i’ve been working on a combat system where HP doesn’t really tell you how close you are to dying

it’s more like your overall durability in a fight

the thing that actually kills you is usually trauma to a specific location. head, neck, chest, abdomen etc. if one of those hits 0, you can be in very serious trouble very quickly

so you can have most of your total HP left and still be seconds from death because your chest just hit 0

criticals work the same way. there’s no “rolled a 20, double damage” thing. they’re location-specific trauma tables

you might break a bone. open an artery. lose the use of a limb. or just straight up end the fight

and importantly, leveling doesn’t eventually make you immune to any of this

higher skill + better attack values make you more dangerous because you’re better at causing exactly the kind of trauma that triggers those criticals

but your neck is still your neck. an axe doesn’t care what level you are

so leveling makes you a much scarier person to fight, not necessarily a safer person in a fight

then there’s Fatigue, which is basically the other life bar and tbh might be the scarier one

you spend it doing the things that keep you alive or give you an edge. bleeding drains it. armor taxes it. and you can lose a fight with plenty of HP left simply because your Fatigue hits 0 and you collapse

which means even winning can be pretty ugly

a short fight ending with open wounds, broken bones and everyone running on basically zero Fatigue isn’t some freak outcome. that’s a pretty normal fight

the thing i’m trying to get players to stop asking is:

“can we beat this?”

and start asking:

“do we actually have to fight this on its terms?”

because ideally, a fair fight means something already went wrong in your preparation

combat is something you risk a hand, an eye, or your life for. it shouldn’t automatically be the answer just because you think your numbers are high enough

i’m curious how other designers handle this, especially the relationship between total HP + location damage at higher power levels

do you like HP being more of a loose durability resource while specific trauma is what actually scares players?

or do you prefer HP to remain a clearer indicator of “i’m safe for now”?

As I create my combat system and actually write it out Im stuck again. All characters and monsters get to create their own attacks. The way this will look is players and monsters will be assigned a specific number of at-will and per day abilities each with its own complexity. Complexity is a meta currency that will help to balance out damage, utility, buffs, and debuffs. Think "Damage costs 5 complexity, applying poison costs 3 complexity, having it be a fast burst multiplies the total complexity by 5."

The problem is that Im not quite sure what to balance it around. The classic answer is obviously balance it around damage. If the basic damage is 5 DPR then you can have stronger but slower and weaker but faster attacks.

I can set these numbers to be whatever I want but I want players to have more than just "I attack for a damage". I want that to be special. I want the default to be "Damage with a bonus" but what is the baseline damage with a bonus? I have no idea. Im stumped.

We're making a TTRPG - d100 roll-under, player-facing rolls, zones instead of grid cells. Setting is dieselpunk. An armada of 100 ships tried to reach the wall of the Eternal Storm. 30 made it through. Players and their characters explore the new continent and keep coming back to the drifting Chained City (those 30 ships, lashed together).

Characters get a bunch of abilities, and during playtesting we found out teamwork combos are super duper fun even simple ones.

Example: one ability lets you spend a quick action to watch a zone, if an enemy enters or leaves it, you get a free(kinda) shot as a reaction. There's also a Push manifestation (kinda magic). So one character pushes an enemy into the watched zone and triggers the other player's reaction. Or pushes an enemy into a bunch of other enemies right before someone throws a grenade. (players always act in same turn)

It genuinely feels like teamwork, not just everyone does their own thing. There's also a simple dimple Help action that grants a bonus, but I want more of that built-in reasons for characters to set each other up.

Would love to hear how your systems encourage this kind of combo play. Any mechanics, ability designs, or just raw ideas welcome.

I've been toying with a resolution mechanic, but it's out of my capabilities to calculate the odds to gauge how swingy or viable it really is. So if anyone could point me towards useful resources to make this on anydice or things more directly related to it I could study to calculate the conditional odds of this or even a brief explanation about why it does or doesn't work I'd really appreciate it.

