A little while ago I made a post about the potential for a 4E D&D inspired high fantasy PbtA, about having cool powers and doing big damn hero stuff. I’ve made a few notes over time and recently came up with some ideas for a combat system with a bit of a tactical bent (although quite different from D&D style tactics). Anyways, I wrote up some ideas for the basic moves, and the sorts of playbook moves that would interact with them. These are totally untested, and there’s likely to be a lot of work to balance options, but I would be grateful for feedback and particularly whether an approach like this appeals to anyone.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-zmlkgjmFt1WGFmdEtCcVNyMGM/view?usp=sharing
In the Combat Move, I can’t see the difference between rolling 10+ and 7-9. Wasn’t it intended to be 3 options for 10+ and 2 options for 7-9?
Sergio Maximo Jr. Whoops, yeah 7-9 should be gain 2 points. I’ve updated the link.
NPCs in combat could take some balancing. Some kind of concrete guidelines for the MC would help.
Bulwark turns defence into victory, Dirty Fighting turns victory into hurt, but no move to turn hurt into defence (Perfect Form?). Fire Blast and Hit and Run also seem like two parts of a triangle.
I know it’s PbtA and it’s OK to not have to force it to balance up, but.
For Fire Blast and Hit and Run, why not make them automatic on Prowess spend?
They’re pretty much just notes of ideas currently, so between the ultimate play books there might be room for a move that turns hurt into defence.
As for Fire Blast and a Hit and Run, you might be right that they should be automatic, these are pretty off the top of my head ideas without any testing. I’m mainly keen to hear if people think they might find the overall concept of this sort of combat mini game interesting and fun, or if it seems lame and bad.
Also, I’m pretty sure Channel Ki as written is super broken. It should probably says whenever you gain Prowess you may convert it to Ki, then it’s a trade off between having Ki and having access to Prowess for other moves.
All this is just spitballing, so don’t worry when I pick at it. I’m interested and appreciate what you’ve put up.
I kind of like having Channel Ki in there, but as a move it’s just the best choice, so that wants fixing. Take out the anytime allowance, maybe it needs time, a peaceful state of mind, something like that.
Symmetry, or lack of it. I don’t want a big big list of special moves. I would prefer to see a short list of “universal principles” and leave the bitty stuff for playbooks. So either Prowess can be pushed into victory/ harm/ defend equally, or maybe there’s a constant “except for this one thing”. Maybe the gods thirst for the blood of men and nobody can use Prowess for defence, which makes the Ki Masters who push Prowess into Ki and then use it for defence into some kind of heretics.
Hmm.
It’s not clear from the notes, but all the moves in the second column are ideas for class specific moves, not general stuff. I just wanted to show some ideas of what powers a character might get
So the second column is like extracts from playbooks, cool.
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This really speaks to me, but I have little concrete feedback.
I’m curious to see how quick or immersion breaking/meta combat is. It could go either way and that’s ok.
Personally I would love to see group combat rather than just roll to give +1. Maybe something where each person helping can add a point to the pool and maybe decide how to spend it, but they are affected by the outcome.
Tor Droplets I think that’s probably a good idea. I’m thinking it won’t take much effort to get a basic version of the moves and combat system up and running if you want to help me test?
I’d be interested.
On the point of meta combat, there’s a somewhat meta-currency but I feel like hopefully it shouldn’t be too meta because spending points can readily map to descriptions and the moves should hopefully have a clear flavour.
I’ve tried to assemble a minimum viable build of the concept for playtesting. It elides a whole bunch of stuff that would have more details – like circles of prowess, heritages and equipment – and has very little on the GM side (because I haven’t figured that out as yet) but here it is:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-zmlkgjmFt1Q0tEaDc1dG9tV1U/view?usp=sharing
drive.google.com – Hero_World_2.1.pdf – Google Drive
It’s not PBTA, but if you’re interested in this style is f play, you should check out Exploding Kingdoms.