Tunnels do flood

So when your party enters a dungeon you think it all looks like the following image?  All nice and dirty with lots of darkness ahead?

Well got news for you.  Underground passages are damp and humid.  Water drips from the roof and pools on the floor.  As it collects it flows to the lower parts and builds up there.  Water alongside gas have been an everlasting concern in mines, what would make us think it is different in dungeons?  A rainy season can bring flooding to an otherwise empty dungeon.  Turning it into something like this:

Flooding alongside rock hardness were the limiting factors for serious mining in the early middle ages.  Only when the issue of flooding was solved with water extraction mechanism was deep earth mining possible.  Such systems like the one shown below allowed for the pumping of water from the deep tunnels out to the surface.

A building like the one below could be a tell tale sign of a dungeon existing below its foundations.

The need for water pumps (mechanical or magical) can also be a great source for adventure.  Maybe the pump is in a remote part of a mine and the party is asked to help fix it.  A team of "engineers" are willing to go fix it, but the party is needed to flush out the monsters and clear the way through the deeper parts of the mine which are now abandoned.

Maybe the pump is of magical nature and the party can disable it to flood the dungeon and thus entrap a terrible threat about to break out.  Or the first part of the adventure is rehabilitating the pump so it clears the water out from the deeper sections of the dungeon.  This will allow the party to continue into the deeper areas of the maze.


Images

http://www.flickriver.com/places/United+Kingdom/Wales/Dinorwig/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geevor_waterwheel_stamps.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40132991@N07/4477207807/

2000 tp

So you party clears the room of some nasty rodents and among the rubble finds 2000 tp.  You say what's this?  It looks like silver, but it isn't.  It's way too soft although about as heavy.  You pass it around and one member of the party realizes what it is.  It's tin, a highly valued metal in the area.  As an element required to make bronze it is brought from distant lands to supply the smiths who mix it with copper.  Mined as Cassiterite it is then processed to make the metallic blocks we're more familiar with.

Maybe years back when the dungeon you're in was first explored tin was common in the area and this metal practically worthless, but as the mines ran dry it was necessary to bring the valued tin from distant lands.  To bring this small treasure to town could mean some good gold for your party.

So what other apparently worthless pieces of treasure could a GM put in a dungeon?

Well there's salt for starters.  A very valuable product for salting food.  Medieval fantasy settings lack something we take for granted: refrigerators.  So food needs to be salted to preserve itself.  Armies marched on their stomachs and needed lots of preserved food.  Salt can be a valuable item to find in a dungeon or as a treasure after defeating a hostile tribe of monsters.

Salt was traded for gold in the Sahara. Large caravans would take it from its mines in the middle of the desert to the sub-saharan cities and trade them there for gold.

Another metal you might want to put as treasure is quicksilver, now known as mercury.  It is a liquid metal at room temperature and can be used in many things.  One of which is amalgamation of gold, making it useful in gold extraction and processing.  Mercury is very heavy though, as can be seen by the floating coin in the image below.

Mercury has another outstanding property.  It is very toxic.  So it can be useful in spell components and for not so honest activities.  As its ore cinnabar it is very toxic to mine and process.

Pure elements like sodium can be very interesting as treasure too.  Sodium doesn't naturally exist in pure form.  It can be isolated through electrolysis or in the world of D&D through magic.  Pure sodium in a jar full of oil can be easy to carry around, but take it out and place it in water and a monster comes to life.

Sodium is one of the elements of common salt which is found diluted in water in large amounts known as oceans.  Isolated though, sodium becomes very exothermic in water (produces a lot of heat).  The reaction produces the highly caustic sodium hydroxide (trust me I accidentally took a breath of it and it burned my nose and throat real bad) and the highly flammable and explosive hydrogen.  When in water and in sufficiently large quantities sodium might melt into spheres and explode.  So you've got heat, corrosive colorless and odorless gas and liquid and a very explosive gas.  Could there possibly be something cooler than that?  What better for a party to have at hand and a GM to surprise players with!

Sodium Hydroxide burn (2d8 HP + 1d6 per round until neutralized)

Images from :
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/photogalleries/salt/photo6.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gold/hd_gold.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pound-coin-floating-in-mercury.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nametal.JPG.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cinnabarit_01.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sodium_hydroxide_burn.png

To the Bitter End

Should characters die only when they run out of hit points? Or should the character be susceptible to death at any one moment by a well crafted hit?  If your game doesn't use hit points, should they only die when they reach a predetermined amount of damage?  For example three hits.

Most games that use wounds as damage tokens still can't easily allow for a single kill wound.  So should there be a threat index?  A level of damage that is significant above which the character dies?  Is that the meaning of weapon damage or should there be another indicator?  A damage effectiveness?

Death by RPG impact is pretty final, but there's a lot of room for discussion between taking a .45 to the heart and a 7.62 to the femoral artery and bleeding to death over the course of minutes.

Hit point systems that add hit points give characters a fighting chance during combat.  It protects them from sudden death, extends their life expectancy and thus the game and enjoyment.  But they bring forth other issues.  Escalating power issues as weapons, spells and healing needs to escalate as the characters level up.

Personally I prefer systems which are closer to one hit and your dead.  That promote character survival through skill and training.  You can't die if you can't get hit.  Characters can have about the same life expectancy as hit point systems with the added adrenaline rush for the player (and the excitement that brings).  It also eliminates many of the drawbacks of having to deal with large hit point values.

Emergent game dynamics in RPGs

Emerging dynamics have caught my attention recently.  It is something that is talked about in computer games, but I see little talk about it on table top RPGs.  I think it is a great table top RPG strength   The potential for simple rules to build synergy and create new and thrilling dynamics in the game.

While synergy has can make things blow out of proportion it is something I'm looking to exploit and not kill through imposed balance.  I'm looking into not imposing balance through game rules. For example: classes or fixed progression, but rather make things fall into place by using negative feedback.  Tailor the rules so opposing forces interact and balance out.  Putting "costs" in such a way that it favors the underdog.

Table top RPGs have a great strength in the GM and player creativity.  Something no other game can equal. Sure computer RPGs have great graphics, but are undoubtedly bound.  Table top RPGs obviously are not bound in that way and I don't believe they should be bound by unnecessary balance rules either.  Sure these rules seem needed to balance the game and make it fair for all in the party, but they should not interfere with the creative potential of players.

High hit points nerf fighters

The more I think about it the more I believe that higher hit points in D&D is counter productive for the fighter class.  From my point of view it is one strong element that makes the power curve so unbalanced as compared to other character classes like the wizard.

At higher levels and unless there is an outstanding damage in one attack the fighter and wizard have the same number of hit points.  Not that they have the same overall amount, but imagine they both take 20 hit points of damage.  They would certainly have died at lower levels, but at higher levels it's pretty much the same thing within the scope of a single round.  Sure the magic user goes from 50 to 30 while the fighter goes from 90 to 70, but they both suffered 20 hit points.  Shouldn't the fighter, who is more skilled and better trained in the art of combat suffer less?  To which you'd answer, yes they do.  Proportionally the fighter does suffer less than the magic user.  A little over 20% for the fighter vs nearly 50% for the wizard. But they never risk their life until the end. There is no risk of sudden death from a hit during the first attacks.  Unless, as I mentioned earlier, the damage is outstanding.  So for practical purposes the magic user is just as good as the fighter.  The fighter will just be good a few more rounds longer than the magic user.

