A Brand New System - Official Announcement

Just a thought, but how's life loss planned to interact with the Fatal Damage? Since it's not technically damage, would it only work up until the creature was knocked unconscious, or would it just sort of translate over into Fatal anyway?

If life loss is maintained (we might decide that just dealing damage is enough), it would work the same as damage does. Damage is an effect that causes life loss if not prevented. Life loss bypasses the types of things that can prevent or redirect damage. So, fatal damage would be caused by losing more life than you have left. It'd just called fatal damage right now because it's helpful to understand what it does.

Similarly to that, how would abilities that cause 'self-harming', 'set hp to X' or 'ally harming' interact with fatal damage?

Would using "All or Nothing", verge on suicidal, giving you 15 fatal damage at the next turn, potentially killing you outright? Would stuff like supercharge be capable of giving you fatal damage if it ends up knocking you out? Would there be traits that allow you to avoid causing fatal damage to self or allies, or will such random/risky abilities be scrapped/altered altogether?

Lots of current talents are built around a system that doesn't use fatal damage. Our new system will likely take inspiration from some and make similar talents that work in the new system. We can't comment on specific abilities yet, because we're not trying to just port the game over into new rules. We're looking to build a selection of talents, abilities and similar that are ideal for the new system. This will likely involve a lot of ports, because why reinvent the wheel?

In short, the process is not going to be "how will All or Nothing work in the new system?" The question we instead ask is, "Do we want an effect that gives tons of power this turn and drops you next turn in the system to begin with? Does it serve the new game's design goals?" If the answer to that question is yes, we'll take a look at what we've already designed and see if we have a cool talent that already fits this role. If we have one that we like, we'll port it in.

Personally I like Reist bypass and Loss of Life moves... Loss of Life itself being a neat little loophole in my opinion when it comes to the -X to damage traits... Allowing a healer build to still be able to do damage if needed.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:In short, the process is not going to be "how will All or Nothing work in the new system?" The question we instead ask is, "Do we want an effect that gives tons of power this turn and drops you next turn in the system to begin with? Does it serve the new game's design goals?"

Well said. Basically, don't assume anything in the current system is going to be transferred over; we're rebuilding from the ground up, and if we come across a spot that could be filled by something we already have, then we'll use it.

You made new smileys and didn't tell us!? Shame!

I assume from the "building from the ground up" sentiments that this may take a while to be released... curse you for making me all excited.

*evil laugh*

The good news is that your positive reactions have made us even more excited to work on it. We've already made phenomenal progress in the last week or so. However, we've learned our lesson about releasing things prematurely. It's just messy when we end up having to fix huge portions of it later. We'll definitely let you guys start testing it's ready for Beta, which we hope to have done before Summer. It depends on our schedules going forward.

Proactive Skills
In no particular order, these are the current proactive skills in our new system. They're subject to change, as is everything, and they're not going to be perfect for every single character (even games with over 100 skills don't always suit everyone) but we feel like this is going to be a vast improvement when it comes to both customization and gameplay over the old system. You will also no longer have attributes, so it's no longer impossible to make perfectly sensible character concepts like "a wizard that really doesn't know anything about healing".

Perception
Noticing details, spotting traps and ambushes etc.

Insight
Reading peoples' expressions, tones of voice and similar to determine what they're feeling and whether they're lying.

Might
Physical strength, swimming against the current, leaping wide chasms, breaking down doors.

Acrobatics
Tumbling, Balancing, Juggling, Agility. This + Might equals the old Athletics. Acrobatics and Might overlap in things like Running or Mountain Climbing which both could perform.

Heal
Injuries-be-gone and analyzing wounds, diseases etc.

Arcana
Analyzing and Manipulating magical effects, similar to how Dexterity can fiddle with traps or machines.

Dexterity
Small Motor Skills, lock-picking, machine-jiggering and trap-disabling/resetting.

Stealth
Name says it all

General Knowledge
Anything that doesn't fall into another skill. Who's the king here? Who's the local mob boss? How do you cook a decent meal? Which mushrooms are sage to eat? No longer will there never be any skill that works for a particular challenge.


Defensive Skills
It's often a major pain to take skills like Endurance only to have your dungeon-master never actually hit you with something that cares. On the other hand, most players won't take Endurance because of this and thus a DM has to be careful how many 'endurance-matters' things he or she throws at the party. It's a vicious cycle, and taking defensive options isn't as fun as taking some of the more proactive skills (even Heal can analyze wounds to determine information Sherlock Holmes style, and the presence of Injuries in the new system will make it vastly more useful). Thus, you'll also get the following 3 skills which you'll get to spend points on separately, according to how you envision your character.

Endurance
Enduring serious damage, wounds and diseases through sheer physical toughness

Reflexes
Responding to traps and ambushes with lightning speed.

