COMBAT SYSTEMS
COMBAT
When I wrote the combat system for Chrono-Rogue, I wanted to give people a lot of things to do during combat. I knew I wanted everyone to feel useful even if they didn’t build a combat-based character. I wanted combat to be lethal because characters can be resurrected a number of times before their character truly dies, it was important to have methods in place to have them play tactically in order to learn as a character would on the battlefield, and not punish them with full character death.
Attacks and Defense are mostly skill checks- This is an old school way of doing things where you compare numbers and the person with the highest scores the hit. In that way, I wanted normal attacks to be simple things to calculate. Players can add skill dice where applicable to give themselves a little boost, but mostly I wanted them to be able to calculate that quickly. From a development standpoint, I had ties go to the attacker, as combat should always be moving towards ending the combat in either success or failure for the PCs. I wanted subsequent attacks in the same round to become harder and harder to avoid, so PCs that weren’t combat-based, could still attack and feel useful.
Beats- The action economy in Chrono-Rogue is pretty similar to other game systems but are a little more customizable as characters can do two things a round, or one really big thing. You get two beats to spend however you wish, they can be offensive, defensive, or neutral. If you attack or use an offensive invocation you spend one of your available beats and resolve the action. At the beginning of combat, you can decide to establish defense (spending a defensive beat to achieve this), and at any time you may use your full dodge or melee defense rating against any applicable attack, and you may use a defensive talent (edge), or invocation to defend against an attack. In this way, you have a ton of options for your character during combat.
Stacks- Stacks are an effect that can happen to a character to further damage them, restrict their movement, or reduce their combat effectiveness. You can have them slowly bleed out their hp, set them on fire, burn away their armor, poison them, slow them down, etc. Stacks usually take place in the round following the attack, allowing characters to plan ahead, and so long as they managed to hit a target, inflict some kind of status effect that will move them closer to winning. Some monsters are more vulnerable to specific stacks, allowing you to work out what will hurt them more.
Damage Dice and Armor Soak Dice- I have dabbled in miniature war games for most of my life, and I’ve always enjoyed a dice pool to roll to damage a foe and a soak roll to avoid damage. I wanted characters to work towards rolling higher quality dice for their characters (D8’s vs D6’s for instance), since rolling a 5+ on the die face equals a success, they have a higher percentage chance of meeting a success with dice with more die facings total. I wanted weapons to have a pierce quality that made it harder to roll that 5+ on armor dice unless a character had a higher value die to roll as it were. In that way, you can build a character who is a master at shredding through armor if you want, or build a character that can take heavy punishment before going down.
HP vs Wounds- in many games, characters have different amounts of damage they can take usually based on a class, attribute rating, or powers they’ve acquired over the course of play. I wanted to even the playing field for people a little. Hardship Points are based on the longevity of your character (how much XP you’ve acquired thus far), and their wounds are based on their Endurance attribute. In that way, you can’t get destroyed just for not building a combat character, and will be able to stick in the fight for a little while before facing some hard choices.
Marks- Some abilities afflict a character with Marks. Marks represent a disadvantage the character has to be exploited. Any character can spend Marks on a character to inflict additional damage, or grant themselves a little mechanical boost to hit a target. They might be outnumbered, unprepared, or afflicted with a powerful invocation.
