Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Breaking shields [LotFP, LL, etc.]

Shields might be handy AC boosters. But as armors are almost unbreakable what about shields? They might break.

When character or a creature with a shield is hit with natural 20 result, there's a change that the shield breaks.

4 in 6 change for small shields and bucklers
3 in 6 change for medium and wooden shields
2 in 6 change for large and enforced shields
1 in 6 change for tower and metal shields

If there are no different types of shields in game use fifty-fifty (3-in-6) or what is most logical.

Also for flavor if an enemy attack is strong enough (lots of damage with a single blow or several attacks in a row for example) the shield might break. Use shield's change to break or x-in-6 change what suits best.

Sometimes natural 20 isn't necessarily needed at all. If a dragon stomps the character with a shield rolling well but not well enough to hit or rolls ridiculously bad damage, maybe it was the shield what saved character this time breaking into splinters in process!

In my opinion shields can be much more flavor and even character's trademark than just a static AC bonus.

Friday, May 10, 2013

[MF] So, my player wants to level up her character...

For some reason every game we play goes into story and character involved in it. Basically the loot, dungeons and combat aren't in a focus when we play. It's fun and fits our game style but there's a flaw. In games like Mutant Future you don't get experience points so your character stays the same even though she experiences a lot of things during her adventures.

I've tried to fix this with free experience. So in addition to monster exp and treasure exp I give other experience points when I feel that character has learned something from her experiences in the game world. But that doesn't always work well and the character still stays forever a newb (unless I give tons of experience points).

So me and my player came up with a conclusion.

We run adventure modules with the same character sometimes. Basically when we aren't up to focusing the campaign her character is on but we still want to play something more lighthearted. That's when we take a campaign module and put the character there ignoring her current storyline. And when the adventure module is over we can either start new one or continue the campaign where ever it last time we played ended.

But I ruled, that the character cannot carry over the loot from these modules to the main game, only the experience points. We initially thought that those experience points replace all the experience points she is lacking from our game style.

Then I thought that she could have a separate inventory for these "alternative" games. So what she gains in those alternative games she can either cash in for experience points or keep to use in other modules for an advance.

Basically she has now 2-in-1 character. Same character sheet for both the campaign we play and for the adventure modules I run but separate inventories for both.

That didn't make sense campaign-wise at all, but hey, it was meant to be all for experience points for her character (in Mutant Future experience point requirements for next level are brutally high after few levels).

Then it hit me! One campaign session I suddenly decided to include the last module session as a flashback style dream. Her character is an android, so what adventure modules we play as separate games have possibly happened in her "previous life". She is re-programmed after all.

So now with this one character we play story oriented campaign and dungeon oriented separate modules from the campaign, but those both are related to same character's campaign. This has worked really well. Just have to make sure that all the equipment don't get mixed up and it goes super well.

I've thought maybe I include this style to other traditional styled games (exp is loot and kill). But what if character isn't a reprogrammed android? Maybe it's previous lives then?