The Lord of the Rings

[James V. West]

Again, I love it.

This method sweeps everything into a single die roll and handles mutliple actions. Its great. I'm a HUGE lover of single-roll resolution.

Good stuff. When I go see IT again this weekend, I'll be considering this concept during all the fight scenes :wink:.

[mearls]

Howdy all,

First off, looking back over this is all very rambling. I hope it makes sense.

I had a bit of a different take on the entire system, one that has roots in the basic concept that I discussed with Jared but takes it in a rather different direction.

Characters have 3 aspects:

Might - a character's strength, stamina, and tenacity
Luck - umm, yeah, it's luck
Skill - a composite of intelligence, agility, and training

Each aspect is tied to a different die type:

Might: d6
Luck: d12
Skill: d20

All three aspects range from 1 to no theoretical upper limit.

During any conflict, everyone rolls their dice. To do anything, you spend dice from your aspect and add them together. This total must either beat a GM selected target number. In an opposed check,  your opponent has a chance to select and total his own dice, then the two sides reveal their totals.

On any given action, you cannot mix dice from two aspects.

Attacks are broken down into two actions: the attack and damage. If you make an attack and beat your opponent's defense, you then select dice to allocate to damage. Normally, the total of the dice comes off your opponent's health.

Health and Hero Points

Health is equal to your Might times six. Every six points you lose off your health causes you to temporarily lose 1 Might die.

Hero points represent the phenomenal luck and innate skill that separate a hero from a horde. (More on hordes later.) Hero points can be spent for the following actions:

* Spend 1 hero point to prevent 1 point of damage. You may as many hero points in this manner as you wish each time you are hit.
* Spend 1 hero point to add 1 to a die. You may spend 1 hero point per die on any given check.
* Use hero points to fuel magic, enchanted items, and other abilities.
* You regain hero points over time and by overcoming obstacles

Realms

Realms are areas of expertise. A wizard may have several levels in the realms of magic, while a cunning swashbuckler cut from the Grey Mouser's cloth might have levels in the realms of society, trickery, and robbery. Realms operate a little like feats in d20. They let you do cool stuff that other characters can't do, plus they also include hard coded abilties that activate on specific combinations of die rolls. Realms allow you to break the rule that you cannot mix dice from different Aspects.

Here's an example:

Realm of Necromantic Magic
Level 3: We Are Legion
Summon a horde of 20 skeletons. This Realm requires skill dice totalling 10+ and luck dice totalling 4+.
Cost: 12 health (remember, you can use hero points to pay off health damage)

Other Realms include:
Society
Trickery
Warfare
Leadership


Hordes
Heroes are obviously a cut above the masses. Hordes are average footsoldiers, lackeys, orcs, and other cannon fodder. They attack en masse, and though they outnumber the heroes the rules treat them as a single creature for combat purposes. Hordes only have a Might aspect; they are neither Skilled nor Lucky. In battle, they roll their Might and allocate half their dice to attacks and the other half to damage. Hordes do not have hero points, only health. In addition, a horde's "health" is merely an abstract representation of its size. As the horde loses health, its numbers dwindle. Depending on the horde's size, it grants bonuses and special abilities to allied heroes who fight with it.

Example:

The Goblins of Moria
Might: 1/2 horde members Health: 1/1 horde member

Abilties:
5 goblins work together prevent a single hero from attacking any opposing monsters or villains
10 goblins swarm a hero and force him to spend half his total dice in attacks or defense against them.
20 goblins overwhelm a hero and force him to spend all of his dice in attacks against him.

Note: the horde must be able to attack a hero in order to exert these effects against him.

Character Creation
I don't have a system created yet, but the basics are:

Players select an archetypal character from a provided list. Each gives a mix of Aspect values and provides bonus points to spend on Realms.

That's it for now. I have some more ideas swirling around but need to work on some other stuff today.

What I like about this system is the feel of give and take in combat, plus all the resource management options. Do I pump lots of dice into an attack and deal little damage? Do I hold back for a big hit? Defense also requires you to burn dice you might want to hold on to for other actions. I'm also thinking of using a bidding initiative system, where everyone selects dice in secret, totals them, then reveals the result. Highest goes first. Of course, hordes always go last.

