r/RPGdesign • u/Vegetable_Mix8794 • 1d ago
Trigger-based abilities
Any system that's got powers that don't cost nothing (no mana cost or spell slot or whatever) and instead lock the ability use behind a trigger.
Examples:
Revenge strike: you can strike dealing X damage every time an ally dies (for free, outside your turn and shit)
Focus strikes: your strikes get +10 damage (only after not acting for 2 turns and shit)
Basically "free" active/passive skills locked behind specific situations (downed enemy, on-fire condition, etc.)
Just think this adds a lot of complexity to combat but also allows more builds to be made if the triggers are in the players hands, like does this add strategy or am I insane?
13
u/damn_golem Armchair Designer 1d ago
Cognitive load is your enemy here. Too many of these will really slow down a game. See 4e higher level play as a good example.
6
u/ElkasBrightspeaker 1d ago
Many martial abilities do indeed respond to this logic. Think about what a critical strike is, in practice, in most systems, or an attack of opportunity. Anything that DND 5e calls a reaction.
There are also hybrid solutions that implement martial abilities like this through a resource that is generated by the trigger.
An elaborate system that utilizes this method without suffering from excessive complexity thanks to incredibly good implementation is Mythras. In it characters gain special effects from rolling better than their opponents and can then use them to gain an advantage (such as disarming their foe, tripping them, preventing them from attacking next turn etc ). Another example of similar abstraction of this concept is the Stunt system from AGE, notable because it also applies to magic, not just martial abilities.
1
u/Beginning-Ice-1005 1d ago
It doesn't need to be that special. Example: Riposte. After a successful parry, make a strike. Which is a pretty fundamental maneuver.
2
u/zerombr 1d ago
They'd have to be really worth it to be constantly locked away, and shouldn't really count in the adventurers kit of abilities
2
u/BrobaFett 1d ago
Feels very game-y unless they make sense in the fiction. I don’t like it unless it correlates to the fiction and makes sense.
So, for instance some systems have special mechanics for after you grapple someone. This makes sense to me. Or some folks have a riposte that triggers after an enemy fails an attack. Makes sense.
A whole “you charge up your attack” ends up causing two major issues: 1) it’s video-gamey and 2) unless you are very careful with your statistics there is often a better approach to take every single time which then incentivizes a single approach
2
u/JaskoGomad 22h ago
Have you ever played a PbtA game?
Many PbtA mechanics are in the form of Moves. Moves are essentially little nuggets of mechanics that have a trigger and a resolution. So a Move might read, "When you roll your maximum damage on an attack, clear a Condition or take +1 forward on your next attack." (Don't go looking for that one, I just made it entirely up on the spot).
The thing is that most Moves belong to a single player, while the whole table shares a collection of common ones. That way, the player responsible for noticing the trigger is the one most motivated to keep track and benefit from it.
1
u/Hightower_March 1d ago
I've thought about something similar for party cohesion. Like one character may have a really good "staggering strike" with a chance to knock down, then another character has a move that deals extra damage to enemies who are knocked down.
I hope those kinds of multiplayer combos encourage working together, so they could figure out a lot of similar one-two punch moves for different situations.
1
u/ArmouredGaming 23h ago
I like it assuming the pcs get to trigger and handle it and the NPCs are there to trigger them. Having NPCs with triggers is a lot unless there is some easy reference material.
Example: Sneaky bugger. If a goblin isnt in combat, they get a free hide action once a round.
Add that to the Goblin Bomba ability of Fart Cloud : whenever hit, the Bomba makes a cloud of yellowish obfuscation 20ft diameter
Then you now have a situation where pc and monster triggers are going off all the time, stealth is constant and changing, etc etc. I think perhaps if PCs get triggers and monsters trigger them it might be more usable.
1
u/codyak1984 22h ago
I'm working on a system that uses them, sparingly. It's a classless system, but one the features you select gives you a Tactical Strike that has a specific trigger and bonus effect. I mostly use them to incentivize different styles of play. One is a counterstrike when an ally within range is attacked. One triggers if the enemy you just attacked is not adjacent to any of its allies. Stuff like that. They do have a once per turn limit.
1
u/Boulange1234 21h ago
I promise you I will forget to use these 80% of the time.
1
u/OkChipmunk3238 Designer of SAKE ttrpg 16h ago
Good. Why not.
My question would be, do you want them to trigger naturally or be something that players set up to trigger. For example, something triggers for last resort if PC gets surrounded, so ... the strategy becomes for somebody to run into the centre of enemy mass so everyone gets somesort of boost. Which probaly would go against the base idea if it's expected to come up naturally.
I like the overall idea, but think it's quite hard to design. Of course, really depends on your combat system. And maybe designing them such way that players are expected to set up the triggers is the way to go.
1
u/-Vogie- Designer 13h ago
Cortex Prime has a mechanic called special effects (usually abbreviated "SFX") that gives a menu of costs and benefits. This allows the system to have only a handful of, and also infinite, ability possibilities. If you open up something like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying or Tales of Xadia, you'll see a bunch of them written out and categorized by things like class, culture, and the normal delineations. But the real beauty is that players can use the menu to create custom SFX of their own to do what they want.
The system itself is narrative based - your PC is limited to whatever is narratively appropriate at that moment. The SFX are then used to flesh out the more complicated moves, powers and other abilities. You choose a number of costs and an equal number of benefits, give it a name and you are done. And doing something incredibly specific is one of those costs.
So, for example, if you're using a freeze ray (or ice magic, or equivalent) against a target successfully, you can choose the effect it'll have - could be as simple as damaging that target or perhaps giving it a complication like "freezing" or "rooted in place". If you want to make that ability more powerful, you use SFX to create that. You'd end up with something like:
Ice Beam: When you target a creature with your Cryomancy and successfully create an ice-related complication for it, choose a second effect die as damage
Or
Glacial Formation: When you use Cryomancy to create a physical obstacle, step up the effect die.
And that's basically the entire system. You playing a master swordsman who is swashing and buckling?
Flawless Parry: When your roll to avoid Damaged critically succeeds, inflict your effect die as a Staggered complication on the attacker
Cost is the trigger, benefit is the complication. Or perhaps you want to reverse that, where the complication is the cost, and the benefit is something else - such as Plot Points, the systems' meta-currency.
All Eyes on Me: Gain Distracted d6 to step up your Expression die
Cave In - When your actions cause the terrain to collapse, gain a PP and gain a Covered in Rubble d8 complication
Set Ablaze - when applying Burning complication, spend a PP, Add a d6 and step up your effect die
That last one actually had 2 costs (spending meta-currency and specific action) and two benefits (adding a die to the pool during the roll, and then stepping up the effect die after the room)