You never mention how many creatures or what area an AOE spell is allowed to cover, though their costs are pretty set in stone. This is especially important for things like whirlwind dance mentioned below.
Movement, range, and positioning in general aren't really defined. Not necessarily a problem, if AOE's are defined by who they're hitting rather than where, but it makes it hard to tell how useful effects like 'Sudden Paralyze' are. If the enemy can move however far they want in a post, then paralyzing a foe and running away isn't an option. If there is a limit, it could be the start of an escape attempt.
Yep, this is very much the
'Not clarifying because it's in my head and I didn't think to write it down' problem I was talking about. AOEs hit everything, but I didn't clarify that because I'm stupid. Changed 'multiple' to 'all'.
Movement, range, and positioning doesn't exist in the game mechanics. One of my goals when I was first creating this system was to make it so it enhances the roleplay and not get in the way of it. The core of it is inspired by the mechanics of Paper Mario. Yes, I'm being serious. It's the reason why there are technically only three main stats (Mana / Clothing Duration / Mana Recovery).
'Sudden Paralyze' is a single-target Major Spell. It has no AOE version. The effect is that it cannot do Attack or Evasion Rolls, but I didn't write that so that means I need to.
I'd adjust the order in which you cover topics for clarity. Going down the trait list, I had a strong idea of how useful mana was, but no basis for HP, sensitivity, curses, and the like without scrolling pretty far down to read what they did. I'd suggest listing the mechanics before listing the character traits that interact with them. This is partially responsible for the length of feedback tapering off as time went on, since I wasn't sure if any information was being omitted or if things were particularly unbalanced-- but it's also because I'm over 1000 words already and barely past the halfway point of the document.
Gotcha. I'll fix that right now. Tell me if it makes sense.
Enemy traits aren't balanced quite as well as heroine options. For the most notable example, see the note on perfect breeder below-- if it gives all the benefits of 6-7 other traits, one lowly enemy with that can have all the same magic effects as a lord enemy that picked one by one. The heroine talents often have prerequisites for picking the better options (see elemental mastery requiring several of the others first) which might help things a bit.
This is by design and request. It's unfair, but not as unfair as it seems on the surface. Let's use the example you brought up. In fact, lets make a super jacked Lowly enemy.
Chad Goblin | Lowly | 10
Main Body | 69/69 HP
Arm A | 20/20 HP
Arm B | 20/20 HP
Leg A | 20/20 HP
Leg B | 20/20 HP
Traits:
Perfect Breeder
Skilled
Armored Foe
Pacification Equipment:
Obedience Collar
Quite powerful for a Lowly. Except for the fact that it all its rolls are limited to a 10 Sided Dice. Even with busted Traits, it's still not gonna be as effective as a Lord with sub-par Traits. The Dice Rolls tied to each category acts as a hard limit while Traits (And HP) allow you to freely craft the type of enemy you want. I didn't place any limits on which enemy categories could have which Traits because I wanted goofy stuff like this to be possible.
There are a few sections where your word choice switches from GM/player to me/you, which isn't optimal if you're wanting to make it easily accessible to a wider audience. There are instances throughout, but the instances that stood out to me enough to mention it were in the section on curses.
This is consequence of how I put my system together. It's a patchwork job and because of that there are 'Older' parts mixed together with 'Newer' parts. Anything Me/You is a left over from my older versions. The curse section is very much an 'Old' piece of writing that predates most of the system. I can actually tell when I wrote something based on certain word choices, capitalizing of important phrases, or what is bolded in the text.
I'm really not sure I understand your turn structure. A turn is equivalent to two posts, but every turn starts and ends within one? The first example makes it sound like there's two per turn; GM Open1, player1 Open1, player2 Open1, then GM Close1 (ending his turn, but not the players'). The second example suggests one turn/one post-- which is much simpler to work with and explain.
This section I had a lot of struggle with. A turn extends beyond the post made by the play/GM and ends when they make the next post. This is due to how buffs, rolls and certain Traits (Counter Dodge / Sharing Is Caring / Exchange) function. It's hard to explain. I made it this way because the one turn/one post way actually doesn't work with what I'm doing. If you would like, I would love to have you play some mock matches with me.
Since the name precludes characters with prior sexual experience (which should probably be allowed if wanted, like non-lawful monks or paladins) and makes no sense at all after being regenerated, I'd suggest tweaking the name to not include 'virgin'. Alluded to in your 'hard mode' options, but the name could still be tweaked while leaving the option in.
