PUCS has a new home!

PUCS - Percentile Universal Combat System

PUCS Open Play Testing

Play testing has resumed! The designers have decided to open it up to the general public. This should gain fresh ideas, confirm some assumptions and strike down some too. Please consider participating! PUCS Play testing public invite

Tweaking continues

Not much to report really. Review, testing and tweaking continues. I expect there will be a DRAFT 3 this Fall. Hand-to-Hand still needs work. Melee is solid.

PUCS Hand to Hand Skills Added

The tweaking continues! During the latest melee the need for some additional Hand to Hand skills was realized. Two skills were added: Combination Punch, Flying Kick or for the summary see:
Skills listing.

I think we are going to see a lot more skills popping into the Hand to Hand category. There is a lot of interest there lately. The bruise vs wound damage is working out really well.

Minor Tweaks

Spring play testing has concluded, sadly with the death of 2/3rds of the party.  Oops.  Players and GMs a like still have some trouble accessing risk/threat it seems.  Oh well that is why we do playing testing!  Some conclusions were made based on the latest round.  

Combined Actions

The combined actions worked.  The penalty is steep but balanced and it played out fairly.

Strength Bonus

This was significant change from the previous version, it also played out well.  More often then not it had little effect, however on  a few occasions it had tremendous impact.  In a way its like a critical hit from D20, but with a much broader range of results and higher rate of occurrence.  BEWARE THE STRONG FOE ;-)

Magic in Melee

Weather by design or by omission (no one is quite certain),  the rules stated that spell cast failure did not count as a spell action.  This made for some very interesting melee which all agreed was entertaining.  For example a man charging down a hill, holding out sword & shield while screaming like a banshee and casting Magic Missile every second.  He failed every second but the last one (combined action: casting and double move) but afterward all agreed that at Magic Missile level 1, he was game-ing the system a bit.  So now a failed cast counts as a spell action.  See Magic in Melee. 

The summer has been busy, new family members, a cross country move and vacations.  However play testing continues just at a slower pace.

Combined Actions

Summer has been busy so far, but not so with play testing. We have been relegated to PBeM due to everyone's busy summer schedules. None the less the testing continues albeit at a slower pace.

Combined Actions
In PUCS the rules really discourage combined actions. Each action, any action, takes 1 second, combine them and whatever action requires a skill check is done at half. In the current melee, it seems nearly all actions, on both sides have been combined, hence the reason its currently cruising into second 60+.

What I am forced to wonder is if this is a player fallback to patterns they are used to in other systems, is this a flaw in PUCS, or is it working?

PBeM / PBMB and Bookeeping

While play testing continues, I as GM am finding the book keeping needed for extended melees to be cumbersome. This not really specific to PUCS, although is some sense PUCs damage by zones does add to the complexity of data management more then I had expected.

Play testing has been performed lately in PBeM (actually PBMB - Play by Message Board), because we have some new parents, many holidays, much travel etc. Since I am GM, our established procedure for game play has made me responsible for everything in the game. Not only do I track the NPCs and build maps, but I also track the PCs and make all the dice rolls. This has been going on for some months now and I have settled into certain patterns that make it a little easier.

I make heavy use of a spreadsheet. You could use Excel or Google Docs, because I do not do anything fancy. I have tab for each PC with all their details. I have a tab for a mission log, where I keep track of each round and events. This has been useful because in visiting the game only a few minutes a day, I can not remember all that has gone on, but in a few seconds I can refresh myself. Also elements of this log end up as posts on the Message board.

I also do all the dice rolling in the spreadsheet. Some may not prefer that, that is fine, but it works really well for me as the dice are not always handy when I need a roll or three. The dice rolling has become more elaborate over the last two months. I do not use a script /r 3d6+. Rather I have a dozen or so common PUCS rolls written in simple formulas, that I can recalculate with a keystroke. It has become so fast that I can process the dice rolling part of melee in a few seconds.