Willpower
Mentally resistant to mind-altering affects, or similar mental assaults (from resisting body possession and charm spells to holding onto one's sanity in the face of abominations).



Where's the Persuasion?
In an optional supplement. It's a fine line to walk between providing skills that improve gameplay/represent what your player is capable of and skills that take away the core experience of roleplaying. Here are some common issues with having a persuasion-based, "social tank".


1) The, “oh really” roll

Player 1: I ask the King for a boat (rolls decently).

King: I cannot spare any ships at the moment, I’m afraid. The huegoths harry our waters each moon and
There will not be--

Player 2: Oh really? You sure? (rolls huge)

King: … Oh alright.

This is the, “oh really?” roll. It’s the social equivalent of a skilled thief taking over at picking a lock. Only, unlike with the lock, this check precludes an interesting roleplaying exchange and cuts interactions with the King short.  It’s particularly troublesome for new DMs and new players, which use the Persuasion skills like a button to press when faced with unwilling NPCs. A DM could just say the king can’t be persuaded by tone, but that’s making the Persuasion checks irrelevant.


2) Shut up, don’t talk to him, I’m the one with the high Persuasion!

You wouldn’t want a guy with a low heal check to be making the crucial heal roll. You wouldn’t want the guy with low stealth to try sneaking past the guards. Why would you want the guy with the low persuasion skill to be talking to anyone important?

Players attempt to optimize this simple truth and people with lower Persuasion scores get pushed away from roleplaying. You can try to get around this by letting the roleplay happen naturally and then let the highest Persuasion guy roll no matter what, but that’s really artificial. In a character-based game like we want the new system to focus on, discouraging players from talking to NPCs isn’t high on our priority list.

3) Why do we need it anyway?
Persuasion skills create problems for roleplaying exchanges, sure, but what do they actually bring to the table? A bit of added character customization I suppose, but there are tons of ways to customize your characters and you can still roleplay the character as a persuasive devil. The persuasion skills are only really useful in character customization for players that suck beyond belief at diplomacy (and similar). They allow a guy who can only think to say, “Oh really? You sure about that?” in a bland tone to somehow come off as wildly persuasive in-game. That creates its own roleplaying problems. I’ve often had players get very frustrated because their diplomatic skills in roleplaying couldn’t support their diplomacy skill in a game. Their frustration was nothing compared to the other players at the table.

On the other hand, I’ve run whole games without a single Persuasion check to see whether it’s needed. I found those games flowing with rich conversation and an added emphasis on what the king’s motivations are and how you can get him to give you the boat. When you can’t just press the Persuade button, you actually have to pay more attention to the characters you’re interacting with.


The Reduced-Roleplaying Supplement
I know some DMs will want to include persuasion skills in their games anyway, and sometimes it can even be a good idea. Experienced DMs can also carefully circumvent most of the above issues (though it takes added work). We'd rather just cut the problem to begin with and give DMs that want persuasion-skills in their games the option to include them. You can just have a single ‘persuasion’ skill’ of course, but here is some added customization (which is the main point of putting it as a skill on a character sheet).

Either way, I’d recommend trying out the game without persuasion-skills first and seeing if you or your players like it that way. You can always add the following skills back in later.

Deception
How good you are at convincing others of your sincerity. If you are a master at Deception, you can tell someone that the sky is green and they’ll believe that you think it’s green (but won’t think it’s green themselves).

Persuasion
How good you are at convincing someone to agree with your position. If you are a master at Persuasion, you can get someone to believe that the sky is green – but good luck doing so if they think you’re trying to trick them.

Intimidate
How good you are at making people afraid of you. If you are a master at Intimidate, you can get someone to shout that the sky is green to everyone in earshot because they’re very, very afraid to disagree with you.

A sensible setup. The three defensive skills remind me of the Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves of D&D.

Thanks. We spent a huge amount of time on it. It was funny how we didn't set out to mimic D&D's three defenses, but it just worked out that way. It's a very nice division for customization and gameplay. I've always liked those three defenses too, when I was playing 4e.

So, would the points thing work the same as it does now? You get enough points so that if you spread them out evenly, each skill has 7, and you can only raise each to 10 under normal circumstances, then you apply training and expert skills? Or will there be something new?

There will be a very similar system to what you're used to. Can't confirm the exact numbers yet, but with the skill-by-skill customization, I don't think we'll need training anymore. There may end up being options in abilities to do something similar to training if you want it, but we haven't worked out the numbers yet. I posted the skills in question the moment the system was designed and the whole team signed off, but it has yet to go through the numbers-tweaking of, 'development'.

Seems like an interesting array of skills. Approve of the 'isolation' the defensive skills get. Overall, pretty good stuff, though general knowledge seems like it might be a tad too strong by it's sheer flexibility.

