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The four F system


FireoftheMonkey

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So thinking about gaming and play by post games I like Both sides of the adventure's stats because they give you a nice set up of ways to over come challenges. But it has an issue in the the villain chooses which stats are applicable to the challenge isntead of letting the player creatively use their status or deal with the threats in a way they want. So I'm gonna start with the stats for it because I feel any rp system should be interesting for character creation.

Force - This is brute force, or more apptly named the direct approach. Fighting an enemy, overpowering a wrestler, blasting them with your most direct damage spell. All of these are force effect. A character with a high force stat would be very direct, they handle their problems in the most direct approach.

Finesse - This is being flexible, this is the sneaky apprach. Sneaking past an enemy, hitting them where it hurts most, focused strikes, a spell that deals with foes from a safe distance. It is direct in the sense that it is not working around the problem, but in general it's solving the problem in a common way that keeps you more safe. Choosing your spots as opposed to rushing in sword and dick swinging wildly.

Fabricate - Funky word for it but it's really out thinking your opponent. Essentially getting past the trial or task in a way that utilizes your mind instead of direct prowess. Spells like invisibility or CC would fit here, as well as spells that solve the problem in a different way. Like creating a box to lock away the minotaur as oposed to out manuvering him or just out fighting him.

Fuck / Fornicate - Depending upon how fancy you want your verbage to be for the stat. It's using your sexual prowess or general lewdness to your advantage. Distractions by poping your tits out of your top mid fight to distract the enemy. There are a bunch of ways to utilize this particular stat but really it is just a measure of your characters level of perversion.

Finally we come to the players HP, this is a stat that is completely optional. If you want the losing point mechanically for them, not needed but useful none the less.

Either way all characters start with five points of will power and can boost that as they gain levels, or with starting stat points. Every time a chracter fails a challenge they lose a will power. No base rules for losing more then one per challenge but still if you wanna go with it, honestly I think it's good because the average dungeon is going to be probably about eight to ten challenges then the boss fight, if your doing really well you'll make it through with WP to spare, if not well you lose.

How do we do the rolling is simple, everything is handled by a d6 to give a more consistent rolling base. But the base DC for any challenge is 5, and this goes up by one for every level the player has. so a level 3 character would have a base DC of 8 per challenge which could change per the DM's discretion.

How the dice works is simple if the characters force is zero and the DC is 5 then the roll of a 5 or a 6 on the dice passes. Anything else causes one point of damage. Every point in a stat puts a minus on the DC, so if she has two points of force and the DC is 5. It goes like this 5-2=3 So she needs to roll a three or better. This also means that force get have a total of something like ten and if your stat is only 3 then no matter where the dice lands you still fail. Due to it just being out of your characters reach by that method.

So characters are put together like so, as a level zero character you have five points to distribute over the five stats and add to will power. Every level you get five more points, sounds simple enough honestly. I may in the future add feats or perks for completing quests and getting gear which would be bonuses to stats or allow things like a single reroll on a force check giving you two chances to hit a number that gives the character a win.

So on to the villain, I like the both sides villain vrs a heroine idea. But base line the villain is really running the adventure for the heroine to fight through. A villian as ten stages to work with before a boss fight, every boss fight won should ALWAYS give the player a level. Over the course of the dungeon every encounter totaled together means the dungeon should have a zero based modifier.

Getting a bit ahead of myself lets talk about modifiers. If all challenges were at five or the base DC it would be boring as shit, so every challenge the DM can move the rating of each stat's solution to the problem up or down. But the total needs to equal either zero, negative one, or one. I'll give an example as this is getting confusing to talk about.

Standard challenge kill goblins, this one is going to be shown as all three of these states for the example.

Force - base 5+2 making the total for that stat 7,
Finesse is unchanged,
Fabricate is at 5-4 coming to 1
Fornicate is at 5+2 so again 7.
We see there that the bonuses are +2+2-4+0=0 This is a level zero challenge for the dungeon. The basic for running, for an easier encounter it looks like this.

Force - 5+1
Finesse - 5
Fabricate - 5-4
Fornicate - 5+2
here we have +1+0-4+2=-1

This is an easy challenge for the heroine to pass.

A hard one is exactly what you would expect
Force - 5+2
Finesse - 5
Fabricate 5-4
Fornicate - 5+3
Giving us +2+0-4+3=1

This is a hard encounter.