So what am I getting at? Read on.

The problem arises when the party level goes up and alongside it the hit points.  The more hit points the more the spells and weapons need to do damage to remain competitive at those higher levels.  Thus the wizard spells become stronger and deal more damage.  I'd like to focus on area of effect spells in particular.  Namely fireball.

As the magic user's level rises so does the damage of the spell in hit points.  Does this mean the spell gets luckier?  More effective?  Hotter and more intense?  I don't want to get all tangled up in the "what hit points are" rhetoric. What I want to point out is that overall the magic user has more power because the spell hit point damage increase is needed to overcome overall hit point increase in NPCs and monsters, which are in turn increasing due to player character hit point increase.  Characters increase so opponents increase so spell increase and so forth a positive feedback loop is created that quite surely spirals out of control.

Meanwhile the fighter also increases the damage that can be done per attack and also increases the attacks per round.  But lets face it, it doesn't matter if the fighter does 10 or 36 hit points to an orc, the orc is dead.  So that extra damage is overkill wasted on a single creature.  Meanwhile the magic user that does 10 or 36 hit points of damage is laughing himself silly as no damage is wasted.  He just wipes out the charging horde.

Now lets consider for a second what happens if the hit points don't increase with level.  Death for one would come much faster.  Unless some means of representing skill and endurance is placed into the game a second blow would end a character's life at any level.  To solve this in Era I've added a secondary value called stamina which acts as a shield around hit points.  But only so much of it can be used in any one attack to buffer damage.  Let me put forward an example of different character classes and their values for a fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard.

Cleric - hit points: 18 stamina: 18 pain threshold: 2
Fighter - hit points: 21 stamina: 30 pain threshold: 5
Wizard - hit points: 12 stamina: 15 pain threshold: 2
Rogue - hit points: 22 stamina: 16 pain threshold: 3

Note: weapon damage in the game is in the order of 2d8 for arrows and 2d10 for heavy swords.

Hit points are the life of the character.  Once they reach zero they are dead.  Stamina represents combat endurance and could be seen as similar to current D&D hit points.  Pain threshold is the amount of stamina allowed to buffer a single attack.

As you can see the fighter has the highest pain threshold, as it should be, given his battle hardened body.  He has less hit points than the rouge, but higher stamina and can endure harder blows.  A 10 hit point hit would only do 5 hit points of damage as the other 5 would be soaked by stamina (pain threshold).  Whereas the rogue would take 7 hit points after the 3 stamina soak.  The fighter can endure 4 such hits while the rogue only 3.  The cleric can endure 2, but hardly 3 and the wizard would be hard pressed to endure 1 as 14 points of damage with a 2d8 take him down regardless of stamina (14 - 2 = 12, which kills him).

We are now looking at the 90 hit point vs 50 hit point example from another angle.  One in which weapon damage weighs less depending on character class.  More so stamina and pain threshold depend on constitution values.  So a fighter type who puts higher values in those attributes would be directly benefited with higher stamina and less direct damage to hit points (higher pain threshold).

The need for ever escalating damage in spells is no longer needed.  Since pain threshold is but a fraction (usually 10%, but slightly higher with better CON) hit points don't spiral out of control.  Characters will gain more stamina level after level, but only one or two points at best can be added to the buffer ever so often.  A fireball that does 3d6 is pretty life threatening and will be so many levels later as well although the more hardened characters will have a good fighting chance against it.  As the pain threshold goes from 2 to 5 or higher the probability of enduring a blast grows, but not as fast as it does in D&D.

This breaks the positive feedback loop of D&D and eliminates the need for ever escalating spell powers and actually nerfs the wizard instead of the fighter.  More so as you can see the fighter now has a clear advantage round after round in melee combat.  Holding 5 vs 2 points of pain threshold is huge advantage.  Adding that to twice the stamina makes the fighter capable of withstanding 5 times more hits than the average wizard.

Monsters don't need to spiral their hit points out of control and thus spells don't need to be so powerful.  Keeping them within human killing range is ok.  The wizard might not be laughing so hard against a horde of orcs if his fireball now does only 2d6 or 3d6 at best for higher level spells.  A giant will have a bit more hit points, certainly a higher stamina, but a fraction of that as pain threshold.  So it could be considerably injured by a single well placed hit.

Thus my belief that high hit points, the quintessential characteristic of the fighter, is also its largest limitation and the source of imbalance with other classes.

Field repairs and the value of chainmail

So you've encountered a few ogres.  You've come out triumphant, but they've shaken your party a bit.  What now?  Pick up the treasure and keep driving deeper into the dungeon?  No thought about fixing those beaten up armors?

Keeping track of armor damage can be a pain.  I'm not really concerned about going down the "realistic" road of having some quasi-simulation of combat.  I want to explore the implications of tracking armor damage and the though of having to do field repair.

Armor damage and the eventual degradation of protection that it brings means the character can't go on forever without loss of armor class bonuses.  This will either lead to a much shorter adventure as the party needs to go back to town for repairs or it will lead to a longer game session as the party slows down to fix things.

But there are two other options as well.  The party might get smarter at fighting to actually reduce being hit and thus having the armor damaged or it can choose armor that is easier to repair.  This is the part that I really like to look into.  Generally armor damage and field repairs are seen as a hindrance to adventure.  An unnecessary realism that only slows things down.  Yet as a stimulus to change gaming habits it is of great value to the game.

Chainmail is clearly easier to repair than banded armor or full plate.  Fixing chainmail can be done by spare patches, extra links and wire.  Fixing banded or plate mail requires a lot more hardware and heat to fix.  Not something you'd find nearby, unless you're near an underground dwarven city.  Which, BTW, gives inspiration for a quick adventure to fix the armor.

Armor damage and field repairs can be used as a stimulus to promote armor types that characters would generally migrate away from once they get sufficient money to buy the "better" stuff.  Better being measured by AC bonus only.

Thoughts?

There is chainmail and then there is chainmail

I never knew there were so many chainmail weaves until I began researching chainmail to build my own.  Like this beauty called dragonscale.  Built with two ring sizes and clearly a very tight knit.

The type of chainmail I always knew about was the 4 in 1.  Called that way because each ring is crossed by 4 others as seen in the following image.

But there are tighter weaves as well.  For example the following image shows a 6 in 1 which has six rings passing through any one ring.

This clearly leads to stronger chainmail which is harder to pierce or slash through.  So it got me thinking how does this get represented in games.  Chainmail was a very common piece of armor.  Its invention attributed to the celts it became the standard armor for the Roman Empire under the name of lorica hamata.

Unlike the more commercial examples shown above the real thing (lorica hamata) was made of punched and riveted rings as shown below.  This made for a stronger chainmail.  Half the pieces were solid rings of iron and half the other were riveted shut.  So a weapon was not prone to easily separate them and bring the rings loose.

As you might imagine making the riveted part of the mail was very hard.  The following video shows how to make riveted mail with today's comforts like electricity, power tools and nails.  Just imagine doing this back in the middle ages.  Chain mail was a cherished item, very costly and quite literally the difference between life and death on the battle field.