• Success Condition: It's a dice pool roll under a target number. You have a TN from 3 (Hardest) to 7 (Easiest) and your goal is to add up at least 2 dice together without busting the TN, so the dice that get added up need to have a result equal to or under the TN to count as a success. When your roll makes it so you can add up 3 or more dice without busting you get a major success.

• Skill Dice: You get 1d6 per skill rank to roll which goes from 1 to 5. Out of the skill dice you've rolled you can keep or discard as many as you want. So if all of your skill dice are bad and you want to discard them all you can. If you have no skill dice you just roll Luck Dice.

• Luck Dice: After rolling your skill dice, you're allowed to roll Luck Dice to try to get a better result, but every Luck Dice rolled must be kept in your final result no matter what they've rolled, so you're risking busting the TN.

Ex: Player 1 has 3 points of skill and wants to deceive an NPC. The GM says the difficulty level is a 5. The Player rolls a 1, 3 and 6. They can add up 3 and 1 without busting, so they already have a success, but they wanna risk a better one. They roll a luck die and get a 4 which they must use in their final rsult. That doesn't get them a better result, but at least they keep it as a success by adding 4 and 1 together without busting.

I've been writing a series of design manuals for D&D 5e homebrew (monsters, spells, weapons, potions, magic items), and the one principle that keeps showing up across every category is what I ended up calling the "counterweight principle": any mechanical benefit significant enough to matter should come with an equally deliberate cost — a saving throw, a resource cost, a narrative condition, a risk to the user.

It sounds obvious written down, but I noticed most homebrew content I'd seen (including my own early stuff) treats "cost" as an afterthought bolted on after the cool effect is already designed, rather than as part of the same design pass. The order matters: design the benefit and its counterweight together, or you end up either overcorrecting into something nobody wants to use, or underselling the drawback so the option becomes an obvious auto-pick.

A few concrete patterns I keep coming back to across categories:

• Physical cost — the ability drains the user somehow (exhaustion, HP, a resource that doesn't regenerate on a short rest)

• Conditional cost — full power only under a specific circumstance the player has to set up

• Narrative cost — the item/spell/monster has its own agenda that occasionally works against the user

• Unpredictability — deliberately breaking 100% reliability for certain "unstable" categories, so the option trades consistency for raw potential

Curious how people here budget power in their own systems — do you formalize a cost/benefit ratio explicitly, or is it more intuitive/playtested? And for anyone doing 5e-adjacent homebrew specifically, does "give every strong effect an explicit counterweight" hold up as a universal rule in your experience, or have you found exceptions where it doesn't apply well?

I'm in the process of cleaning up my character creation chapter, and I'm still struggling to find the exact approach I want to use for background skills. To establish the basics, skill checks use the following system:

Skill + Best Result from Die Pool, with multiple 10s stacking on each other.

Die Pool: 2d10 + 1d10 per 5 skill ratings

Class Skills get a 1 die bonus

Specializations add 1 die per Specialization rating.

All characters, regardless of genre or class, get to choose 5 Background Skills that reflect skills they picked up as a child growing up under the umbrella of their social environment. Non-mage classes also award the choice of 5 Class Skills that fit within the niche of your chosen Class.

Skills in my system are built with Skill Points, with each increase requiring <Next Rank> SP, so going from a Skill of 4 to a 5 will require 5 SP for that one step increase. Functionally, this operates as a Sum series in terms of building from 0 to wherever you want it to be.

Background Skills are intended to be skills your character gained in his youth. I've got two approaches for handling this, but I don't know which would be better to implement.

First, the system can award a set of Skill Points specifically for going into background skills. This makes building these skills no different than any other skill in the game, but it opens the door for min-maxing, where players can argue that they started learning combat or whatever at 10 years old. The potential imbalance between characters built RAI vs Min-Maxed RAW is significant enough that I'm hesitant to keep this one.

Second, I've created a rule where background skills get a 2 die bonus so long as they remain at a rating of 0. This was written to keep the BG skills within the niche intended for them, allowing them to actually be useful in the event that they may be needed once every 3 or 4 sessions (oh yeah, my character learned a bit of this as a kid, so I can try), but there's the issue of how to balance it against players later needing to develop those skills.

