Shields and Defensive playstyles

Shields and defensive play are a big part of any good RPG. Their execution however, is critical. When we allow a defensive player too much defense, he becomes unkillable and the game is forfeit from the start. When we allow too little defense, he becomes non-viable and the abilities are scoffed at and ignored. There is a third, and even worse, situation in which the defensive player has too much defense and becomes unkillable, but has too little offense as well: creating a stalemate. Then finally, the worst scenario, is one in which the defensive style character is unkillable, and his defensive abilities are so strong that he absolutely murders the entire field, surpassing even damage-dealing characters. All four scenarios are examples of poor game design, development, and testing. So, this time around we take a look at how we thread that delicate needle of defensive characters, and balance them with others.

One trademark of the standard defensive character is the shield. In Theory, shields have three stats: Damage, Damage Reduction, and Speed penalty. Shields should do a low amount of damage when used to attack, they should reduce damage when blocking, and are cumbersome, thus reducing the speed of the user. But, from a balance perspective this can make shields look REALLY bad. Reducing your speed (the stat you need to defend multiple incoming attacks with), to defend against incoming attacks seems counterproductive.  Actually though, its a balancing factor. The shield based build is centered around only two abilities really, Block and Shield bash. Neither of these abilities has an experience cost and the cheap meta-martial unlocks make them easily upgradable.  This leads the Shield user down three paths: One is to invest experience in the speed stat and plug the hole, gaining enough speed actions to successfully defend against enough attacks to make the shield an extremely strong defensive tool. But this takes away from offensive power, experience spent on speed just to plug a hole made by your shield is not experience spent on offensive abilities. So, our second choice is to spend that experience on offensive abilities instead and have very few actions in combat. We can do both, offensive and defensive skills, but not very many. However, both are really effective. The third path. is to get a really expensive shield: an energy shield. Energy shields are statted to be big upgrades for characters to look forward to, never to start with. They represent the midpoint between these two paths, with no speed penalty, and very little damage, but heavy defensive ability. Allowing the player to invest in offensive abilities instead of plug a speed-hole in their experience. But doesn't that create the fourth-kind of defense character? the kind that cannot be killed and wrecks the field? While an argument could be made, and testing could show that, I anticipate that it wont. Because there is a resource we haven't talked about thus far: Handedness. A shield actively takes up a hand, reducing the wielder to one handed weapons, the highest of which is 6 damage. Which I might add is a pistol and therefore does not benefit from strength. So what about a defensive fighter that doesn't use a shield at all? What if a defensive fighter was dual-wielding wouldn't THAT create the fourth-kind of fighter?

The parry fighter gains big defensive bonuses from wielding more weapons. He can attack with more weapons and deal more damage, has access to more offensive ability, and at first look seems unstoppable. A parry fighter is an extremely strong build if we look at it in those terms, but they have a critically overlooked weakness, and they rely on it to turn the tables on you. A parry fighter is either on the offensive or on the defensive: Never both. He relies on being faster than you (and probably is), so that he has enough actions to parry anything you could throw at him (which he can't actually do until the lower mid-levels). While he is doing this, he isn't spending actions to deal damage. He is spending actions to stop you from dealing damage to him, and prolong the fight. He is disarming you to make you waste actions running to your weapon to pick it up, so he can shift the balance from defensive to offensive. And the whole time he's doing that, there is one thing he's not doing: Damage. A parry fighter will deal lots and lots and lots of little damage, but never very much at a time, and never very often. Making any character with a small-to-moderate amount of healing stop the parry fighter in his tracks. Not to mention magic, without a Thrumming weapon a parry fighter is helpless against magic. And that's assuming that even if they do have a thrumming weapon that magic-users don't have a way around it (they do). So if the parry fighter is so weak to magic, why not pick up the ability to counter-spell? with arcane magic you can counter any spell. This is, again, using experience to plug the hole in a strategy. While it does allow you to throw dice at the problem, the modifiers for a parry fighter on a counter-spell roll are going to be massively out of his favor. But lets say he uses his experience to plug that hole too, he gets enough skill to counter-spell with the best arcane mage. At this point, he has had to sacrifice so much offensive ability that he is entirely defensive (albeit a beast of a defensive character). So then, this creates the first-kind of defensive fighter.... right? Not necessarily, While he has spent so much experience plugging holes, other characters are getting faster, and their abilities are hitting harder. Even a slight misstep for the parry-counter-fighter will mean death.

