First, what kind of feeling are we trying to produce with our mechanics? I'm aiming for a high-magic feeling, swords and sorcery where it's possible to go from a relatively minor player to the host of an insect god-head in a session. I definitely want high lethality without imposing grimness. Blood and guts should feel brightly colored and splashy without losing their significance. At the same time, I want non-mundane power (mundane power being political, physical, power by numbers etc.) to be very dangerous. I want players to grab high-powered magical artifacts or fill their terrible little bodies with tremendous energies for short periods of time at great risk to themselves. I want the world to be weird, and I want physical & political power to be very reliable in this weird world, while the magical and extranormal elements are chaotic, powerful, and undergird the elements of reality. I'm not very concerned with a specific setting, as I assume anyone who uses anything I'm making will be homebrewing it to hell and back, but I am concerned with capturing this specific tone.
I'd also like this system to be light enough to introduce players to roleplaying games but modular enough to encourage tinkering with it if the players or the GM want something different out of its skeleton.
I'm using the standard D&D array of stats, minus constitution, so Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Players roll 2d6+3 for each stat. None of my initial playtesters were fans of this method, but 2d6+3 puts the probability of players rolling a 9,10, or 11 at about 44%, and the odds of them rolling lower or higher than that at about 56%, which averages 2 median stats and then 3 exceptional/terrible stats, which allows players to focus on their deficiency/strength when they're placed in roleplaying situations. One character made by a playtester was Roland, a fighter with a 5 in dexterity but an 11 in strength, which led the player to role-play Roland as a wrecking ball fighter, crashing into combat and social situations equally until his ignoble death at the spines of a dissolver-beast.
I tossed constitution because I could just fold its entire purview into Strength. I thought about adding another Stat like Arcane, or a Social stat like in Traveller to measure your place in society just so we could go back to 6 stats. But, I decided that I wanted the magical class you choose to be the primary determinant in how your magic works, and I realized that splitting Charisma's job into two stats would just mean that I made two stats so niche they're not worth investing in. So I was left with:
Strength, for activities that require brute physical force.
Dexterity, for activities that require finesse.
Intelligence, for activities that require quick thinking.
Wisdom, for activities that require careful thinking.
Charisma, for activities that require interpersonal appeal.
Perception checks are the realm of both Intelligence and Wisdom, depending on the speed of the check. If you're scanning every inch an object or investigating a scene without a time limit, then wisdom allows you to glean a depth of knowledge about it. If you're the middle of a dungeon and need to know if the shape barreling towards you is the ranger's dog or a feral ghoul, roll intelligence.
And then I began building my character sheet.
This is the third iteration of the sheet. If you aren't a magic user, then everything you need to play should be on this sheet. Starting from the top left hand box and moving downward are your stats, then your defenses, which are derived from your stats, third are your skills, which you gain from your class, background, and origin, fourth are your inventory slots, calculated from your strength score, and finally your currency.
I'm using a d20 roll-under system. You roll a d20 and try to get a number lower than the most relevant statistic. If a player wants to leap across a gorge, they would have to roll under their Strength. Particularly large gorges would pose a penalty, while any particularly small gorge would not call for a roll at all. I assume a certain level of competency of all characters so that as long as the fiction doesn't give me a reason to doubt their ability, no rolls are made unless there is stake in failure as well as victory.
Penalties and bonuses are never applied to the roll itself, but always to the statistic that's being rolled against.
A character's Defense is the penalty the apply to their opponent's attack roll. A Strength 15 character attacking a manticore with a Defense of 3 would have to roll a 12 or below in order to hit. Defense is your Dex mod, but some classes, like the fighter, allow you to add your level to your Defense, making you even harder to hit.
Save is 10 + level. This is used to save against any kind of magic you can't jump out of the way of, or if you would be required to roll against something that none of your stats would cover. Some classes, like the cleric, allow you to add your wisdom to Save rolls.
Speed is both the number of feet you can move per round and your initiative. Your speed is your dex mod plus your racial speed. Humans have a base speed of 10, so a human with a +3 in Dex would be able to move 13 feet per round. Some classes, like rogues, allow you to add your level to your speed, letting you dip in and out of situations much faster.
When you choose your race and your class you roll on a list of backgrounds to get a skill at 1. Skills are broad, and encompass years of a character's life. Farmer, soldier, herder, mountain-man, servant, deserter, etc. are all examples of a skill. Skills allow you to their rank to a roll that they could assist you in. Every time you fail a roll that includes a skill bonus you may mark it. After two marks for each rank your skill has, you may erase them and raise the rank of the skill by 1. Skills also provide you with items that it would make reasonable sense for a person of your profession or background to own. If a GM does not believe that a skill would make sense in a given situation, then they must ask the player to provide justification in the form of a story from that character's life.
