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[IronyOwl]

-All custom schools of magic. Obviously I'd be making sure everyone's schools were appropriate, but I'm not sure there's any actual point to describing premade ones.

It depends on how much you plan on limiting players. Describing them will allow you to curb how the players interact with magic.

To be honest I'm not that worried about this. Well, there are a few things- a large part of the game is combining magic schools, so I'd like to ensure specialized players are actually specialized, but otherwise I'm not too worried. Summonings ahoy.

-Simplified items, including various rock-paper-scissors armor and weapon classifications.

Sounds good enough. Though remember that players can and will question the realism. So, for example, a steel plate armor being effective against cutting and not being effective against stabbing would cause a lot of questions.

I'd intended for it to be a little more fluid than that, so generally you shouldn't be getting platemail that does nothing against stabbing, for instance. I'm generally more concerned about mechanics and simplicity than overt realism, but I don't think we'll get any egregious examples.

As suggested by Taricus and Darvi, adding a stat bonus. Easy, somewhat realistic.
Adding a sort of "related" bonus for certain skills. Like, say, a related bonus for swords and hammers (you swing them). This could be kinda tedious, but it's realistic.
Adding a generic "Fighter" skill that is the total of all melee combat skills. This is easier than the above one, though less realistic.

-I'd rather avoid having yet another number and stat to fiddle with; you've seen how massive the bonuses can get.

-Having skill in hammers give a bonus to swords and vice versa could work, except that the numbers will be so small it might be hard to make meaningful. I'd also rather avoid a situation where a player gets nothing until they're Adept at which point they get a bonus; the more incremental the better, within reason. It'd also stray into poorly defined categories with concrete benefits territory, which I'm wary of.

-I considered using overskills of some sort, but I'm not sure what they'd do. The main thing I thought of was each batch of regular exp providing a little bit of exp towards its overskill, so each time you got swordfighting exp you'd get a little fighting exp as well. The overskill could then be used in place of a more specific skill. Trouble is, this doesn't address the example I gave unless the guy's a novice fighting another novice, because his more specific skill would always be better than his overskill. It also kind of works against itself at some point, because once you've gotten enough skill to raise your overskill, there's not so much point to advancing any of the skills under it that you don't already have higher than it.

Sounds good so far. Maybe if you streamline all this stuff beforehand, you can keep from burning out with so many rolls-automation and simplicity are the keys.

Yeah. One of the other things I intend to do is put everything relevant about a character in bold up at the top so I don't have to go searching for it.

Dwareet'ik will probably be making a comeback soon! I'm sure that portal ended up somewhere...

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

I guess the first thing we should talk about concerning stats and so forth is how many sides are you using for your dice? If it's the standard six, then yeah, you'll either want to make a lot of categories like the Westlands so nobody gets so skilled they can do everything well (which admittedly has led us to specializing our characters. >.> Not really THAT bad of a thing but from a GM standpoint I can see how it would make some situations harder)

Spell levels will also help with this somewhat, similar to Westlands' spell difficulty modifiers. If you've never read Arcanum Octet II or Staggered Magi, Westlands is similar enough to give you the feel I'm going for. Mine will also include increasing experience points necessary for each skill level, making it as hard to go from +4 to +5 as it was to go from +0 to +3.

or go for no categories and hand out bonuses very sparingly (which I'm more in favor of). I would say let players get 1 bonus or skill of some sort to define who their character is at the start, then if they consistently do certain tasks well like roll several fives while wielding a sword, then consider giving them a bonus for it.

Hm. I hadn't actually thought of that- I was going for the more Westlands style experience gain and such. I probably still prefer allowing players to slowly get better at something, for a number of reasons, one of which being that with sparing bonuses, everyone's the same at most things.

Other dice carry their own issues of course, but they're modifiable. You could use the 10-sided system and just change a few things to suit yourself, like no stat can start above 5 and give us less points to start with because we're supposed to be jobbers, that kind of thing.

I think I'm going to keep it at d6, but I do appreciate help thinking outside the box.

I'll probably be keeping an eye out, but I dunno if I'll use Shiloh again. I might try making a different character 'cause I don't like to repeat myself too much.

And because he was a WWE gigolo cat.

Ditto. Despite my intentions, my RTD hands out bonuses like a candy vendor hands out candy to children who have an easy way of getting money. It's ridiculous. And I don't think I can change it in-game anymore without causing serious breaks.

I would be willing to wait while you reworked the system, if you really wanted to. ^^

Players can be surprisingly resilient to earth-rending changes, so long as they don't feel they're being cheated. You could probably bribe affected players with something to pacify them.

If you're worried about changing one thing breaking another, eh. Shouldn't be too bad, since everything's related anyway- just find a way to adjust the affected thing to roughly what it was before.


Also, ninjas EVERYWHERE.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I'll probably be keeping an eye out, but I dunno if I'll use Shiloh again. I might try making a different character 'cause I don't like to repeat myself too much.

And because he was a WWE gigolo cat.

Actually that would be a reason to keep playing him IMO. OuO

[Tarran]

Go for it. Though would there be a turn today?

Yes. Right now. Go get 'em.

Also, ninjas EVERYWHERE.