Defensive characters are a special and unique balance of abilities, numbers, situations, hands, feet, heads, shoulders, knees, and toes. So check out shields on page 63, and the new offensive and defensive abilities to go with them.

Up and coming is still the Lore overhaul and more arena content.

Optimus Character Sheet

In between working on other areas of the project, I decided that it was time for a new character sheet. The old one just didn't represent the way the game works anymore and frankly it looked awful. I named the file "Character sheet I don't Hate", but honestly I don't see how.  I mean seriously, look at this thing... 

Garbage!

...What in the fucking fuck was I thinking? "Yeah lets half-ass an attempt at reflections on the stat box and just glue a piece of notebook paper into the goddamn middle!" and "Hope you don't mind arbitrary lines fucking everywhere!" It's like I had an idea and got Michael J Fox to do the actual work on it. I am honestly disappointed and a little embarrassed that I ever posted this.

That's just mean to Michael J. Fox!

With that out of the way, I put a bit more thought into it and decided that a modular design would lend well to both aesthetics, functionality, and the ability to mix-and-match based on feedback.
So what do I mean by "Modular design" in relation to a character sheet?
I mean that I build and design it in blocks, the stat block is all one image, the ability block is another, the skills are another, and so on. Then, these blocks are all merged together into one larger image to make a complete and customizable character sheet. What I came up with was this:

New Hotness!

As far as character sheets go, I do intend to make more of them that are specialized to character builds (mages, fighters, telepaths, etc), as well as others that simply address a certain gripe or complaint. In my experience, there is no one character sheet that can satisfy everyone 100% of the time. Some want simplicity, others want detail, others want a balance of both, others want none. Personally, most character sheets just annoy me and I end up resorting to notebook paper. Let me know what you think about the new character sheet, and what you'd like to see in future ones.

New Arena Maps and more!

In this update we're looking at 3 new maps added to Arena, and two new weapon enchantments added to character creation.

Arena
The arena book now has three new maps in chapter three: Breakpoint, Simplex, and Reactor. The idea for all three was to just keep it simple and not add many rules past the basic ones.

All three are team objective-based maps. Breakpoint and Simplex are capture point maps while Reactor is Capture the Flag.
Breakpoint is a fairly basic control point map with a single point in the middle of a walled-in area.
Simplex takes the idea of breakpoint and condenses it, then adds a twist. There are two control points in this map with one tuned to each team. Gain points by being on your point or steal points by being on an enemy point.
Reactor is intended to the basis on which capture the flag maps will be built. Long run-routes, and extremely defensible positions can ensure a long game.
All three maps are symmetrical in an attempt to maintain balance, but none have been actually tested.


Character Creation
Character creation saw the addition of two new weapon enchants: Vengeant and Indestructible.
Vengeant allows you a free attack every time you take damage. the attack is made with your full attack bonus and does full damage, and the action is specifically tuned so that it cannot be denied to you, making this an extremely powerful enchant if you can stay in melee range.

Indestructible is exactly what it sounds like... with a caveat. the weapon can never be destroyed by any means, but it can never be modified again either, making it the last enchant you put on a weapon before calling it complete.