So shouldn't all that hard work pay off on the battle field?  What about paying an extra for 6 in 1 or even 8 in 1 chain mail which adds more protection to the wearer?  And how should this be represented in the game?  As a +1?  A +2?  Where does this leave plate mail and full plate then?  What mechanical benefits does it convey?  Is armor encumbrance represented well enough in the game to be worth it?

D&D economics is to inflated to make a real difference.  After all chain mail is cheap relatively speaking.  Once a character gets going and survives the first few adventures there is little interest in worrying about chainmail anymore.  In Pathfinder chainmail gives +6 armor bonus, costs 150gp and has a -5 armor check penalty coupled with a +2 max dex bonus.  Full plate costs 1500gp has a +9 armor bonus, -1 max dex bonus and -6 armor check.  Is there niche for chainmail costing between 150 and 1500 gp that can give +7 or +8 bonus while still have the same low penalties for chainmail?  I sure think so.  Thoughts?

Images from http://www.chainmailbasket.com/ , http://www.legionxxiv.org/loricapage/ & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorica_hamata

Three stabs for every cut

Watch this video (minute 4).  Listen to the closing sentence "You can stab me three times for every cut I can give you".

So, why does your D&D character have only one attack per round regardless of weapon?  I understand that combat in D&D is an abstraction and the one roll represents a chance of a successful hit among many movements and strikes (except with arrows in which those movements and strikes represent the usage of just one arrow, but who's counting).

Anyway, even within this abstraction, shouldn't a weapon that allows three times more stabs than the opposing cuts get three times more die rolls?  After all there are three times more possibilities of getting a successful hit?

Negative Feedback

Nope it isn't about those comments we hear of THAT table top rpg.  The negative feedback I'll be talking about is that which takes a bit of the success in an RPG and feeds it back as a cost.  A slowing down force that curbs exponential growth.  Since negative feedback gets stronger the higher the success it can be said that it benefits the loser in the game.  This is particularly good in an RPG were you want to keep party balance.  The less powerful of the characters is less hampered by negative feedback than the more prominent, because negative feedback is a fraction of the success.  The more powerful the character, the higher the success, and the larger the feedback put back into the system.

The opposite of negative feedback is quite obviously positive feedback.  In positive feedback the bigger the success the stronger the feedback for  more success.  This  type of feedback benefits the winner, and while we all want to win, this is hardly what you'd want in an RPG.  Positive feedback is a destabilizing force that benefits the winner.  The more ahead a character is the further ahead he or she will get.  Positive feedback works against party balance.

A very simple and clear example of positive vs negative feedback in games can be seen in a deadly car race with armed vehicles.  Something similar to Death Race. In this type of game forward facing guns are negative feedback and backward facing guns are positive feedback.  With positive feedback (backward facing guns), if your ahead you can fire back at those behind you and strengthen your position.  On the other hand with negative feedback (forward facing guns) all lagging players can shoot the leading ones.  Note: this doesn't mean trailing players in party should shoot the leading ones, it's just an example of negative vs positive feedback.

Here are a few observations I'd like to point out about negative and positive feedback systems:

Negative Feedback Systems

• Drive output towards target value.
• Keep output within acceptable range.
• Are stable.

Positive Feedback Systems

• Drive output away from target value.
• If left unchecked will drive output to infinity.
• Are unstable.

If we take a moment to look at tabletop rpg games we can see that a great deal many have positive feedback and few have negative.  In the next article of this series I'll put up some feedback rules and look deeper into games.  Notice how some game elements build synergy and seem to take a life of their own?  That's emerging feedback and I'll touch on that on the next article as well.

Source :
http://algorithmancy.8kindsoffun.com/cgdc99.zip
http://8kindsoffun.com/
Marc LeBlanc

Weapon & Damage Modelling in Era

Era uses a damage roll and soak roll for weapon and armour respectively.  The concept of damage and soak roll is not novel and has been around for a while.  Yet the mechanisms commonly in use add the die rolls to arrive at a value for damage and a value for soak.  Era on the other hand compares the rolls die to die and in doing so exploits some of the value of the roll that is lost in adding them up.

When dice are compared one to one some nice tricks can be made and some really interesting patterns emerge.  First of all lets look at an example.  Lets imagine a sword rolls 2d8 for damage and a chain mail armour rolls 2d8 for soak.  The rolls could be 6 and 4 for the sword and 5 and 4 for the armour.  Comparing the dice from highest to lowest we get:

6 vs 5 - the sword roll beats the armour roll
4 vs 4 - the sword roll ties the armour roll

Only the succeeding are added to total damage.  These rolls are called penetrating rolls.  In this case the 6 is the only penetrating roll and 6 is the total damage done.  The sword's 4 is stopped by the armours 4.  If the second armour roll had been lower, the second damage roll would have gone through and added 4 more points for a grand total of 10.

This creates an interesting dynamic because each die can represent a certain effectiveness for the weapon to penetrate the armour.  Bigger dice mean more AP (armour piercing) punch.  For example a weapon that rolls with d8 is inherently more effective against armours rolling with d6.  There is no way the armour can roll a 7 or 8 to soak the weapon's high rolls.  Adding more dice to the roll makes it more effective as well.  If the weapon has more dice than the armour there are dice the armour simply can not stop (6d4 vs 2d6, the six attacking are no match for the two defending).  Fortunately these would be the lower valued ones.  This comes in really handy when you want to simulate engulfing attacks like fire.  A blast of fire can be said to do 6d4.  All low dice, but lots of them to represent the engulfing nature of the attack.  Armour will stop the highest rolls, but be ineffective against the lower ones.

Too put this a bit more down to earth lets see how much damage a weapon of varying kind does to a 2d8 armour.  We'll graph 1d8, 2d8, 3d8, 4d8 and an amazing 5d8 weapon against the armour.

Putting it all together, calculated and graphed we get the following graph. 

Lets look at how this behaves.  The blue line shows how a 1d8 weapon fares against a 2d8 armour.  Most of the time (72%) the blade does no damage, but when it does it tends to do so at higher than normal values.  Damage above 4 and up to 8 takes up about 25% of the values.  Think of this as a dagger which is not very effective in general, but when it is it is quite good at doing damage.  It represents the ability to find critical holes in the armour quite well.

Compare this with the curve of the result when the dice are added.  Below is a graph that shows a 2d8 armour vs a 1d8 dagger (red line).  About 90% of the time the dagger does no damage and when it does it rises very gradually.

A strange behaviour happens when the armour matches the weapon (both 2d8).  Observe the red 2d8 line on the first graph.  It starts to rise quickly, then there's a small spike and then the slope diminishes.  So a quick rise to mid point value and then a slower slope toward the higher values.  Compare that to the blue 2d8 line above when dice are added.  The slope when the dice are added is very gradual and 55% of the time it causes no damage at all.

Finally when the weapon has more dice than the armour as is the case of the yellow, green and purple lines on the first graphs, there is always a minimum amount of damage done and the slope becomes more gradual.

Now lets compare the 2d8 armour against weapons with different dice (better amrour piercing properties).  On the following graph we see the armour going against d8 weapons and d10 weapons.  When facing d10 weapons the armour can't roll higher than 8 and the weapon is clearly in advantage.  Take a look at how the blue 1d10 curve behaves compared to the 1d8 curve.  It is considerably more effective against the armour.  The red 2d10 curve (on the graph below) is very close to the cyan 3d8 curve.  This is a good representation of technological advancements in weapon design.  The 2d10 could be seen as maybe lighter than the 3d8 (less dice), but it is almost as effective given its penetrating power (given the large die, d10 vs d8).  It becomes pretty easy for a game designer or game master to represent technological advantages this way.