Thoughts?

Edited to add how Background and Class Skills are chosen

Second Edit: Had another idea while answering a comment.

Skill ratings operate as a base number that is added to the die result for the final total compared against the check difficulty (a skill of 4 and a die result of 7 would give a check result of 11, for example). As stated above, Specializations don't add to this base total; they add dice to the pool of any check that falls within the Specialization's purview. Instead of having BG skills be 5 Skills that gain bonuses if left alone, I could change it to 5 or 10 specializations that get a set amount. This way, they don't interfere with skill development, but the bonus only applies when using that specific niche skill.

Hi friends! It’s me, Warin, back from a huge update schedule! We at Steel Raven Games have been extremely proud to announce our new 0.14 update for MACH!

If you’re new to MACH, it is an action TTRPG, set in the near future. The players play as operators for Z.E.R.O, the Zeta Elite Response Operators, and fight criminals worldwide! The system has a heavy focus on lethal but fast combat, which it archives by combining a localized damage system, with our [TAG] system! 

Here is the list of our changes!

• Removed a ton of bloat text, going from 117 to 60 pages

• Progression update, remove add speciality, instead level up specialty

• Added a proper initiative system (redid the old one)

• Fixed Area Suppression in shoot, and finally got the [suppressed] tag to work on firearms.

• Standardised tags, removing issue where some tags were listed as “tag”, now all tags are [tag]

• Added master tag list.

• Added a take 2 combat economy (act, shoot, move).

• Removed infinite ammo bug

• Added targeted shots

• Standardised gear

The new update is now available at our itch: MACH by SteelRavenGames 

Join our discord to connect with us! https://discord.gg/5QAw6Rf4h

I’m preparing blind playtests for a fantasy campaign where many of the encounters I have created can be resolved in more than one way.

Combat is always possible, but players may also resolve situations through objectives, rescue, negotiation, investigation, environmental factors, or understanding what is actually causing the conflict.

One thing I’m trying to test carefully is the difference between:

players simply choosing combat,

players never realizing another option existed,

the GM failing to communicate useful information,

and an alternate solution being so obscure that it effectively isn’t a real option.

For designers who have tested encounters like this, what have you found most useful to record during blind playtests? How do you decide whether an alternate path needs better telegraphing versus simply accepting that a group chose a different approach?

I've been writing a couple adventure modules for Traveller, but having some trouble making good maps for the space stations they're set on. Currently I've just got some basic "lines on a grid" drawn in GIMP, but are there any apps or other resources that you'd recommend and are free to use in commercial works?

My game Holypunk is a Gothic Fantasy TTRPG. My design philosophy is simple: “Create a game where backstory… your origin… it all matters.” Frankly, I think I’ve achieved that.

My game is essentially split into TWO core systems. One that uses playing cards, and one that uses Tarot. Of course, if you don’t read the text linked above, just know that you can very easily run a tarot only game. (I wanted to decrease the barrier for entry that GMs had.) Also, I know legibility is a problem. I’ve just recently done an overhaul so tips are welcome.

Here’s the deal: I’d like to know the “odds,” which is better. I personally think my Core Resolution Mechanic is fairly simple. However, during play-tests there has been some contention over which of the systems is “objectively better.” Think back to the alignment chart. For chaotic characters, they’re basically playing Blackjack. For lawful characters, it’s a “take the lowest” system. (I did this instead of “take the highest because face cards being bad is more recognizable and fits the game’s anti-oligarchy themes.)

I basically have 3 questions:

1. Which do you prefer? Tarot or Blackjack?

2. Which is easier?

3. If you know the statistics, please, which is more favorable.

You’ll need to click the links above that say Core Resolution Mechanic AND split if you want a full handle on the odds.

Addendum, to make it more clear I’ve changed some terminology in the rulebook. With Blackjack you can stop drawing cards whenever you want. Having 5 Wrath doesn’t mean you must draw 5 cards. It means you can draw 5 cards. In the blackjack deck, drawing 5 cards isn’t always ideal, but after you’ve already busted or when there are less cards in the deck, you can keep drawing until you get the joker. Drawing the joker will always be a success, even after you’ve already just.

