Hi Everyone,
First time posting on the Gauntlet! Before shamelessly requesting your help I wanted to thank you all for being a great source of both ideas and entertainment. I follow the podcasts and the actual plays and I’ve found the insight invaluable.
So I have this hack in mind… (shock XD)
My overall goal is to come up with a hack that gives the “feeling” of a JRPG, in the spirit of Final Fantasy, while at the same time avoiding as much as possible the actual videogame mechanics.
However, one aspect of the genre that I would like to retain is the feeling that “level matters”. The idea here is that heroes are not just brains+muscles. There is something else, call it magic, the power of love, determination… or we can call it level.
How can I make level matter?
First of all I’m taking the damageable stats system and the basic moves from Fellowship. PCs have 5 stats not too different from the ones in Masks while Monsters can instead have any number of traits that basically work like the Overlord Stats.
I define Combat Superiority as the difference between PC level and monster level.
When attempting the Take Down move against a monster you would roll 2d6 and add the minimum value between the current Combat Superiority and the applicable stat. As you see, if the level distance is too great, there is no point in rolling.
Before a PC attempts the Take Down move, others can (and they should be encouraged to) work as a team to “damage” some of the monster traits. For every damaged monster trait, other than having that trait damaged “in fiction”, the monster’s level is effectively reduced by 1. Reducing a monster’s effective level in turn raises Combat Superiority so, if you pile up enough “advantages” (here comes Fellowship again), you can try and Take Down higher level monsters.
When your Combat Superiority would be +4 or more, don’t roll, you are basically farming. Narrate how you Take Down this monster.
When your Combat Superiority would be -4 or less, don’t roll, you may narrate how you struggle ineffectively against a threat that at this stage is too powerful for you.
I would also have other things factor in when calculating Combat Superiority. For example, using some kind of BFG (stationary cannon, ritual, etc.) would allow you to perform Take Down “as if” you were of much higher level.
If you are still reading know that you have earned my deepest respect and gratitude.
Cheers.