What's Coming
Currently, a friend and I are building a lore overhaul that's about as extensive as the combat overhaul was. these changes will have large and far-reaching effects that will change the Theory universe in a lot of really big ways... oddly enough by making it smaller. you'll just have to check back and see

An Early Look at Theory: Arena

I have added the Theory Arena document to the Theory Docs. The work is far from finished, but I felt that I posted too much about it and not actually delivered anything. For the most part, the first two chapters (general/game modes, and premade characters) are complete. I expect to expand on terminology as questions and comments come in. The chapter that will see the most expansion will be Maps. Currently there is only one: Crossfire. but there are plenty more in the works. while we're here, lets talk about crossfire

The basic premise is simple: Be the last man left alive. But then i throw you a curve ball: Everyone re-spawns  So, how exactly are you to be the last man left alive in a map where everyone re-spawns? By using the literal curve-ball. Each player is assigned a colored section of the map, every 3 rounds the ball will explode. If the ball explodes in the same section 3 times (not necessarily consecutively), the section falls out into a pit and the player will no longer re-spawn. While I could go into a meta-game discussion about how to win or take the upper hand in this one, I could also tell you that there MIGHT JUST BE HINTS IN THE META-GAME ANALYSIS OFFERED IN THE BOOK. But what are the chances of that actually happening?

Oh, and i almost forgot..

Another Iamevo wallpaper...

 Enjoy!

More new abilities

I've simplified metamorphosis to reflect both what is actually happening and the speed at which it is happening. Before, you would take "non actions" to turn your health into mana and cast a spell. This way you can passively cast spells from your health pool, which can also add an element of surprise to combat when your opponent expects that your out of mana.

I've also added a new school of telekinesis: Mindcrush. I had always admired the ability to think "I really don't want that guy to have a brain anymore" really hard. And then making it happen and watching them fall to the ground bleeding from the nose.

The damage on this one is low, but it ignores damage reduction, making it extremely powerful against heavily defensive enemies. It also fills another role I've always greatly admired: The ability to take your opponents mind and force it to do your will.

Insta-kills are nice too if you can pull them off.

Defensive martial characters got a new ability too: Sanctuary

Defending yourself against an incoming foe is nice when you know you can. But when you're outmatched you need a contingency plan, and that plan is sanctuary.

Magic characters got a group of new abilities called spelltricks, one for each school. The intention with these was that they could be use offensively or defensively on your own spells and on those of others. I could see future expansions on the mage archetypes having TONS of these.

In the up-and-coming side of the project, I am still working to add more lore as well as a new marskman archetype based around flamethrowers, grenades, and wreckless abandon for ones own safety and well-being.

The Biggest Theory Update Ever

Normally when updating part of theory, I like to use screenshots of the section to give a preview. If I did that here, I would have to post the entirety of character creation as screenshots in a blog post that would likely exceed 160 pages. I have chipped away at this update every day for 3 weeks. So, what specifically have I been working on?

Introducing the new Theory Combat system
To introduce the new, we must first understand the old, and the logic and decision making behind both.
The basics of the old system went something like this: do a lot of math to determine whether or not you can take an action before you can even decide if it's a good idea or not.
Specifically the differences between the old system and the new can be broken down into a few questions

Can I take that action right now?
Old system: subtract AP, Subtract Mana, do I have enough? good, Add attack/Defense modifiers and resolve action
New System: Do i have an action left? good, Add attack/Defense modifiers and resolve action

Should I take that action right now?
Old system: Try to guess each opponent's build and how to counter it while tracking how much AP each opponent has spent in an attempt to guess their maximum and catch them over-extending while managing your own AP and keeping yourself from over-extending or getting tricked into over-extending.
New System: You have an offensive and defensive action, and a number of speed actions equal to your speed mod. so does everyone else.

Do I have the resources to take that action right now?
Old system: Subtract AP in multiples of 5 from 100+ and remember that number constantly. Cant remember? take 10 minutes rebuilding your entire turn and try not to get it confused with previous turns.
New System: You have an offensive and defensive action, and a number of speed actions equal to your speed mod. so does everyone else.

How many resources will I have left afterward?
Old system: Subtract AP from a total that may vary from round to round and instead of dealing with multiples of 1, deal with multiples of 5 for some reason...
New System: You have an offensive and defensive action, and a number of speed actions equal to your speed mod. so does everyone else.