There's a bit of vagueness with a few of them, though:

Insight

Spoiler:

Dexterity and Acrobatics

Spoiler:

Deception and Intimidate

Spoiler:

Defensive skills

Spoiler:

Zarhon wrote:Seems like an interesting array of skills. Approve of the 'isolation' the defensive skills get. Overall, pretty good stuff, though general knowledge seems like it might be a tad too strong by it's sheer flexibility.

There's a bit of vagueness with a few of them, though:


Defensive skills

Spoiler:

1) Insight could easily be renamed Empathy, but neither name is perfect. Insight implies some wrong aspects, but Empathy is a broader concept than lacking the ability to read expressions, tone and body language. Someone oblivious to that stuff could still feel deep empathy for someone. Anyone have a third name suggestion?

2)All talky skills are going to be unnecessary, which is why we didn't include them in the base. However, none of the other skills can help you lie better. You can scare someone with other actions, but you can't give the "I will find you and I will kill you" speech in a more menacing voice than another character with a different skill. Stealth definitely doesn't help you lie.

3) Defensive skills are meant to be reactive in nature, not proactive. Endurance would not directly help you lug a cart for 100 miles. However, if you start pulling it so long that you have to make an endurance check to NOT suffer a debilitating exhaustion condition, endurance will help you endure such effects and enable you to keep going. Might is what you'd use to pull the cart in the first place.

Sitting and re-reading Zarhon's question on defensive skills, I think it does bring up something that should be in the GM guide. There should be some discussion of "take 10" and "take 20" concepts. Someone with low might isn't moving the cart anywhere but someone with average might may be willing to take the "slow and steady wins the race" option for a non-immediate task. It should be discussed for GMs but not a default.

Good point. We might not use those exact mechanics (not as big a fan of take 10 as I am of take 20), but we should definitely talk about some version of the concept. It's seriously helpful.

I think most take 10/routine check situations probably fall on the GM simply telling the player not to roll. Applejack trying to harvest an orchard should require a roll but a small handful of trees while fully rested on a nice day should be hand waved.

I'm wondering how General Knowledge is going to interact with Freaky Knowledge and also the loss of History. History probably runs into the role play issues Persuasion has but I wonder if GK is too broad. Though I guess it could be argued that FK will always have use due to the fact that it's a specialist skill and can help define a character.

Indeed. I've already tried out General Knowledge in a game and it's been absolutely fine so far. I'm sure someone somewhere will try to apply it to do something silly, but we'll just explain that it's for things that fall through the cracks and handling random things. If it's doing anything proactive, powerful and intense - you're using it wrong. It's so *broad* that the DCs to do anything truly challenging in it would require great rolls and FK at best.

Is Arcana still the magic casting skill, or is that relegated to flavor in abilities?

Abilities are how you create tangible effects out of nothing.

Arcana lets you manipulate EXISTING magical effects, as well as analyze them, the way dexterity can help you disable traps or slightly rejigger them. Arcana could dispel or help you bypass enchantments, or perhaps slightly tweak them to your advantage (if a spell is detecting for non-goblins for a golem to attack, you might be able to shift it to detecting goblins instead with a great check). Gaining control of certain magical constructs, like golems, can also be possible the same way dexterity can let you fiddle with a mechanical turret.

It's magical mechanics basically. You couldn't use it like Magecraft could. Thank god.

Regarding the use of insight, I think it works quite well for its role. Two people could both listen to a third person telling a sad tale of woe that befell them; the first could empathize with them and want to cheer them up as a result, while the second could observe them closely and use insight to tell that they're actually an actor making it all up. It's basically "reading people" and I think "insight" sums it up nicely.

Thought I'd spoil our current draft of the Rework's Level-Up Table (including what you get at level 1).

Commentary:

Level 1: 10 Novice Ability Points, 1 Special Move, 1 Novice Feature, 7 Combat Talents, Assorted Skills
Level 2: 3 Heroic Ability Points, 2 Heroic Trait Points
Level 3: 3 Heroic Ability Points, 2 Heroic Trait Points
Level 4: Choose Your Destiny
Level 5: 3 Heroic Ability Points, 2 Heroic Trait Points
Level 6: 3 Legendary Points, 2 Legendary Trait Points
Level 7: Destiny Feature
Level 8: 3 Legendary Points, 2 Legendary Trait Points
Level 9: 3 Legendary Points, 2 Legendary Trait Points
Level 10: Destiny Feature


Notes
As mentioned earlier, abilities will be separated by tier. Novice points can purchase novice abilities, heroic points can purchase heroic abilities and legendary points can purchase legendary abilities.

Novice abilities will be roughly as powerful as the current abilities in PT and LL. Heroic abilities will be roughly 2x as powerful as equivalently-costed novice abilities and Legendary abilities will be roughly 3x as powerful as novice abilities.

Most abilities will cost 3 points in their respective tier (the current system of costing in LL).