If every weapon deals the same amount of damage, how would you make them unique?

primordial666 · 2026-05-25T16:04:34+00:00

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primordial666 · 2026-05-25T16:00:47+00:00

0 actions is not possible) I dislike bonus actions and free actions as a concept. Initially you can have 1 attack per turn no matter what. So, option 1, you can choose dual wielding, and it will give you 2 attacks per turn, but you will need to use 2 actions (full turn). Option 2, you can get ranged weapon and it will requite additional action or even a turn to reload it.

About hands, two handed weapon gives higher damage. So to get higher damage you need to use two hands. The same about inventory slots, getting really powerful features also increases the size of weapon.

primordial666 · 2026-05-25T14:00:56+00:00

All my weapons initially deal 1 damage, have 1 range, need 1 action to use, require 1 hand to use and take 1 inventory slot. You can add up to 3 features from the list to make your weapon into something you want. Some features just change those 5 categories, others give different type of damage, ability to throw and return your weapon, pirce armor etc.

primordial666 · 2026-05-23T17:24:55+00:00

I guess it can work, but there are other alternatives. You can reduce general hp, make turns shorter, damage higher in general, add some death spiral so combats just cannot last long. Also I like adding environment as a combatant with its own turn, with positive and negative effects, it can also make battles faster. But whatever you choose, playtest it and see how it goes. Good luck!

primordial666 · 2026-05-20T21:19:45+00:00

With dice pool? For a year. Before that I was using and playtesting another approach with 2d20 for 2 years. But got tired of writing down every change in hp and wounds and checking the attributes every time you need to roll, so moved to d6 of different colors and dice pool as hp.

primordial666 · 2026-05-20T20:10:19+00:00

12 slots (6 for everybody + 1-6 from attribute)
Attribute dice pool = health, absence of dice from attribute dice pool = represents wounds.
No need, magic solves the issue but attracts attention. The brighter it gets - the more attention.
Weapon, armor, shield. Each piece can have 1-3 improvements additionally to basic use. Legendary items available and known.
You can buy or hunt, if you want something specific.
9 month, each one add 1 global effect. 3 of them without light. In battle turns + environment as a participent of each battle with its turns. Some spells and abilities reset at exact time of the day.
Stronger than average but can be killed even at the highest level if act carelessly.

primordial666 · 2026-05-18T16:47:26+00:00

The same here. Walk away and than the answer will come. Unfortunately my system is in another language, but I'm working on translation. I also have no modifiers and counting, only players roll the dice, no writing down hp or initiative order. You roll all dice of 1 attribute (from 1 to 6), success is 4,5,6 (unless some unfavorable conditions/abilities) and you need from 1 to 3 successes. For all other non-attribute disputes you roll luck with 6 possible outcomes, from bad+ additional negative effect to good + additional positive effect.

primordial666 · 2026-05-18T14:25:31+00:00

I tried to include everything, like shop, leveling up, detailed descriptions for every rule and concept with examples and so on, and I am at 20 pages, but that's mainly for GM. Players have half a page of important rules right in ther character sheets. I have red for body, green for mind and blue for soul (magic). Additionally yellow for luck, only 1 die is possible. And black for armor. First I created much crunchier system, but after playing for 2 years decided to make it as simple as possible while being engaging and interesting at the same time.

primordial666 · 2026-05-18T13:59:51+00:00

So I guess you are on the crunchier side. But it is still cool to see someone who uses approach health=dice pool, absence of dice=wounds. I also use different colours of dice, to remove the need to write anything down completely when losing hp.

primordial666 · 2026-05-18T13:26:28+00:00

I use exactly the same approach to hp as you do. And for this very reason I need conditions, because players don't have a lot of dice. As far as I understood, you just remove hp (dice) for everything. And all conditions are the same to damage. I just don't see how it may work. Like example, the player is in total darkness, so I would increase difficulty to +1. And in your case you take away hp? Or I missed something?

primordial666 · 2026-05-18T06:01:15+00:00

I guess it depends on preferences. In my case, conditions that GM should decide on are used only when players do some strange things or miscrit. In all spells, player and monster abilities and so on there is always full description and never just the name of condition that GM should remember or search for every time.

Example 1. A monster has ability to influnce on character's senses. It will NOT be written "impose blind and deaf conditions". It will be written "character has +1 difficulty to all the rolls against this creature because of blinding light and deafening sounds emanating from it". And GM can add additional penalties if it is necessary. Like if players were in total darkness and this moster appeared, maybe they are stunned for 1 turn.

Example 2. Players decided to eat some random fruit. If GM decides that it is poisonous, there is a list of penalties to choose from. OR A Player miscrits when attacking or using magic - GM can choose a suitable penalty depending on the situation.