Ninja turn to my RTD. Lulzorz.

[choobakka]

Customized magic schools
...
Specialization within schools

So, for instance, if someone wanted to play a bard, they could do something like "Even if the music concept isn't included, the spells are cast with music"?

[IronyOwl]

Customized magic schools
...
Specialization within schools

So, for instance, if someone wanted to play a bard, they could do something like "Even if the music concept isn't included, the spells are cast with music"?

No, more like if someone wanted to play a necromancer, they could specify whether necromancy included life drains and weakening or was purely animating the dead, and could then specialize in life draining or skeletal minions. It'd be totally different from Tainted Power.

[choobakka]

Okay. So like "Bards can only affect peoples minds, not shoot fireballs and stuff."

[IronyOwl]

The basic system would be more like "You're Adept at Enchantment so you get a +3 to rolls to cast Enchantment spells, but have no Fire magic skill so you get +0, and since spells give a penalty based on their level you can affect minds pretty well but trying to make a fireball is likely to end badly for you."

The customization would be either "Enchantment covers all subtler aspects of the mind, but you mainly use it for encouraging allies so you're especially good at that" and/or "Enchantment covers all subtler aspects of the mind, but you're only familiar with buffing allies and misdirection, so even though discouraging enemies is technically part of the school you're not as good at it as your skill elsewhere would imply."

[IronyOwl]

I might as well go into more detail on mundane combat, mostly to see if anyone notices any glaring problems.

In its most basic form, combat will be [Attacker's Roll] - [Defender's Roll] = [Damage Dealt]

I'm thinking about maybe giving Dodge experience this time around, instead of weapon skill acting like dodge skill. I'm also considering a damage resistance skill, and will probably make skills increase hit points. I guess I could have melee skills increase hit points and magic skills increase spells known or something. Hm.


Anyway, the part I'm actually certain of will be that weapons and armor are divided into tiers. For every tier, weapons have +1 damage and armor has +3 resist. Armor's resist is divided among its Slashing, Piercing, and Bludgeoning categories, however, so tier 1 armor might have +3 slashing resist but do nothing against piercing or bludgeoning, or have resist 1 against everything, or 2 and 1, etc. Equal-tier weapons and armor should theoretically be on even footing, then, but specific examples might be a lot harsher to one side or another. Higher tiers might be better-made, made of better materials, enchanted, etc.

I might also need to find a way to make mundane combat better than spells in some way at higher levels, to make up for the latter's awesomeness. This was the reasoning behind making weapon skill provide dodge bonuses, incidentally, but it made warriors and casters way too divergent in what they could survive at higher levels.

[SeriousConcentrate]

[Attacker's Roll] - [Defender's Roll] = [Damage Dealt]

I don't see anything wrong with it, it's a basic formula. The weapons dealing certain types of damage / armor absorbing certain types of damage is fine too, as long as you (the GM) want to keep up with all of that. ^^; Truthfully there's really not a lot to comment on, to me anyway.

[Taricus]

Maybe make it so that it'll take some time to cast higher level spells?

[Tarran]

@everything before last line: Sounds fine.

I might also need to find a way to make mundane combat better than spells in some way at higher levels, to make up for the latter's awesomeness.

A few ways:
Make weapons, on average, do more damage, but give magic the ability to deal out horrible damage with good rolls.
Give spells a lovely Luck roll (we all love our luck rolls, right?).
Make it so higher level spells have more penalties (which is what I'm doing in my RTD. So far it's keeping players somewhat at bay).
Make it so players have a Magic Pool and it regenerates slowly instead of just letting them cast at will. Make the regeneration too slow to let a spell be used every turn.

[SeriousConcentrate]

A few ways:
Make weapons, on average, do more damage, but give magic the ability to deal out horrible damage with good rolls.
Make it so higher level spells have more penalties (which is what I'm doing in my RTD. So far it's keeping players somewhat at bay).
Make it so players have a Magic Pool and it regenerates slowly instead of just letting them cast at will. Make the regeneration too slow to let a spell be used every turn.

QFT. This is always a good universal fallback; a fighter is more damage-per-second while a mage is a nuke. That's how I see it.

Give spells a lovely Luck roll (we all love our luck rolls, right?)

Don't do that. It feels random and arbitrary, even though everything is decided by RNG anyway.

[Ochita]

Like an arch magi failing a cantrip random.

[Tarran]

Give spells a lovely Luck roll (we all love our luck rolls, right?)

Don't do that. It feels random and arbitrary, even though everything is decided by RNG anyway.

Oh come on, it's not that ba-[Luck: 1] AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!

Anyway, it was just a suggestion. Certainly not the best, but certainly the simplest.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I don't use Luck rolls for a reason, is all I'm saying. Like the example Ochita pointed out, it doesn't matter how skilled you are, all it takes is a single roll to make it where your Legendary Swordsman cuts his own leg off, misses entirely, kills an ally, etc. I guess I wouldn't mind Luck if it applied when you were unskilled at something, but after a certain point you really should be skilled enough that you can eliminate most random elements.

I mean, this is what happens when Scissorman rolls (5 Luck: 1) when trying to kill Helen in Clock Tower.