Character Creation & System Changes

Character creation is very important to me. Building a cool character can be as fun as playing the game. It is also the perfect time to introduce players to the world and I have always wanted the system to fully represent that. This is a huge step in that direction.

Note that this is all work in progress and heavily subject to change. 

Maybe a stream this weekend to try and finalize art relating to this chart.

The cosmic star chart is front and center and will be an important decision that lays the foundation for your entire character. Two 'Birth Signs' will be selected, represented by each of the significant celestial bodies. These signs determine what you gain upon every level up and what skills you meet the requirements for. This was originally planned to be called a 'Devotion', but gave the wrong impression. You can not change a birth sign in the same way you can not change the day you were born. It is just the way you are.

For example, some spells may require you be born under the sign of 'The Maelstrom'. These would mostly be blood related magic and martial talents you could only use if you met this prerequisite. Similarly, there are skills that require "Spirit". Both of your birth signs must be within the Spirit quadrant of the star chart to meet this higher level of specialization. 'The Void' is a special selection that means you denounce the significance of these celestial bodies. Both selections must be 'The Void' and this will either grant more martial abilities or more CP to spend on skills per level. Unsure!

These basically take the place of 'classes', but also allows the system to be much more open and feel  as though it were classless. Being able to combine 25 different level up options gives you a lot of opportunity to build exactly how you want to and point you in that direction. A combination of something such as Gnosis and Maelstrom would be a good start for a hybrid spell-sword. Gnosis would provide spell progression and sanity while Maelstrom could be offering HP and front line sustain.

Another layer to this situation is offering scaling abilities. I think these birth signs are the perfect place to put some new modifiers. Currently: Opulence and Occult.

Different signs will earn these stats at different paces -- think of them like what level of spell you are capable of casting. However, all spells will also scale based on the level of Opulence or Occult that you have, as they are relevant to that type of ability. It is also already coded to require a player to have a certain level of Opulence/Occult before they can select a spell, though I am unsure if I will go there. I've only actually made 1 skill in the updated framework so far!

Hopefully that is legible. I'm still learning how Patreon displays things within these posts.

This is a great example of a skill that also scales with your Occult stat. No matter what type of Mind Trap you like using, it will only get stronger as you level with the hope that it never becomes useless. The ability to invest more skill points in one skill remains so that if you really like one playstyle, you can invest further. I may hold back on a single skill having more than 1 additional level, however. Investing a lot in one skill reduces your amount of combat options (unless it is a skill like this, that has variance built in). More options to consider is a good thing!

I'm also very happy with how easy this skill is to use compared to some of its earliest iterations. This comes as a part of a reinforced effort to make everything user friendly so that Myriad can potentially be distributable to people looking to DM within the system (A lot has been done here to prevent players from doing things outside of the rules). This skill creates a dropdown menu allowing the player to select what type of trap they want and the trap is automatically generated and placed on top of the player to be placed where they want it, accounting for Occult skill. This also includes automatically updating the macro when the skill is acquired at level 2, creating large traps that proc twice. 

This all sounds like a given, basic stuff that any RPG should obviously have, but is a major deal for running a tabletop game. That level of user-friendly skill usage is the core of what has kept me working on Myriad.

To wrap up, here are a couple of other significant changes that are going to need to take place to support each other.

Armor has become more like Temporary HP rather than damage reduction. I could probably talk about this for an entire post on why it was found to be necessary, though it is very obvious in hindsight. Portrayed by a blue bar that protects the health bar.

Piercing attacks deal half of their damage to HP and half to armor.

Start of Turn Action mentioned in the previous post.

No Diagonal Movement. This may sound weird and out of nowhere. This is how things used to be in the ancient system I sometimes refer to, but was done away with because the entire system felt very 'video-gamey' and wanted to get closer to the 'simulation' feel that D&D portrays. If you read the previous post and what I talked about in regards to Kenneth using Web and player tenancies to avoid a more interesting strategical depth to combat in favor of hitting things, this actually deeply ties into that. If you want to fully surround an enemy with no diagonal movement, you need 4 tiles. If you want to do that with diagonal, you need 8. With the freedom of movement comes the freedom to ignore a huge list of mechanics that would only make combat more enjoyable if they were more relevant to consider. What is the significance of spending all the actions to evolve Fire tiles into Filth Fire, just so that an enemy can walk around it? There are 2 things you can do. Have gigantic AoE so that there is more shit in everyone's way, or restrict movement. I went with the latter.

Adrenaline is a static per turn gain, rather than an exponential increase.

Weapon damage is losing a lot of variance. This is also how things used to be in the old system...funny how I keep going backwards to it. Now, however, I'm going to try a little bit of the best of both worlds. Instead of weapon damage dealing, for example, 1-8 like in a traditional D&D dice rolling system, the weapon will instead just deal 8. After the attack is made, the 8 damage can be varied by -1 or +1 to give you 7-9. Some variance is essential, but I was seeing gigantic swings in character damage potential. For example, Beef was dealing 8-28 damage with the spear he found. On a miss he would do half damage, so could potentially even deal 4 damage with a big Troll heavy weapon. Of course, he could also lucky crit and do 35 or more. 4-35? Yikes. I'm glad I have more than 1 rushed month to actually sit down and sort this out.

Adrenaline, Armor, and Damage changes are obviously major system balance points. Everything needs to follow the example that they are setting. The effect of base Stat points are heavily in flux with the new character creation, Strength in particular. That is what allowed Adrenaline to scale to crazy amounts and it added 1-STR damage. Another high point of absurd damage variance for high STR characters.

Races. Um...Okay, I really haven't gotten that far. There is still more to figure out.