Six Health Classes

This is related to yesterday's post. It's like right there, so check it out if you haven't.

Alright cool, back to me.

Here's the idea: Every class has six health. The vast majority of humans have six health. Some have a couple more, some a couple less.

Weapons in general do 1d6 damage. This is enough to kill a guy if he gets hit wrong. To cushion the blow a little bit, I like to have zero hit points be "incapacitated but probably dying," the better to let the players drag each other to safety and have fighting be dangerous but less so. (Death occurs when your hit points are at your negative constitution score- so if you have 10 CON you'd die at -10. If you're incapped you "bleed" a hit point every round until you're finally dead.)

Fighters get +1 to their attack  every level. If you're using THAC0, that lowers by one every level. They get +1 to their Armor Class every other level (so levels 1,3,5,7,9) as long as they're "ready." This basically means that they don't get their AC bonus if they're being ambushed or sucker punched- this bonus AC is from them being able to dodge, parry, and roll with the punches.

Non-fighters don't get anything special. Sorry guys. Everybody does still get their normal saving throws.  I prefer the ones from Sword and Wizardry ( a single "saving throw" that gets better with levels) but I don't know if it really makes a difference which ones you use.

Magic users still cast spells, and at the same rate. They can use whatever weapon they want, because they're not going to be very good at it anyways.

Same with Clerics. Specific clerics might have specific strictures (no sharp weapons being a common one for clerics of a peaceful religion), but they otherwise can wear any armor and use any weapon. No attack bonus here, so clerics are less frontline fighter and more armored wizard.

Thieves, if you choose to include them, are relatively unchanged, except for the lack of attack scaling. You can give them a +1 at first level if you like, to let them do something, but considering that their main use is out-of-combat anyways (and that they tend to ambush more than fight fair anyways) you probably won't notice anything.

This variant means that the focus is off the infamous "You hit the orc for 4. The orc hits you for 3. You hit the orc for 2. It dies." that inflated hit point combat kind of feels like. It does mean that fighting men have a more limited lifespan at higher levels  but you know, honestly, I can deal with that. Punching dragons in the snoot is generally a bad idea; at the very least you should take your magic sword and stab them in the eyeball or something, and that's the sort of thing that is simulated in the fiction extremely badly by combat rules. You don't "fight" a twenty foot long serpent, you encounter it and are going to need to figure out how you're going to stop it.

I move five feet towards it and attack with my axe.

 

And that's kind of that.

It's a smallish tweak that I'd play in a heartbeat.

Hit Point Creep

First, real quick: I'm not talking about the increase of hit points by edition. I actually like that the starting pool is bigger in, say, 4e, and that this is going to feed into one of my fundamental dissatisfactions with the old editions.

In old editions, you'd get roughly 1d6 hit points per level. Which just so happens to be the default amount of damage a weapon deals. Which is neat. One hit can equal one kill, just like in real life, or maybe it takes two or three solid chops with an axe. Good, right?

But why, then, do you get another 1d6 hit points at second level? And another at third? It bugs me, because now you're asking me to believe that a person is able to be chopped in the body parts between two and twelve times. And then three and eighteen. Even if you assume that you roll average hit points and always get average damage rolls when you get hit, you're still taking twice as many hits, on average, to be slain by the same sword. And that's really weird.

I know that hit points, according to the books, represent "luck and chance" and stuff, but you also recover this "luck" at one point per night of rest and getting hit in the face by a sword apparently reduces this "luck" so let us call a spade a spade and say: Yes, these adventurers are absurdly tough. At the highest levels (9) even the frailest wizard is capable of taking six average stabs to the chest. You know that scene in Conan where dude cuts the head off of Thulsa Doom? Imagine if it took him a couple of whacks instead. Not so exciting.

Probably a better way to do things would be to boost everybody's hit points up to 6 or so, and then have them stay there. Then, when characters gain levels, instead of having them get more hit points, have them get more defense. You could probably restrict this to fighters or whatever your closest warrior equivalent would be in your game of choice and nobody's really notice. This way hit points narratively go back to being what they were supposed to be in the first place (a mechanical description of toughness) and you have warriors who actually learn how to defend instead of just learning how to slash things better. Two birds with one stone.

One last thing it does: It makes monsters scarier. When you fight an ogre now, one of its main traits is being goddamn tough, which makes sense, given that it's a really, really big monster. And when it hits you for 2d6, well, that's a problem if you get hit, so you need to make sure that's a thing that doesn't happen. You should bring a shield and some armor, or else use a big to make sure it doesn't get the chance to hit you before you disembowel it, or nail it with some arrows.

You can leave the other things player characters get alone. Those things are fine the way they are, I feel.

Except the cleric.

But I've been trying to "fix" the cleric for years now and I just don't think he's a good fit.

CAVEMEN WIZARD LORDS

Magic is a primeval force, the one true elemental force in the world. And it is stored in human beings.

The most powerful wizards are the ones that have the most mana-slaves. The most powerful wizards fight amongst themselves, fight for prestige, for power, and for slaves. In a world of CAVEMEN WIZARD LORDS, only one Wizard Lord can reign supreme!

This entire idea came from a friend talking about "what if people could be mana batteries", and "what if magic has always been there?" And now we know what'd happen. Who would have time for science or for development of agriculture if the most powerful resource in the world is people themselves?

Kingdom of Amalur First Impressions

Alright, look. This was a game that I wasn't excited for in the least. The writer's a fairly untalented stock fantasy writer, the artist is apparently Todd McFarlane, two people for whom I have little love. The lead designer is the guy who apparently also designed Morrowind and Oblivion, and the worst edition of Paranoia (2nd, sorry guys). And since they marketed it so heavily promoting those guys, I just said, "I'll pass."