You have a number of inventory slots equal to your strength. Most items take up an inventory slot. Two-handed weapons and particularly large items take up 2 inventory slots. Armor you are wearing takes up an inventory slot, except for plate armor which takes up 2. Armor you are carrying takes up 2 inventory slots if leather, 3 if chain, 4 if plate.
The top right box holds a character's vital statistics. Health, hit dice, armor, and wounds are in this box.
Hit Dice (HD) are given to your character each time they gain a level in a class. The system heavily encourages multi-classing, so it is likely that a character can have multiple types of Hit Dice. If the size of a Hit Die becomes relevant, use the hit die that you have the most of. If there's a tie, use the smaller Hit Die.
At 1st level a character's health is equal to highest number on their HD plus their Strength modifier. Health measures glancing blows, minor injuries, and exhaustion. Eating a decent meal, sleeping in a comfortable bed, or spending time with a loved one or someone trained in the art of stunning conversation will let you regain health. This cannot bring your health up from below 0.
Wearing armor other than leather lowers your Defense by its armor rating. It also reduces damage taken by its armor rating. Narratively, this is cushioning, deflecting, and dispersing energy from blows. It is more difficult to avoid strikes, but easier to survive them. Leather provides 1 armor, chain provides 3 armor, and plate provides 5 armor.
If your health reaches 0, then you roll on the wounds table. Wounds range from concussed: may only take 1 action per turn, to mangled: take a -3 to all rolls requiring the use of 2 arms, and all the way up to Dead: A lucky strike kills you on impact. You may act normally at 0 health, and continue to take damage into the negatives, but each time you take damage you must roll on the wounds table with a penalty equal to your life total. You take 1 point of damage at the end of your turn, every turn for each unstabilized wound. Any character can attempt to stabilize all of a character's wounds by making a wisdom roll. Stabilized wounds do not go away, and can only be removed by visiting a medical expert with appropriate tools, such as: swamp witches, city surgeons, clerical healers, biomancers, etc. Once under a medical expert's care, a character gains 1 health a day until they are at 0. They then lose 1 wound every 1d6 weeks. Some wounds, like enucleated: One of your eyes is non-functional, you have disadvantage on all rolls to locate anything by sight, cannot be cured, and those wounds will say so on the wound chart.
The abilities box is due for another re-design, but I left it alone for now because I like the open space. It lets players put in class abilities, racial abilities, magic items, etc. all in the same area.
I really have to stress how unoriginal this framework is, not to self depreciate, but because this is a synthesis of a lot of what I've been reading for the last few months. This is still version 0 of the system, and although I've run a few sessions in it with some pretty decent results, it's probably never going to be finished.
Next up: Probably combat and dungeon-specific rules.
I'd also like this system to be light enough to introduce players to roleplaying games but modular enough to encourage tinkering with it if the players or the GM want something different out of its skeleton.
I'm using the standard D&D array of stats, minus constitution, so Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Players roll 2d6+3 for each stat. None of my initial playtesters were fans of this method, but 2d6+3 puts the probability of players rolling a 9,10, or 11 at about 44%, and the odds of them rolling lower or higher than that at about 56%, which averages 2 median stats and then 3 exceptional/terrible stats, which allows players to focus on their deficiency/strength when they're placed in roleplaying situations. One character made by a playtester was Roland, a fighter with a 5 in dexterity but an 11 in strength, which led the player to role-play Roland as a wrecking ball fighter, crashing into combat and social situations equally until his ignoble death at the spines of a dissolver-beast.
 |
| Not Roland. |
I tossed constitution because I could just fold its entire purview into Strength. I thought about adding another Stat like Arcane, or a Social stat like in Traveller to measure your place in society just so we could go back to 6 stats. But, I decided that I wanted the magical class you choose to be the primary determinant in how your magic works, and I realized that splitting Charisma's job into two stats would just mean that I made two stats so niche they're not worth investing in. So I was left with:
Strength, for activities that require brute physical force.
Dexterity, for activities that require finesse.
Intelligence, for activities that require quick thinking.
Wisdom, for activities that require careful thinking.
Charisma, for activities that require interpersonal appeal.
Perception checks are the realm of both Intelligence and Wisdom, depending on the speed of the check. If you're scanning every inch an object or investigating a scene without a time limit, then wisdom allows you to glean a depth of knowledge about it. If you're the middle of a dungeon and need to know if the shape barreling towards you is the ranger's dog or a feral ghoul, roll intelligence.