Sure. How about Chasity Tattoo Barrier?
It looks like Incendium has at most a +5 to damage that ignores the category of spell used? It seems like you'd only want to use the weakest possible fire magic, then, in order to get the best mana economy. +5 on top of a monumental 60 damage is weak, but on a minor spell you've nearly quadrupled the damage done. Same with Fulgur-- they stand out as being the only things so far that don't seem to have any scaling with the size of the spell used. I feel like it'd be more consistent to add that in somehow.
Remember what I said about it being a patchwork? Well, I wrote those two before I had started working scaling into my Traits. I just forgot to do the same for them. Thank you for pointing that out.
Possibly related, 40% sounds too low for true elemental mastery; getting a spell that debuffs and lifesteals and does extra damage and bypasses some forms of damage resistance and/or other effects seems really good. If you've tested it and it works to your liking, ignore this point.
I tested this as well as the average AAA game company tests their games. None at all. I did 40% because I didn't want the cost to be too much. Especially when it came to Monumental Spells. Maybe you should help me test it. Wink Wink Nudge Nudge
I like the concept in general, but re-rolling a new random number after every clone destruction seems like more work than is necessary. What if instead, the number is kept and the foe rolls to see which clone is targeted as before. If they roll a number that was already destroyed, flip a coin and go to either the next highest unused number or the next lowest unused number as appropriate. Doesn't have exactly even probabilities with re-rolling every time, but it saves time by skipping unnecessary RNG.
Or treat it like an array-- whenever a clone is removed from the options, the numbers of all the others get moved up. Say the heroine is #4 of 8, and the opponent rolls a 2. On the next attempted attack, after shifting her number up one space, she's #3 of 7.
I like the array idea. I'll write that in once I'm less lazy.
Doesn't specify a maximum distance for how far the power can go. Now that I think of it, I haven't seen range or positioning considerations anywhere so far.
That's cause range and positioning mechanics straight up don't exist. Is that weird?
How close do enemies have to be to be 'present'? Surely she's not spinning like a top across (for example) an entire gymnasium kicking 42 monsters in the face in the span of a few seconds? And it seems like she'd be less likely to hit all of them with one kick versus hitting just one and the rest dodging back before it's their turn. Maybe instead of a flat d(# of enemies) it's weighted somehow towards the middle?
Could you elaborate on this?
Melee seems strictly worse than a spell-based build. Without heavy investment of traits the damage numbers won't get close to what spell attacks can do without any traits at all. Sure, not costing any mana is nice, but with the regeneration rate as it is you could get a few minor spells 'free' each turn and exceed the damage with just Incendium.
Melee actually started as a joke option, but due to the actions of my first player, I started creating Melee Traits. When it comes Melee, it's hard to balance due to the 0 Mana cost. A Minor Spell does 2 Damage and cost 10 Mana. Melee does 1 Damage and cost nothing. Add a single point of damage to the base of Melee and suddenly there's no reason to ever use a Minor Spell. A purely Melee Build would need some investment, but it can be worth the pain. Let's take three pure Melee Traits
Warrior Maiden
Weapon Mastery
Full Force
With perfect rolls, you would inflict a max of 40 Damage. That's the equivalent of two Major Spells (150 Mana). With shitty rolls, you would inflict 4 Damage. The average amount of damage you would probably around 22 Damage. The idea here is that while Magic is more certain and immediate, Melee is more RNG based but capable of great damage at no cost.
Many of the traits that benefit Energy Blast work just fine for the spell-only build. Since it only stated that it added one damage per trait like Incendium, those talents benefit melee attacks less than they do spells anyway-- if the elemental effects could also be applied to melee attacks, that might shift things a bit.
Elemental effects can be applied to melee attacks. I just didn't realize that it wasn't obvious. Refer back to the
'Not clarifying because it's in my head and I didn't think to write it down' problem. The Trait is Weapon Enchantment. It basically gives the certainty of spells to a melee attack. This includes the elemental effects and status effects. To demonstrate, lets use this combo of Traits.
Weapon Mastery
Weapon Enchantment
Sacratus
With perfect rolls and a Monumental Sacratus Enchantment, you would inflict a max of 360 Damage. That's the equivalent of four Monumental Spells (1,120 Mana). This is all done in a single Turn for only 280 Mana. With shitty rolls, you would inflict 180 Damage which is still a stupid amount of damage.