One final graph I want to show is the effect of modifiers to the roll.  A typical example of this is magic weapons in the game.  In those cases the weapons get a plus that is added to each die rolled.  The following graph shows the d8 weapon (our dagger) against the same 2d8 armour.  Notice how the red curve of a +1 turns the simple dagger into something similar to a 1d10.  Additional modifiers create an ever increasing slope and lower odds for zero or low value damages.  Compare these two graphs with the first one at the top and compare the effects of a bonus vs adding extra dice to the roll.

As you can see by moving away from adding the dice to comparing them one on one a new way of representing the weapon's and armour's effectiveness is created.  One that gives a totally different and much more effective (greater damage) than the classic adding of the values.

A drawback is that comparing one on one may be a little more work.  But one that could be worth paying for the added benefit of the behaviour shown on the graphs and the ease in which the technological edge of a weapon or armour can be represented.

Era Aesthetics - An Intro

Over the next few days I will be putting out a set of articles addressing aesthetics in the design of Era.  Based on Marc LeBlanc's list of 8 kinds of fun (algorithmancy.8kindsoffun.com/GDC2004/).

There are some aesthetics I'm focusing more than others. I will review them all and see if they are addressed in the design of the game and if not so why, or to what degree.

Expression is one of the key aesthetics and also the one I will touch first.  Table top rpgs have a potential like no other game.  They are not bound by the path set in a program or the graphical content of a computer game.  They are bound only  by the imagination of the GM and players.  So set them free!!!!!

I want to put just the right amount of rules to inspire and empower the players to build great settings and stories.  I strongly believe expression will help fantasy and narrative to gain more strength.  Discovery is also benefited as greater expression on the GM's part creates more things to be discovered.

But enough for now.  Until next time when I begin with expression.

Mage in Armor

Ok so I'm letting magic users cast spells in full plate.  There I said it.  Now fire at will!

Actually to be honest what I'm doing is not explicitly prohibiting magic users from casting in full plate, I'm just making it cost prohibitive and quite unproductive.  See with the ideas coming out of the fatigue rules it becomes very hard for a magic user to be a good magic user and cast in full plate.

Face it, high attributes are a scarce resource.  So it would be uncommon to have high intelligence, high strength and high endurance so your character can be both proficient in spell use and able to carry the burden of spell casting AND wearing full plate.

Intelligence gives you a rating of how well you can channel magical power, a term called flux (and the attribute is actually illustration, not Int).  The higher the attribute the higher the flux and the more powerful the spell caster is.  Strength allows you to carry more.  With lower strength the armor feels heavier.  On top of this endurance dictates how much fast paced activity you can do per round and as you might have guessed spell casting is one of those highly demanding activities.  So having a medium to low endurance and performing one of the most demanding activities which is spell casting, and do so inside a heavy piece of armor could be too much for the wizard.

Sure the wizard will get a spell or two out, but will be so fatigued afterwards it won't be cost effective.  If the party gets rushed the wizard might be too fatigued to effectively run away.  Overall it isn't worth the trouble to wear full plate.


Other articles to read :
Character Fatigue - A preamble
Character Fatigue - Movement & Encumbrance
Character Fatigue - Round to round fatigue

Static vs Dynamic Encumbrance

In working out the fatigue and encumbrance rules for Era I stumbled upon a limitation of the encumbrance mechanism.  At one point the encumbrance of the equipment is left behind and the effect of a sword in round to round combat is represented as a plus or minus or a cap on dexterity bonuses.  I was looking for something with less tables and less looking up.  A value I can just add up to use the same mechanism I was already using for encumbrance.

So I came up with dynamic encumbrance and tactical builds.  Dynamic encumbrance represents the load an item puts on the body when it is set in motion.  A tactical build is the sum of all combat items set in motion during an attack.  It might be simply a dagger or a sword, or armor, sword and shield.  Each item has a dynamic encumbrance and all these add up the tactical build's dynamic encumbrance.  This encumbrance can be added to the static encumbrance that is already defining base character encumbrance and through it determine the load on the character.

By using this I spare myself the trouble of having a set of extra tables to calculate bonuses and penalties based on weapon speed, dexterity and strength.  Fitting it all into a single table that's much easier to maintain.

Other articles to read :
Character Fatigue - A preamble
Character Fatigue - Movement & Encumbrance
Character Fatigue - Round to round fatigue

High Level Play

Yesterday Mike Mearls put out an article addressing high level play.  This is something that has concerned me since the early stages of designing Era.  In the article Mike addresses a key element which is "power" and thus the power growth that leads to it.  He puts a sentence that is crucial in showing that they're going in the right direction "To start with, we're moving away from a steady, linear progression of bonuses."  Not only does high level play depend on this, so does every other aspect of D&D play.

Historically D&D has been caught in what I like to call the battle of the curves.  Fighters move along a linear curve and magic users along an exponential one.  All types of ideas have been put forward to try to "curve the curves" and make the straight line a curve or iron out the curved exponential one into a nice straight line.  Seeing the futility of this exercise I decided to start from scratch an place a self regulating power measurement called XP Tax.  Simply put XP Tax represents the cost of current skill and power upkeep.  The more power you have the more you have to pay for upkeep.  On the other hand the more power you have the easier it is to obtain that upkeep.  So from the character's point of view it doesn't feel like an impossible hill to climb.  The character sees it as a constant challenge rather than one that grows exponentially (A bit of tongue in cheek, those doing the math will notice hardship as XP Tax reaches 100%, but in daily gaming the statement holds).

The usage of XP Tax gives power a different curve to grow on and allows the player to retrain.  Since XP Tax is a percent of your XP income it can never exceed 100%.  When you reach 100% your character can no longer grow, it costs so much to upkeep that there is nothing left for the character to acquire new skills and powers with.  This forces the player to play in a way that isn't always "more more more".  The character can forfeit some skills by not paying their upkeep cost and make room for others.  The player can keep playing by modifying the character to the new arising needs of the high level campaign.  By leaving behind the skills that got the character to these levels and obtaining new skills that are more fitting for these higher levels the player can continue play, but do so without a character that is overly powerful and prone to unbalance the game.

The following graph shows four types of growth; exponential and linear in blue and red respectively.  They are the classic magic user vs fighter curves.  When a cost for the current skills are added the curves begin to flatten out or become asymptotic ("a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as they tend to infinity").  While the logarithmic (log) curve isn't truly asymptotic it is so for practical game purposes (you're not going to reach level 1000).  Yet when you put a percentage cost to XP then it truly becomes asymptotic and behaves like the green line.  The character will never be able to reach beyond a certain level (100 % XP cost).  That effectively caps game power, but added to retraining rules it simply promotes the game in a different direction.

The Unofficial Matrix RPG

Yesterday I played a great session of Matrix RPG.  Got to say I loved it.  I played a Zion resistance soldier called "Breaker"  my outstanding Matrix feat was a sonic blast I can use as a weapon.  Noelle played "Rico-Shay" the hot shot pilot of the Isis our hovercraft.  Brian played "Sun Bear" the captain of the Isis and our Matrix programming expert.  Together we went out to recover three blue pills or plugged in people as they call them. One John, a so called Kayla and Silva a dropped out burnt student. 


