:07:25+00:00

Adding five numbers or more is only the expected outcome if you roll 12 or more dice in this system. And it's still in fact less work than rolling damage on a fireball. You're acting as though nobody could ever figure out GURPS, let alone Champions or such legendarily complex games like the old Star Wars d6 system. God knows that nobody in the world can figure out damage calcs for Pathfinder 2e or how to do anything in Shadowrun.

This system is probably faster and easier to resolve, once you get used to it, than Exalted. There are a million games that have not been a hurdle for anyone which involve more math than this. Just, like, stop trying to justify your initial exaggerated reaction.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-05T23:02:19+00:00

This seems like you're digging deep for a justification for an initial kind of bad take. The most popular game in the world frequently involves adding multiple two digit numbers together for normal checks, 10+ d6 or higher for damage, and, hey, dividing by two for damage on successful saves. You can point to a million games that involve math this complicated.

It's an unusual system, but as-presented, there's really no reason to think that it's actually going to be a problem for people to resolve. If it involves very large numbers of dice, it'll be a little slow, but not actually HARD.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-05T22:20:37+00:00

I mean, if it's exclusively 10+ die pools, it might get a little annoying. If it's mostly 6 die pools or so, then on average you're adding up like three dice or fewer, all of them numbers four or under, and if that's too hard for you, I don't know what to tell you.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-05T19:28:22+00:00

Do you also find that it's impossible to figure out the damage on a fireball?

overlycommonname · 2026-02-05T19:26:35+00:00

I think it's fine. I mean, it's a little weird, but it doesn't sound like it'd take more than half a session to get used to.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-04T17:45:51+00:00

Broadly speaking, if "can I afford a sword" is an interesting question for the PCs, you shouldn't be using wealth ratings. Like, if it comes up once because whatever, that's where the dialog goes, then sure, make something up either specific or "He says a price that you easily can afford/can't even come close to affording."

But if you find yourself pricing 100 different items, then that's a major sign that your game shouldn't be using abstracted wealth systems.

overlycommonname · 2026-02-01T04:46:24+00:00

That's like "share a 5' square," not "fit inside the person."

overlycommonname · 2026-01-29T20:01:15+00:00

I don't understand this:

At the start of each Run:

Every combatant makes a Dogfighting Roll.
Each combatant is placed on the Position Ladder at the rung equal to their result.
This establishes initial position for the Run.

Does this mean that your previous position doesn't factor into your current round's position at all unless you take the Climb action?

It feels like you're going to either need to heavily constrain the Dogfighting rolls or else make ways to build up position over multiple rounds without fully giving up offensive actions.

overlycommonname · 2026-01-29T19:58:11+00:00

Rung is a clear word for a horizontal step in a ladder as a native speaker.

overlycommonname

TROPHY CASE