u/Independent_River715

I haven't played any games that used them beyond Fate so I don't know them as well. I'm wondering if I should try to make the conversion or if my ideas are just going make both sides unhappy.

Pitch for hp

Two tier hp bar where one is easy to fix and the other isn't. Gaining health in both equally tied to level and fortitude. Quick heals would only handle shallow hp and deep would have a slower recovery rate when resting. Goal was to have something that lingers and an incentive to maintain health early. It would also allow for easy access to powerful heal as out healing damage only works if it never touches deep health.

Pitch for wounds

Start with a few and fortitude gives more. The amount a wound box takes would be tied to a flat number and level so as you get stronger, you can endure harder hits but of course they move up if the one they would fill is already full. Having a higher fortitude would give you more of these boxes with higher values allow you to take hits that might take someone else out in one shot. So example would be if you have a 1-5 damage wound gaining another would give you a 6 damage wound box and then 7 and so on making you able to take bigger and bigger hits and more of them. Again this is probably the opposite of what the wounds people want but I'm just spitballing here.

I think my game can work with simple numerical penalties as the way actions work is you have targets based on the move with some becoming obsolete as they are impossible to fail but not as rewarding. Think worst roll is 2d20, best is 2d4, so you have your most basic action having something like a TN of 25 and the hardest move being a 5 with many in between. I think how it's set it would be a slow death spiral as you could always rely on weaker moves you can still pull off even with a wound adding to your roll in a roll under system. I can see giving penalties to having certain missing deep health or larger wounds filled in. This would make having more health mean you can get penalized further but survive more damage.

The game is likely to be less gritty and more on video gamey play with an aim for cinematicstories (if it sounds cool try to make a mechanic for it to be part of the base game). Its not gritty or grounded which works against wounds from what ive seen bjt they seem to be the wave of the futureand though the current idea probably goes against its prinivple it does a good service to take characters. I haven't crossed the bridge to seeing how to treat wounds in games but I have some ideas but this is already too long.

Again I'm new to wounds but see it everywhere and am kind of pondering to try them or stick with what I know.

Seeing how so many people hack a game using the bones of one system with just their custom parts thrown on, I have to wonder if people value something more original or familiar? If a game is so different from everything else it is hard to compare it to a peer and is pitching to a crowd that doesn't exist yet, but on the other side I see a lot of hate thrown around for some systems to the point it feels like if you make anything similar you are accused of making a cheap rip off of that system.

Do you value originally or familiarity in your game or the games of others?

I've tried to make a game very different from those that I know but it feels like I'm getting in my own way trying to make something new when people might dislike on their principles more than any merit it does or does not have.

Not every setting has orcs, goblins, and ogres but if they are all in the same setting they always seem to find each other's company and I could never find good reasons for it.

I had an idea for my setting, but it needed a big leap from their common directions. The direction I went was that they are all from a primate/Neanderthal lineage. Something like goblins being monkeys, orcs being chimpanzees, and ogres being gorillas. Keeps the big fang like teeth and super strength while making them fit as a distant relative to humans but all closer related to each other. Monkeys being mischievous and clever, but still steong for their size, chimps being communal but very aggressive and attacking in troops, and gorillas being the largest and strongest but often roaming alone unless they settle down. There were a few parallels and i thought it would be a neat take as long as no one tries to make racist things out of the artistic choices. I guess they could all be green apes instead of green skins but that was the best way I could make it make sense for me and we don't see a lot of ape based races in fantasy.

What about you what way have you made the stereotypical "green skins" work together in your setting?

Maybe there is nothing new under the sun but I still want to see if I'm making sense. I like wuxing's approach to elements but want to use that as the rules of nature that magic flow with and so have made an ugly little hybrid. Today will be focused on alchemy

The three types of magic I'm trying to make are:

Grammaire, spoken and written magic. Needing proper form when spoken or written to cause magical effects. Your most standard of studied magic, very Harry Potter like. This would be writing words of sealing on a door in fancy letters and the door becomes magically locked. Correctly speak the words of fire and you conjure a ball of flames in your hands. Very much likely to be the most boring to apply wuxing to but maybe some potential.

Alchemy, the magic continued within the physical world that can be brought out with the proper application of energy and other matirals. Very much you potion makers thing. This one might have the most interesting approach for wuxing but I'll get to that later.

