Weird Combat Mechanic Idea

Wow, I'm feeling vacation from dev work refreshing. Out next game should be ready to playtest on Sunday and I'm already finding weird new ideas flitting into my head. Here's one I wanted to throw up here.

Note: These combat talents are NOT balanced right now nor particularly well designed. Just examples of a weird idea. I'm taking a vacation from polishing and development work after all, last thing I want to do is make sure it's balanced or publishable.

Another Note: I'm using a monk for flavor here, but it could also be adding "gears" or, "machine parts" and be the basis of an engineer set of combat talents. I'm just using ki because... I'm using ki. =)


Core Idea
A series of combat talents that give you a single type of counters (in this case ki counters) when you use them - and give you an ability to use those counters as long as you have the combat talent equipped. The combat talents work fine on their own, but each also gives you more options to gain the types of counters and more options to expend them in different ways. In the past, we haven't implemented things like this because we could easily do the same thing with pips - but by granting you the ability to use the counters in ways pips normally can't work... It might be worth exploring.

[+2] Spiritual Shield - Standard Utility
You gain 1 Ki counter. While you have this talent equipped, you may expend a Ki counter whenever you would take damage to reduce the amount of damage you would take by 4.

[+2] Spiritual Strike - Standard Utility
You gain 1 Ki counter. While you have this talent equipped, you may expend a Ki counter whenever you would attack single creature to have that attack deal an additional 3 damage to that creature.

[-1] Spiritual Healing - Standard Utility
You gain 2 Ki counters. While you have this talent equipped, you may expend 1 Ki counter as a free action to grant yourself or an ally a saving

[-1] Spiritual Focus - Minor Utility
You gain 1 Ki counter. While you have this talent equipped, you may expend 1 ki counter as a free action to give an ally a +3 bonus on his or her next saving throw.

[-4] Spiritual Weapon - Standard Utility
You gain 4 Ki counters. While you have this talent equipped, you may expend 4 ki counters as a free action to conjure a cool weapon.

[-6] Spiritual Summoning - Standard Utility
Gain 1d12 ki counters. While you have this talent equipped, you may expend a bunch of ki counters as a minor action to summon a guardian spirit with a cool stat block.

A very funky idea... Weird and complex... I do admittingly like the idea of a new power system. But Not totally sure how well this could work. Then again. I'm one to never say something's bad because of complexity. Think it'll work better if we deal with two different talents, one gains, one spends.... That might be more balanced.

Balance wise, these appear to be straight-up upgrades over reactions/interrupts, limited only by the amount of counters you have and what other ki-counter abilities you have.

I think in practice, it means that the players will just pick one of the talents as a ki counter increaser, ignoring its Ki effect generally, and then use a different talent for its effect exclusively, not using it's PiP action.

e.g. using the spiritual weapon to get 4 Ki, then just using spiritual strike's Ki effect on a different (probably pip boosting) talent.

And there's the fact that these KI effects appear to be stackable to interrupts/reactions on their own. So you can "react" in two different ways simultaneously, ignoring the reaction/interrupt trigger rule. That might complexify things a bit.

The thing with them is that they're kinda "exclusive" to the rest of the combat utilities - there aren't any methods of improving the KI mechanic with items/traits, nor can other talents directly improve on em. Those would probably have to be added for extra options/flexibility.

They also pretty much rely on having multiple KI abilities at once so you can work them off each other (otherwise you lose a lot of turns doing nothing as you gain pips). And combat allows only so many for you to bring...

Overall? I'm not quite sure how they'd work, but they'd certainly need more options/considerations given to them, as far as all the other utility talents go. Traits that improve on the Ki talents (cost-wise, Ki-generation wise, effect-wise...), combat items that use the mechanic, actual attack that generate/expend Ki...

[+1] Ki strike - Standard Attack
Deal 1d4 damage to target enemy, and gain 1 Ki Counter. You may expend Ki counters to use this attack as a free action (you do not gain Ki counters from this).

Ki-Reactive - Trait
Prerequisite: Ki using combat utility
You gain 1 Ki Counter for each 5 damage you take whilst in combat, up to a maximum of three per round (15 damage taken over a single round).

Ki Restoration - Trait
Prerequisite: Ki using combat utility
You gain 1 Ki Counter for each 5 damage you heal to allies whilst in combat, up to a maximum of three per round (15 damage healed over a single round). This counts for regeneration effects, but doesn't count for healing over maxiumum hp.

[-1] Ki-netic Affliction - Standard Utility
You place "Kinetic Affliction" (save ends) on a target enemy. You receive a Ki Counter each time they are damaged by an ally. Maximum three Ki Counters per round.

You wanta know the wierdest thing? We've kinda already got this mechanic. Just only have two talents that kinda use them.

combat talents doc wrote:
[+1] Craft Acidic Addendum - Standard Utility

You craft one vial of, “Acidic Addendum”. You may expend a vial of, “Acidic Addendum” to use the combat talent below.



[0] Acidic Addendum  - Free Utility

Trigger - You make an attack that has only one target.

Effect - The attack causes the target to suffer 5 ongoing damage (save ends), in addition to its other effects.

&

[-2] Craft Emergency Provisions - Standard Utility

You craft one vial of, "Emergency Provisions". You may expend a vial of "Emergency Provisions" to use the talent below.


[0] Emergency Provisions - Immediate Interrupt

Trigger - You or or target ally would take damage that reduces you or that ally to 0 hp or less.

Effect - The target gains 1d12+5 temporary hp.

I think if we where to maybe rework those talents into acting like these two do, we could come out wit some really cool new talents to try out.

The only real difference is that this "new mechanic" would not be some type of self-contained talent thing... But if rebuilt them into being self-contained, they might turn into some really cool talents.

Yep, I remember designing those two combat talents. =)

The ki difference (see what I did there) is that those talents are just different ways to get temporary hp or put ongoing damage on people. I'm a little interested in seeing if an entirely new style of build can open up. But I do love the craft talents, I'd like to see other people design those too. =)