The reasons for all these changes are completely in the DM's hands and should be used to push the heroine but not outright counter her. That being said you have no way to know which stat she will pick so even with this if she chooses wisely she can breeze through without an issue.

Beyond that for descriptions, setting, character stuff it should all be really open and in the hands of the DM and player. I have not had a chance to playtest this yet but hopefully I can soon, any changes and the perks I have intention of adding later will come then. Give me any feedback you like again this is in kinda alpha stages so hopefully I got everything across I wanted to get across.
 

freeko

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Re: The four F system

Well, I would not mind throwing my hat in to playtest this a bit. I see a few issues with how you classify your encounters, otherwise I think this looks pretty solid.

Force - 5+1
Finesse - 5
Fabricate - 5-4
Fornicate - 5+2
This would only be "easy" if the character were to pick Fabricate, its more likely that a character specialized in some method other than Fabricate would choose a different method to solve the issue at hand.

Personally speaking an average roll would be either a 3 or 4, so things should be based off of that instead of a 5. In my opinion an average level of skill and an average difficulty level of the encounter would require an average roll to pass. I know its a rather average description, but the baseline is something that I believe needs to be established properly otherwise the system crumbles.

I would propose that the character starts at a zero in every element aside from the optional HP. When you build the character you get 3 positive points and one negative point to apply to the character, each "level" would give you points, but without really playing I do not know how much the addition of a single point would affect a d6 roll, so I reserve levelling up for later when more information is gathered.

The character could have a few different ways to build by including the negative point in creation. It is certainly optional, but it is my personal preference to give my character a "weakness". It is really more about RP than actual stats, so possibly just ranking the stats from best to worst might work as well instead of relying on a numeric represenation.

My sample baseline encounter would look more like this for a level 0 character.

Force:4
Finesse:3(-1)
Fabricate:5(+1)
Fuck:4

Now the character having a point in one of those skills would reduce the number needed. However the particular task would require more effort to Fabricate something, the skilled player would be able to mitigate the 5 down to something more manageable since their skill would overcome the obstacle instead of "luck". A character that is good with Finesse would be able to almost trivialize the encounter since the optimal method of solving the encounter and their own skill match as it were.

Random question section:
Will there be a autofail on a 1 and autosuccess with a 6?

Does the d6 constrain the character too much into having to build evenly into every aspect instead of being able to truly specialize in one aspect?

Would a slightly larger die help or improve things at all, say a d10 instead of a d6 for example? The more range of randomness, I think the better things are as just "stuff" happens from time to time.

Will the obstacle (for lack of a better way to frame it) be visible toward what is effective or ineffective once an attempt is made using a certain aspect? Say I attempt Force and fail, would I see the modifier to the basic skill roll after failing so that the character could re-evaluate their strategy to overcome the obstacle?
 
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FireoftheMonkey

FireoftheMonkey

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Re: The four F system

Baseline there is no automatic failure due to a roll. That being said there is automatic success and failure, if your stat and the modifiers for the challenge int hat way make the total 1 or less you can't fail because on a tie the player wins. And if the dc is 7 or higher it does not matter what you roll you fail no matter what.

And I am not sure on upping the dice, I like the idea but also worry about it. White wolf did use the a d10 based system but on that one 8-10 were success and the more skill you had at something the more D10's you rolled. Honestly it's something to tease out in playtesting, and honestly yes, ideally if the character has like one or two points in something unless the stat check is modifier they should succeed half the time.

Character point wise I'm tempted to go with ten to start which would give the standard array of stats looking like this. You have a 3 for your best, 2 for your fall back, 1 for your moderately good, and a 0 for your horrible stat. Then more additional WP. But it can also mean you can just go 2 in all stats and some extra WP and just try to play by feeling the DM and playing to the enemies weaknesses.
 

freeko

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Re: The four F system

Well, if you want to make a trial dungeon I would not have a problem being the trial guinea pig to see what works. I figure making two characters would make sense. One would be balanced while the other imbalanced with the stats distribution.

My feeling is that with 10 stat points, I would go with 2 in everything including the HP/willpower for the balanced character and something a little extreme with maybe 5-4-1-0 and no extra HP with the second character.
 
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