For the map, I still use MapTool. This tool works really well for me and is indispensable for PBeM/PBMB. I take a screen shot (from the tool) and upload the image to http://flickr.com/ If this were PBeM I could just attach the images in each email, but on the message board, its easier (for me at least) to link to an image. Although our board also supports attachments, I prefer the Flickr links. The Flickr links are scalable, players can really zoom and examine the map if they choose too. Furthermore since I keep the images in set for the campaign, players can easily review all the images directly in flickr (for example: http://flickr.com/photos/8832225@N08/sets/72157604384209063/ ). Naturally they can review them on the message board also. In the end this give GMs and Players more options. More options with no additional effort, can not be a bad thing. If you are not familiar with flickr, I use a free account which is limited to 100MB of uploads per month. I have never even come close to that limit yet. You can also have a paid account but I have yet to need one.

Playtesting Continues!

It has been a quiet month at least with regard to blog posting. However play testing has been proceeding at a furious pace. This is a lot of fun, because so far at least, there has been very little debate about the rules. The game is just flowing along and isn't that point anyway?

What is surprising to me is that the players for the most part remain in a D20 psychology about melee. This is creating additional risk for each character and is giving their opponents (run by GM) an advantage. However it has been a lot of fun and no characters have died and early on at least there was a good deal of maneuvering going on. Some missile weapons and some spell casting all to limited effect.

I would like to think that the good flow and lack of debate implies that rules are gaining some polish. It may be that testers are holding there tongues until the test is complete and they can comment on the total result rather some specific nuance here or there.

Below are some screen shots of melee. 3 PCs assaulting a hill against a force of unknown strength. The PCs played it pretty smart. Split the defenders fire, made good use of spells, and then heavy melee ensued. If they made one mistake, it would be that they let themselves get split up. They are out numbered and would be stronger if the party remained together.

What I have found most interesting is that the PCs, should already have been defeated. There has been some lucky rolling here and there, but on balance they are doing well. The melee is not yet complete, so I can't say they will be victorious, they do at least at this moment have equal odds.

Screen Shots:



Here the party came under missile fire from the rocks at the top of the map. One PC took cover and intended to return fire with a bow. The other 2 PCS charged up the hill side at angle. The effect was to divide the missile fire. As it turned out there was only 1 bow firing on them, that bowmen kept at the PC who took cover. As it turns out, that is because the bowmen never had a field of view of the other 2 PCS.



The PC taking cover, has a few more close calls with incoming arrow, but is never able to spot the shooter. He figures the general area of the shooter, inside deep shadow on the rock face and casts a sleep spell on that location. He has no idea if he got the shooter or not. The other 2 PCs continue on up the hill, but realize as they draw closer that the rock is rimmed by a dense brier. They see no way to approach the rock where the shooter likely is.



The charging PCs fall into prone positions with some cover and scan the brier for a path. While doing so they spot a defender laying prone on the rocks. They also spot a group of 4 defenders approaching from the West and heading towards their lone companion. They shout warnings.



The defenders charge continues, some spells are exchanged and one defender drops. At the same time, a cut in the brier is found and a PC blitz into it. With 3 warriors coming fast, the lone PC decides to make a break for his companions.



The break is well timed, and he stays out ahead of them. Meanwhile one PC melee's in the brier cut while the 3rd moves towards to help against the defenders from the West.



Here the action has effectively devolved into melee. The party has done well against an opponent with greater number and more skill. I am a little disappointed that party has not made better use of their capacity for movement as a defense. Still they have done well and its a been a fun so far!

BTW all screen shots done with Maptool

PUCS Draft 2 Release today

The second draft of the PUCS system was released today in PDF form. It can be downloaded from the home page, http://www.rolldamage.com/pucs The PDF is indexed, searchable, bookmarked and hyper linked to the live site.

