Post-Initial Combat Test

A Splendid Saturday to You All!

I just got done doing some initial combat and mechanics testing with my partner. While the thoughts are still fresh-ish in my mind, I wanted to commit them down into writing. We'll start off with my oh-so-professional looking test images.

There isn't a lot to look at, but since we were just testing combat and abilities, we opted not to include the dungeon map. 

Combat Thoughts

First, rolling a d10 to see if you hit felt great. Each party involved in combat felt like they had a solid chance to hit, having only a 10% chance to miss, and made combat fast paced and engaging.

Second, the Status Mechanic was fantastic! It felt like each one added some nice spice to the combat without grinding anything to a halt. Using colored dice to indicate the level of the effect went over well and made it clear what effect was on the creature or player. 

Third, the initial numbers I had used for the PC stats were way too high. They did too much damage and had too much health. To remedy this, we dropped the ATT bonuses and just used the STR #, which we had reduced from 3s and 2s to 1s and 0s. We also cut the initial health amounts by half, which gave more severity to each choice the players made. 

Fourth, Multi-target abilites felt fine. We agreed that keeping the damage a bit lower than a focused ability while costing more was balanced.

Fifth, using defence to reduce damage rather being "harder" to hit felt good. It made my armor feel like it did it's job of protecting my characters and monsters without magically making them harder to hit. Since the damage is mostly determined by 4-8 sided dice, limiting the defence bonuses to 5 or under seems like the best course of action (at least at the time of this testing).

Sixth, players dying, while part of a game, feels bad. Using an increasingly difficult death check after dropping to 0 or lower HP helped remedy this as well as provides a space for new items and abilities. While some are okay with their characters dying, we have to respect that that isn't the case for everyone.

Final initial thoughts: rebalance the numbers and possibly drop the whole ATT bonus on the cards. 

The AP system, recovery, and items.

One thing that was heavily discussed after the combat testing was how much or how does AP recover. We talked for about an hour debating the ways in which to go about it and settled on testing out a system where there is no recovery until a long rest, but increasing the total amount of AP available. This brings it closer to the spell slot systems of other games. While I don't have any specific numbers at this moment, I will be doing more research and balancing as the game progresses.

This was also brought about by having healing abilities and making sure players don't, or rather can't, endlessly spam CURE until their HP is full before charging into another deadly encounter. 

Limiting the amount of items a player can carry with them also adds weight to their decisions. While I am personally not a fan of having a "weight" system, having limited pack space might be the way to go. Initial limits are set between 5-8 items while not including trail rations or water (though these may be added at the GM's discretion).

Final thoughts

We had a blast with the combat system of Illevar. It was fast paced, choices felt important, and it was fun. From a Player side, it was great to just instantly jump in, get dirty, and try new things. From the GM side, it was easy to set up and run, abilities were clear, and it didn't feel like the players were slowed down on their adventure.

That's all for today's post. You can always tune in again on Tuesdays and Fridays. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter.