Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenPost by J.M. Joensuustat + skill + d100 vs difficulty + d100,
Wouldn't it be faster to roll if you did stat + skill +
2d100 vs a higher difficulty?
Probably. d100 vs d100 feels more normal when the situation is someone vs
someone, but 2d100 really would be faster...
I think it'd be worth the saved milliseconds.
Others might have suggested that you simply replaced
"difficulty + 1d100" with "difficulty + 50", as 50 is the
average of 1d100, but going from two dice to one (1d100 is,
for statistical purposes, one dice ("die")) would be bad. In
fact another of my preferences is for roll mechanics that
give "highly predictable" results, meaning ones where the
roll outcome tends to cluster, closely, around some average.
You get closer to that the more dice you roll (e.g. 3dX,
4dX, 5dX...) or by using a dice pool system.
Rolling 1d100 twice is cumbersome, no matter how you do it.
Can't you replace 2d100 with 2d20? I've never seen any point
in fine-grained attribute/skill scales.
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenSounds like you're aiming at a system where Fortune
overshadows Karma.
Yes, depending on how you define Fortune.
I think I define it in exactly the same way as Ron Edwards
defines it in his "GNS theory".
Unlike the Threefold thing (read the FAQ, re-posted a few
hours ago), or the threefold'ish aspect of "GNS", the
Drama/Karma/Fortune distinction is not very controversial.
Probably because it is a lot more obvious to most people,
once explained.
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenPost by J.M. JoensuuRoll of 01-05 is considered negative (-5 to -40) and 96-00 is considered above
100 (105 to 140) but there are no automatic succeeds/failures.
I dislike having to re-roll.
No reroll.
Ah, my fault for not paying attention to what you wrote! I
though you were going for some kind of "open-ended" roll
mechanic like in Rolemaster.
Post by J.M. Joensuu01 -> -40 96 -> 105
02 -> -25 97 -> 110
03 -> -15 98 -> 115
04 -> -10 99 -> 125
05 -> -5 00 -> 140
Now I can see why you find the width of the 1-100 outcome
attractive.
But it's an illusional attraction, not one grounded in
factual reality. When you roll 1d100, each possible outcome
has a 1% chance of appearing. That may *sound* low, but it
really isn't, compared to multiple-dice mechanics. With a
mere 3d6 roll, the "edge probabilities", the chance of each
of the most extreme outcomes (3 and 18), is 0.5% (each).
Increase the number of sides (e.g. 3d8 or 3d10) or the
number of dice (4d6 or 5d6), and you can easily lower the
edge probabilities much more.
Of course your proposed mechanic isn't properly described as
1d100, the correct description is 2d100, so we're at least
talking two dice. But I can also see some small problems
with moving the dificulty's 1d100 over to the acting character.
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenAnd I prefer systems where you can hit "auto-success" or
"auto-failure" land with sufficiently big modifiers.
Well, that is what I meant. I there was a 181-point difference between
difficulty and skill value, roll would't matter. That would be huge,
however. Someone having stat+skill total of over 200 is rare...
It's not too rare, after all, if you contemplate the
possibility of tasks that have very low difficulties, either
innately (driving your car to work, in normal density
traffic) or because the character decides to spend a lot of
time on the task, performing each step in a careful manner
(I think all RPG rules systems should have formal, general
rules for how one can get a bonus to skill rolls if one
takes extra time, or attempt to perform the task faster at a
penalty).
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenPost by J.M. JoensuuThere are few problems. First, I don't know what the base difficulty should
be. This won't come up that much when only playing battles, because then
In order to decide on a good base difficulty, you first need
to define some typical skill levels.
[snip]
Thank you, that was very helpful!
You're welcome.
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenPost by J.M. JoensuuDo you think it is easier to decide a difficulty level and then round other
numbers so that it all matches, or look at the numbers already present and
change difficulty level accordingly?
It is *wrong* for the GM, e.g., to ask a player what his
character's Jump skill is, before deciding on the Roll
Difficulty of jumping over a chasm.
I meant the *base* difficulty, but it seems I wasn't clear enough. I know I
shouldn't look at characters' skills, and that is one of the reasons I am
trying to decide on base difficulty.
Okay, then I have misunderstood you once again.
I'm actually not quite sure what you mean, now, but your
talk about rounding makes me think that your heart isn't
100% into the fine-grainedness of a 1-100 scale. Because
that's exactly what a desire to round (e.g. to nearest 5 or
nearest 10) is indicative of: A nagging realization that
you're making distinctions that are too fine, e.g. between a
skill of 43 and a skill of 45.
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenPost by J.M. JoensuuSecondly, stats have too high effect. Character with high intelligence is
very good in all intelligence-based skills, even if he has only one level
Yup, that's why stat+skill is a sucky idea.
The best way to go is to abandon stat+skill and replace it
with something *sensible*.
What would that be? Only skills? Skill + small bonus dependent on
Neither.
The sensible alternative is that attributes affect the time
it takes to learn the skill, and skill purchase points then
represent learning time (e.g. 4 hours of self-study, or 2
hours of study under a teacher, or 1 hour of study under a
very skilled teacher, each equals 1 skill point).
I tend to refer to this method as Skill = Talent * Training,
whereas the traditional approach, found in almost all other
systems, is Skill = Talent + Training.
Post by J.M. Joensuuattribute? Especially, what should I do if I went for only few stats? More
below.
Depends on how few stats "few" are. I think few stats is
unhealthy in general, but the fewer you have, the greater is
your need to replace Skill = Talent + Training with Skill =
Talent * Training.
In late 2000 or early 2001, I realized that the only way I
could turn GURPS into a playable system was to make massive
changes to it: I'd have to increase the number of attributes
drastically, from two (DX and IQ) to something like seven or
eight, and then (this is the part that'd have taken a *lot*
of time) I'd have to go through the entire skill list (and
GURPS 3rd Edition has many *hundreds* of skills, even if I'd
have been able to prune a few of the ultra-narrow ones, such
as Starglazing and Uttering of Base Coin) and assign each
skill to one of the new attributes.
Upon realizing that, that I'd have to pour in many hundreds
of hours, to fix GURPS into a playable state, I decided that
my time would be better spent designing a system of my own,
because that way I'd get much closer to what I wanted than
it would ever be possible to achieve with GURPS.
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenThe second-best solution is to have many attributes. (Look
at GURPS. Count the stats. See? That's 180 degrees *wrong*).
In my system, there are many. Str and Toghness (might, ability to take
damage and pain), Dexterity and Agility (fingers & whole body), Wits and
It's always a sign of health when a system distinguishes
between Dexterity and Agility :-)
Post by J.M. JoensuuWisdom (thinking&learning fast, knowing things) , Charisma + I think four
counted from these. Ugly.
What's ugly about that?
Sagatafl has 12 attributes, and (I kid you not!) several
dozen sub-attributes, and perhaps a dozen derived attributes.
Currently the attributes are still divided into four
categories (although I've thought about changing Strength,
Size and Hardiness into advantages):
Athletic:
Strength
Dexterity
Agility
Toughness:
Size
Constitution
Hardiness
Intellect:
Will
Intelligence
Perception
Spiritual:
Charisma
Faith
Psyche
In addition, there are a bunch of Advantages which are not
treated as attributes, such as Appearance (quality of
face/hair/skin) and Sex Appeal (the attractiveness of the
body, represented as a bonus or penalty).
Post by J.M. JoensuuI am thinking of going down to something like four stats: physical, mental,
toughness/guts/constitution and charisma. This is quite close to GURPS's
Why do you want to do that?
Post by J.M. Joensuusystem. Do you think GURPS's way is bad because it has few stats, or
GURPS is so bad that I can't imagine that it wasn't done
deliberately. I mean, what sane game designer would create a
system with only two attributes? That's the reason, more
than anything else, why GURPS (3E anyway) is so wide open to
abusive degrees of optimization.
If you were me, and you started out making a system with
your four attributes, you'd end up sub-dividing those
attributes into sub-attributes after some time. And once you
had done that, you'd regret not having had them as seperate
attributes to begin with.
But you're not me, so you might not end up doing that.
Post by J.M. Joensuubecause it has few stats and is stat+skill?
Few stats is certainly the worst game design crime in GURPS.
But stat+skill is also quite bad, because GURPS is one of
the type of systems that wants to let the players "explore
the extremes of humanity", e.g. let the players create and
play characters with Dexterity /Intelligence /Charisma
/whatever that is at the highest possible value for a Human
(e.g. IQ 20 or DX 20 in GURPS).
I do think that systems ought to let players do that (my
homebrew does, and I rabidly attack systems that don't), but
the extremes of Human vareity is exactly the kind of place
where stat+skill will break down.
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenPost by J.M. JoensuuWhat else could I do to have my players
roleplaying more? I don't have enough experience to really be GMing, but
Figure out what roleplaying means, for instance. That's the
first thing you ought to do.
I _think_ I know what roleplaying means, but without any real experience it
In your previous post, you weren't writing about
role-playing, but about self-playing, meaning an expectation
that the player characters would be capabilitistically
similar to their players.
Post by J.M. Joensuuis hard to teach others to roleplay. I have been *wanting* to roleplay for
many years. I have almost given up hope of finding a p&p group.
People who design freeware RPG systems rarely get a chance
to play under their own designs, instead they are fated to
sit behind the GM's screen 100% of the time (this becomes
truer the more strict we are when it comes to the definition
of "system", e.g. when we exclude such things as Risus or
FUDGE).
And if you literally have no experience playing (i.e. as a
player) tabletop RPGs, then your first attempt at GMing
might turn out quite unfortunate.
Your best bet is to find a local group, one who plays a
system that you can at least tolerate, and ask to play in
one of their campaigns. Get some experience as-a-player that
way, and then you're hundreds of times better prepared to GM
than you would be if you had started out "cold".
Post by J.M. JoensuuPost by Peter KnutsenPost by J.M. Joensuuand protection would be different from each other, so that a knight and an
acrobat could both survive a fight. Only knight needs to be good at it,
though.
Doable.
Any hints? I can only think of two ways of evading damage: dodging
Sure.
Post by J.M. Joensuu(evasion) and armor (protection). High dexterity/agility + high dodge skill
I can't think of a third :-)
Post by J.M. Joensuu-> high evasion, armor -> low evasion + high protection is simple enough,
Okay, Sagatafl is slightly complex in this regard.
But let's start with the basics:
The attacker makes a roll for his weapon skill (and keep in
mind that high Strength, high Dexterity and to a lesser
extent high Agility, makes it faster - and thus cheaper - to
improve melee weapon skills), against a designated target.
If he gets one or more Successes, then he can potentially
injure the target. The target now has a choice to make:
Either stand and take it (*not* recommended, usually), or to
attempt to parry with a melee weapon (or the Unarmed Parry
skill), or attempt to block with his Shield skill (assuming
he is carrying a shield, of course), or attempt to dodge
using the Dodge skill (which is chiefly influenced by
Agility, so that a high-Agility character can learn it faster).
No matter what defensive option the target picks, he makes a
skill roll (for his Weapon skill, for his Shield skill or
for Dodge). Any successes he gets are subtracted from the
attacker's successes. If there are successes left
(un-countered successes), each success is turned into a
damage dice (d10 for broadswords).
So let us say that I attack you with my broadsword. My Roll
Difficulty to hit you is 8 (I'll explain why it is 8 later),
and my Sword (Broad) skill is 7, so I get to roll 8d12 to
try to hit you (7 dice for my Sword skill, and a bonus die
because the sword I'm using is a broadsword, which is my
specialization).
I roll 3 Successes, 3S.
Now, you decide to Dodge. Your Dodge skill is 7, and your
Roll Difficulty to do that is 8. But, no surprise, you're
specialized in dodging melee weapon attacks (Dodge (Melee
W.) 7), so you get to roll 8d12.
You get 2 Successes, 2S.
So I have one un-countered Success, 1S. This means that I
get to roll 1 damage dice, in this case 1 d10, because my
weapon is a broadsword.
The damage roll is first of all subtracted from your
hitpoints (these used to be the sum of your Hardiness,
Constitution and Size, but recently I've decided to change
it to being simply a multiple of Size, like Size x 5,
because high Size is quite undesirable as it is now). If you
drop below zero hitpoints, you must make rolls to stay
conscious, and if you drop below multiples of your
Constitution, those rolls get harder, and you eventually die
(you become Dying, you can never die outright from HP loss).
But hitpoints aren't the real problem, they are easily
overestimated in Sagatafl.
The real nasty part is the Wound that I might inflict on
you. If my damage roll (a mere 1d10 in this case, but if I
had gotten 4 uncountered Successes it would have been
4d10!!!) equals or exceeds your Hardiness, then I have
inflicted a Minor Wound on you. The average person has a
Hardiness of 3, and the highest possible for a Human is 5
(Dwarves can have 6).