It is still not perfect. I have not decided if I like the revised melee system or not. I preferred the previous version as it was simpler. In any event, there it is. The website is always current as it updates every time the designers make a change. Before too long they will need to issue yet another DRAFT. I'm hopeful that some real work on other genres will begin soon. Things like sci-fi, modern etc.

I wonder about endless BETAs like Google is famous for. Will PUCS ever leave the DRAFT mode?

This has been a slow month

While this month has been slow.  Play testing has been a lot of fun.  The new magic rules are very interesting tactically.  Balance wise, no one is quite certain where it should go.  It could easily become a sort of Harry Potter style melee where everyone uses magic, because it is so much more powerful then melee weapons alone.  However none of the play testers nor designers really want that to happen.

One obvious difference is that melee which was already more hazardous then D20 variants, really requires tactical thinking.  If you just stand toe to toe, and your opponent takes advantage of movement rules your not going to do well.  In short there is a lot more moving around in melee then anyone really expected.

Recently in play testing a low power party encountered a giant crocodile.   The monster ambushed the party at a broken down bridge, where the party had little freedom of movement.  The crocodile attacked, nearly killed a horse and was trying to drag it away.  The party went after the crocodile, but the crocodile retreated, then ambushed again and nearly killed a party member.  The party hacked away at the beast but to little effect.  Finally the character who was ambushed and being crushed by the crocodile, successfully put the beast  to sleep with a spell.  However the spell was an area of effect spell.  They were all of them clustered together, and half the rest of the party went down too.   It was tremendous fun!  Read some detail about it here.

Otherwise, rules review is proceeding more slowly then anyone would like.  Hopefully DRAFT2 by the end of the month.

Combat Rules updates

In the process of reviewing the rules some reorganization has also been done. No rules have changed, but they have been described consistently now. Check it out here: PUCS Rules for Combat.

In any event it looks like the Draft will be finalized later this month!

PUCS - Updated Character Sheets

The PUCS character sheets have been updated. In keeping with the simplicity mantra, the sheets remain a single 8.5x11" sheet, with easily read fonts and nothing, repeat nothing complicated. The sheet comes in two flavors, MS Excel or Adobe's PDF. There are links to down the character sheet on the PUCS website.

Or just click these links:
PUCS Character Sheet in Excel Format (Excel 2003 format)
PUCS Character Sheet in PDF Format


If anyone needs other formats let me know!

The Updates Continue

The good news is that the methodology is resolved. The mechanics are resolved. All that is left is some adjustments to both cost and potency and its all done. We are still cleaning up the context a little too.

So whats the new methodology?

The same methodology has been applied to magic, missiles and melee. Previously we had variations in each major category. Each round consists of 10 seconds. In each of those 10 seconds a character can take an action or move. The maximum number of actions is determined by the categories basic skill.

For melee weapons, the Basic Melee skill level determines the maximum number of actions the character can make it melee. There is a cheviot though. The character can not take more actions then they have skill level in the weapon they are using. For example if the character had Axes & Hammers level 4, but only Basic Melee level , the character could only make 3 attacks/defends per round. The character would still get the +20 bonus, 5 points per skill level.

For spell casting, it works exactly the same way. The Basic Spell Casting skill determines the maximum number of spells cast round. There is a cheviot though. The character can not cast a spell more times then they have skill level in that spell. However the character can cast different spells in the same round, so long as they do not cast any spell more often then the skill level in that spell and the total number of spells cast in the round does not exceed the Basic Spell Casting level. This gives the caster a great deal more flexibility and more power. This is why we are play testing the casting so heavily, seeking the balance between cost and potency. It is worth mentioning that spell's skill level sets how often the spell can be cast per round. There is no longer a daily limitation on any spell. You can read the revised PUCS magic rules on its site.

Missiles are skills unto themselves. There is no base skill for bows or crossbows. Bows can be fired as many times per round as the skill level. Crossbows are slow to load and their rate of fire is defined by each device.

That is enough for today. Check out the PUCS website and please post any comments or questions you might have here. I'm happy to answer them as best I can!