I had my doubts about John, or John GQ as I'd end up calling him.  Too elegant this kid and I doubted he could endure the hardship of being unplugged.  I feared another Cipher   But my fears were never to be realized.  As we jumped into the Matrix a strange figure got to him first and dissolved his body with a flesh eating virus and stole his eyes.  Even though we got there a few minutes past without him taking the red pill there was no way to track his real body and recover it and with it some hope of saving him.


In the commotion created by Rico-Shay jumping from building to building and failing we managed to review the crime scene.  Yes she actually fell and drew the cops and emergency team to her.  At the crime scene I recovered a swab of John GQ's flesh for analysis and his computer which had a webcam running.


Forensics done in the loading program on the Isis allowed us to review the laptop and get a glimpse of the perpetrator.  A strange figure known as the Sandman.  Even stranger was what we found on John GQ's body.  It was a fast acting virus that causes necrosis.  We decompiled it (remember the virus is actually a program), but were unable to find any leads from the way it was built or who built it.


Our luck changed a bit when we went after Kayla.  Stubborn as she was she did not heed our warning to meet us in a nearby cemetery.  In a small church located inside the cemetery she was cough by the Sandman's minions who were cramming her dead body into a cross.  We got there a minute too late to save her, but managed to deal with these creatures.  They appeared to be hypnotized or under some type of control.  Bullets did little harm so I tried my sonic blast against their heads effectively blasting away their brains and clearing the scene.  Rico-Shay tried her pyrokinetic powers and lit some up along with a cross. Although we were too late to save Kayla we found a lead.  A smuggler who we could meet and get some information from.   We contacted him and set up a meeting the next day at a local bar.


To close off the day we quickly moved to recover our third blue pill, Mr. Silva, who we successfully recovered from a bar.  We did the whole blue pill red pill drill quite quickly.  Actually being a junkie himself I'm not sure he actually realized the choice he was making, he kinda snatched the red pill out of our hands to swallow it.  Nonetheless he enjoyed the trip that's for sure.  He sleeps in the Isis for now, his body recovering from never having been used before.


The following day we geared up in the loading program and went down to meet this guy, the smuggler.  We walked in not knowing who to meet so we asked for a drink.  Myself I asked for a gin and tonic.  Fortunately the bartender was unable to put the tonic on the gin before some fellows stood up and threatened us.  I slowly turned around with my gin in hand, Sun Bear drew out his AK and Rico-Shay turned to face them as well.  As Sun Bear opened fire I blew a banshee scream against the glass sending it against these guys as fast flying shrapnel.  Rico-Shay used her power to lite up the alcohol which turned the whole mix of bullets, glass and flaming alcohol into a killer fireball.  Only two bodyguards and the smuggler were left standing after this.


At that point we started "negotiating" with him.  We obtained as much information as we could about the Sandmand and his intentions, who built the virus and how much more of it was there.  The session ended there with us deliberating if we should send this smuggler back to the source or let him be and become useful at some later time.


On the game itself I have to say I really liked the mechanics.  It's got 5 attributes, a simple mechanism for skills and feats and I was up and playing without even reading the manual.  The checks are done with d10 die pools against your attributes and your Cyberzen which is how tuned into the Matrix your character is and how easy it is for him or her to bend the Matrix.


Tre' Grisby did a fine job at picking the maps and scenarios for the adventure.  Some great work for the buildings and the cemetery.  It really helped with the setting and getting the action moving fast.


Overall I found the game great to play, quick to get into the action and exactly what I'd expect from a Matrix RPG.  In a computer world were bullet-time is the norm your mechanics have to be exceedingly fast and that's what Tre'Grisby gets right with this game.


Looking forward to Thursday's session.


Don't forget to look into more Indie+ events

To strike or not to strike, that is the question

This past week has got me absorbed in the fatigue rules and how to determine actions per round based on character endurance.  This has brought me to the point of initiative.  More precisely, to question if is it a good thing to win initiative.  In the highly abstracted OD&D combat mechanism the answer is yes.  In other combat mechanism it's not always yes.

Claytonian JP put up an interesting link yesterday which explains the mechanics pretty well.  If the combat round and in particular the combat roll represents the average of a set of swings, moves and evasions.  Then yes to win initiative is to place the first killer blow.  But in OD&D characters don't wear out during combat.  A character is just as fresh defending from one opponent in a round as from three.  Even if that means dealing with two more attacks.

Working from a less abstracted fatigue mechanism in which there is no single roll representing a set of actions, but rather a roll by roll definition of attacks and parries, taking the initiative isn't always such a good thing.  With fatigue rules you have to pay to parry and pay to dodge.  If you're facing many opponents you may run out of breath before dodging them all.  So holding your attack may be a good strategy.  That is if you survive.

Using fatigue rules you can defeat a big monster because monsters wear out too.  A ravaging giant may blitz you and attack and attack and attack.  If your character is good he keeps his strength and attacks.  Counter striking when fatigue kicks in and the giant is tired and beginning to endure penalties for it.  Slower dodges and parries on the giant's part make your attacks more effective.  These type of strategies are not really possible in OD&D in part due to the highly abstracted combat and in part due to the fact that combatants don't fatigue!!

As D&D rules progressed combat abstraction seemed to fade.  Feats, movements, attacks of opportunity, etc, make it seem like there is one main attack and many others options.  If you move half the round and then attack, isn't that attack taking place in the second half and thus in a more compact period than the "abstracted model" of OD&D.  Think about it, you could attack anything on the move during that round, but it's not really allowed in 1st and 2nd.  Third allows for feats to do this, but it's an add on contrary to the original OD&D abstraction.  So the abstraction seems to break up the more elaborate and decorated the combat mechanism becomes.

Moving away from an un-abstracted mechanism has its drawback.  Namely : complexity.  You have to keep tabs on a lot of things.  Unless you can simplify the system greatly, and even then it is nowhere near as simple as OD&D.  Players nonetheless demand these details, these actions that spice up the narrative.  The character moves, swings, falls back, rolls and jumps up again.  Using a non abstracted mechanic allows greater access to these details as they're not abstracted to a single die roll.  More so it seems that putting all that detail back onto the combat mechanics, like a coating of detail rules, is more complex than starting from an un-abstracted mechanism to begin with.  On top of this it doesn't wear the combatants out, which leads to min-maxing and optimization, as I'll address in a future post.

Working from an un-abstracted mechanism breaks down combat into individual actions.  You attack, parry and dodge individually.  If such a mechanism has a cost per action instead of a fixed set of actions per round then it becomes even more interesting.  You can wage on your opponents actions.  Hold back on attacks.  Use lighter weapons and armor, ones less "expensive" to use. It also gives more directions in which to improve your character.  Speed and agility really kick in and more importantly the choice of initiative.  You are committed to defend.  It's not like you'll let your opponent take a clean swing at your neck.  So holding back, parrying, measuring your opponent is a good strategy now.  Making an all out attack that leaves you out of breath to endure the counter attack can become suicidal.  As more and more attacks come in you raise your shield once, twice, thrice, and your arm begins to burn.  It becomes harder, and as your rolls become worse, as you run out of breath you realize it wasn't such a good thing to strike this round and to do so with such vehemence.

