So the +4/level classes will start with 2d4 healing dice at 1st level, and gain one more per level. The +6/level classes will be the same, but will use d6s.

My thought is that in-combat healing will use 1/2 healing dice (rounded down) and be capped by the wound threshold, while ritual healing will use full healing dice and will be capped by double the threshold.

So by level 20, in-combat healing for d4 classes will average 27.5 (still less than the average attack, but not by much) while ritual healing will average 55.

For d6 classes, the average will be higher. Combat healing will be above average damage, though the max healing in combat is still capped low enough that a character "fully" healed in this manner can be dropped by one hit.

The only problem that I forsee here is the buckets of dice at upper levels, and I'm not sure how to deal with it. One possibility is to only add dice at even levels, and add a flat bonus at odd levels. This is a bit of a pain in the ass, but I could also just say that in-combat healing rolls the dice with no bonus.

I'm sure I'll figure something better than this out at some point, but I think I could live with either of these.

Another thought on healing caps and using a flat bonus:

After combat, if the maximum you can be healed to is two times your wound threshold (which has nothing to do with your class), that can be a problem. Because class hit points don't matter much then.

I gotta figure out a better method for capping in and out of combat healing.

I'm a bit dubious about the ranking system where you go to hero at 5th level to deity at 20th. The number inflation between the two isn't ridiculous enough for my taste, though its a bit YMMV; I guess I come from a background with alot of particularly ridiculous systems, and it may also depend on what powers come into play, beyond just the raw numbers.
 
Other than that:
 
*For healing if there's too many dice, perhaps having the dice be maximized under non-combat conditions?
 
*DR always does bad things to daggers - one of the reasons I often like 'armour bypass' type mechanics. Potentially you could fudge it with a rule that lets a weapon like a dagger called shot through a join or weak point in the armour, ignoring DR but probably at an attack penalty.
 
Good luck in playtesting and stuff.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;551654I'm a bit dubious about the ranking system where you go to hero at 5th level to deity at 20th. The number inflation between the two isn't ridiculous enough for my taste, though its a bit YMMV; I guess I come from a background with alot of particularly ridiculous systems, and it may also depend on what powers come into play, beyond just the raw numbers.

The powers are going to be the bigger part of it. The leveling will slow to a crawl at the high end, and the difference is enough that 15-20th level characters will quickly crush pre-5th level characters. Which is really all I wanted out of the upper end. Nevermind the fact that super-difficult tasks have become auto-successes at this point.

You're right though, that the numbers don't look too impressive by themselves. Hopefully I can get the feel right.
 

Quote*For healing if there's too many dice, perhaps having the dice be maximized under non-combat conditions?

An every other level bump and flat healing in rituals would both work okay.
 

Quote*DR always does bad things to daggers - one of the reasons I often like 'armour bypass' type mechanics. Potentially you could fudge it with a rule that lets a weapon like a dagger called shot through a join or weak point in the armour, ignoring DR but probably at an attack penalty.

Ooh... I was thinking of having leather/hide, mail, and plate defend better or worse against different damage types. In the earliest stages of this project. Never got good feedback on it, but it'd be worth trying out in the playtest. Also thought it would be a nice way of distinguishing weapons of similar damage values.

Playtest is a little way off, but I really should try out the base combat rules before throwing powers in.

Quote from: beejazz;551675Ooh... I was thinking of having leather/hide, mail, and plate defend better or worse against different damage types. In the earliest stages of this project. Never got good feedback on it, but it'd be worth trying out in the playtest. Also thought it would be a nice way of distinguishing weapons of similar damage values.
 
Playtest is a little way off, but I really should try out the base combat rules before throwing powers in.

That's a thing I've always thought was nifty, but that tends to get hard to do in actual practice without a mess of tables and modifiers. 1E D&D did this for weapons, and 2E just by damage type, while 4E has its different 'proficiency bonuses' to attack rolls and 'damage on miss' feats.
 
*JAGS (and it might have inherited it from GURPS) increases the base damage values for bludgeoning weapons, but have 'penetrating' damage of 4 or more get doubled, representing that it may have hit something vital. Potentially the same sort of idea like that could perhaps be adapted to your system, where with bludgeoning weapons damage goes up (so armour is less effective), but where it is less likely to cause a 'wound'.
 
You could also potentially customize your Wounds table based on damage type (or exact weapon/spell used, like Rolemaster).
 
Or depending on your power system, you can also try to have damage type effects come off your powers i.e. there might be an edged-weapon-specific power that re-rolls wound rolls.
 
Wandering off-topic away from your system, in something I was doing awhile back, I had an armour bypass roll, but with piercing weapons rolling a single roll to see if they get through armour (its stopped or not), while bludgeoning weapons rolled a dice for each point of damage against the same target number and counted the 'hits' - so that armour cushions but doesn't fully stop bludgeoning damage.

The way I thought it would work (and this is like... a year or two ago, so I might be getting the details wrong) is that armor would just have half DR against particular damage types. It's not like modern games where a penetration value would work best. I think in this case, just making it clear that mail is shit against maces would be enough. I think mail was weak against bludgeoning, leather against slashing?, and plate against piercing? There might have been one armor type weak against two damage types, and plate might have had a higher DR value in exchange for its cost and weight.