Heirarchial Change in Melee Skills

Get ready because it here it comes. Melee skills are being reworked to have greater hierarchy and more flexibility. Essentially "Basic Melee" is being changed to a fundamental melee skill, levels of which determine how many combat actions you can take in a round. To gain greater chance to hit however you will invest your skills into specific weapon types: Blades, Simple Weapons, etc.

All of this came about because of a disagreement about to handle to changing weapons. I won't bore you with the specifics as its already been decided. Look to see the web pages updating over the next week or so.

PUCS - Percentile Universal Combat System

Axis and Allies

This is unrelated to PUCS development but it was so cool I had to mention it. My friend has been laid up after some surgery earlier this month. We have been play Axis and Allies via Map Tool and its been a lot of fun so far. Below are some screen shots.

The Russian Front

The Battle Board

The Complete Map

I really remain impressed with this FREE, flexible and easy to use application from the good folks over at http://www.rptools.net. I eagerly await their 1.3 release coming out of BETA sometime this year.

PUCS website launched over the weekend

The PUCS website went public over the weekend. The DRAFT 2 Rules are publicly available there, however editing continues and the final DRAFT 2 PDF has not yet been created. A whole lot has been changed with regard to magic especially. Play testing continues and I think that spells are going to be revised for potency and cost before the final DRAFT 2 is released.

So what changed? Mainly spells. Previously you could cast a spell as many times per day as you had skill level in the spell. There was also a calculation to determine how long it took you cast the spell in melee. It worked fine, but was still clunky in play testing and really slowed things down in melee. So it was scrapped.

Now Magic is casts per round of skill level in the spell. That a huge change. There remain many balance issues to work out between cost of the skill and potency. Some competing plans are:

1. Make magic much more expensive then in DRAFT 1.
2. Make spells much less potent then in DRAFT1.
3. Keep cost and potency from DRAFT 1 the same but increase the hierarchy to get to powerful spells.

Personally I do not know what is the best answer is. I'm inclined towards some combination of 2 and 3. But then there are some complexity issues so where the balance will fall out, we still do not know.

There are others issues to work out too. If I cast spell X in melee, can I cast spell Y in the same round? Its a worthy question but not yet answered. If you let the cast switch up between spells in the same round you increase their effectiveness and potency considerable.

So please browse the rules at the PUCS web site and post any comments that you might have. I would like to hear what you think!

PUCS Logo

Well the hard work of re-work has begun in earnest. I have done my small bit by making a new logo. I stuck with the shield design but went with orange instead of blue. I am not all that enthusiastic about it but it is complete.

What's in a name?

Apparently quite a bit if you consider copyrights and legal trade marks. That said the system has found itself a new name. No longer shall be referred to as The Dee One Hundred, hence forth is officially know as: Percentile Universal Combat System or PUCS.

So what's changed?
Really nothing other then the name.

When is the next release?
The name change has caused some delays as a new website and lots of editing needs to be review, so the next release aka DRAFT 2, is slated for March 2008.

How do you pronounce it?
Here in lies a quandary well described on the roll damage forum. Either puck (hockey puck) or puke (rhymes with nuke) is acceptable.

I'll post more details about the new website and firm DRAFT 2 date when they become known to me.

Damage Bonus in Melee - Part III

The damage bonus from in melee is resolved although the word-smiths continue to play with how exactly to describe them.

Summary
The Damage Bonus From Strength will be 10% of the strength attribute. Each 10 points of strength bonus is rolled on its own 1d10. Rolling at or below the bonus, give the bonus of the dice roll. Rolling above the bonus gives no bonus. This is unchanged from previous blog posts. See Damage Bonus in Melee - Part II for details of how it works and see Damage Bonus in Melee for why we thought it needed to be changed.

Strengths Greater then 100
The Damage Bonus From Strength greater then 100 was problematic. We wanted to continue the variable nature of the bonus but we wanted to keep the calculation simple. So we ended up doing was giving each 10 points of the damage bonus from strength its own roll.