Character empowered magic items and accesories

A few months back when I started work on the base RPG rules I decided that magic would be mana based and so magic users obviously had mana.  They had stamina too, to endure some combat damage, but not as much as a fighter.  Clerics on the other hand would have willpower points.  These allowed them to cast divine magic, unlike the wizards magic which is arcane.  So all characters would have stamina, you know to fight.  Some character types would have mana and others would have willpower and some would have neither mana nor willpower.

A few iterations later I had put mana and willpower on all character classes.  Albeit with greater or lesser strength depending on their class.  So even a fighter would have mana and willpower.  Yup, the essence of arcane and divine power in a class that is not meant to be casting spells of any type.  What made me do such a thing?  To practically multiclass from the get go during character generation.

The reasoning was simple.  If a magic user needs stamina and hit points to endure combat.  Shouldn't a fighter need mana to endure magic item use?  The +2 ghoul reaper sword is magical in itself.  But it is powered by the character wielding it.  If your fighter doesn't have enough mana to power it up, tough luck.  To use the sword the character has to level up his mana to reach the required level.  Which is in itself the start of another great adventure, don't you think?

I believe this helps keep the game in control.  When your character empowers magic items instead of having the magic items empower your character there can't be an power escalating effect that breaks the game.  A game mechanics meltdown so to speak.  It is the character who sets the caps on what can and can't be done.

H'lars scouting - Era rule sampler

This is a quick intro adventure for the Era RPG I'm making.  Shows some of the basic mechanics coming into play.  I'm not going too deep into detailing what's going on mechanics wise.  Skipping some details on mana usage and combat mechanics.  More interested in showing the overall mechanism.  Specially the combat, fatigue and damage rules.  Hope you enjoy it.

You’re H’lar a human ranger of the northern mountains of Raakad. Mounted on a sure footed mule you’ve journeyed up river to the inner valleys to survey ogre activity in the area. The dwarfs have reported attacks on the merchant caravans crossing the passes and connecting the northern trade cities with the southern trade routes.

Finding more frequent orc and ogrish tracks you have left your mule behind and advanced on foot instead. You’re now hiding on a forested outcropping looking at some orc-hounds securing a narrow pass to a small valley beyond where the orge camp is seen.

To hide H’lar rolls against his Hide Skill. It is against his Enlightment attribute (12) and done at Master level (+3). You need to roll 15 or under with 2d10. You roll a 10. The difference between success and actual roll is 5 (15-10 = 5). This is exceeding good success and gives you -2(hard) to enemy checks when searching for you. Any check that succeeds by more than three gains a bonus.

Your backpack was left behind near a river you crossed 200 meters back. You had advanced with sword and bow and your trusted shield tied to your back. Your hiding skills are excellent, so far the orc-hounds have not detected you and wind is still in your favor. You scrutinize the ogre activity beyond trying to measure camp force and layout. You take note of all you can while the sun is strong above the camp.

As the sun begins to cast stronger shadows down the pass you notice the wind begin to change. Suddenly the org-hounds pick up on your scent and realize there’s someone in your general direction. They begin to advance toward you. Three coming your way and one staying down below in the pass.

The orc-hounds have been rolling every hour to detect H’lar. They have to roll 14 or less, but the check is done vs a very difficult difficulty level. The GM dictates It is initially -2 given H’lars distance to the target. On top of that H’lar did a superb job at hiding himself. They’ve been needing to roll less than 10 to succeed. After various unsuccessful rolls the wind changes and the difficulty due to distance disappears, leaving only H’lar’s -2 benefit (roll 12 or less, 14 – 2). The GM rolls a 12 this time and the orc-hounds pick up on the track and begin to close in on H’lar.

You crawl back gently and begin to fall back hoping to reach the creek and use it to lose the scent on you. A few steps back you pick up your shield and begin to jog quickly uphill. You try to put more distance between you and the orc-hounds, but it seems a futile exercise. They’re quick and strong on the track and quickly catching up. Realizing you wont be able to sprint the last 100 meters to the creek and lose them in time you turn, lay your shield on the ground, drive three arrows in the ground and prepare your bow.

Looking at the movement table you see H’lar is loaded as his equipment is more than 15kg (chainmail, sword, bow and shield). He’s joggin uphill making about 20m/round. He covers about 100m in one minute (50 seconds = 5 rounds). His movement table indicates he’s in the cardio cardiovascular level, yet the GM considers the uphill climb to add another level so he’s actually sweating it in the hard cardiovascular level. Seeing he can’t keep up this much longer he turns to fight. He casts Phantom Mist on the trail to try to confuse the incoming orc-hounds. Casting takes one round and consumes one action point. This takes him to max cardiovascular level for that round. He was already at hard due to running and that meant all his attacks were at -1, now they’re at -2!. He sets his gear down and takes a break as he sets the arrows in the ground. The mist slows down the orc-hounds a bit and K’lar has two rounds to recover. Bringing his cardiovascular level down to cardio. At this point he has no penalties.

As the first two run into range you put two arrows out. One to each.

As the orc-hounds break the mist you pump two shots into them. The attack starts with H’lar in cardio level. The first arrow goes off without penalties. You roll a 13 with 2d10 and the orc-hounds roll a 18 defensive roll. They lack shields or equipment to parry so they have a -5 roll penalty. They’re at short range so you have no distance modifiers and they’re coming straight at you so no movement modifiers apply. Their 18 becomes a 13, same as your roll and you hit the first orc-hound.


The orc-hound rolls 3d6 soak roll for his armor and you roll 2d8 for your arrow. The rolls are 4, 4, 1 for him and 8, 8 for you ( an excellent strike ). Both 8’s defeat the 4’s and all 16 points go through to the orc-hound. The orc has only 4 points of pain threshold making him suffer a terrible 12 hit points of damage (75% of total). He tries a save vs trauma (roll against Endurance) and fails. He falls to the ground unable to fight.


You set off the second arrow which is now done at hard cardiovascular level. Your last action upped your fatigue level to hard cardiovascular. According to your activity table you get only 2 action points for cardio and an attack takes 2 of them (1 for parries). Hard cardiovascular level makes all rolls -1 (attack, parry, dodge and damage). You roll a 9 with 2d10 and the orc rolls 10 defensive. Your 9 is an 8 given your cardiovascular penalty. The orc’s is -5 given ranged weapon. Your attack still hits, but barely. You roll damage for 6 and 2 which become 5 and 1 after the -1. The orc rolls 5, 2 and 1. None of your rolls beat the orc’s soak rolls, no damage is done and you realize you’re beginning to tire.

The second orc-hound keeps coming. Too close to shoot an arrow you cast a magic bolt at him.

You’re at hard cardiovascular level and the last arrow didn’t do anything to the incoming orc. Desperate you drop the bow and cast needle spells on him. Sharp darts shoot out from your fingertips. One, two and three go out. The first stressing your system to max cardiovascular, the second taking you to overload 1, and the third to overload 2. It’s a risk, you make an endurance check vs 14, roll a 5 with 2d10 and make it. The darts go out. You make a 19 hit roll vs 12 defense, a 17 vs 15 defense and a 15 vs 15 defense. All your shots hit as all defensive rolls are at -5 ranged weapon. Your shots were done at -2, -3 and -4 respectively as your penalty increases with each cardiovascular hike brought by the stress of casting magic. You got lucky on the last roll, it was an 11 (15-4), but his was a 10 (15 – 5)

You roll 2d6 for damage and the orc rolls 3d6 for soak. After rolling damage and soak rolls and resolving damage the orc takes 4, 4 and 6 points of damage on each attack respectively. The first four do only superficial damage and are easily absorbed by stamina and the 4 points of pain threshold. Only the last one exceeds the threshold and causes a 2 hp wound which is too minimal to stop the orc-hound.