Armor would be something like light/medium/heavy leather/mail/plate (nine types total). And they'd be something like 2/4/6(/8?).

___________

As for using damage types as "keywords" enabling some powers, I was thinking of things along those lines (along with the usual keywords like reach or thrown) for a lot of the generic powers anyone can take. I wanted to allow some weapon specing to all martial classes.

Oh OK that doesn't sound too complicated.
 
 I think you're breakdown of what armour works against what sounds basically about right, though I think maces were I think often used against guys in plate? Other than that, crossbows were also very effective, and warhammers often had a spike on the back for dealing with armoured guys you unhorsed with the other end. A sword was not very effective, but a dagger for performing coup de grace was also standard equipment, I think.
 
IIRC; I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;552077Oh OK that doesn't sound too complicated.
 
 I think you're breakdown of what armour works against what sounds basically about right, though I think maces were I think often used against guys in plate? Other than that, crossbows were also very effective, and warhammers often had a spike on the back for dealing with armoured guys you unhorsed with the other end. A sword was not very effective, but a dagger for performing coup de grace was also standard equipment, I think.
 
IIRC; I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.

Yeah... I'd need to run anything like this by somebody who knows better (and then be disappointed). Probably won't change the numbers much, other than bumping armor up to a potential six or eight and pricing the high end out of reach of starting characters.

On the healing, I figure now that I'll just set it up so it has a few dice at zeroth level and a fixed bonus every level thereafter. Should handle the buckets of dice issue, and feels consistent with the way damage is handled.

I'll also probably just let ritual healing do full hp, but not all wounds.

Just an update, but after a while of messing with it, this is where I'm going:

You get healing dice at multiples of 3 (so levels 3, 6, 9, etc.).

Healing touch will heal based on the target's healing dice, with healing capped at 1/3 (yes, that means there's division being used... but it was the best I could come up with).

Healing ritual will be healing dice plus the target's level, with healing capped at 2/3 (likewise with the division).

And then the temple-healing will get a person back to full.

Healing touch works out to around 1/6 or 1/7 of hit points on average, and is always less than average attacks (this will prevent hit/heal loops or the potentially worse net gain effect after a few misses). Basically healing touch is for keeping someone on their feet that one extra round so they can get out of harm's way.

Ritual healing works out to around 1/3 of hit points on average, and because it will take two castings (per recipient) to reach full effect, the order of the recipients and the potential for interruption could matter in a big way.

And I'm bringing back the whole "you're injured until you get back to town" bit. I like the feel of that really. Also if people are running around on 2/3 hp until they get back to town that can stretch out the one hit kill potential for a few extra levels.

Interesting. I don't mind the division so much - if it was on a damage roll or similar it might cause issues but healing should be infrequent and perhaps often between combats so I don't think its so bad.
'You can't heal to more than 2/3 of HP' does strike me as somehow a bit metagamey, though (I'm struggling to articulate what bothers me about it , sorry).. I sort of wonder if there could be other ways of getting the same effect in a more (realistic?) fashion.
 
The only thing I can think of offhand would be say dividing the HPs into multiple types (like Palladium's Hit Points and SDC, or Star Wars SAGA's Wounds/Vitality) and having the more severe form of damage restorable only at temples/via long term rest.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;556314Interesting. I don't mind the division so much - if it was on a damage roll or similar it might cause issues but healing should be infrequent and perhaps often between combats so I don't think its so bad.
'You can't heal to more than 2/3 of HP' does strike me as somehow a bit metagamey, though (I'm struggling to articulate what bothers me about it , sorry).. I sort of wonder if there could be other ways of getting the same effect in a more (realistic?) fashion.

My thought is that hp are both fatigue and actual damage. Magic is limited in its capacity to heal damage, and that extra pep it gives you only goes so far.
 

QuoteThe only thing I can think of offhand would be say dividing the HPs into multiple types (like Palladium's Hit Points and SDC, or Star Wars SAGA's Wounds/Vitality) and having the more severe form of damage restorable only at temples/via long term rest.

Each spell deals with a different set of wounds, so I may grey-box the option to just flat remove the caps on one or all of these spells. It would certainly hurt the ritual least, balance-wise.

Which wounds go where matters some too. I might lump broken limbs (and not just severed ones) in with the temple healing, so the difference continues to matter once the caps are off.

If a lot of people say something similar during the playtest, I'll probably just shift the cap to half on healing touch and remove it on the ritual altogether.

I need to get working on dying rules. As usual, first thing first is to set goals:

1) I want dying to be possible on the first round that you are dying. Low level games without full-on one hit kills just aren't right by me.
2) I want time spent dying to be pretty flat across levels. I can think of no reason your training should help you bleed out on the floor longer.
3) I want the max time spent dying to be somewhat less than your average whole combat. I'm probably going to repurpose the dying rules for drowning and such elsewhere, and I want water-breathers pulling you under to be as terrifying as it ought to be.
4) I don't want a separate pool of hp.
5) I probably want repeated checks with cumulative odds of failure.
6) I maybe want to tie in constitution and/or wounds somehow.