Well today I'm giving it a shot, and holy crap does it want me to dislike it.

Look, I'm not an easy guy to impress, I get that. But look at this shit.

That's not me showing off the game's graphics (pretty, but weirdly slick and weightless), that's just me turning the camera around so you can see my character's face. He takes up most of the screen, and when I turn it around to get to actually playing, for some reason the camera is centered on the feet.

See what I mean? I'm not exaggerating- my character takes up a sincerely grotesque amount of my screen. It's weird.

The combat is floaty and it feels like I'm swinging around cardboard. No sense of impact or weight or damage, but if it cranks up later in the game that's fine. I'm willing to give this one a sec.

Destructable crates are passe but make their presence here. Bows and ranged attacks auto-aim and seem to be massively superior to actually hitting things with fists, which is also fine, if a little strange. There's rudimentary stealth, wherein you enter stealth mode and creep around for a while. If you get close to somebody you get to do a very unintentionally silly auto-kill stab thing, which is whatever.

The motion blur is driving me crazy, and my character wants to leap and bound about when I so much as tap A or D, which is really, really annoying. He won't just walk, it's like everything has to be bigger and bolder because LOOK how pretty I am, the game's saying.

I don't think this'll be one that I keep playing on and on, but we'll see. It feels like somebody looked at Fable 1, went "Yes, that's perfect" and then content themselves with just making it prettier instead of actually adding anything cool to the game. But Fable's a rather light-hearted jaunt through a big and pretty world, and I don't know if Amalur has the same spark that Fable had. I guess I'll find out.

One parting note: Is it too much to have your weapon racks actually display the kind of shit that's on them? I want to take the sword and the spear and the bows, not just the single shield and then go "durrrr guess that's it." That's not it, you idiot, take the spear, too, and leave your rusty fucking longsword behind. And HOLY SHIT, why do I have to use the Escape menu to change my equipment? Diablo didn't have you do that. Dungeon Siege didn't either. Fable did, but it was goddamn annoying there, too. Don't make me have to change screens to put on armor, people.

Also: Your shield appears on your arm when you use it, and you put your weapon on your back while blocking for some reason. Did I mention that the camera angles are shit? Sometimes it runs away from me, and I find myself obscured underneath the minimap while the camera helpfully displays a completely inert patch of ground.

And please, why are there roaring spiders? This spider just popped out of the ground, stood there and sorta squeak-roared at me. Spiders don't have vocal chords, and I'm reasonably sure animals aren't interested in trying to intimidate me. It's like the worst monster cliche. Why does every monster stand and roar while I get to watch the cinematic camera pan around it for a sec? IT'S A FUCKING SPIDER, WHO CARES?

This just happened: I killed a troll, and did a quick time event where I SPEARED IT IN THE EYE WITH A LIGHTNING SPEAR THING that apparently I can summon now? But obviously only after I've killed a troll, because otherwise I just have to shoot regular magic or else summon fire out of this staff I got from a chest. Who keeps putting their unlocked chests out where people can see them? Who knows, no time to ask questions, adventurer, you've got to finish the tutorial level!

So far this game is a 5/10, but we'll have to see where it's going. I can only hope it gets better.

Antichamber Review

I feel like writing about this game, because I played it and it's the sort of game that warrants a review.

Not because it's particularly good, mind you. The impression I got from Antichamber is one of overwhelming mediocrity, and if you want to find out why, I will tell you exactly why.

Check it out.

I'm not reading this synopsis: Solid 6/10; neat style and some clever puzzles, but ultimately collapses in on itself as unintentional self-parody combined with mostly uninteresting puzzles.Would recommend to people who've already played all the better games in its genre and are looking for something new, but nearly nobody else.

Bulgarian Pagan Festival

This is a thing actual intelligent adults participate in. If you were Bulgarian, you probably have heard about this sort of thing, but I'm posting it here to illustrate that, once again, real life is stranger than fiction.

What Is Going On

I have been gorging myself on Victoria 2. I actually stayed up till like midnight playing the damn thing- I couldn't help it. It's compelling.

It's all about managing your people, unlike most map-painting Grand Strategy games. You have to make sure that your ethnic factions are all working together in harmony, and you can capably quash rebellions, and build factories, and you know, honestly, just look at the game if you like the time period. It's set from the Industrial Revolution to the Great War and it's wonderful.

I was playing as the Russian Empire and it's a huge pain to get my illiterate masses of peasants educated and getting them to actually be capable of industrializing because hooooly crap, there are so many of them. It's insane. I can raise something like three times as many armies as anybody that isn't Britain or maybe France, but I don't have any industrialization so I can't be a truly great Great Power. It's frustrating!

But I guess what can you do.

This isn't my empire, but this is the sort of thing you can do in the game.

For example: Imperial Russia (me) has claimed Florida and part of Japan in my game. It's beautiful.

Win Conditions

There oughta be a card game where the only win conditions are written on the cards. Like this guy here; the game should revolve around what you want it to revolve around.

If you were running Azor's Elocutors, for example, you'd be all about protecting these guys. It'd pretty much be your main mission to guard them with everything you have, packing plenty of counter spells and weaving lots of charms over them to make sure that your enemies didn't get the chance to do anything to interrupt your win condition.

But what if they're running something like Hellkite Tyrant?

Now you see where I'm going with this.

I'm thinking there'd have to be a couple of card types; and there'd have to be a lot more interaction between card removal and prevention of removal, and then some rules on how creatures interact (because in Magic, for example, you can't directly attack a creature), but I think it'd be interesting. Maybe not as long-lived as Magic the Gathering, but it's entirely possible that it'd be a decent shared deck game, or as a customizeable "Living Card Game" type thing.

Maybe I oughta mock up some rules sometime.