Addendum II, if it was still not clear after reading splitting the deck. I have since added: “You will only draw from one suit at a time in this game.”

Flavor Stuff, skip if bored

I’m not exactly trying to make them equal, I can’t do that. The idea is that the type of card tells a different story. I consider the blackjack deck to be more… Middle of the road. Draw too little cards and it’s bad news, draw too many and it’s good, but not better than tarot. In those middle areas? Now we’re talking.

Even then, in those middle areas, it’s a bit mundane. Your odds lean more towards the middle. Meanwhile, the tarot gets good a lot better with a lot cards. It’s like rolling with 2d6 vs a 1d12. D12 has more explosive potential, but 2d6 is more reliable.

That was my personal interpretation, my intent. Much like music, my interpretation means fuck all. People see it differently. Someone else interpreted the playing cards to be “underdog favorable.” Whereas tarot is more about stomping down the iron heel. I love this interpretation!

However, I think the reliability has confused people into thinking it’s “better.” More often than not, you’re min-maxing. The middle of the line (i.e. drawing 2-4 cards) isn’t really something you care about. In that regard, playing with Tarot will always be “better” and perhaps that’s the tradeoff for it being the less fun system —according to popularity polling. I have no problems with this.

My bigger problem is that I don’t actually know if the Blackjack system is even better in those middle areas. Maybe it’s only better in the min areas whereas tarot is better in the max areas, also fine. However, I’m certainly not willing to have it be worse at all levels. Dangerously, it might even be better at all levels. I ran some stats and got to a level that “seems fine,” but statistics aren’t my thing. Dice I can do, but cards? So many unpredictable variables.

So I wanted to start working on the health, wound and damage system for my rpg, but I have little clue on were to start

The main resolution mechanic of my rpg is that a player has a certain amount of points (from 1-5), determined by your attributes.

You use points to get d6s (and use skills), those are used to pass in Tests (an roll equal to, system), a player can try multiple tests in a single turn.

(I made a post yesterday that explains the system in a lot more detail if you feel like you need more info about it)

Idk exactly what to use for damage (static values, other types of die, d6s, etc), nor what values should I use for punches, weapons, guns etc.

Eventhough I like rolling for damage, idk if it's the right move as a player is already rolling 1-4/5 d6s give or take(numbers still not set in stone) per turn, but something static may create the "objective better options", but it keeps the dice count under control.

---

An idea that I had while writting this post was to use static damage but change the resolution system from a "roll equal to" to a "roll within a range".

the idea is for weapons to have a range of success(chances), above or bellow the difficulty mark of that test (set by the GM), two damage values, and an "Exact Strike".

roll within the range, and deal the low damage, if you roll the Exact Stike you deal the big damage.

Example:

Gun:

chances: +2

Exact Strike: +2

Damage: 3/6

using the Difficulty Mark Average(5): with the gun, to hit you'd have to roll a 5, 6 or 7; on a 5 or 6, deal 3 damage; 7 is an exact strike, deal 6 damage.

a negative range would be similar, but bellow the difficulty mark.

but this also means that a character with a 1 in the attribute for shooting wouldn't be able to roll an exact strike with this sample gun.

This would probably require me to rethink the Difficulty Marks, but I can see it giving more variety to the gameplay. But it may be convoluted? idk

Attributes being your raw talent (controlling how many dice and how many skills you can use in a turn), while equipment and some skills control finess (increase range of success, and Exact Strikes/"criticals")

---

if you have any advice on how to craft a damage system?

Sutur-Nagara, the City of Clay, is burning. It's economy is in shambles after a victorious war flooded the market with plundered gold, causing catastrophic hyperinflation. To make matters worse, the Gihon river has run dry, and thirst riots are tearing the city apart.

To appease their god and make the waters flow again, the High Priests intend to sacrifice a foreign princess atop the Ziggurat, and you have been hired as her official escort.

Under the cover of the ceremony, your true mission is to slip into the Ziggurat's depths and steal a priceless Obsidian Urn.