As for Energy Blast, the minor elemental effects can be applied to that Trait.
And maybe bleed could stack? 2 HP doesn't seem like a lot for a 1 in 5 chance, but if it could be compounded, that could help even the odds a bit. Alternatively, another trait that increases bleed amount and/or bleed chance.
Hmm, good idea. I'll add it stacking.
Though maybe it also depends on what you mean by a 'hit' for Energy Drip. If melee attacks count and restore 5 mana per hit, that could be useful for quicker mana return. However, the wording doesn't really specify, and my first guess on reading was that an attack that doesn't cost mana doesn't replenish it.
Energy Drip does work with Melee. That player I mentioned earlier was using the Melee 'joke' option with this Trait to get free Mana. I should really clarify that.
On top of that, they're not taking the added risk of being grappled on a bad roll thanks to the dancer option.
The critical failure was a requested feature. Sometimes losing is winning.
Nitpick here, but I'm not 100% sure what beats the check. I'm reading it such that (Roll + 8 >= Enemy Roll) means that if the player's roll plus eight is equal to or greater than the enemy's roll, that the effect fails. If so, for clarity's sake maybe list it as bonuses added to the resistance rolls instead, mentioning that tying or exceeding the enemy roll avoids the effect.
Gotcha. Yep, I'll clarify it.
As regards Brainwashing Cum-- the wording of that trait seems like it's on a separate system? Definitely seems like BC could apply a penalty to resistance rolls here, but that's not what I got on reading it. Not true for the Obedience collar, which was immediately and clearly linked in.
That was me attempting to differentiate from Hypnotic Suggestion. Yeah, I thinking of following your suggestion and changing it to penalizing resistance rolls.
You mentioned that each sub-enemy in the combined attack can choose their own attack targets, and that a successful attack applies the applicable effects, but didn't mention whether or not the penalties for targeting limbs comes into play (and if so, how. Biggest penalty? All penalties? Fractional penalty based on what percent of the attackers are trying for the limb?)
That's a good question! I don't know! I'll write in something to address that.
Masochist and Sadist say that getting hit or landing hits respectively has a chance to trigger an effect, but no information is given as to what the chance is and how it scales.
The chance percent is 100%. This is just more
'Not clarifying because it's in my head and I didn't think to write it down' problem.
Not clear if it gives all the traits listed in parentheses, or just a subset. If it's all, that seems really strong.
It's all. And yes it's stupid strong.
Chains and rope can both be used to restrain arms, legs, or both at once-- begging the question, why not always use both at once? If there's added difficulty mechanically in doing so, it's not particularly clear. Especially since it's listed separately from the binding section which focuses exclusively on limbs.
It's suppose to be either arms or legs. One chain or rope = One pair of limbs.
Is it the case that the creature has to have control of the arms and limbs separately before using the chains/rope to keep them bound?
Yes.
The structure here made a few things unclear. The various effects fall along the scale from 0 to 100, but they're broken up into chunks like the rolling chart was (but less clear). The effects in a given chunk only cover up to the top roll result, but with various penalties they could be higher. Do the worse options only activate after getting to the higher ranges? For instance, a it looks like a nat 100 is only an instant loss after 1000 sensitivity or more. If so, do the lower effects only kick in while still at low sensitivity?
If that's not correct, consider listing the possible effects separately from the tiers and their modifiers.
With penalties, it is possible to go higher or lower. You can get higher tiered options even in a lower tier thanks to modifiers. It's the reason why I made it so you would need a nat 100 to get an instant loss. This is to avoid hitting it with a modifier. As for lower effects, you can still get them even at max sensitivity as long as you roll low (and don't have any modifiers that raise it). I guess this is another thing that I need to clarify.
You could also include a 'favored enemy' style trait that gives advantages against a specific enemy type or enemy trait, even. Perhaps another set that boosts resistances to specific elemental magics (three for heroines, four for enemies) or something like that.
I have thought of implementing something like this, but couldn't figure how to do it without making it too niche or over complicated. it's why none of the elemental magic do any of the rock /paper / scissor stuff and is instead tied to different rolls.
Phew! I really appreciate your insight. All the changes I say I'll do will put in the game... once I'm less lazy. As I mentioned before, I would love it if you would help me test the system with some mock battles. If you want, of course.
insert puppy dog eyes here
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