Example
For example take something hugely strong, Strength 250. The Damage Bonus From Strength is 10% of 250 or 25 points. You would break that down into three d10 rolls. The first two rolls 2d10 do that amount in bonus damage. The third d10 would only do damage if you rolled at or below 5. So you have a minimum damage of 2 and a maximum damage of 25. A likely damage of around 12 (statistics is not my strength.)

Damage Bonus from Strength 25
Bonus	Roll	Potential	Average
10	1d10	1 to 10 points	5.5
10	1d10	1 to 10 points	5.5
5	1d10	0 to 5 points	1.5

Unexpected Consequences
The damage bonus in melee has given rise to some new skills. These skills afford those with them to better leverage their strength. The only new skill whose defintion has settled down is this Power Attack.

Power Attack
Power Attack helps the character maximize their strength bonus on damage rolls in melee. The skill level in Power Attack is the minimum damage bonus the character can roll, after a successful attack. The Power Attack can not exceed the character's Damage Bonus from Strength .

A character has a Damage Bonus from Strength of 6 and Power Attack of level 2. The character hits in melee, rolls the weapons damage and then a 1d10 for the Bonus Damage from Strength. With the Power Attack skill, the character will always get 2 points of Damage Bonus from Strength even if they roll a 1,2,7,8,9 or 10. Rolls of 3,4,5 or 6 are not effected. Without this skill, rolls of 7,8,9 or 10 do no bonus damage.

Damage Bonus in Melee - Part II

Round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows!

Strength Bonus has found its resolution for the soon to be published D100 Draft 2. As I described in a previous entry, in the current system strength bonus was a straight adder to any damage roll in melee. While it worked just fine as play testing continued it was revealed that super strong creatures pretty much squashed any human they hit, every time they hit. In practice we have no problem with this effect. We none the less considered that even the very powerful do not always connect a blow with all the power behind it and how might we model that in the system.

What we have been play testing is this.

Damage Bonus from Strength

In melee using a hand held weapon each character gets a damage bonus from Strength. This bonus is based on 10% of the Strength Attribute. The 10% represents the maximum bonus. The effect of the bonus is determined by rolling 1d10. If that roll is equal to or below 10% of the Strength attribute then that roll is added to the weapon's damage roll. To determine the total damage of a hit you roll two times, first for the weapon, second for the strength bonus.
For example a character has:

• Strength of 55
• Strength Damage Bonus is 6 (10% of 55 is 6 because of rounding)
• Rolls a 45 for a successful hit
• Rolls a 1d6 for weapon damage
• Rolls a 1d10 for strength bonus damage
  
• Rolls of 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 are added to the weapon damage.
• Rolls of 7,8,9 or 10 are ignored.

Remaining issues:
We are still toying with how to handle a strength bonus greater then 10. There are a couple competing concepts. I will post about the winning one next time. This has also brought up some interesting possibilities for new skills.

Damage Bonus in Melee

In the current draft of the D100 Melee System, we add 5% of the strength as a damage bonus for hand help weapons. This is similar to the d20 model and It works well. A problem that has been realized is that damage is skewed towards always heavy damage. D100 has a radically different hit point model compared with D20 and so this skew causes a break down in the system against something monstrously strong, like a troll. A troll's strength of 200 has 1o point damage bonus. This means even if the troll were to make a hit with a club (1d4). When you combine that with the damage bonus for strength, the troll can do a minimum of 11 points and a maximum of 15 points. No one has an issue with the maximum, but the minimum seems unfair. Does the troll always get his full strength into the swing?

More Detailed Example of Issue
Take Opponent X, who is quite strong and has a 6 point damage bonus for strength. The weapon of choice is a club with 1d4.

If Opponent X connects and gets all their power behind the blow, they do 10 points of damage. SPLAT! Now lets say Opponent X falters some and connects. In the current system, any hit does a minimum of 7 points of damage.