Not visibly hurt the orc-hound keeps advancing and you see the other one coming into range now. You could try to make a desperate attempt at bringing him down with magic bolts, but you need to catch your breath. You prepare your sword and shield as the orc-hound closes the last few meters. A new round begins.

The orc moves up slowly clearly waiting for his buddy to come out of the mist. That time buys you a little bit of rest and you get down to max level by the time he reaches H’lar. The orc has the initiative (weapon length) and attacks with his spear rolling a 6 and you easily parry it with your shield even when rolling a 4 (4 + 3, shield bonus = 7). He attacks again with a 12 and you parry with a 11 + 3 = 14. Holding on the attacks and only parrying helps you recover your breath after this round and you’re down to cardio cardiovascular level now.

The next time he moves up you’re ready for a counter strike. He wins initiative out of sheer weapon length. He attacks with a 15 and you parry with an 18+3 = 21. A successful parry leaves the weapon out of the way and you move in. You swing with an 11 and he dodges with a 12 ( he can’t parry as his weapon was just used to attack and he lacks shield ). You separate and begin again. He attacks with a 5 and you parry with a 9 + 3 = 12. You move in and attack with the sword. Rolling a 16 vs a 15 for his dodge you hit. You roll 8, 4 for damage and he rolls 4, 4, 2 for soak. The 8 points go through, ripping his pain threshold of 4 and causing a terrible wound. He’s hurt, but not down. Your high roll of 18 allows you to keep initiative and swing again. You’ll be pushing your body in this round building too much fatigue and entering hard cardiovascular. A 15 vs a 6 converts to another hit even with your -1 due to fatigue. You roll 6, 5 which are 5, 4 after the -1. The orc rolls 5, 4, 1 and all his soak rolls stop your damage. It was a good try, but failed to deliver any real damage. You still have the initiative as you enter the next round.

You begin the next round in hard cardiovascular level with a -1. As long as your attacks don’t exceed your hard level action points this round you’re remain at hard and not ascend. If you use less attacks and just parry you will begin to recover your breath. For example falling back to just parries will lower your fatigue. Yet you choose to press for now given your initiative. You roll a 16 -1 = 15 vs a 13 for dodge and hit. You roll 7 & 5 for damage and he rolls 5, 2, and 1 for soak. Even with your fatigue penalty that’s still 6 and 4. All damage goes through the armor’s soak capacity and delivers 10 points to the orc. That’s 4 to stamina and 6 to hit points. Another terrible wound for the orc. The GM rolls a save vs endurance an fails it with a 16. The orc is stunned. You roll a 10 – 1 = 9 attack roll, and he rolls a 13 – 5 (stunned) = 8 defense roll. You hit again. Rolling 6 & 2, 5 and 1 after penalties you fail to damage him through his armor soak roll of 6, 2, and 1. Still stunned you roll again. An 18 – 1 = 17 vs a 11 – 5 = 6 defense roll. Another hit. The orc seems to be recovering so this better be a good damage roll. You roll 8 & 5, with penalties 7 & 4. They still beat the orc’s 5, 3 & 2 roll delivering a terrible 13 points of damage and a killing wound for 9 hit points.

The orc-hound drops to the ground terribly wounded and dying, but your problems are hardly over. The third one is closing in quickly. You get ready to dispatch the last two arrows set in the ground at him.

Character Fatigue - Round to round fatigue

This is the third and last article of this series covering character fatigue.  In the first article I covered cardio exercise and how heart beat rate can be used as a simple reference to measure character fatigue.  In the second article I presented a functional equipment encumbrance rule that allows for easy measurement of character fatigue.  Reducing it simply to knowing what character load and speed is desired.  Character load is done sporadically, when the character gears up and it is something that doesn't need to be done round by round in combat.  Speed is simply decided by the player.  Does the character walk, jog, run or sprint to its target?  Those two simple pieces of information alone help define how much fatigue the character is building up.

Now we'll see how that comes into play in combat.  Combat is a type of fast paced short encounter in which the characters' lives are placed at risk.  It is important that they outmaneuver their opponents and finish them off quickly to come out triumphant.  The goal of the fatigue based combat mechanism is not so much to create a realistic simulation, but rather to give a countering force to over optimization and support players who look into different weapon and armor layouts for their characters.  Instead of limiting a character to a set of attacks or actions per round the character is limited by the cardiovascular system and can do so much before passing out.  The player is then allowed more flexibility in the actions the character can perform.  Fall back and cover rather than attack, blitz attack with four fast swings, rush a target, etc.  To make this functional and fun the mechanism has to be quick and simple.  By extending the movement fatigue rules to combat a simple table can be built for the character which allows this mechanism to work with little crunch overhead.

The key to a simple usage is the character load table shown below.

	Rest	Fitness	Cardio	Hardcore	Vmax	Overload1	Overload2	Overload3
Endurance Points	0	1/2 END	END	2xEND	3xEND	4xEND	5xEND	6xEND
Fatigue	0	1	2	4	8	16	32	64
Recovery	END/2	END/4	1	0	0	0	0	0
Roll Penalty	0	0	0	-1	-2	-3	-4	-5

This table has a top row indicating the load level the character's cardiovascular system is taking.  The following is the explanation for each one:

• Rest : normal activity and warm up, up to 60% of max heart beat
• Fitness : fat burning activity, up to 70% max heart beat
• Cardio : aerobic exercise, up to 80% max heart beat
• Hardcore : anaerobic exercise, up to 90% max heart beat
• Vmax : Known as VO2 Max it's the maximum heart beat rate for a human ((220 - age) heart beats per minute)
• Overload 1, 2 & 3 : burst ranges of highly demanding physical activity

The second row measures the endurance points being paid by the character.  The more endurance points being paid each round the higher the load and thus the heart rate.  This row depends on the character's endurance ability as so does the recovery row below.

As an example the following table has values for a character with 12 (average) endurance

	Rest	Fitness	Cardio	Hardcore	Vmax	Overload1	Overload2	Overload3
Endurance Points	0	6	12	24	36	48	60	72
Fatigue	0	1	2	4	8	16	32	64
Recovery	6	3	1	0	0	0	0	0
Roll Penalty	0	0	0	-1	-2	-3	-4	-5

In this example if a character does an activity demanding 8 endurance points the character is in the "Fitness" range (above 6 endurance points) and is creating one fatigue point per round and recovering 3.  The character will not wear out in the short term.  If the character were consuming 18 endurance points he or she would be in the cardio range, consuming 2 points and restoring 1.  Every round the character wears out one fatigue point that can only be recovered with rest.  Fatigue points are deducted from the fatigue store which equals 5 x endurance.  In this case the character has 60 points.  At one point per round the character can keep this up for 60 rounds or 600 seconds (5 minutes) without a problem.