In case you can't already tell, Action points are gone. There are no actions that require Action points, restore action points, or damage action points. The replacement is simply: Actions. Everyone gets an offensive action, a defensive action, and a number of speed actions equal to their speed modifier.

Well thats neat, but what does that mean for combat and abilities? 
Offensive actions and defensive actions still behave the same way, and are still used to interrupt eachother (but not themselves).  nothing has really changed here except that you have one less resource to manage.

So what about this speed action thing?
A speed action can be used in place of an offensive or defensive action.

So what's the downside to a speed action? 
Many abilities and weapons are stronger when used with your offensive or defensive action, instead of with a speed action.

But what about Chronomage that class was built around abusing AP?? 
Chronomages now abuse speed actions.

What about movement? since you only move 5ft on a move, doesnt this mean you only get to move *maybe* 15ft a round?
Your movement speed is now inherited from your race. when declaring a move, you get to move that amount of distance.

What about Meta-magic skills? does EACH one now take a speed action?
No, meta-magic skills are now only limited by your spell matrix and available mana. This means that all your spells, regardless of the complexity, require the same amount of time to cast.
IMBA IMBA IMBA!!!!
When you looked at the math from before, most mages had enough AP left over (that they were saving to defend themselves with) that these small, incremental increases really had no effect on decision-making in combat.

Overall, this update has simplified the game and it's abilities, without losing any of the tactical decision making, or skill investment. For the most part, everything even works the same way but has been simplified and streamlined. check it out.

New Metas, New Stat Progression, New wallpaper, and a shift of focus

This time around, we have 3 new metas: Supercharged, Overcharged, and Nova. I didn'd feel there was enough progression as far as metas go (and still don't). There should be small meta's for starting characters with a clear progression into more powerful versions. This is something I intend to improve in small increments while I work on other things.

The progression starts with charged, its a simple meta: 5ap, 5mana, 1 more damage. While it is arguable that this meta isnt worth the investment, that extra point works to overcome damage reduction, and could be the difference between a kill and a wounded foe. The next step is Supercharged:

As you progress, this meta levels with you, and is never useless. But when its time to bring out the big guns, look to Overcharged:

Overcharged is all about being a big, scary spell that does big scary numbers (and costs big scary numbers). while the explanation for it is a little lengthy, the simplified math works out something like this. N^2 where N= the number of times you overcharged the spell.

And then somewhere, somehow, I overlooked a mage's staple:

Unleashing large torrents of energy that can shear the flesh from an enemies bones and blow him to hell-- How is that not what mages are all about?

The new stat progression uses set numbers instead of variables. I really felt that there was just too much variation in the old way of paying experience to roll dice and not know exactly what your'e getting. Plus, the natural progression in the dice themselves (d4 to d6 to d8 etc) could yield numbers FAR too high. In addition, this made it possible to reverse engineer a character and figure out how much experience someone spent and where.
Basically, a stat purchase will give one of thee values:

• A +2 represents something a race is sub-average at
• A +3 represents something a race is average at
• A +4 represents something a race excels at 

Experience costs are still 50 with a x3 progression, and all modifiers are still calculated the same way.

I made another "I am the evolution" Wallpaper with a more grungy feel this time. And again, thanks to everyone out there for reading, contributing, subscribing, thinking, feeling, or talking about Theory.

I encountered yet another shift of focus again today. For some people this is gradual, their interests change and they move on. For me its like a brick wall in two ways: the old fashoned "it hit me like a brick wall" and that my interests seem as stable as the wall itself. In a way I am not sure i can explain, my interests didnt change at all but my focus did. I suddenly feel driven to make massive amounts of historical detail about the races from their own perspective, I think each might end up with its own chapter in the Lore book but I haven't decided yet.
The Arena book will still happen, and still soon(TM), but I am currently chewing on massive amounts of potential historical lore.

More Metas!

I read somewhere that you shouldn't comment on the amount of time between your posts, especially when it's lengthy because it makes your audience notice more, and that posting good content frequently is key to pleasing your audience.