Opponent X is strong, but do even the very strong always get all their power behind each blow. Rather, the very strong have tremendous potential for power behind each blow. Much the same as each weapon has its own potential for damage. Melee is a dance, some blows miss (we got that covered), some blows are blocked (we got that covered), some blows are shifted (we got that covered too) and some blows hit without full force and there in lies the problem.

Solution(s)
This is a little tricky to resolve because we want the system to be kept simple. We do not want to reference a chart each time in melee. We do not want a complicated formula, but we don't want a straight adder bonus either. What we are experimenting with is rather then having a straight bump to the damage roll, we have a second damage roll for the strength bonus. We are also trying out a combined damage roll that accounts for the damage potential of both the strength and the weapon.

For example:
Currently
- Short Sword 1d6
- 60 Strength: +3 on damage
- Hits do 1d6+3, or 4-9 points per hit
Idea #1 - 2 rolls for damage
- Short Sword 1d6
- 60 Strength: +3 on damage
- Hits do 1d6+1d3, or 2-9 points per hit
Idea #2 - 1 roll for damage
- Short Sword 1d6
- 60 Strength: +3 on damage
- Hits do 1d9, or 1-9 points per hit

This example shows a bonus roll that is not an easy dice roll. You would have to roll a d6 divided by 2. What do you do when the bonus is 7 or 9? Obviously this introduces some complexity that we do not really want to deal with. But at this point its just a concept. I'm partial to the single roll (Idea #2) but the debate and testing continues.

Monsters, Humans and the Scale of things.

D100 is a simplistic system and this fact affords it some interesting advantages in developing monsters and defining what there capabilities are. Firstly what is a typical human is easily understood. When creating a monster relative to normal human it is quite easy to see how deadly the monster might be.

Human
A normal human has all attributes of 40 and so a movement (Strength + Reflex) of 80. Presuming this person has no martial training, they can pick up a club or a knife or a sword and have a 10% chance of hitting in melee.

Goblin
Let us consider a fairly common and low power monster the goblin. A goblin is smaller then a normal human, weaker, and none to bright. However they have some martial skills and they are much faster (Movement 120) then a normal human. In a straight up fight between a goblin and human, the goblin's 35% verses the human's 10% is a clear advantage. It is not hard to imagine a small set of goblins easily destroying/routing a much larger group of humans. After all if it goes badly for the goblins they can run 50% faster and easily get away.

Minimally Trained Human
If a human has basic martial training (Basic Melee) there attack score doubles to 20%. It is not hard to imagine that some proportion of the general population would have this training, either from life experience or perhaps from being pressed into military service sometime in the past.

In this scenario the a straight up fight between the two still favors the goblin with 35% verses 20%. However it is more difficult to invision a small set of goblins destroying/routing a much larger group of humans. Due to the goblin advantage being reduced by half.

Moderately Trained Human
If a human has some specialized training in a weapon (Simple Weapons) for example a club, they have a 45% of hitting in melee. This human has likely spent sometime in either the watch or repeated pressing into military service and probably has even had a some melee under their belt.

In this scenario a straight up fight between the two slightly favors the human with 45% verses 35%. This makes it difficult to envision a small group of goblins destroying/routing a larger group of humans. Even if only a few humans are at this level among many humans it may be enough to turn the tide.

The Man at Arms
If a human has specialized training in a weapon (Blades 2, Light Armor & Shield) for example a short sword, they have a 50% of hitting in melee. This human has likely been a man at arms or a professional soldier.

In this scenario a straight up fight between the two strongly favors the human with 50% verses 35%. The human gets as many as two attacks and as many as 3 defense rolls. This makes it difficult to envision a small group of goblins even attacking a larger group of humans. Even if only a few humans are at this level among many humans it would be enough to turn the tide.

The Scale
The point of all these examples is that goblin, would be absolutely terrifying and deadly to a normal human even if there were large numbers of humans relative to the number of goblins. With even a little skill this quickly reverses.