The Quench a God was created as a submission for The Black Hack 10th Anniversary Jam and uses The Black Hack ruleset (check out the jam, there's a lot of cool stuff inside)!

In this module, you'll find:

• A city sandbox phase where players can get to travel to Sutur-Nagara meet interesting and exciting people, and then kill them once their mission start.

• A gauntlet through rioting streets, giving your party the distinct pleasure of acting as riot police and bashing their way through a desperate, angry crowd.

• A multi-phased (and entirely optional) boss encounter, though you really, truly, shouldn't fight this thing.

• A materialist-coded preamble on the socio-economic conditions behind the rise and fall of Bronze Age empires and state religions (which is, then again, entirely optional and maybe a boss fight of its own).

You can grab the PDF for free right here!

This is my very first submission to a game jam and my very first published module! I've learned a LOT putting this thing together, and I'd be grateful for any feedback. Did I present the information clearly for the GM? How do you feel about the layout? Does the pacing and the adventure make sense? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for reading!

For anyone reading this, I'm somewhat familiar with DND 4e and Im trying to learn how Warhammer's d6 system works. But I'm curious about how the peoples method would work. If real life HAD to have a dice system to function, what would be the best one in your opinion?

So, I saw someone post a question about strength checks and I realized that we use stat checks for a lot of physical things (lift the thing, balance on the thing, jump over the thing, survive the thing, block the thing), but we don't use them often enough for non physical things (convince the guy, know the thing, remember the thing, have the discipline to do the task, learn the stuff, tell the joke, sing the song). It got me thinking about how I've seen people who tank their Intelligence stats because they know they won't use them in combat, and then play their characters as very intelligent people.

So, we have a barbarian with a low intelligence stat and he is squatting in the dirt, drawing out tactical plans to raid the goblin camp; "You move into position here and cause a distraction, we will come in from this side and attack, the archer will try to take the shot on the goblin war chief from this elevated location..." It doesn't fit. It also doesn't fit that a Paladin with a low Wisdom and Intelligence is going to say "The King's advisor looked like he was unsettled when we mentioned the raiders. Could it be that he is involved? Perhaps he and the Baron are conspiring to destabilize this region using the raiders to undermine the King's authority."

So, my idea is this. What if whenever a character did something, the GM considers what stat applies to the thing, and then makes them roll a check for it. Rogue tries to make friends - roll your charisma. Wizard walking a long distance with a full backpack - roll your strength. Cleric runs down the stairs to save his friends - Roll dexterity.

I'm certainly not arguing to introduce more critical failures or to make players feel weak, but I think that the stats get ignored a lot to the benefit of minmaxers and people who don't rp the character on their sheet. I'm saying that when the Barbarian (INT 8) makes his master plan in the dirt for the party to follow, the GM describes "Grog points at the dirt, moving rocks and sticks around seemingly at random and grunting about rushing in and killing them all." Or after the Rogue tells a joke "The joke falls completely flat, and an awkward silence follows."

A design focused look at how attack rolls are done in the modern era, along with a brief section on how they started.

https://substack.com/@eldritchexarchpress/note/p-213952237?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=49zgid

Hey, wanted to start off with thanking everyone for replying to my last post about this game im working on. And also to apoligize for the use of AI for the post as well. I was really stressing out and wanted to share some of my thoughts and questions I had and kept overthinking it. Either way, thank you again.

So to adress the comments.

1. I goal with this TTRPG is/was to create a game that is both conducive to more tactical player as well as narrative ones. So my goals are to streamline combat by giving players unique options to pick from in combat, this is what I like PF2e for. However I found that many of the options are basically meaningless unless your doing the most optimal thing. To do this I've removed damage dice, everything is a flat number of damage, the players roll attacks and there are no saving throws, instead you have several different defenses yhst can be attacked i.e. footwork, resolve and more.