I have but one retort: My last post was goddamn May 7th, WELL over a month ago. And I'm pretty sure that constitutes some cardinal sin of blogging.
In that time, I have been building the Arena book, and making it more useful to even non-pvp players. That said, its nowhere near ready to be posted anywhere. So, in the mean time I've been collecting a lot of insights on character creation, specifically the available meta-abilities (Martial and magical). Which has led me to come up with a rather large quantity of new ones.

New Meta-Magic Abilities

Blade is the only shape meta without a damage bonus. Or is it? Line your opponents up properly and get ready to cast the highest damage spell in the game.

Pillar is meant to be a big, stompy type of spell. costs a lot of AP and a lot of mana, but its hurts and it hurts BAD.

Think of Strike like a "multi-blast" choose exactly the squares you want and don't get your friends hurt in the process. Particularly useful for the "careful" mage.

For control players, there's nothing quite like the feeling of having your opponent trapped in a box with no way out and the ability to deny his every move. Control players: meet Wreath.

For aggro players, there's nothing quite like the feeling of going all-in and wrecking someone with complete disregard for life and limb. Aggro players: meet Hungering.

New Meta-Martial Abilities
I feel that martial got a bit left behind initially, and always has been really. Originally I didn't want martial players to get meta-martial unlocks at level 1. But, I've seen the folly of my ways and buffed the shit out of martial characters.

A meta-martial with a 50xp progression makes it extremely easy to get those unlocks early on, and since it only heals you once a turn I dont feel its partiularly broken.

Another meta-martial with a 50xp progression and a once-a-turn effect. Mobility will be fun for wild strikers, chargers, and really any melee. I could see this becoming a key maneuver in all melee players arsenal.

On the flip-side of Respite is tenacity. Works the same way as Respite does, but for defensive maneuvers. This meta-martial is key for heavily defensive players as it decreases the gap between damage intake and mitigation. But, it does so in an active way that doesn't lock out a lot of weapons and abilities from being able to damage you.

Are you one of those players that likes having the ability to smirk across the table and say "nope" to your enemies alpha strike? Well I am. And if I ever make a defensive character I'll be picking this up early and often. The ability to normalize and regulate damage intake is a key factor in playing an effective defensive character.

Annihilator exists for two reasons: To add another cheap offensive meta for metamartial unlocks. And, to give melee more aggro viability. I think more meta-martials like this one will show up, likely more expensive and with slightly different effects.

Counter-shot

Marksman style characters didnt really have a defensive maneuver that was tailored specifically for them... until now. I imagine countershot in a few different ways: 

A dual wielding gunslinger rapidly firing off shots and making the eight combatants around him seem worthless. A watchful eye, stopping the one blow that would get through on a friend. 

A full defensive tactical badass, keeping the heat off of his friends and himself while resistance crumbles.

The maneuver eventually lets you counter ranged shots. and with the thrumming enchant: Spells.

In the "whats to come" section of Theory development, I have been planning an entirely new combat style that may revise many of the magic abilities and leave a significant weakness for magic and melee characters alike to exploit. In addition, I expect to get "Creatures of our Galaxy" back under way with some interesting ideas I've not seen anywhere else.

Mage college faction abilities completely revised!

One of the things I was most disappointed with when looking through Theory a couple weeks ago was the mage colleges. They were basically all the same thing: three levels of membership that gave bonuses to mana and maybe an interesting ability or two. So, I took two weeks and revised each and every one of them. Lets take a look.

The Helioseminary

Everyone's favorite light college just got a lot more lethal with 9 unique abilities including the ability to blind enemies, and heal in new ways. Speaking of..

The Pyrari Academy

The fire college got 9 new abilities that should make the fire mage play like something of a Rage-Mage. What do I mean? well how about:

Couple spellrage with abilities that reward you for going all-in on the offensive, and a Pyrari mage becomes quite the aggro strategy.