If my damage roll instead equals or exceeds twice your
Hardiness, you have a Major Wound. Or if my damage roll
equals or exceeds three times your Hardiness, you have an
Incapacitating Wound.
4xHA means you are Dying Slowly (you will die in 6 Minutes
times your Constitution, i.e. an average person dies in 18
Minutes).
5xHA means you are Dying Rapidly (you will die on Conx1
Rounds - too fast for medical intervention, only magic can
save you!).
6xHA means you die instantly. Higher multiples mean that you
die in a spectacular way, for instance by getting your head
chopped off (8xHA maybe), or by being cleaved in half,
horizontally (10xHA) or even vertically (12xHA, i.e 36
points of damage on an average person, in one blow).
A character gets an penalty to all his Roll Difficulties for
physical skills, based on his worst Wound (that is, Wound
penalties are not cumulative). A Minor Wound gives an +1 RD
penalty, a Major Wound gives a +3 RD penalty, and an
Incapacitating Wound gives a +7 penalty. Dying Slowly
/Rapidly also gives +7 RD.
Let us assume that I get a 4 on my 1d10 roll. You are now
suffering from a Minor Wound (assuming your Hardiness is 4
or lower), and all your future RDs are 1 higher.
If I had instead gotten 4 uncountered Successes, I'd have
rolled 4d10. If and you were Hardiness 3, and I had gotten
18 points of damage, you'd be instant-killed (it would even
be theoretically possible, although statistically
improbable, for me to cleave you from shoulder to groin,
assuming you wore little or no armour).
One complication of this is that encumbrance slows you down.
The rules won't get anything out of giving you an Agility
penalty to punish you for encumbrance, because your current
Agility is not very relevant. It *was* relevant back when
you learned your Dodge skill, but now it isn't (not much,
anyway. Your GM will require you to make Agility rolls, or
Balance rolls, once in a while. Perhaps once every second
session).
So instead, I invented something which I call Fleetness.
Think of it as "Effective Agility".
The starting value of Fleetness is the ratio between your
Strength and Size (specifically your Leg Strength. Leg
Streng is a sub-attribute of Strength). For most people this
is 1 (3/3=1), and currently that yields a Fleetness of 0,
which means normal (although I will eventually change that,
so that Fleetness 3 is normal, in accordance with the
general scale of Sagatafl. It a simple change, to just raise
all Fleetness values by 3).
If your Strength(L)-to-Size ratio is higher than 1, your
Fleetness gets a bonus, or if it is lower, your Fleetness
gets a penalty. Fleetness is also modified if you are
overweight (Chubby, Overweight, Fat, Very Fat... gives
increasing penalties) or underweight (you get the same +1
bonus, regardless of whether you're Thin, Skinny, Anorexic
or Lethally Anorexic, because I don't believe in severe loss
of fatty tissue without an accompanying loss of muscle
tissue. Amusingly, it took me quite a while to realize that
being Thin was not a disadvantage but an advantage, i.e. it
should *cost* points!).
Those are the innate modifiers. But your current state of
encumbrance also penalizes your Fleetness. Wielding a
shield, or a heavy weapon (anything from a broadsword and
up, or a heavy (combat) staff), or wearing armour, or
carrying much gear (relative to your Strength), gives a penalty.
Then for each possible Fleetness value, there's a number of
modifiers to various things. For instance, if your Fleetness
is higher than average, your movement allowance improves
(you get a multiplier to your Pace). If your Fleetness is
below a certain treshhold, you lose the ability to take a
one-hex "Step" in combat while you do something else (e.g.
attack or cast a spell).
But the important bit is that each value of Fleetness has to
modifiers associated with it, one for Agility-heavy tasks
and one for Agility-light tasks.
Agility-light tasks are those skills where Agility has 2/7
or 3/7 influence on the learning speed.
Agility-heavy task are those skills where Agility has 4/7 or
more influence on the learning speed (no skill is influenced
more than 5/7 by any one attribute, e.g. Language is 5 parts
Intelligence and 2 parts Will, Dodge is 5 parts Agility, 1
part Dexterity and 1 part Perception).
Skills where Agility has 1/7 influence on the learning speed
are never affected by Fleetness.