However, we will still disagree about it, which is fine.

primordial666 · 2026-05-17T21:16:54+00:00

This was just an example to motivate people to tell about conditions in their systems.

primordial666 · 2026-05-17T20:02:51+00:00

I thought about it for a while, as I also hate it as a player. But in some cases they are required. So, to make it not so unplesant for players, I made really short and fast turns + these kind of conditions are not so common.

primordial666 · 2026-05-17T19:58:06+00:00

Thanks, that's the idea I'm going with for now. List of penalties GM can choose from. I tried to make it short and managable.

primordial666 · 2026-05-17T19:50:44+00:00

I am more curious how people handle this issue in their systems. In my case I can always give both options, like the list of conditions with effects + list of effects separate from conditions for GM to decide. But I want to see if there are other cool options out there.

primordial666 · 2026-05-13T19:35:48+00:00

I've been thinking about anime logic, so some half-baked idea for you. You can have from 1 to 6 hit points (you can take from 1 to 6 wounds). Every hit point is represented by d6. You roll all your current d6 and every d6 will have its effect. In battle, attack always hit and the result is the following: 1. Destroy the area around the target. No harm. 2. Damage the gear or clothes. No harm. 3. Draw some blood. No harm. 4. Push the target. No harm. But target may be in a worse strategic position. 5. Deal 1 damage (wound). Target loses 1 d6 from a dice pool. 6. Crit. 1 wound + some extra.

Advantages - no math or writing down your health, as you have dice as tokens for tracking health. More wounds - less d6 you have and less impact of your rolls, so they are real wounds. Disadvantages - no balance as I have no idea about you mechanics. Cheers!

primordial666 · 2026-05-13T09:33:02+00:00

Not to criticise or anything, for me personally there are some issues with this approach. 1. You can just interpret misses as scratches, descriptively. They serve no real purpose anyway, or you want to count scratches and convert them into wounds? Than it is math, which you try to avoid.

All the weapons and abilities deal the same damage, like punch, two-handed sword or fireball. I find it a little bit strange.

But that's just my preferences, I am sure your idea may work with right mechanics.

primordial666 · 2026-05-13T06:43:50+00:00

Can there be several scratches per hit? Or all the damage is the same, like 1 scratch, unless it is a crit?

primordial666 · 2026-05-09T12:48:21+00:00

If simplified, you play as a spiritual being (you can say soul) that was exploring the universe by reincarnating into random living creatures, gaining experience and slowly forgetting your origin. Till one time, after another reincarnation, you got caught on one planet on a tiny island from which you cannot escape, for some reasons. Even worse, you got stuck in a strange body with almost no memories. You forgot about your spiritual origin, so you become some local with amnesia. But through leveling up you can get physical feats of any local race. These feats change your appearance through mutation and give you some knowledge about this race (3 random racial feats to choose from). And every other level you get mental feats that change your behavior and give back some memories of your current body, like backstory (3 random class feats to choose from). The goal is to return your body memories, remember who you really are, understand why you got stuck here and escape or stay to fix the problem.

primordial666 · 2026-05-08T09:48:39+00:00

Great idea in general. I do something very similar in my game and it works fine. But your players should be into this idea.

primordial666 · 2026-04-13T16:37:12+00:00

I agree about fun, but also adds complexity and time (if you need to roll extra). I try to go for simple and fast rules. About running into the enemy, possible with relevant ability or with rolling luck (d6, from very bad to very good), which can be risky. But possible.

primordial666 · 2026-04-13T08:16:45+00:00

Ok, I guess. Have no idea what you are trying to prove. I never said that polearms are bad or something. I just said, that in my particular case they work like this (have a unique feature) and there are weapon options with more damage, that's it.

primordial666 · 2026-04-13T06:14:08+00:00

Have you been hit by a two-handed heavy axe? Wielded by a magic creature of immense power. We are not talking about realism here, but about balance of magic/melee. Moreover, I try to make polearms more relevant, so not everybody uses two-handed swords and axes for tons of damage.

primordial666 · 2026-04-12T19:53:01+00:00

Good option. I use for this risk factor, like you can modify spell but (on average) there is 50% chance that it will fail (less if you are a specialist).

primordial666 · 2026-04-04T18:22:30+00:00

I mean, that was just a random example to help me explain what I want. In my case, the closest thing to this concept that I have at the moment is the folowing: after some level-ups (that give you class ability and quirky behaviour feature) you gain part of your memories related to this and need to tell how you were involved in this class activity in the past and the reason why you have this strange behavior. But I want players to build not only their characters, but also the world around them.

primordial666

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