For your own personal reasons, you too eventually decide to try and find the Fountain of Dreams together with a few allies, hoping to be more successful than those before you.
Rules:
Roleplaying
1. For anything not adressed in this ruleset, generic RPG rules apply. You know the drill. (Feel free to ask if you don't.)
2. If you want to do something that you don't want to describe as bluntly in your roleplaying or otherwise can't fit into it, feel free to state your character's actual action in OOC text for clarification.
Combat
3. This PnP uses the traditional d20 for determining the success of all actions.
Physical attacks will hit if the attacker's d20 + Hit matches or exceeds the target's AC.
Scoring a natural 20 on an attack roll of a physical attack will result in a critical hit that will deal double damage. Abilities and certain weapons can adjust this mechanic.
4. Every character can take either a minor and a major action per turn, or just two minor ones.
- Major actions: Attacking, using a spell or an active ability (unless specified otherwise), using an item, changing armour.
- Minor actions: (De-)activiating a sustained ability, giving or receiving an item, switching between front and cover, changing weapons.
5. If a character's HP drop to 0 or less, he/she is KO. This damages your fortitude modifier, meaning that your max. HP will be reduced until you get sufficient rest. As long as your max. HP are still above 0, however, you can continue the fight once you receive sufficient healing.
6. You can choose between two possible positions for battles - front or cover. The front can be attacked by anything, but can also attack with anything itself. Covered characters cannot attack in melee. Trying to attack a covered combatant in melee is possible, but provokes a DEX vs. AGI check against all opposing front combatants and is thus more likely to fail - however, this only applies if the front actually exists. If there's no front row, the cover row will be treated as the front.
7. If things don't seem to be going your way, you can escape from battles. Whether this fails or succeeds depends on the circumstances; usually, you will be able to get away, but ranged attackers may get in a few free attacks while you escape. However, any party members not capable of moving (e. g. because of being unconscious) will need to be carried by someone else, and will be left behind if carrying them would hinder your escape too much.
8. If you don't want to wait for the other players to post in a battle (if things just seem to slow down), post in the talk thread (this one) and let me know. You can then also give orders to the characters that haven't posted yet, if you want to, kind of like in an actual RPG game. Any characters that do not receive orders and have not posted yet at that point will idle for that turn.
You can also post actions for multiple turns in advance, which I will attempt to follow as closely as possible.
Character Stats
9. Every character's main stats are HP (Health Points), SP (Spirit Points), XP (Experience Points) and AP. Everyone knows what HP and XP do, as well as how XP are gained. SP is what you use to cast spells (they can also fuel physical abilities if that suits your fancy). AP allow you to learn abilities as usual.
10. Advancing to the next level always takes 100 XP. After a level up your XP are reset to 0, though any leftover XP will be kept (e. g. reaching 108 XP would leave you with 8 XP after the level up). Gaining a level will allow you to distribute 2 additional points among your main stats and increase your max. HP, as well as give you additional AP.
11. Players may define their active/sustained/passive abilities themselves, but the GM may change them if he deems them too imbalanced; otherwise, you'll be told how many AP your abilities require. Please refrain from making your abilities overly complex, as I don't really feel like spending three hours just to calculate one round of combat.
I'm aiming for roughly 25 AP for a completely "average" ability (with active abilities' uses' average being 2).
12. You can start out with any equipment you want, but please be reasonable. You can also start out with any number of utility items that make sense for your character, as long as your inventory is big enough to hold them.
13. Armor has been simplified. It simply adds AC, and lowers/increases your AGI in addition to this if it's heavy/light. This means that heavy armor will make you very resistant to physical attacks, but at the same time very suspectible to magical projectiles, while light robes and the like will only give you a modest defense against physical attacks, but help you dodge magical projectiles.
14. Items don't stack. Ammunation (arrows, bolts, throwing stars, throwing knives, etc.) is excepted.
15. This PnP re-introduces gold as a currency and shops to buy items from. You can sell items you don't need for 80% of their value. All gold is shared by the entire party, and will be displayed together with your status table in my posts.
16. Any character that fulfills the necessary requirements may start out with up to 3 spells. You can define your spells yourself if you want to, but I probably will adjust them to make sure they're not over-/underpowered, as well as to maintain some sort of continuity between them. After the game has started, spells can be learned at various occassions. There's no limit to how many spells your character may learn, although you can only memorize 5 of them at once, and you can only change your memorized spells while resting (whenever your SP would fully recover). Your characters may freely teach each other their knowledge of spells when they're unoccupied for a while, though depending on both the pupil and the teacher, the pupil may learn a different variation of the spell instead (this is not always strictly negative).