Most (probably all) melee weapon skills are Agility-light,
but the Dodge skill is Agility-heavy. Unarmed combat skills,
and martial arts type skills such as fencing and staff, are
also Agility-heavy (because they rely much on footwork).
Now, as long as your Fleetness is at 0 (normal) or close to
it, you don't get any such modifiers.
But if your Fleetness is good (IIRC it has to be 2 or 3),
you get a -1 RD bonus to Agility-Heavy tasks (e.g. Dodge),
which is quite useful. But if your Fleetness is bad (IIRC at
-2 or -3) you get a +1 RD penalty to Agility-Heavy tasks.
If your Fleeness is really good, the bonus to Agility-Heavy
tasks grows, or if your Fleetness is really bad, the penalty
grows.
Also, at a certain really good or really bad value (not the
same as for when the Ah-modifier changes, or at least it
shouldn't be), you also start getting a bonus or penalty to
Agility-medium tasks.
So that's the effect of armour, and of carrying a shield
(and to a lesser extent carrying a heavy weapon). It lowers
your Fleetness, which tend to slow you down, tactical
movement-wise (and also, of course, for the purpose of
strategic movement), and may give you a penalty to your
Dodge roll. And for severe cases of encumbrance, you might
even get a penalty to your sword skill.
Post by J.M. Joensuubut is there anything else? Should shield add to both, or to protection and
to evasion if you can use it well?
In Sagatafl, a shield has two uses: First of all, it
provides "passive defence", by simply making you harder to
hit. It gives a +1 RD bonus for a small shield or a +2 RD
bonus for a large shield. (I think these bonuses should be
+2 RD and +3 RD, respectively against ranged attacks).
Secondly, you can use your shield to block, instead of using
your weapon to parry. Shields are a lot more durable than
weapons (although of course characters with high Metallurgy
and Smith: Weapons skills can make swords much more durable
than the norm - and magic can also help), and thus much less
likely to break or become damaged, when they are used for
active defence.
Earlier, I promised to explain why my RD to hit you is 8.
The reason for this is that you are a Human-sized target
(your Size is between 1 and 8), and that gives a start RD of
6 (To-Be-Hit, THB 6). On top of that, you get a bonus for
your Fleetness. If your Fleetness is normal or close to it
(that is the case in the example), that bonus to THB is +2,
but if your Fleetness is higher or lower the bonus may be
more or less than +2 - it can even go away entirely (but it
can't become negative).
Second-last item: Armour subtracts its AV from each damage
dice. Let us say that you are wearing heavy leather armour
(either boiled or studded - both are AV 2, but have
different Tech Levels and give different RD penalties to the
Stealth skill). If I roll 1d10 for damage, then you subtract
2 from my damge roll, because I had one uncountered Success.
But if I had 4 uncountered Successes, then you'd get to
subtract 8 from my damage roll (4S x AV 2/S = AV 8). So it'd
be 4d10-8 instead of 1d10-2.
Last item is how AP works, the Armour Penetrating property
of weapons. For broadswords, this is 1. Weapons worse at
penetrating armour may have AP 0.5 or even AP 0, while
weapons that are really good at penetrating armour may have
AP 1.5, AP 2 or perhaps even AP 2.5.
If I get 2 uncountered Successes, then I get to subtract 1 x
AP from your AV total (here it'd be 2S x AV 2/S = 4 AV). Or
if I have 3 uncountered Successes, then I get to subtract
(1+2) x AP from your AV total (6 AV for 3S), or if I have 4
uncountered Successes, then I'd get to subtract (1+2+3) x AP
from your AV total (4S x AV 2/S = AV 8). (these values are,
of course, pre-calculated on the character sheet, for each
of the character's wepaons, up to IIRC 8S, to speed up play).
This means that with 4S, using my broadsword, I'd get to
lower your AV total from 8 to 2, and thus the final damage
roll would be 4d10-2 instead of 4d10-8 (and this means that
I'd only have to roll 38, on 4d10, to cleave you vertically).
(You'll notice that Strength does not give any bonus to
damage. I was unhappy with that, and tried to include some
kind of Damage Bonus skill, but it didn't work well, so in
the end I dropped it, and decided to try to be happy with
the fact that you do get a decent benefit from high Strength
while learning your melee weapon skill)
Post by J.M. JoensuuThank you for your ideas, many of them got me thinking. I haven't yet had
time to do anything, but I'll start my work soon.
You're welcome.
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org