Tabletop Arcade Dev Diaries #13: Ending "Banes"
Hey guys! Today I wanted to briefly go into a smallish topic of how to end negative status effects or "banes" in combat. Oh and the project has officially been renamed, check here for details.
As previously mentioned in dev diary #10, I'm planning on having a free-form ability construction system in TA. Abilities will be partially be inspired by the banes/boons system from Open Legend. Essentially, an offensive ability will deal damage and apply a "bane" (a negative status effect) on hit. For simplicity, I'll just use the Open Legend terminology during this post.
During this dev diary, I wanted to settle on a system for how banes might end on a character. As I mentioned in dev diary #8, I'm not planning on having saving throws in the game (at least not a save for every attribute like D&D 5e), so the obvious option of repeated saving throws that is used in D&D 5e is ruled out. Before getting into any potential rulesets, I wanted to lay out a couple of my design goals for the system. First of all, I don't want the attacker to make more rolls after the bane has taken effect. For example, a system where whoever inflicted a bane on the creature must make another attack against the afflicted creature on each of their turns for the bane to persist. Something like this just wouldn't fit with the "rolls indicate action" feel I want for the game. So whoever is trying to shake a bane makes the roll. I also want the system to be relatively simple, you shouldn't need to reference any numbers that aren't immediately available to make the roll. Okay, let's get down to a couple possible systems.
I like this system a lot, with my only minor gripe being that a bane inflicted by a very powerful opponent would be just as "sticky" as the same bane inflicted by some random henchman.
The only missing piece in TA for this to work would be the equivalent of a save DC. I don't really want to add another thing to calculate here, so I see two options. The first is just having a fixed save DC, but at that point you're basically using Style #1. The other possible option I see right now is having the attack roll result be the DC. This could work quite nicely but would need some fine-tuning to avoid the persistence of different banes being too heavily variable. This kinda roll would basically be equivalent to rolling a d20 without modifiers and having to beat 10 plus however much the attack roll exceeded the your defence score, since both the defence score and roll would add the same bonus.
Regardless, this kinda system is fairly close to just adding saving throws to the game anyway, which isn't exactly what I want. Compared to Style #1, it just feels like a bit too complex to be worth it.
As previously mentioned in dev diary #10, I'm planning on having a free-form ability construction system in TA. Abilities will be partially be inspired by the banes/boons system from Open Legend. Essentially, an offensive ability will deal damage and apply a "bane" (a negative status effect) on hit. For simplicity, I'll just use the Open Legend terminology during this post.
During this dev diary, I wanted to settle on a system for how banes might end on a character. As I mentioned in dev diary #8, I'm not planning on having saving throws in the game (at least not a save for every attribute like D&D 5e), so the obvious option of repeated saving throws that is used in D&D 5e is ruled out. Before getting into any potential rulesets, I wanted to lay out a couple of my design goals for the system. First of all, I don't want the attacker to make more rolls after the bane has taken effect. For example, a system where whoever inflicted a bane on the creature must make another attack against the afflicted creature on each of their turns for the bane to persist. Something like this just wouldn't fit with the "rolls indicate action" feel I want for the game. So whoever is trying to shake a bane makes the roll. I also want the system to be relatively simple, you shouldn't need to reference any numbers that aren't immediately available to make the roll. Okay, let's get down to a couple possible systems.
Stye #1: Open Legend/D&D 4e
The first obvious option is just to use the same system as Open Legend. Before writing this post, I was doing some research on how earlier editions of D&D handled ending conditions and was surprised to find that the system in 4th Edition was exactly the same. It's a pretty light system, with a character simply rolling a d20 without modifiers when they try to resist a bane. On a 10 or higher, the roll is a success. D&D 4e calls these rolls "saves", and they happen automatically at the end of your turn, whereas in Open Legend resisting banes is a specific action a character must take, but all in all both systems share a lot of DNA.I like this system a lot, with my only minor gripe being that a bane inflicted by a very powerful opponent would be just as "sticky" as the same bane inflicted by some random henchman.
Style #2: D&D 3.5e/Pathfinder
Both D&D 3.5e and Pathfinder both have saving throws, but they're a little different to how D&D 5e handles saves. Rather than having separate saving throws for every attribute, there is simply three saves: Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. There's a pretty clear parallel between these three saves and the defencive scores I want to use for TA, so I'm considering using some sort of "defence roll" to end banes. A defence roll would add whatever bonuses normally apply to your defence score, so in a sense the defence score would act like a passive check in D&D 5e.The only missing piece in TA for this to work would be the equivalent of a save DC. I don't really want to add another thing to calculate here, so I see two options. The first is just having a fixed save DC, but at that point you're basically using Style #1. The other possible option I see right now is having the attack roll result be the DC. This could work quite nicely but would need some fine-tuning to avoid the persistence of different banes being too heavily variable. This kinda roll would basically be equivalent to rolling a d20 without modifiers and having to beat 10 plus however much the attack roll exceeded the your defence score, since both the defence score and roll would add the same bonus.
Regardless, this kinda system is fairly close to just adding saving throws to the game anyway, which isn't exactly what I want. Compared to Style #1, it just feels like a bit too complex to be worth it.
Style #3: Fixed Duration
I haven't seen this kind of system in systems I've read so far (or I could just be being forgetful to be honest), but in this style a bane would have a fixed duration once it has been inflicted. The fixed duration could be calculated using the attack roll, or could just have a consistent duration. There's some potential in this system, but I reckon it could get pretty finicky and require some pretty in-depth balancing.
Summary
Overall, I reckon I'm going to use style #1, though I might include #2 as an optional rule. Simplicity is always a nice thing, and it honestly seems like it'd pretty closely mimic how status effects feel in JRPGs, if not their precise mechanics. I also think I'll have saving throws be automatically done at the end of a character's turn rather than relying solely on a specific action, but I may well flip flop on this.
That's it for today's dev diary, hope y'all enjoyed it. Next week's post will probably be another draft chapter, but I'm not 100% sure yet. I hope to see you then!
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