Rite, (name not yet decided) this is the magic caused by actions. Very often people will do this magic and not know it. This leads to a lot of good and bad luck magics being folk magic. Handcrafting a doll and then weaving in a strand of hair from someone will make it a conduit to that person. As these are the least understood these often have people fumbling them or failing to recreate the exact situation needed to do it twice. Perhaps the matiral of the doll might need to come from your birth place, you must have spite in your heart while you weave it, and the hair must be taken from a postion of the target like a brush or hat. This is the kind of magic where you accidentally bring someone back as a vengeful revanent because how you killed them and dishonored their body is a spell you didn't know you did.

Wuxing, is the philosophy of 5 elements and how they assist or impede each other. It goes both ways, water extinguishes fire and fire boils away water, but in most cases it has a natural direction that's just one Wikipedia page away and my post is already long so I won't go over it here.

With that out of the way we can get to the fun stuff.

Mixing it all together I think there can be some pretty good applications. My current idea is with alchemy, water and wood is sorta the transfiguration forces with water rusting or wearing away and wood ingraining, fire and metal are the refining with fire burning away impurities and metal cuting and shaping, and earth is considered the stabilizer of them all.

So to boil something would be to apply the nature of fire and water which if done to something of the element of wood you would be generative cycle with water and wood and the reverse generative cycle with wood and fire. More water than fire (I assume grilled with sauce would be more fire than water), meaning you are more breaking it down into something else than bringing out its true nature (that transfiguration vs refinement thing mentioned earlier). So a magical plant that has minor healing and major minor poison might have the focus changed to the healing with the water and the healing part brought out with the fire aspect. Perhaps more transfiguration isn't optimal for strength of effect but can allow things that would be ignored in the final product to instead become the final product. So if something is known to heal you would want to apply fire and metal to refine it to the best of its ability but depend on what it is you may not be able to use both be it of t he same element needing earth to be the substitute or maybe of the destructive cycle making use of it actually make things worse. Who knows, I haven't gotten it that worked out yet.

With this heat is fire, air is wood, liquids is water, grinding may be earth and shaping (maybe cutting maybe putting into a mold) is metal. So to slice something into strips and hand it out to dry would be metal and wood, to smoke something would be wood and fire, and grinding down and then shaping would be earth and metal. I do realize now that with this method the greatest mix of alchemy would be bread (grinds flour, make dough by mixing liquid, let yeast rise in air, shape into pan, cook in oven)

I'll admit I sometimes still get mixed up with the generative and destructive cycles as everything goes both ways Making it hard to keep track of. I'm hoping to do something with the other two as well as the reverse destructive cycle has a sorta corrupted version to it that could work well for demonic or dark magic earth turning to rot, metal atrophy, wood parasitizing and all kinds things that fit as the "dark magic" that systems often speak of but not in detail and I feel like that could very much be a core philosophy with this build. I'm trying to make a ttrpg and wanted to give it magic and so I want to develop this in a way that's both intractable and also thought provoking. Like not just hand wavering you do magic but actually have an idea of what your character would be doing. I. Not sure which I should do next but if you liked the idea let me know and maybe I'll come up with this stuff sooner instead of later.

Is there a good way you know to reduce the benefit of outnumbering? The one that comes to mind for me is zipper initiative where one person from a side goes, and then the opponent goes, and if there is less on one side one of those that went goes again. Helps a boss from getting ganged up on but also helps a player from getting mobbed, and might make duels useful to isolate someone and take them out without them getting stronger from more turns that the less combat focused members would give. It seemed like a decent way to play things but I'm looking to see if there are more ways to make things even when one side would win through pure numbers advantage.

I have a new idea, but I need to see if it sounds intuitive and servers an actual purpose. The current iteration of my game idea is that it rolls 2 dice that range from d4 to d12 based on level in that. 1 is a stat and the other approach, but can just be referred to as stats for simplicity. I believe that at a certain points in a character's life some tasks really shouldnt challenge them anymore. Like shooting center mass from 30ft away as a beginner has some chance of failure, but it shouldn't be a problem for someone with years of gun training. I have a solution, but I'm not sure if it will work or is intuitive, so I need some feedback.