- Mearls

[mearls]

One important thing I forgot:

Each "round" of combat everyone rolls their dice and keeps them secret. After everyone acts, all combatants reroll. I also want to include a cooperative mechanic, where players can combine dice of different types to yield a single effect. For example, Legolas and Gimli team up to kill a cave troll. Legolas uses his Skill dice to attack the troll, but Gimli uses his Might dice for damage.

I'm thinking of allowing this if players sacrifice dice from their roll. They must declare before rolling that they're teaming up.

Non-combat actions simple require players to roll and total an Aspect of their choice. Players can choose to automatically take a result equal to half (rounded down) of their Aspect's value times its die size rather than make a check.

- Mearls

[Bankuei]

I've always had a "3 measures" of any given trait in my head for a long time.  It's always been about how powerful(might), control(skill), and how long(endurance).  This particular scheme came to me from reading too many comics.

There's a big difference between being able to lift boats(might), manipulate atoms(control), and not sleeping for 2 weeks(endurance).    I really like the three scale measure you have, even if its a little different than what I envisioned.  

I definitely look forward to seeing your cooperative actions rules. :smile:  

Chris

[mearls]

A few more ideas:

NPCs, monsters, situations, whatever can include blocks against particular Aspects. The cave troll, being so big and tough, has a block against the Might aspect. Using Might against him isn't as effective as Skill or Luck.

OTOH, everyone with a block also includes a heel, a weakness against one of the other two aspects. The troll has a heel against Skill. He hits hard, but his attacks are rushed and wild. Legolas dancing down the troll's chain is a good example of taking advantage of the troll's heel against Skill.

The basic system works like this: if a character makes an attack countered by his Heel aspect, one die used in that defense may immediately be applied to a manuever or attack.

If hit by an attack that uses his block, a character may force his opponent to discard two dice from his action.

Cooperative attacks or actions rely on building chains. If I take an action, my buddy can replace one or more of my dice that sum to exactly the total of dice he spends to augment my action. Example:

Legolas uses 3 Skill d20s to make an attack. The dice come up 7, 14, 16. Gimli sees this and immedialely replaces Legolas's 7 with a 2, 2, and 3 from his Might pool. He then chips in a 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, and 6 to Legolas' damage, burning most of the dice he planned in using for attack and damage that round.

I'm thinking of building a Realm (Teamwork?) that makes this more effective. First level might be "Replace a friends' die with dice that are equal to or sum to at least 5 or more."

I'm also thinking of adding a rule that says you may only augment an attack using dice of lesser size to those used in action. Thus, Gimli can aid Legolas's Skill attack with his Might, but Legolas can't aid Gimli 's Might attack with his Skill. Thus, low rolls with skill dice are still very useful if you have friends helping you out.

- Mearls

[Ian O'Rourke]

My next epic fantasy campaign will probably use Hero Wars or this - amazing stuff. Keep it coming - and how/when will we see all this stuff in a 'final' format.

It's great, simple, but with deapth.

I assume characters can change the die types? So a character who has might as a focus can have D20's in his Might Score? Similar to Deadlands (for example purposes) in which your best 'stats' are multiples of a higher die type.

_________________
Ian O'Rourke
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[ This Message was edited by: Ian O'Rourke on 2002-01-02 08:02 ]

[Zak Arntson]

On 2001-12-28 20:11, Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
Using it for Kung Fu would be neat...I'd call the attributes Chi, Tao and Fate.

I've got notes around here somewhere for a fantasy Kung Fu (think Chinese Ghost Story 1, 2 & 3) rpg that's different than this system but ... to reflect the craziness of combat, everyone would roll a ton of dice to compare, and pick and choose their combos, to reflect ongoing kung fu madness.

(Oh, and the three stats in mine are Duty, Heart and Fu to reflect the conflicts of the Premise)

There's gotta be something good to this buckets of dice, but simple resolution system.  Kind of the opposite of Rolemaster's MERPS, eh?  Percentile Dice & millions of charts.

