Hold It In (RWBY/Transistor)
- Thread starter Prok
- Start date
- Crossover
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Their
Nope, it's working properly. Everyone who voted for a plan is shown under the tasks voted for in that plan, so you can just ignore the Plan voted for, as far as I can tell.
Prok
Go play Star Fetchers
- Location
- Scotland
Despite my constant flip-flopping on plan tallying vs line tallying, I don't actually think that's ever come up before, but I accept that that's absolutely just luck on my part than any kind of grand chessmaster scheming to slowly veer the thread towards a general consensus that everyone is happy with by the end of voting.
Anyway, I'm closing the vote, and no matter what way I cut it, Plan Informed Discussions wins, both by plan tally and by being the collection of the most popular choices from every other vote, so it literally doesn't matter!
N-no, seriously, they're the exact same collection of choices once you add all the stray votes up.
I had absolutely no input in this I promise-
- Location
- A hole full of snakes.
I guess that makes sense. People wanted the same things, we just voted for them weird.
- Location
- USA
Hurray, everyone wins!
Or are equally disappointed.
Sounds like you have a good handle on this quest-thing, then.
- Location
- Hyperborea
I'd recommend disallowing plan votes and having people just copy paste options.
Or demand that plans are formatted without the dash, like this:
Either way, it does look like the vote turned out that way, so you're safe (this time).
I think that's how the math works out, unless I missed something.
Actually no, its frequently raised as a point in favor of plan voting, but provided nobody actually votes for an impossible combination, its mathematically impossible for an impossible outcome to arise in the case of a task vote.
Its not luck when you need people to deliberately vote an action in on the first, second AND third day or vote for the followup action without voting for the initiating action to produce an impossible outcome.
Like, we've had 12 by-line items voting with over three hundred players in Paths of Civilization back then, spending limited resources, and its only happened like thrice over the course of a year, and then only because people constructed a combination of votes which is in itself, using far more resources than were available, and nobody noticed through the entire vote due to arguing about something else entirely.
3 Vote for
[A] do X
[B] do Y
2 Vote for
[A] do Y
[B] do X
2 Vote for
[A] do Y
[B] do Z
Final vote count:
[A] Y:4, X:3
[B] Y:3, X:2, Z:2
end result with line/task tally is [A] do Y, [B] do Y, despite no one voting for it.
Also, in PoC, the sheer complexity meant that there were pretty much only one or two plans competing in any given vote, and there were groups who did strategic voting specifically to prevent the nonsensical plan combinations from ever winning.
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Alright, just finished rereading (up to landing in the forest during initiation) and then got caught up on the new stuff, and wow I forgot how hilarious this quest is. Like, the jokes often make me just start laughing uncontrollably. Also the character interactions are great, and I appreciate how detailed things like Jaune's thought process is.
Sad I missed the vote, but I was going to vote the same as everybody else apparently so no issue there. I'm really looking forward to what happens in the next couple of updates.
Overall I just really like this crossover, I think it's awesome how Transistor has been implemented and world building wise things have been internally consistent, which is what's most important. Like, for example I don't think in canon Semblances are generally as powerful /important as in here, but you've consistently made ALL semblances equally broken, so it works out really well. So keep up what you're doing, it's pretty awesome. Good luck with NaNo...whatever the second half is!
Sad I missed the vote, but I was going to vote the same as everybody else apparently so no issue there. I'm really looking forward to what happens in the next couple of updates.
Overall I just really like this crossover, I think it's awesome how Transistor has been implemented and world building wise things have been internally consistent, which is what's most important. Like, for example I don't think in canon Semblances are generally as powerful /important as in here, but you've consistently made ALL semblances equally broken, so it works out really well. So keep up what you're doing, it's pretty awesome. Good luck with NaNo...whatever the second half is!
Quest Mechanics
Prok
Go play Star Fetchers
- Location
- Scotland
25/06/2022: This section is no longer relevant to the quest but will be kept threadmarked for both posterity, and so, if I should choose to finish the system as its own project, I have somewhere to place it. However, you do not need to worry about them; Hold It In is a purely narrative quest.
Okay! I know you're used to me being dead for aeons at a time only to drag this thread kicking and screaming from its grave with an update, but this time I have to do it with something important- see, during November, on top of failing NaNoWriMo and acing college and not writing anything for this, I came to realise that half of my problems with writing this was, well, a crippling fear that once I finish this I'll be without one of the most consistent pillars of my day-to-day life, but the other half was that, mechanically, this quest is... kind of a mess.
Part of that is, yes, I have nothing written down for it, pretty much every system bar the Library was a cobble-and-forget kinda deal until the system became a pile of short-term bodges that began to collapse under its weight, so, I made the decision to streamline most of it, reducing everything down to the same system, using the same (for the most part) dice, and, most importantly, written in plain English that even someone as disorganised as me can understand it at a glance every time without having to hunt through the thread for the last thing I ruled on.
This post will, at least for the moment, contain the universal rules that govern every character within the quest- these are the absolute most basic rules, and over the next couple weeks, I'll be updating it with the rules specific to Jaune, namely Transistor combat, Function coding, Process upgrading, and how money will work from now on. Finally, by the time this batch of updates is finished, I'll have finished up with weapons, both in terms of damage numbers and how to upgrade them, and will have put together that table on random RWBY weapon combinations I promised like 84 years ago, along with Grimm health, armour, and other such things.