Moves will have a DC that the player rolls against with their two dice and a modifier (think proficiency toes to level) but if the dc is below the invested points into the stats and the proficiency modifer it no longer needs to be rolled for and becomes an automatic success.

So let's say you invested 5 points to get a d12 in one stat and 3 points for a d8 in another and have that proficiency of 1 you wouldn't need to roll for our moves that use those two if the DC is 9 or below. You could still fail, but the average is in the players' favor at that point. I think organizing them under approach which is currently the smaller of the two could help keep these all organized or just have a check mark next to the move after it has become an auto success.

I'm starting to turn the game into a thing where moves have DCs and you are rolling against the DC on your sheet instead of contesting a target.. You may want to take that chance as it could be worth it if you are down to the wire or you are well enough off that you can take the risk without great consequences. The idea was that moves would burn up a resource so there would be reasons to still use "basic sword attack."

For a constant measuring stick lets say level 1 magic might be DC 5 but you lowest average would be 6 with 2d4+1. You still need to roll for it as you only auto succeed on DC 3 things. Once you have 2d6+1 that you are rolling you no longer need to roll for that level 1 spell with its DC 5, you auto pass DC 5 even though your lowest possible roll is still a 3 but your average is 8, and maybe level 2 magic is a DC 7 so you have a good shot at getting it and level 3 magic is a DC 9 meaning you have a decent chance of failure but you would get so much more out of it. I'll have to figure out scaling the DC as if stats dont change the highest starting auto success is an 11 and the lowest is a 3 which is a decent about of wiggle room between the most skilled and least skilled in a field. I think it could be easy to just put like a check mark next to skills which you no longer need to roll for to keep things quick and easy.

Tldr, is the idea that you outgrow a DC to perform a move based on your progress a good idea? Would it cut down on unneeded rolls and make players have reliable options or just bloat a system?

If you were making combat rules that focused heavily on what a weapon does, what distinctions would you make? The rest of this is just my ideas so you don't really have to read it to reply but some people will always ask for more qlinformation.

Plenty of games make the damage basically all function the same like kinetic damage, some give lipservice with damage types but never makes then mean anything (looking at you dnd 5e), but I thought it might be good to look at how weapons act and what jobs they do to make distinctions. A sword and an axe both have sharp edges by one chops while the other slices. Some swords are good for stabbing while others aren't. A puncture wound from a sword, and arrow, and a warhammers spike are all going to look different and might be caught by different Armors.

I can only think of a few and can't think of too many meaningful ways to have them pop up other than what is good against different armor. Some ideas so far:

Slicing (smooth movement with edge alignment, swords, knives and the such. Good on soft targets and leaving lingering injuries like laseration or seperating body parts.)

chopping (heavy forceful hits with a sharp edge. Axes come to mind but any weapon with heavy weight balance toward the blade could work. Works good for harder targets and getting through armor while still having the chance for lingering injuries.)

crushing (more weight then hardness. Fists, mallets, clubs, breakable improvised weapons. Good for non-lethal damage that puts people off balance instead of going for the killing blow.)

Cracking (hard concntrated force. Flanged maces, warhammers. Focused on doing lethal damage with blunt force trauma by breaking bones and caving in helmets.)

Piercing (sharp penetration. knives, arrow, swords meant for stabbing. Decent against some Armors but doesn't have anything special like the others. Almost a mid point between leaving Wounds like cutting and getting past armor like blunt)

Puncture (an unsharped edge meant to push in. spikes, maybe bullets. Leaves the least injuries but will tear right through armor. I know wound chambers are a thing but a bullet that passes through sound slide less than a broadhead arrow that passes through. Smae with a pointy spike and a sharped blade.)

Also possibly make a distinction between ranged and melee attacks as dispersing force is harder to do when a whole man is on the other end pushing a spear further in compared to the arrow that lost all force after breaking a ceramic plate.

I feel like some weapons would need tags to define how they work. A flexible weapon could be a flail, rope dart, or that nightmarish blade whip. Would let weapons have the way they fuctiona ND the damage they do be sorta distinct.

I've just been playing some systems that are rather rules lite as of recent and miss the depth that weapons can give and feel like it would be good to see what others like in a heavier martial combat focused game.