You are a tiny person; less than a foot high, living in the Fingerling town of Jeaha. Fingerlings are tiny humanoid mouse creatures around the size of a human hand. They inhabit miniature towns that often lie within human cities such as Northsdale, and are strange people; they consider dubstep music to be classical. They are calm folk, but have a problem; they have little influence. The big people control the world, and right now it is in chaos; the Sultanes of the void are wreaking havoc on the world. You remain only an underlying aspect, a speck among giants... but you want to change that. You are a hero among your people, the greatest of the greatest. And you know very well the human saying:
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
This is a spin-off series of Rise of the Magic Girls, centered around the lesser-known race of tiny people known as the Fingerlings and other tiny people. It is happening in the same setting and the same timeline as RotMG.
The JournalName:
Age:
Description: Physical and backstory. You must be tiny, but you don't have to be a Fingerling. You could be a pixie or something.
Stats 80
Health: Your vitality. 3 HP for every point in this stat.
Mana: How much energy you can hold. 2 MP for every point in this stat.
Speed: How fast you are. Used for dodging, and running (usually away).
Skill: Your accuracy, timing, and smarts. Used for aiming and for things like crafting.
Strength: How good you are at dealing physical damage. ((yes, this includes guns, but just go with it, okay?)) It also determines how strong you are.
Magic: How adept you are at manipulating magical powers.
Defence: Your resistance to physical attacks.
Resistance: Your resistance to magical attacks.
Perk: You start with a weak perk and gain another at Lvl. 5 and 10 and so on, each one increasing in power.
Equipment: What physical weapons and armor you have. See the equipment spoiler for information.
Ability: Basically your magic. See the magic spoiler for information.
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
etc.
In this stat-system, the stats a completely average fingerling would have are set to 5. This is for reference when stating your own character, but also combat encounters. There are 8 stats in the system, meaning a perfectly average fingerling has a pool of 40 points. The pool of starting stats is 80, since you are not an average person. To clarify, all rolled dice depend on the skill. If you have 7 strength, you roll a d7
Health:
This stat represents your vitality. It grants you 3 hitpoints per point in this stat. Any regen phase, which is usually a good nights sleep, or simply whenever the GM acknowledges that you have time to regenerate health, you regen twice your health stat. That means if you were close to death, you'd need about 3 days of rest to be back to full. Not realistic, because this is a game and all, but also not so miraculously quick that grave wounds are without consequence - you may stumble into the next encounter with less than optimal health if you do not watch out. Professional medical care can boost the regen to 3 times your health stat. And I mean professional, making sense with the caretaking chars background. Just bandaids and clumsily applied bandages with a bit of antiseptic salve is nice and all, but will only do something if the GM in question feels generous. More on this stat below under Combat. Also, health is used sometimes to determine further effects. If you are hit by a large blunt object, the GM may roll your health. If it doesn't exceed the damage roll, you may break a bone or worse.
Mana:
How big of a vessel for energy you are. It grants you 2 manapoints per point in this stat, and also dictates your rate of regen. A regen phase is about 12 hours without using mana, and regens your Mana by as many points as the stat is high. So a complete nights rest should get you back to full mana, and unless encounters or times where you use mana come in rapid succession, you will not entirely run out.
Possible perks: regen of mana during combat 1 point every 5 rounds or one point of mana is now worth 3
Speed:
How fast you are. This stat is used for dodging, but also for chases and of course when the GM feels now is an appropriate time to use it. When you are dodging multiple enemies in succession, you gain a penalty of -1 on each successive dodge. This penalty resets between hits. Dodging AoE attacks get's a penalty of -2 per size category.
Possible perks: If your speed is at least 5 points higher than your targets speed, you can dual attack him or if your speed is at least 5 points greater than your target, dodging them does not cause a penalty for successive dodges or you can attack two different targets each round, but in that case only deal 60% damage to both
Skill:
How good you are at aiming, timing your attacks, and your general smarts. This is also the skill that is used to roll on for mundane skills, like crafting and whatever else, if the GM feels it is appropriate.
Possible perks: if the optional rule for critical hits, see below, is active, and your skill is at least 5 points higher than the target, your critical hit chance increases from 5% to 20% or if your skill is at least 5 points higher than the targets, you can aim at weak spots in their armor (if that exists?) to ignore 2 points of damage reduction
Add a .5% chance to crit with each point in SKILL you have, and write the percentage next to it in brackets. Crits only apply to physical attacks, and deal double damage.
Strength:
How good you are at dealing physical damage. Yes, I know, being super buff should not affect your damage if you use a gun, BUT we are looking for unified system, with clear rules. So you better be lifting son. Note, this does not necessarly have to mean you are incredibly buff. If you want to deal tons of damage and still play something that is frail and not muscular at all, this is roleplay - feel free to roll strength checks for lifting the huge boulders badly on purpose.
Possible perks: When grappling an enemy, he needs to roll at least 5 points higher than you to escape your grapple or if you strength is at least 5 points higher than the enemies defence, ignore two points of damage reduction or your unarmed attacks deal 2 points more damage
Defence:
How good you are at minimizing damage to you. This may mean you have thick scales or are a robot made of steel, but also that you know how to properly brace yourself before a hit, to prevent that a bullet that otherwise might have been lethal hits anything too important. Every five points of DEF now gives a bonus +1 to the roll for that stat.
Possible perks: If your defence is at least 5 points higher than the enemies strength, the incoming damage is reduced by 2 or physical AoE damage is decreased by 25%
Magic:
How powerful your magical abilities are, and how adept at using them. For the sake of unifying the game, magic covers all supernatural abilities, no matter wether it is actual magic, or a superpower. Wether or not Personas use the same stat or are so radicaly different, I barely care. Only one person uses them, and in fact, does not use them for anything other than the healing spell, and instead has technology skills that definetly classify as a superpower. I will leave this for others to figure out. More on this stat in the magic section.