But as a criticism, I'd say you chuck the hit table. A headshot can be glancing, and an arm shot could sever the thing.  Unless I'm reading the rules wrong.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Hit Table

The Hit Table determines what value die your opponent loses when you hit them. If it's a head shot, they lose a "6" for every point of damage they take. If it's their left leg, they'll lose a "1."

Actual damage is whatever they don't block. So if I do 10 points of damage to you and you block 9 of them, I only do 1 point of damage.

Suffer six wounds in any area and you're out (dead, crippled, unconscious, whatever).

[Bailywolf]

What happens if you take a "6" shot, but don't have any sixes left?

[mearls]

On 2002-01-02 07:58, Ian O'Rourke wrote:
I assume characters can change the die types? So a character who has might as a focus can have D20's in his Might Score? Similar to Deadlands (for example purposes) in which your best 'stats' are multiples of a higher die type.

First, thanks for the praise. That's the kind of thing that keeps me plugging away on this rather than playing Madden football during breaks from freelance writing stuff.

The die types are linked to the stats. d6s are always used with Might. However, the XP system and character creation system make it much, much easier to buy dice in Might than Skill. Thus, a Might specialist character (like a big, mean barbarian) has tons of d6s to roll.

This makes Might-centered characters very good at taking on lots of opponents. In combat, you can break you dice down into as many attacks as you wish. So a character with 8 Might dice could, in theory, make 8 Might-based attacks in a single round. Essentially, he rampages through the enemy, swinging his fist and attacking wildly. OTOH, he could use all 8 dice in one attack, basically making one huge, powerful blow.

In addition, you allocate dice for attacks and damage separately. So, you pick a few dice for an attack, and if it hits add more dice to damage.

Also, I can't remember if I mentioned this in the previous posts or not, but your oll all your dice first, then assign them to attacks. So, having lots of small dice gives you a nice, tight level of control. The guy with an 18 on a d20 can only apply that to one action. If a wizard tries to blast him with a spell and spends dice totalling 12, the d20 guy is stuck wasting 6 points off that roll. OTOH, a might guy with 6d6 who rolls all 3s can spend 4 of those dice to save against the spell, and he still has two dice remaining.

Obviously, the system needs some more work and testing. I want to give Skill dice lots of cool effects, to make up for their lack of flexibility and the wide range of values they can produce. Rolling a 1 on a d20 hurts big time in these rules.

As for publication or a completed version, that's really up in the air now. The first quarter of 2002 is rather packed. Ideally, I'd like to build a playtest set of rules by April.

- Mearls

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Baily,

If you hit someone in the head and they don't have any 6's, then nothing more happens. They still get the wound, just no blood in the eyes/cracked jaw/broken nose/ringing in the ears/whatever.

[contracycle]

I've also wondered about how to make a mechanic that reflects multiple attacks without doing a back and forth tennis match of die rolling.  Having a martial arts

Slightly OT, but Conspiracy X uses a simple difficulty accumulation system.  You only have to roll if the Diff is higher than your skill, so you can cerate "combos" just by adding move difficulties until (horror!) you might have to actually roll or (double horror!!) you might have to roll well.  This is modified by the targets ability level, however, so there might be a couple more points in there.  But what this means in effect is that a skilled martial artist, especially against a non-combatant, can make an attack constituting several actions, and do damage, possibly without even rolling unless they are being ambitious.

[redcap]

The LOTR-Lots Of Tetrahedron(al?) Randomizers game

:smile:
Redcap

[Bailywolf]

Jared

So... if you have no dice of a given value in your pool, then the part of the body represented by that die is invulnerable?

further so... whouldn't this lead to a furor of burning 6's at the start of combat to reduce lethal risk later?

A possible fix:

reverse your hit location order; make 1's a head shot...

[Jared A. Sorensen]

No, it just means that you can't specifically target that area. If you don't target an area, it's done randomly with a roll of 1d6.