If you consider larger creatures, say a werewolf or a troll. The human could never match the speed of a werewolf (250) or the strength of troll (200). Tangling with either of these beasts even if you are highly skilled is a dance with death. A single blow (+10 on damage) from the troll is lethal to even a heavily armored human. The werewolf is so fast, you would be hard pressed to even attack it as it can attack and move away from you in most cases.

Conclusion
To me this scale is just one more thing that makes D100 so good. It highlight what is wrong with D20 and the like. A creature that is 12' tall and weighs 500# and hits you... is lethal. You can tangle with the creature in melee but you will have to focus all your energy on not getting hit in order to survive. In D20 at high enough level you could take on this creature without fear. This would never be the case in D100, you would always need companions or better yet attack it with ranged weapons.

D100 Draft PDF finally released

It is not pretty but for a draft it is sufficient. The second draft will be available in February 2008 and promises to be prettier. You can download the PDF at the D100 site. Enjoy!

Playtesting and PDFs

There are many a great lesson to be learned in this life and wise man once said to me.

Be careful what you complain about in committee for it may be assigned to you.

I wish I had listened! Because I had long been whining about not having a PDF of the complete rules. I could dog ear one, make notes on it, and not have to be browsing the website in play. In truth I rarely have to refer to the rules in play, but making notes about tweaks, ideas and changes is easier for me on a hard copy. So after my repeated mentions of having no single PDF of the entire rules set, I was volunteered to correct the problem. Oh happy day.

However as it turns out it was not all the hard to automate the content capture and so now I must tweak the format of that capture (in an automated way) and then we'll be good to go. As it stands now the DEC 2007 rules are a little more then 100 pages of 8.5x11 including all charts & graphics. I only have few format issues to correct and a few linking issues to adjust and it will be complete.

That said I believe a PDF of DEC 2007 rules will be available, just before the FEB 2008 rules are released. Just in time to be obsolete!

D100 logo finalized

In the grand scheme of things this is a minor event.  I created it and I wanted to show off a bit!  You can also go see it live at the D100 Open Melee System.  I am proud of myself for getting it to look that good.  I became so frustrated at one point I considered offering bounty for the logo design at www.sitepoint.com

I used a free logo generator on the web to create the shield design.  I then used GIMP to spruce it up, add text and the fade to transparent white ellipse.  I am an amateur and it took me many hours to create the effects.  Translate that to a whole lot of rework, Save As, beer and trips to the potty!

Dealing with light in game play

Recently I played in a very spirited campaign. All involved were experienced and the characters had been in use off and on for many years. However this time the campaign was played using a VGT (Virtual Game Table) called Maptool for the first time. There was a noticeable change in player behavior and this was completely due to the lack of light which Maptool does an excellent job of representing.

Traditionally on the table top, the map is revealed in bit and pieces as the characters "See" more, using either torches, lanterns, light spells or whatever. We more or less took the light for granted and it rarely slowed the pace of the party in exploration or melee. In fact rarely did light effect player behavior or impact die rolls. This was really a convenience for both GM and the players. It had been going on for so long that none of us even thought it about it any longer.

However in last weekends play something amazing happened. The players were, for lack of better word, Timid! In more then one example the strong fighter type would blitz after a foe and stop. Thats right STOP at the edge of the light. I can't recall that ever happening before. Furthermore our sources of light were limited to certain characters and the other characters tended to bunch up, bathing in the warm glow of thelight. Furthermore in a large and dark cavern. The characters were easy targets for foes outside the light with melee weapons. This is new behavior and really added to the fun!

None of this really has anything to do with developing a RPG, but it was such a powerful and positive experience I had to share the effect. I recommend that if you have not used a VGT you try one out sometime soon. We used Maptool which is free, works on multiple platforms, is easy to install, and not too difficult to learn to use.

No play testing but a fun game!