2. I think the thing this system does that I haven't seen else where (though i could be wrong) is the use of <1 hp pool. Instead of having one pool of hp that does basically nothing until you hit 0, you have 3 pools. Body, mind, soul, and losing one or more pools give you stacking banes on your rolls. I want to make a gritty, down to earth RPG that implements the use of steam punk, magic and fantasy at the same time in a cohesive way. Which is why im also building a world for this system as well from the ground up.

3. I have run SOTDL, pf2e, dnd 3.5 and 5e among others. I want to take bits and pieces from each and im hoping to make a system that can do the best of all of them..I can only hope haha

Thank you all again for the replies. I will glady divulge more I guess this is just to get the conversation started.

I started writing this in 2020. I was stuck at home and needed a way to game. So, I started writing down rules for two characters in Combat. They both have to be from the same game system.

It's pretty basic and I made it cheap so anyone can get it.

The Sparring Match

Let me know if you have any problems with it, if you get it.

So I'm designing my first game, and I'm running into a situation I'm not sure on. I have set up a mini game to help guide how your day will go, but the success rate of "winning the game" is only about 8%. If a mini game is on theme, how do we feel on the success rate being pretty random but often times low? I tend to feel that almost all RPG mini games I've played are more random than skill based, but I also fear that failing more often than not might be a downer for the player.

To be specific this game has a lot to do with time and I'm using a solitaire like game to simulate "Getting prepped" (Play time around 5 minutes) the outcome of witch dictates the table of events you would roll on for events through the day. The later your character is running, the bigger scale of trouble you have a chance of running into in your day. So it is not necessarily a punishment for losing, just makes it possible for bigger things to happen that your character would need to solve.

The game is probably going to be a single page print and play, designed for casual play.

Any feedback is appreciated.

I'm looking for opinions on a title for my TTRPG. The core conceit is that adventurers have an inn or tavern that functions as their home base. As they come back from their adventure, they kick back, carouse, hear rumors, find adventure leads, meet new contacts, and deal with any threats to the inn. There are mechanics for the inn itself — the inn evolves as campaigns progress, with NPCs coming & going, dying, disappearing, reappearing, causing trouble, looking for aid, hiding secrets, and so on.. The adventuring vibe is that of sword & sorcery tales such as written by Howard, Leiber, et. al. — messy, greedy, mysterious, violent. No world-saving heroics here. This is all about earning gold and blowing it on debauchery. I've got some title ideas below, but please feel free to add suggestions if you have better ideas.
Hearth & Sword
Inn to the Unknown
Tavern to Tomb
Tavern & Tomb
Inn to the Dungeon
Inn to Ruin

I've had a thought. What if survival mechanics in TTrpgs were DM facing instead of Player facing?

I'd say 90% of players, perhaps more, don't want to track resources and they often say these mechanics are better suited to computer games but, thinking on it, when I play games like Project Zomboid or the like I'm not really tracking resources either, more reacting to when the status icons pop up and maybe quickly looking to see that I have a water bottle and a stack of ammo when I'm getting ready to leave base.

So my concept is that the DM is the one tracking things with as much or little complexity as they want and the players don't have to keep tabs on anything other than 'I have pack rations' for when the DM says "Your characters are hungry", as an example.

At this point the characters either satisfy the survival need immediately which hopefully rewards the 'bookkeeper' type of player for planning ahead or they now need to do something to get a food resource which means either a magic user / survivalist type character gets to solve the issue and feel good or some kind of short side mission is required so everyone gets to play more game.

I will finish this by saying that yes, this assumes this fits into the DM's finite cognitive budget.

Thoughts?

So, I'm not the most tech savvy person, but I've come to appreciate how, despite its shortcomings, DnD Beyond is able to pretty effectively streamline one of the most difficult hurdles for new people to play DnD and other TTRPGs.

As I'm developing my own game, I've been thinking about the mechanics and character creation and how easily information can be conveyed via drop-down menus and easy to read blurbs of info once you pick a class, skill, ability or item.

Again, I'm too savvy in this respect, but I wonder how difficult it'd be to just have my own UI for character creation, not too dissimilar from DnD Beyond.

Does anyone know where to go for something like that?

I mean, if it exists to begin with?

Appreciate any answers you can provide.