And then I began building my character sheet.
 |
| As I playtest the system more and adjust how the numbers on the sheet interact with each other, I'll begin laying it out for understandability instead of grouping types of characteristics together. |
I'm using a d20 roll-under system. You roll a d20 and try to get a number lower than the most relevant statistic. If a player wants to leap across a gorge, they would have to roll under their Strength. Particularly large gorges would pose a penalty, while any particularly small gorge would not call for a roll at all. I assume a certain level of competency of all characters so that as long as the fiction doesn't give me a reason to doubt their ability, no rolls are made unless there is stake in failure as well as victory.
Penalties and bonuses are never applied to the roll itself, but always to the statistic that's being rolled against.
A character's Defense is the penalty the apply to their opponent's attack roll. A Strength 15 character attacking a manticore with a Defense of 3 would have to roll a 12 or below in order to hit. Defense is your Dex mod, but some classes, like the fighter, allow you to add your level to your Defense, making you even harder to hit.
Save is 10 + level. This is used to save against any kind of magic you can't jump out of the way of, or if you would be required to roll against something that none of your stats would cover. Some classes, like the cleric, allow you to add your wisdom to Save rolls.
Speed is both the number of feet you can move per round and your initiative. Your speed is your dex mod plus your racial speed. Humans have a base speed of 10, so a human with a +3 in Dex would be able to move 13 feet per round. Some classes, like rogues, allow you to add your level to your speed, letting you dip in and out of situations much faster.
When you choose your race and your class you roll on a list of backgrounds to get a skill at 1. Skills are broad, and encompass years of a character's life. Farmer, soldier, herder, mountain-man, servant, deserter, etc. are all examples of a skill. Skills allow you to their rank to a roll that they could assist you in. Every time you fail a roll that includes a skill bonus you may mark it. After two marks for each rank your skill has, you may erase them and raise the rank of the skill by 1. Skills also provide you with items that it would make reasonable sense for a person of your profession or background to own. If a GM does not believe that a skill would make sense in a given situation, then they must ask the player to provide justification in the form of a story from that character's life.
You have a number of inventory slots equal to your strength. Most items take up an inventory slot. Two-handed weapons and particularly large items take up 2 inventory slots. Armor you are wearing takes up an inventory slot, except for plate armor which takes up 2. Armor you are carrying takes up 2 inventory slots if leather, 3 if chain, 4 if plate.
The top right box holds a character's vital statistics. Health, hit dice, armor, and wounds are in this box.
Hit Dice (HD) are given to your character each time they gain a level in a class. The system heavily encourages multi-classing, so it is likely that a character can have multiple types of Hit Dice. If the size of a Hit Die becomes relevant, use the hit die that you have the most of. If there's a tie, use the smaller Hit Die.
At 1st level a character's health is equal to highest number on their HD plus their Strength modifier. Health measures glancing blows, minor injuries, and exhaustion. Eating a decent meal, sleeping in a comfortable bed, or spending time with a loved one or someone trained in the art of stunning conversation will let you regain health. This cannot bring your health up from below 0.
Wearing armor other than leather lowers your Defense by its armor rating. It also reduces damage taken by its armor rating. Narratively, this is cushioning, deflecting, and dispersing energy from blows. It is more difficult to avoid strikes, but easier to survive them. Leather provides 1 armor, chain provides 3 armor, and plate provides 5 armor.
If your health reaches 0, then you roll on the wounds table. Wounds range from concussed: may only take 1 action per turn, to mangled: take a -3 to all rolls requiring the use of 2 arms, and all the way up to Dead: A lucky strike kills you on impact. You may act normally at 0 health, and continue to take damage into the negatives, but each time you take damage you must roll on the wounds table with a penalty equal to your life total. You take 1 point of damage at the end of your turn, every turn for each unstabilized wound. Any character can attempt to stabilize all of a character's wounds by making a wisdom roll. Stabilized wounds do not go away, and can only be removed by visiting a medical expert with appropriate tools, such as: swamp witches, city surgeons, clerical healers, biomancers, etc. Once under a medical expert's care, a character gains 1 health a day until they are at 0. They then lose 1 wound every 1d6 weeks. Some wounds, like enucleated: One of your eyes is non-functional, you have disadvantage on all rolls to locate anything by sight, cannot be cured, and those wounds will say so on the wound chart.
The abilities box is due for another re-design, but I left it alone for now because I like the open space. It lets players put in class abilities, racial abilities, magic items, etc. all in the same area.
I really have to stress how unoriginal this framework is, not to self depreciate, but because this is a synthesis of a lot of what I've been reading for the last few months. This is still version 0 of the system, and although I've run a few sessions in it with some pretty decent results, it's probably never going to be finished.
Next up: Probably combat and dungeon-specific rules.
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