The Workspace

Attack Templates

So something I was thinking of was something like for every level someone takes in a weapon proficiency, they gain a sort of 'trademark technique' or something for that. Also a possibility of gaining more through some in-game progression, or possibly buying them with experience.

Because let's face it, five attacks aren't going to be enough. It's possible to have some levels unlock more, perhaps something like Level 3 unlocking another 1 and 2, and 5 unlocking another 3 and 4. Or just have each Level unlock ONE of the level below it (which is equitable to the last at Level 5). I don't think I want each level to unlock one of each level below, because fifteen attacks seems like a lot to gain that way, and gaining five attacks all at once seems like the player won't think enough.

Each technique can add effects to it, with certain ones having requirements. Ideally, each effect has a scalability to it, so that attacks don't end up entirely useless over time or overpowered when first acquired.

With this, I was thinking that each level has a sort of cap so you can't add too many features to it for your level. Something like 5 chakra (so one effect) for Proficiency 1, which would be sort of a 'special technique' with one effect when first gotten (ideally). But as you level, it becomes more just a variation of a 'regular' attack and the higher levels replace it as 'special.' Get it?

Pretty much the idea is to sorta make these like Powers in DnD, where the players create their own to fit their desires. Instead of explicitly making 'Dailies'/'Encounters'/'At-Will,' I think instead each effect adds to the chakra cost, making powerful attacks with many effects cost a lot and be saved for special occasions while more general attacks with a single effect be relatively cheap and more easy to throw in whenever.

The problem this runs into is someone who adds a proficiency late in the game, though I don't really know if this is a problem per se. As I said, ideally things scale, so the only problem will be they'll just have a low-level decent attack which makes sense because they just picked up the weapon.

Example Effects

• Devastating Strike - The attack gains an amount of damage proportional to the proficiency.
• Driveback - The enemy is pushed back a number of squares
• Magic Strike - Adds an effect from a specific school of magic to the attack.
  • Requires Level 1 of the magic
• Multitarget - Splits the damage among a maximum number of targets equal to the proficiency. In some range, I imagine. Each target has to be rolled against, I imagine, before or after the split? Spitballin'!

At higher proficiencies, the ability to link into another attack (one's own or another player's) would probably be possible, too, but these would be more expensive (and thus not available for low levels due to their caps). Other possibilities are causing status effects, or possibly short buffs after an attack or something.

Pulling back a bit to the big picture again, I think the idea here is to sort of try to envision a sort of Rube Goldberg device of violence: When exposed to a battle, a character should be able to take these techniques and think of ways to set up situations that benefit not only themselves (or perhaps not themselves at all) but their comrades as well. Obviously these would rarely work out exactly as planned because each piece has its own agenda, but the idea is to really make the player think of how much more control they can have with these. This is especially true because obviously I don't want these to be unique to PCs, significant enemies should have these to force the PCs to think as well.

I'm still trying to think of a way to make these outright appealing on their own rather than 'Powers you can customize!' but I think of another part of the motivation is the whole 'enemies getting used to attacks' thing I proposed. You'd have to throw these in there to mix it up, but still, I'm not sure if that's rewarding enough on its own? Making a system is hard!

Items, Money, the whole material side of the game

Another thing that's been bugging me is this whole area. Due to the way the physics are handled, there's not much in the way of upgrades, especially explicitly in dungeoncrawling. You're not going to find a better armor down there, no way. The best I can think of is finding various resources that can be brought back up and refined to improve stuff. Even then, I certainly don't have a table, but spitballs!

That's actually an aside from my true point: As I had in the sample battles, a spitball is characters recovering chakra and mana within battle. So where do recovery items fit in? I want them to be kinda limited, because otherwise combined with the above a character could use a powerful attack, snarf one down, and then use it again, ad infinitum. I get the feeling that's a concern in any setting, right? How do others handle it? Also in this vein: I feel at the rate of recovery in the game, everyone would fully recover chakra/mana during established rests probably, right? Is that a problem? I feel like it might be, but I don't know.

Really, I'm tripping on items to use in general, and a lot of items I'd kinda like the characters to be able to make themselves with the right resources, especially in later sections where they don't really have time to stop in town. But then this leads to another overarching problem: Money. The root of all evil.

What IS money good for here? Following the standard plot, I imagine rent and at least part of food would be taken out by BLUE before the paycheck even reached the character, which means they probably wouldn't get a lot early on anyway so that's good. But what would they want to spend it on? I could say like classes early on, but it seems kinda dickish to charge for those? Obviously decorating one's living space (which could provide bonuses in its own way), but I have a feeling most players wouldn't care about that even if their characters would.

Best thing I can think of is getting resources at a discount from BLUE, but then to me the whole system feels kinda bare. It probably doesn't help I never got to a point in a game where buying things was really an option, so I really have no clue how this works.

And...

More to come, I'm sure.