The Burning Plague

[jim]

A bit late to the table here, but count me among the intrigued. I enjoy the Spiderweb games (the plots are pretty mature for RPGs), but always wanted a more robust combat system. Looks like you're headed there. I'd drop a fiver on this one if it ever ended up being for sale.

[pat]

thanks jim, it'll be interesting to see what people think about the combat system when they give it a go and whether it does end up better than any simple RPGs. At the moment, I think it's going to involve optimal tactics fighting until you're 'wounded' and then trying to flee for healing before re-engaging. The complexity is going to have to come from the positioning (or possibly even the presence) of healers, the tactical bonuses for positioning in combat and the bonuses/maluses provided by wizards/priests.

As it stands, two lucky (or very unlucky) hits can drop you from 'healthy' to 'unconscious', and that can happen in a single round from a single opponent if they have the 'swordsman' trait or successfully roll a speed check. Even then the victim would have to fail two toughness checks and have the damage penetrate through their armour twice to be knocked out, so in practice it's very unlikely. This is probably one aspect of the game which might need to be reassessed in light of future play-testing because currently the player can fight a reasonable amount before being 'wounded', but the frustration that will come from what is effectively a very unlucky insta-kill in a game without randomisation would definitely turn off a large number of players.

Of course, they should have made one of their expendable henchmen take the heat for them as they heroically fought from a safe position at the back of their party...

[Vanguard]

If excessive randomness is a problem, an easy solution is increasing the number of hits needed to take someone down.  I think one or two more levels of wounded state would be a better fit for a single player game anyway.  Two hits to KO is fine when you've got a group of human players working together, but I'd like a bit more when it's just me and the AI.

Multiple wounded states also present opportunities to bring the thief and barbarian's lackluster combat abilities up to par with the others.

[pat]

Actually, I think I'll do that and make an 'injured' state which slots in between 'healthy' and 'wounded'.

[getter77]

Another aspect to consider would be actually applicable results to all the various states of combatants as opposed to the old "safe" trope of monsters with 1HP are exactly the same as with 100HP---certain sorts of actions could have flavorful modifiers depending on the state/race in question, literal desperate attacks, special temporary states bases on a chain of successes or even failures, etc.

[Vanguard]

The Dead Simple RPG rules already do that - you take a penalty of -3 to your skills for being wounded.

I think a great way to make the barbarian class stand out would be to either give them one more wounded state than everyone else, or to reduce/negate the skill penalty they take from being wounded.

As for thieves, a critical hit ability that applies two wounds instead of one would fit the archetype pretty well.  One way to handle it would be to either give out criticals for beating an opponents defenses by a certain amount on an attack roll.  You could also stick with your "team fighter" theme you were talking about earlier and give them critical hits for attacking an enemy alongside a large enough group of allies.  Or maybe interrupting an opponent's next turn would be better than extra damage?  I dunno.  I'm just throwing ideas out there.

[pat]

yeah, that 'wounded' malus of -3 on all skill checks is already in. I might include a further one of -1 when you're 'injured' so it builds up over time.

Interesting thoughts re: distinguishing barbarians as well. I had already modified them slightly into being a 'hunter' class because I've actually been basing more content off the Busiris addendum rules just because I like the feel of them a little more, but you've got me interested in thinking about whether barbarian is a better fit and have them effectively be a bit more of a damage tank than a soldier, but less capable in dealing damage. Actually, I think I'll make it a state of damage more serious than 'wounded' and call it 'berserk' or 'frenzied' and have that near-death state actually give barbarians a bonus in combat, so that you go from a -3 when simply wounded, but once you're pushed to the limit in terms of damage then it turns around to a bonus of +3.

The way thieves work right now is as I said above with a stealth check during combat amounting to bonus damage in addition to the thieves natural bonus in group combat, and this was my version of a traditional backstab as well as making use of the otherwise unloved stealth stat. I think that if it applied two wounds instead of one, it might work out but it in effect means that you'll just be one-shotting monsters on a successful roll which is arguably fitting but since I haven't really finished play-testing the current implementation, I might keep that on the backburner.

[pat]

Berserking now makes you terrible at most things (-5) apart from fighting and toughness (+3):

[Legend]

I saw that you are basing it on a ad&d module. Are you basing anything else like mechanics on the Ad&d system? Like the race/class combinations or the memorizing style of how spells/prayers work?

I've always wanted a RL that played similar to 2nd/3rd addition ad&d system like the older pc games in terms of memorizing/praying for spells and race/class combos (Eye of the beholder, ravenloft, curse of the azure bonds, etc).

[pat]

The short answer is: not really.

I'm not basing anything else off AD&D rules at this stage. I was keen on basing it around a module because they're a cool source of settings and I'm particularly interested in low-level D&D style adventurers as opposed to epic high level stuff which if fairly hard to conceptualise.

The magic system is unsettled currently. Dead Simple basically allows you to cast a known spell every round with a successful 'knowledge' check. Spells become known by essentially buying them as a means of character progression.

I think that's probably a bit overpowered, especially considering that one of the spells basically inflicts a free hit on an opponent. A better system I'm thinking about is that it might take 3 turns to cast a spell and you can't do so when there's an enemy in an adjacent square, and that should balance it out a bit better as well as making it so that you need companions to block approaching enemies so you can actually get a spell completed. Or you might be doing the guarding yourself as a magic-using ally tries to cast.

And with respect to race/class combinations, I wasn't planning on enforcing any kind of restrictions or particular benefits. I think a free-for-all is my approach at this stage, but we'll see.

Incursion is probably the biggest and best D&D conversion that I know of and it's pretty much a great game as long as you can get past the crippling bugs.

[JollyRoger]

collection of screenshots is making me laugh as I look back at how it was all looking just a few weeks ago.

And after year or two. 

[pat]

This will be a success if I'm still going after a year or two!

The Dungeon Crawl tournament got in the way of recent programming, so now that I'm completely burnt out on actually playing games looks like I'd better get back into it. I'm probably about halfway through finishing a basic character generation set of menus to start a new game and then it's on to magic and priest powers before moving on to plot, plot and more plot as I write the actual game content beyond having placeholder monsters.

[pat]

After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back and here's a bit of tangible development with me twisting libtcod around to put in multiple sized tiles so you don't need to squint at the map to make it out anymore.

[getter77]

Nice.  Aiming to have anything afoot for ARRP 2013 in about 9-10 days time from now?   

[pat]

Well, at the moment it's a working map with a number of different encounters and a 95% complete combat system. There's a vast empty gulf where the plot content, magic, and leveling systems should be, but I suppose I could try and get an alpha version out there so people can try out the combat and get a feel for what I've done.

It probably wouldn't be the most exciting release in the world because there's no procedural content and there's not much fun in replaying set piece battles time and time again without the context of a story or any kind of plot choices, but let's see how I go.