Possible perks: Your spells are more mana efficent (-1 cost), or simpler to cast (TN -1) or have less drawbacks
Resistance:
Works exactly the same as defence, but against the supernatural.
Possible perks: As with defence
Combat innitiative is determined by the speed stat. When you attack someone, you roll skill vs the targets speed, if you rolled higher, you hit. Damage is calculated by you rolling strength+(weapon, more on that later), vs the enemies defence (+possible extra armor). Simple.
For magic the same, assuming it is a kind of magic that needs to be aimed and that can be dodged, skill vs speed, and then mag vs resistance. Depending on how much mana you use, the mag score will be increased, more on that on magic.
Should someones health fall to 0, that character is unconscious, probably heavily bleeding. His allies now have [health] turns time to perform any sort of CPR or live saving measures on him. This takes no roll, however while doing so, you are an easy target, and prone to interruption. Maybe you wanna kill the demon first and CPR then? Maybe someone should cover you? Should health fall below 0, you have that much less turns to save the wounded allies live. Whether he was saved or not, that character is out of combat.
Magic (all abilities go under magic for simplicity) is split into categories, starting from Tier 0 to Tier whatever. Every tier costs +2 mana, has +3 TN starting at Tier 2, and deal extra damage equal to +20% of MAG.
Tier 0 spells cost no mana and are mostly for flavor.
Tier 1 spells cost 2 mana and have no TN. have That's either attacks that deal more damage (mag+20% is rolled here), or add side effects, like setting the enemy on fire to do damage over time, or adding a small AoE etc.
Tier 2 spells cost 4 mana, and you either need to beat a TN of 3 on mag, or the spell could come at a minor drawback. Mag+40% for damage
Tier 3 spells cost 6 mana, and you need to beat a TN of 6 on mag to pull them of, or a TN of 3 alongside a minor drawback, or no TN, but two drawbacks. Mag+60% for damage
Tier 4 spells cost 8 mana, and need a TN of 9, or 6 with drawback, 10 mana, TN of 12 etc for bigger, you see how the categories increase. Spells become stronger the highter the tier, infinitely so. If you had enough stats, you could perform huge Tier 40 spells or something that are equivalent to a god's.
If the TN is not met, it is reduced by 3 if you try to continue casting the same spell next turn
A charsheet should provide ample amount of examples what their abilities would do in each category, and the GM needs to look those over carefully.
Examples of drawbacks: Deal a d3 of damage to the caster, cost 1 more point of mana, is immobile while casting. A turn to charge the attack counts as two consecutive immobilisations, so that's two drawbacks. You can always come up with more, customise your character.
Summoning:
Tier 0: some cute critter of no actual use apart from being cute, and possibly distracting
Tier 1: 25 stat base
Tier 2: 50 stat base
Tier 3: 75 stat base
Tier 4: 100 stat base
Tier 5: 125 stat base
Tier 6: 150 etc. etc.
The summoning itself takes 1 turn, with the summon being ready to act on the next turn. For enormous summons, there is a delay of 1 turn while the summon manifests itself. The character that summoned it can already act that turn, Gigantic 2 turns delay, etc. etc.
Summons remain for as many turns as you have rolled over the TN, example, for an enormous summon, with a TN of 9, summoned with a mag roll of 11 stays only 2 turns. It is generally recommended to decrease the TNs and add drawbacks instead.
Summoning spells can also summon multiple creatures that have a lower statbase than its tier.
As magic attacks are mostly about huge burst damage, physical attacks are more about steady, but comparatively lower damage, but comes at no drawback. Your damage is defined by your strength roll, of course, but also by your mode of attack, which is determined by the quality of your weaponry. The values here mean *on average*. A bit of variation is entirely okay if the GM allows it.
Unarmed: no bonus. Note that dragons, clawed things, things that are permanently on fire etc etc do not count as unarmed.
Normal: +3, your everyday weapon that is really nothing special. A PC could likely make or acquire such a weapon with no problems whatsoever
Good: +5, a weapon that has received some fine tuning, or is in other ways above average. Acquiring these should cost money, which should be finite or proper skill in weapon making, that is not only your skill stat must be high; it should also fall in line with your background.
High quality: +7, these are usually rare, and probably won't be found in a store, but more in the grave treasures of some ancient warrior or whatnot. Characters are unlikely to be able to make these easily.
Masterwork: +9, does not get better than this. A character should have real trouble getting his hands on one of these babies.
One time use: Explosives etc, that you can only carry a very finite amount with you deal between +5 (for grenades, added AoE), to +10 (RPG) damage.
As far as the effects of enchanting does, that really depends on the enchant, but a pure damage enchant would probably add a +2.
Optional: For further customization, there could be a distinction between light, medium and heavy weaponry. Light weaponry (daggers etc) deals 1 point less damage on average, but grants a bonus of +1 on the skill roll to hit, while heavy weaponry (huge ass hammer) deals 1 damage more, but reduces skill by 1, as it is easier to dodge.
Armor:
no armor +0, light +1 defence, medium+3 but -1 speed, heavy +5 but -2 speed and -1 skill.
As for other items, like the speed increasing 3D gear, or whatever you want, the above guidelines give a good idea how much stuff can give. Of course, the GM decides alone whether something is allowed or not. For already existing gear that carries over, they may be subject to rebalancing. As far as new starting gear goes, the GM decides how much one should be allowed. Equipment that increases Mag should be incredibly rare, as it would snowball most likely.
An XP reward is assigned at the end of a campaign, usually an amount between 50 and 150XP. 100XP is required to level up, giving players 5 additional stat points to assign. Additionally, every 5 levels players can take an additional perk.