Most basic spells require roughly 5 SP to cast. The stronger the spell, the more SP it requires.
17. Each character has the following modifiers, also called main stats:
Strength (STR)
- Every point de-/increases the maximum number of items you can carry.
- Every point de-/increases your base HP by 1.
- Every point increases the damage your physical attacks deal by 1. Negative points do not decrease your damage.
If a damaged/buffed STR modifier causes your inventory limit to drop below the amount of items you are carrying, you will have to discard items until you no longer surpass your new limit.
A damaged/buffed STR modifier will not affect your HP.
Dexterity (DEX)
- Every point de-/increases your Hit bonus by 1.
- Every other point de-/increases your AC by 1.
Agility (AGI)
- Every point de-/increases your AC by 1.
- Your AGI is applied to your saving throw against various spells (mostly those that take on a physical form, like a fireball for example).
Fortitude (FOR)
- Every point de-/increases your base HP by 2.
- Every other point de-/increases your HP Modifier (HP increase upon level up) by 1.
- Your FOR is applied to your saving throw against status ailments and instant death.
Intellect (INT)
- Every point de-/increases your maximum SP by 3.
- Every other point de-/increases your (physical) Hit bonus by 1.
- Your INT determines the chance of success of many of your own spells. Negative points do not decrease the chance of success.
A damaged/buffed INT modifier will not affect your SP.
Willpower (WIL)
- Every point de-/increases your maximum SP by 2.
- Your WIL determines the effectiveness of many of your own spells. Negative points do not decrease their effectiveness.
- Your WIL is applied to your saving throw against some types of spells (mostly those that do not take on a physical form, like debuffs, curses and mind control).
A damaged/buffed WIL modifier will not affect your SP.
Luck (LUK)
Luck is everything and at the same time nothing. It will not directly affect your stats nor your performance in combat, but if you find yourself winning tough encounters against all odds or keep getting hit by random stray arrows, your luck may or may not be responsible for this.
If you don't know what to think of it, just leave it at 0.
...this results in the following sub-stats:
Code: Select all
- HP Modifier (HPMod): 2 ± FOR/2
- Health (HP): 15 + [Lv xHPMod] ± 2xFOR ± STR
- Spirit (SP): 10 ± 3xINT ± 2xWIL
- Ability Points (AP): 125 + 25xLv
- Inventory Cap : 5 ± STR (cannot be lower than 1)
- Damage (Dmg): Weapon damage + STR. If unarmed, weapon damage is 1-3.
- Hit Bonus (Hit): DEX ± INT/2 ± Weapon Hit
- Armor Class (AC): 10 ± DEX/2 ± AGI ± Equipment AC
18. Distribute your starting stats wisely.
Your modifiers can be anything from -5 to (4 + Lv). The sum of all your modifiers must not exceed +10 at the beginning, though you may distribute 2 more points everytime you level up.
19. You can rest whenever you're not in immediate danger. Resting recovers your HP, SP and ability uses, as well as damaged modifiers.
In order to fully recover your HP and SP, you'll have to rest for around 8 hours.
In order to fully recover your ability uses, as little as around 1 hour is sufficient.
Modifiers recover at a rate of around 1 point per 8 hours.
If your rest is interrupted at some point or you simply don't rest long enough, you'll still recover a certain percentual value of your HP, SP and ability uses, but not nearly as much.
Unless you're in a hurry, take your time and rest after battle. Don't rush things.
- Example-kun, Lv 1.00 (Front)
HP 24/24
SP 20/20
5-10 Dmg | +3 Hit | 17 AC
Longsword [ 3-8 Dmg ]
Chainmail [ 6 AC | -2 AGI ]Spoiler: Inventory & Status
Items (1/7):
- Stuff
Spells:
---
Abilities ( ??/150 AP):
[list][*]Example Ability [ 2 / 2 ] [ Active ] [ ?? AP ]
Description
[*]Example Ability [ Sustained ] [ ?? AP ]
Description
[*]Example Ability [ Passive ] [ ?? AP ]
Description
+2 Strength
+2 Dexterity
+0/+2 Agility
+2 Fortitude
+2 Intellect
+2 Willpower
-2 Luck
HPMod: +3
Appearance:
[Insert description and/or picture]
Story:
[Insert your character's background and story][/spoiler][/list]
Notes:
- I decided to boost both STR and the minimum damage of weapons because plain ol' physical attacks were kind of underpowered, causing fights to drag out unnecessarily when neither party was full of mages or spammed abilities.
- Don't make the mistake of considering luck a dump stat. It isn't.
- Feel free to assume that your characters already know each other at the beginning of the game if you want to. May speed things up.