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I might bump up the cost of Devotion to 2 or 3 points depending on how actual combat goes. Multiple-action abilities are kinda strong after all, but I was hoping that the limited resource pool would limit its power. You also have to remember that other damage-dealing abilities exist/can be made, so... Yeah. A PvP fight shouldn't be taken as representative of how actual gameplay will go. After all, you're supposed to be beating up terrible monsters and honourable foes, not each other. Most enemies will have a ton of HP and plenty of weak attacks to spread over the party, instead of being the glass cannons that the PCs are.
And hey. The rules aren't in stone. I can always boost the HP totals of the PCs if becomes a problem.
How many combat rounds are tales expected to be on average?
Depends on the opponents, my goals for the fight and so on. Ideally they'll take less than double digits' worth of turns, unless I really want to string things out.
Lol. Obviously with a game where a majority of the differentiation between characters comes from something that's made up on a case by case basis. It's honestly probably not something to worry about too much, seeing as we're all allies and this is... Presumably going to be a pretty rules lite game.
Yeah, but I still want people to have fun in the game. And sometimes that means bringing a certain character down so that they don't outshine everyone else by their presence. But generally you are correct.
I mean, there are characters who, IC-ly, would just avoid combat or find different ways around (Deidre for certain, considering she's a pacifist whose physical attributes amount to being an excellent dancer and nothing else), so I doubt it'd be mandatory for anyone except heavy damage dealers. It is an Arthurian mythology-based RP, so the likelihood is that there will be times for people to sneak past battles or talk their way out through doing errands or something.
That's the goal. The game is supposed to be rules-lite and RP-focused, so I'd be a terrible GM if I didn't include non-combat solutions. Looking at my scattered ideas, most of them have significant non-combat parts to them and only a handful of battles. The exception is at the very start of the game but it's hard to include a ton of non-combative scenarios while the land is still swallowed up by Primordial fog and monsters roam freely. This phase of the game will be very short so hopefully that won't be a problem.