Things become complicated when weapons and armor come into play.  Swinging a sword, raising a shield to parry, moving around, closing in on the opponent and falling back all demand endurance points.  Most combat will occur in the hardcore range and in demanding situation rise into the Vmax and overload ranges.  In intense combat a character in the hardcore range will use 4 fatigue points per round.  In this example that means 12 continuous rounds, 120 seconds (2 minutes).  A player that selects to heavy a weapon might find his or her character quickly rising into the Vmax range.  Combat endurance in that range is a mere 60 seconds for an average endurance character.  Not only does the body endure less, it begins to suffer penalties in attacks.  The physical strain causes a penalty roll in attacks, parries and dodges.  The more the character wants to attack the higher the penalty due to muscle fatigue.  In this way the mechanism greatly simplifies the usual penalties in armor and weapons that are used against dexterity and strength bonus.  Players only need to calculate the encumbrance value of armor and that factors itself into the fatigue and endurance mechanism.

The following example shows how to setup a character with various builds on the character sheet to represent the different tactics the player wants to use.

A player has a choice of armor and weapons for the character.  The armor as well as all other equipment will influence encumbrance load.  This sets the amount of load to consider when moving and sets the base fatigue for combat.  All combat is considered to be done while jogging.  This represents the second to second movements the character does.   This means 1/2 the character's endurance score is added as cost to each combat round (if unloaded, loaded or encumbered characters pay more).  On top of this the character adds attack, parry and dodge fatigue.  These values are calculated from the armor and weapons used in a combat layout.  A character with chain mail and a sword will have a different fatigue than leather and sword.

The player must thus be thoughtful when selecting the character's weapons and armor.  Factor in character strength, endurance and skills.  Too heavy a weapon  and the character will wear out to fast and will only be able to do one or two attacks per round.  Too small a weapon and the damage will be insignificant against heavily armored opponents.  Since attacks, parries and dodges count towards round fatigue the player must be careful to reserve enough fatigue to allow the character protection from incoming blows.

Let's take for example the following endurance costs per weapon, armor and shield:

Chain mail armor 5,  sword 7 = 12 attack & dodge cost / 6 parry cost
Leather armor 1,  sword 7 = 8 attack & dodge / 4 parry cost
Chain mail armor 5, sword 7, shield  3 = 15 attack & dodge / 8 parry cost

Attacking in leather armor costs half of what it does attacking with chain mail and shield.  The character can move faster too as he is less encumbered, but at a greater risk to his skin.  So what can the player do to mix this into a combat tactical setup?

We know the character starts with a 6 point endurance cost just for being in combat.  And this is considering him unloaded (dropped backpack and all and shield weighs little).  How close can the setup get to 24 (hardcore) without actually reaching it.  There are 17 points to play with.  Leather and sword setup only add 8 per attack and 4 for parry.  So a good setup would be one attack and two parries.  That's good too keep off the enemy while boarding a ship.  You're light and fast.

Chain mail, sword and shield with only parries is a great way to hold off the enemy while recovering.  Gets two parries for 16 points and doesn't enter the red zone.  The character can slowly recover fatigue points while holding off attacks quite successfully with the shield.

Now lets see what we can do if we enter the red zone of hardcore.  We can go up to 36 points, but not reach it.  So we have 35 points to play with.  We can put in two attacks and a parry for 30 (12 + 12 + 6) points using chain mail and sword.  They're all at -1 due to higher fatigue, but we are getting in more attacks per round.  Or three attacks and a parry with leather and sword.

But I digress, by now I'm about to lose many of you to the math if I haven't done so already.  What's all this number crunching in the middle of a round.  Wasn't this meant to be easier not more complex?  Well it is simpler.  If you take a look all values are multiples of the base endurance costs.  So it is easy to tabulate this.

Take for example the following setups (the numbers indicate endurance point costs) :

Chain mail, shield & lance = 7, 3, 5 = 15 attack & dodge / 8 parry

Chain mail, shield & sword = 7, 3, 7 = 17 attack & dodge / 9 parry

Chain mail & sword = 7, 7 = 14 attack & dodge / 7 parry

Leather, sword = 3, 7 = 10 attack & dodge / 5 parry

I'll simply define the cost to parry as one action point.  So in the first setup it takes 8 endurance points to get one action point.  The lighter leather armor and sword takes only 5 endurance point per action point.  Now as a simple rule I'll state that you need two action points to attack or dodge and one action point to parry.  Putting this all together in a table we get the following:

Max Endurance Cost	12	24	36	48	60	72	84
Fatigue	1	2	4	8	16	32	64
Penalties	0	0	-1	-2	-3	-4	-5
Tact Build	Fitness	Cardio	Hardcore	Vmax	Overload 1	Overload 2	Overload 3
Chain mail, shield & lance	1	2	4	5	7	8	10
Chain mail, shield & sword	1	2	3	5	6	7	9
Leather & sword	1	3	7	9	11	14	16
Chain mail & sword	1	3	5	6	8	10	11

This table show the max endurance cost per cardio activity range for a character with 12 endurance.  Any activity in excess of 12 points leaves the fitness range to enter the cardio range.  In the same way any activity beyond 24 leaves cardio to enter hardcore.  I simply add action point costs until I exceed the max value and move on to the next cardio range.  I repeat this for all the weapon setups I want my character to use and I arrive at the table as shown.

During game play I just read off the action points available per weapon setup.  I know the character can perform one action requiring one action point at the fitness range.   That is perform only one parry.  To attack at least two action points are required.  So one attack per round keeps the character in cardio.  If in turn the character is attacked twice two parries are required.  That adds two more action points to the over all expenditure taking the character into the Vmax range ( 4 action points, 2 for attack and 2  for both  parries).  At this point the character begins to feel the pinch of physical overload.  The two parries are now done at -2.  The player is free to call more actions in the turn if the GM deems them physically possible, but fatigue will keep building up.

On the other hand with leather and sword the character can make  two sword swings and parry three times while remaining in hardcore range.  Just barely breaking a sweat. He could attack once and parry without penalty as given by the three action points in cardio and then attack again and parry twice at -1.

Now movement fits in seamlessly.  Recalling from the past article movement counts pretty much as one endurance score cost.  That cost is exactly what separates the columns here.  So running just means shifting one column to the right.  In the past example with the leather and sword setup would allow one attack and one parry within the cardio range.  If the character runs the same activity is taken as performed one to the right, that means as hardcore.  All attacks are thus at -1 while running (plus any movement and combat specific modifiers).  If the character attacks again those attacks that were hardcore while  standing still are considered as Vmax at -2 now.  If the character sprints all activities are taken as two (2) columns to the left in regards to penalties and fatigue build up.

To sum it up.  Adding fatigue allows the game to include a force that counters over optimization in weapon and armor use.  Players have more flexibility to configure their characters and get real benefits from their well though out layout.  It now makes sense to change from fighting with a spear to a sword.  Dropping the shield or taking on lighter armor.  There is something that finally adds a benefit to smart weapon layout.  Something that counters the "biggest and baddest" weapon philosophy of min-maxing.  It also fits seamlessly with the movement rules so it is easy to explain whats going on as the battle progresses.  It's easier to include attack as you move maneuvers that add excitement and better narrative to the story.

Finally I'd like to point out that endurance can be changed to thermal heat sink units or any other futuristic game and port this idea to mecha and use it in a sci-fi setting as well.

Hope you like the idea and mechanics.  Feedback as always is greatly appreciated.