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Author Topic: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam  (Read 2364 times)

GlyphGryph

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Re: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam
« Reply #30 on: February 23, 2014, 08:46:54 pm »

A bit more of the General Rules:

Tasks
Players can do a variety of things - some of these are trivial to accomplish, and others require checks, or calculations of bonuses and rolls versus difficulty. This second group of activities are called tasks.

There are two parts of a every task, and two types of task. First, for unopposed tasks, there is the difficulty, which normally varies between 1 and 300, and the result of the skill check the character rolls in an attempt to overcome it, which is 1d100 plus any bonus the character might have to this task. For opposed tasks, you simply compare the two results.

A value that is more than twice the opposing value is said to be a "great success", and one that is less than half the opposing value a "great failure". Furthermore, unless you have a bonus of 100 or more, rolling a 1 always results in a critical failure, and if the difficulty of the task is less than 200, rolling a 100 is always critical success.

Some tasks also have a cost associated with attempting them, which pulls from a character's Power Pool. Characters can often choose to spend additional Power to modify a task - expending additional power to gain additional bonuses or influence the outcome of a success or failure. For basic physical tasks, most characters will be able to expend additional power for a small bonus - more powerful and effective modifications require knowledge of an appropriate skill.

For a basic physical task - running, jumping, and even fighting, all characters can make a very basic modification - they can commit to the task. All of these basic tasks take just a single power point - but you can spend 5 additional power to commit and give a +10 bonus to your result. Usually, there are better things to spend that power on - but when your life is on the line, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Luck
There are three primary uses of the points in a players Luck Pool.

The first is that luck provides a passive bonus whenever things go wrong. Oftentimes, when something is left up to chance, there might be a check involved where your Luck Pool is used as your bonus.

The second is that you can burn luck by spending luck points on any check. Every point of luck spent adds 1 to your result - a pretty poor exchange rate, but uncapped, which means a standard character with his Luck Pool capped out can choose to make a single check at +75 in the direst of emergencies. This must be determined before the dice is rolled, but this bonus does not prevent critical failures. Sometimes Luck just doesn't see things eye to eye.

The final use of luck is in a twist of fate. Characters who have failed an important check may ask for a twist of fate. Normally, this is only done in a life or death situation, though others may apply. 1d100 is rolled - if the result is less than the amount of Luck in the players Luck Pool, burn a point of luck until the player's check matches the value it lost to. If the character doesn't have enough luck, that's ok - they still get the benefit. But every point of luck they do have gets burned. This does not mean that they win the skill check - it only means that they avoid the majority of the penalties for failure and have another opportunity to recover.

As an example, if a character is attempting to jump from the roof of one ship to the platform of another in flight, and they come up short, they might well realize the fall will be guaranteed to kill them and request a twist of fate. If they succeed, they don't make the jump they initially planned, but instead might manage to catch on to a loose rope or wire on the target ship, hanging below it, with a climb check ahead of them to recover. Or they might end up landing somewhere or in such a way that the fall doesn't kill them after all, or even leave them horrible crippled. They might be hurt, but they'll survive and make a full recover. Or it might just be that someone else is able to come to their aid - in a twist of fate, the cavalry might arrive just in the knick of time to set things right - in this case, a diving friendly fighter might scoop our unlucky hero out of the air in a daring save. They won't succeed at what they set out to do, but everyone that witnesses it will agree that they are still one lucky bastard.
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Darvi

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Re: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam
« Reply #31 on: February 24, 2014, 11:35:20 am »

Any examples for difficulties? How high would a task be easy, average, difficult or near impossible for your average person?
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam
« Reply #32 on: February 24, 2014, 12:31:06 pm »

I've got a few incomplete tables that aren't ready to be shared, but essentially... here's the "normal" range of tasks encountered, 10-200.