Today we played good ole d20 for a few hours.  Although my character spent most of the day KO'd (Beholders are tough!) it was still fun to roll the dice.  It did serve to remind me of the many complexities in D20 and re-affirmed my view that D100 is the right way to go.  Hopefully with the pending FEB 2008 release we will see more acceptance of the new system. 

Critical Hits and Critical Blunders

As it happens in D100, melee is quite deadly even to the well skilled and experienced. We have found that this is largely due to two factors:

1. Many on 1 confrontation. In D100 this is a scenario for even the well armored and highly skilled to avoid. Put simply if surrounded you are unlikely to survive. Even if the opponents have only 1 attack each, 9 attacks can not be defended against and you are going to go down.
2. Critical Hits. In D100 under 2007.12 Rules happen anytime the player rolls a 00, 01 or 02. 3% is not great odds yet it happens quite often and is frequently the end of the character who is hit by one.

"Many on 1" is situational and really a function of how well the system is modeling reality. No changes are coming there. Players should avoid the situation, purchase good armor and well be ready to run when need be.

Critical hits however is going to be changed. The designers went back and forth on the "how" many times but ultimately decided to keep it simplistic. First they are reducing the incident rate from 3% to 1%. Players who roll a 00 score a critical hit. However they are not reducing the deadliness of it, in fact they are increasing the deadliness to maximum damage, then doubled. Unlike before however they are allowing the defender (if they have an action available) to attempt to block the blow. If the defender fails the block or has no actions available, the defender can bump it.

In summary, in the revised rules, they have reduced the rate at which the critical occurs by 2/3, they have increased the effect of it, and allowed the defender a chance to avoid it or reduce its effect.

It looks like the next rules draft will be out at the end of February!

Ahh so what to do about magic?

Well what happens when you combine 60 points for each of two player characters, matched up against: 16 goblins, 16 orcs and 8 evil humans. In a word... CARNAGE!



Ok it was a scenario designed for 4 PCs not 2. The goblins had short bows. The humans had long swords blades 4. The Orcs had short swords blades 3. The match lasted 43 seconds (took about an hour to play but there were many sidebars as it was play testing), 1 PC still standing and all others were killed or incapacitated. Most were incapacitated (grey X's on map above).

So what did we test:
1) Spell level = casts per round of that spell
2) Casting time = 1 second
3) Bow Level = missiles per round
4) Missile Rate of Fire = 1 second

So what did we learn:
1) Magic, well used with even simple spells is very powerful.
2) Magic skills may be too cheap.
3) If you have magic and your opponent does not, your opponent is going to loose.
4) Critical hits are deadly. One PC died in the first 10 seconds with a critical hit to the head.
5) Fireballs rock, but lowly sleep spell won the day.
6) We need articles/equipment for magic protection. This is a balance issue that requires A LOT more testing.
7) GAP comparisons for success of spell was too cumbersome. In a simple engagement we had not noticed, but calculating GAPs on 10 people at time was way too much work and we just stopped and went with simple Willpower checks instead.
8) MapTool remains the coolest thingie out there for remote RPG play.
9) Wands, rings and Staffs are far less useful in revised system.
10) Revised rules for magic were so simple to follow we never thought about them in play.
11) Revised rules for bows were so simple to follow we never thought about them in play.
12) Good armor is worth the money. Especially against missiles. A PC absorbed three volleys from a group of archers at short and medium range, and although damaged he was not brought down.
13) Large engagements are a lot of fun, especially with interesting terrain.

So what do we need to do.
1) Initially we will keep the spell costs unchanged, but add some protection equipment and see how that effects things.
2) More testing of spells with protection.
3) Small engagements, large engagements, open space, confined space.
4) Review spell list and drop the GAP for area of effect spells, its too cumbersome to calculate, simple willpower checks suffice and in truth degrade the power of the spell somewhat.
5) Consider an option for willpower based area of effect spells to use the GAP when the spell is targeted on a single creature instead of area of effect.