The Catricarch 

The terra college got 18 new abilities. Many of these abilities are focused around increasing the effectiveness of chain lightning, using lightning charges, unarmed attacks, and being a mother-fucking viking. While this college didn't get any ultimate-style abilities like many of the others did, it has a wide variety of ability sets that work well with many different character archetypes. 

The Alternate Interim

The chrono college got 10 new abilities including 2 ultimates. Of all the revisions, this is the most likely one to get nerfed.

 

The High Artisans 

The arcane college  got 11 new abilities including the ability to dispel or overcharge magic, and some interesting new ways to counter and manipulate magic.

You can find all this new material in the Factions chapter of Character Creation starting on page 65. I would be interested to hear thoughts and comments on the new and existing ability sets.

Combat and Lore update!

In my ongoing attempt to clarify and expand Theory, I have updated the combat document and the Lore document. Nothing about the game changed mechanically, much of what was added was simply for clarification.
This time around, the player is introduced to the two types of combat maneuvers and how and when to use them. Then, we move on to explain how to use all different types of interrupts (with pictures!). If you are reading this blog post currently (of course you are) I would heavily recommend that you read the new combat document. It is likely that there was a previous misunderstanding, or that I may have jaded the content of the document in some way. In either case, I would like to know.

While perusing around some of the old Theory revisions, I found an interesting section that I decided to omit for some reason. "The Mechanics of Magic" now appears on page 7 of the lore document. This section describes how magic physically functions in the multiverse and where each type of magic is drawn from. While this doesn't give GMs or players anything to take and run with directly, I feel that it adds some flavor, and that tampering with mechanics like these can make for great high-level campaigns.

Another Scattered Update!

This time around I've added 2 shape metas, a brand new offensive maneuver and a new faction with its own set of faction abilities.

Final Strike

This offensive maneuver can only be used on your turn, and it immediately ends your turn when you do. It's metamartial progression makes it devastatingly powerful for one-hit-one-kill and defensive style players. It appears on page 25 of Character creation.

Globe and Rain (shape metas)

Globe is intended to have a dual purpose: Fighting upclose martial fighters and overcoming high damage reduction. Martial fighters will trigger the globe and damage themselves when attempting to brawl you or hit with an unarmed strike. The meta also increases the damage of your next spell by its damage roll, making no opponent safe.

Rain is a staple spell shape, impossible to go without. "Rain of fire", "Rain of lightning", "Rain of shadow (or Shadowrain)" fill that vital niche of a powerful mage calling massive amounts of magic from the sky. In Theory, rain also allows a mage free spell attacks during later rounds once they are higher level.

The Agency

The agency is a secretive organization interested in obtaining information. Its founder and leader, Myralith Gandin, has seen the collapse and fall of a million universes to the dark rot which takes the form or Ural in ours. They seek the secret to ending the rot and reversing its effects, and they will assassinate, replace, and infiltrate any faction to do it. Their faction abilities appear on page 68 of character creation, and a detailed breakdown of the faction appears on page 14 of the lore document.

While we're on the subject of factions, Two of the mage colleges clearly stand out above the others: the Agency and the Heretic Cabal. The other mage factions have pretty bland abilities presented in a formulated way that really makes them no different from each other. This will change. I fully intend to revise, re-revise, and re-re-re-revise the old mage colleges until they have the same amount (or more) depth as The Agency and the Heretic Cabal. While their lore functions and mechanics will not likely change, their faction abilities most definitely will.

You Are The Evolution

Before today I never really knew what I wanted to use as a slogan for theory. As most inspiration does, it just came to me:

 "I am the evolution" 

This doesn't refer to me, the creator of theory. It refers to you, the player. By playing,  reading, sharing thoughts and developing we bring about the evolution of this system and, who knows, maybe some powerful person will be influenced by what they read and will incorporate it into a system that will actually be famous some day. By exchanging our ideas and our thoughts we move drive forward the progress necessary to bring about change. And through change, we drive forward the exchange of ideas. This engine is the evolution that is driven by the motivation of the players, the GMs, the creators and the contributors of Theory.