10 or less is an "easy difficulty" task. Something most people would be able to accomplish without any previous training the vast majority of the time, and where "failure" isn't likely to be extreme, but it's at least possible if you're unlucky. An example would be climbing up a ladder, making a 4 foot standing jump, hitting a ball off a t-ball stand with your bat.
25 or less is a "normal difficulty" task. This is something most people would be able to accomplish pretty consistently, given enough time or a few goes. Making a 5 foot standing jump, climbing over a 6ft chain link fence, catching something casually tossed to you specifically for you to catch, etc.
50 or less is a "hard task", one that average person's attempt has even odds of failing, or at least stumbling, but which they can make a partial success pretty easily. Someone with particular skill here will have little difficulty. Making a 6ft jump, climbing up a pipe fastened to a wall or over a 6 foot slat fence, hitting a dartboard with a thrown object from 8 feet away.
75 or less is a "very hard task", one that a normal untrained individual can be expected to fail at more often than they succeed or struggle over several turns to manage. Making a 7ft standing jump, climbing up a free hanging rope with knots, catching a long throw.
100 or less is a "skilled task". Skilled tasks are unlikely to be accomplished by someone who hasn't explicitly been trained - if they do, they manage the accomplishment through pure luck, and it's likely as not that any failure will be a bad one if they try. Even someone who knows what they are doing (a 50 point skill bonus) is as likely to fail or at least falter as they are to succeed. Making an 8ft standing jump, climbing up a free hanging rope without knots, or scoring a strike in bowling
125 or less is an "expert task". Expert tasks are unlikely to be accomplished consistently even by someone familiar with them - they may require several attempts, and the failure of someone unfamiliar with the task is likely to be severe. Even experts (a 100 point skill bonus) have a real chance of failing or at least faltering. Attempting to clear a long gap between buildings in wet and windy weather, climbing a greased pole, throwing a bulls-eye.
150 or less is a "master task". Master tasks should only be attempted by those who are very good at what they are trying to do. Even a someone who knows what they are doing is unlikely to accomplish this task through anything but sheer luck or rugged determination - they benefit mostly from minimizing the damage a failure does. Experts have even chances of succeeding or failing - even if you do everything right, success comes down to luck. Attempting a long jump from one moving vehicle to another moving at a different speed in inclement weather conditions, climbing the "inverted wall" from Ninja Warrior, hitting a bulls-eye from 30ft away.
175 or less is a "heroic task". You'll want to be an expert, committing extra effort, to have a reasonable chance of succeeding, and failure is still likely without a dose of luck. Accomplishing any task at this level makes you an official badass. Doing the above jump as a backflip, the inverted wall... greased, or hitting the bulls-eye with your eyes closed.
200 or less is considered an "impossible task" - especially since you can no longer succeed by critical hit for these, so you have to be an expert to even succeed 1 times out of 100. It can be done, with suitable commitment, and a good deal or luck, despite the name - but don't count on.
200+ tasks are considered legendary - Expect to fail often and repeatedly, to exert all your willpower and use up all your luck for even a /chance/ of success.

Not that when trying for a task, you can also calculate "partial success" - for a jump, this would be catching the edge but having a poor landing and needing to climb up. For a climbing task, this would mean a wasted turn where no progress was made. To calculate a partial success, consider the task's difficulty minus your bonus, divided by half. For a 150 point task against an expert (100 point bonus), this would be a 25. If you fail the task, but roll above this value, you have a partial success instead of an outright failure.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam
« Reply #33 on: February 25, 2014, 06:52:54 am »

Cosmology and Lore can be seen in a previous post:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122186.msg3990060#msg3990060

I need to rewrite that and add it here in a proper paragraph form though.
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sjm9876

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Re: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam
« Reply #34 on: February 25, 2014, 12:28:34 pm »

Do Squelk = grend
and Mycos = Runic?

Or were there more severe changes?
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My dreams are not unlike yours - they long for the safety, and break like a glass chandelier.
But there's laughter and oh there is love, just past the edge of our fears.
And there's chaos when push comes to shove, but it's music to my ears.

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GlyphGryph

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Re: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam
« Reply #35 on: February 25, 2014, 01:14:26 pm »

Yeah just a rename for the races. Not much of the lore has changed beyond superficial stuff. Some of the slight details regarding the war, and what happened before the war, and what happened since...

When I rework and include the reworked bit here, that will be the canon version.
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ShadowHammer

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Re: Pen&Paper Roleplaying: Swords and Sorcery in Space - AetherJam
« Reply #36 on: February 25, 2014, 10:34:26 pm »

Looks cool. Posting to watch.
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