In the meantime, though- the most basic, universal rules of Hold It In are below- these will be updated frequently, as I figure out what works, what doesn't, and as I, well, finish writing the rest of them. I'm open to suggestions, calls for clarification- I know that these are pretty rough, but, hopefully, by the end of it, I'll have a... very, incredibly specific but fully-fleshed out system I can't really use anywhere else.
... J-just, push it down, push it down-
Okay! I know you're used to me being dead for aeons at a time only to drag this thread kicking and screaming from its grave with an update, but this time I have to do it with something important- see, during November, on top of failing NaNoWriMo and acing college and not writing anything for this, I came to realise that half of my problems with writing this was, well, a crippling fear that once I finish this I'll be without one of the most consistent pillars of my day-to-day life, but the other half was that, mechanically, this quest is... kind of a mess.
Part of that is, yes, I have nothing written down for it, pretty much every system bar the Library was a cobble-and-forget kinda deal until the system became a pile of short-term bodges that began to collapse under its weight, so, I made the decision to streamline most of it, reducing everything down to the same system, using the same (for the most part) dice, and, most importantly, written in plain English that even someone as disorganised as me can understand it at a glance every time without having to hunt through the thread for the last thing I ruled on.
This post will, at least for the moment, contain the universal rules that govern every character within the quest- these are the absolute most basic rules, and over the next couple weeks, I'll be updating it with the rules specific to Jaune, namely Transistor combat, Function coding, Process upgrading, and how money will work from now on. Finally, by the time this batch of updates is finished, I'll have finished up with weapons, both in terms of damage numbers and how to upgrade them, and will have put together that table on random RWBY weapon combinations I promised like 84 years ago, along with Grimm health, armour, and other such things.
In the meantime, though- the most basic, universal rules of Hold It In are below- these will be updated frequently, as I figure out what works, what doesn't, and as I, well, finish writing the rest of them. I'm open to suggestions, calls for clarification- I know that these are pretty rough, but, hopefully, by the end of it, I'll have a... very, incredibly specific but fully-fleshed out system I can't really use anywhere else.
... J-just, push it down, push it down-
-
Character Stats and Stat Checks:
There are eight stats, and they're divided into two category-acronyms- HACK, and TALK- combat stats and non-combat stats, specifically.
HACK:
Hack-Slash: This is a measure of a character's raw physical ability- their ability to swing a sword, or fire a gun, or rip a door off its hinges, lift something heavy off an ally. It, along with Kinetics, is the bread and butter of most combat situations.
Arcane: This is a measure of a character's ability to attack and defend themselves in more esoteric ways- for most, this means Aura manipulation and creative use of their Semblance, for a few, this means real-ass goddamn magic. Creating Aura shields, achieving minor prescience, using your Semblance weirdly, wielding a shard of magic grafted onto your soul- these all fall under this stat.
Command: Command is your ability to issue orders, whether to your allies or human enemies and have them be followed- useful for coordinating attacks or just scaring the piss out of some gormless White Fang goon, it's a measure of how much people will listen when you speak.
Kinetics: Kinetics is a measure of someone's coordination, hand-eye or otherwise- all that flippy acrobatic gubbins, dodging attacks, or just pulling a dead sprint, fall under this stat. This stat is a measure of your ability to move and not look like a bunch of wet noodles stapled together while you do it.
TALK:
Training: Training is a measure of the knowledge that lives in the hands rather than the head. It's a measure of skills like carpentry, coding, Dust Alchemy- knowledge that has practical applications, rather than being learned for the sake of becoming learned, as well as a measure of how well you pick up new skills. When skills are being learned, they use half your Training stat- after they're properly learned, and are marked down as being trained, they use the entire dice pool. Training is upgraded by learning new skills, with every two new skills being equivalent to another stat's breakthrough, and requiring more and more complex skills to progress. Skills may have multiple levels that give bonuses to their use or otherwise unblock certain options.
Attitude: Attitude and Karma are unique- they aren't stats in their own right, so much as gauges of useful, intangible commodities that can help with other rolls. Attitude is a measure of a character's mental health- the lower it is, the more exhausted, strung-out, and generally not at their best they are. Attitude can be expended to add dice to just about any check- it represents you going that extra mile to ensure your efforts aren't going to waste, at the expense of some mental energy. However, it may also be used for some special roles regarding Jaune's mental health.
If Attitude ever reaches zero, or God forbid, reaches negative numbers, Jaune will gain the Burned Out status: this applies a universal malus to all rolls that begins at -1, and only gets worse from there.
Do not let it reach -10 Never let it reach -10.
Learning: Learning is a measure of the knowledge that lives in the head rather than the hands. It's a measure of things like history, mathematics, geography, the sciences- knowledge that doesn't have much practical use but is still useful to know in its own right. Unlike Training, this just represents a level of general knowledge on all matters- there is no granularity to it. Instead, it is the stat used to perform Information Trawling for the Library, and other such activities.
Karma: Attitude and Karma are unique- they aren't stats in their own right, so much as gauges of useful, intangible commodities that can help with other rolls. Karma is a measure of how people feel about you- and more importantly, how much they're willing to put up with any eccentricities or weird requests you may have, without much extra effort on your part. Karma can be expended on Command rolls, or in social situations to improve people's opinion of you regardless of how much foot-sticking you do. Get it high enough, and you can act like the utter fucking sociopaths you all are, with almost zero consequences for your actions.
Stats are ranked from zero to ten, representing the size of the dice pool they have access to- if a stat is ranked zero for whatever reason, roll 2d10, and take the lower result.
Improving stats involves gathering successes to force a breakthrough- these successes are permanent and do not decay over time. Zero-ranked stats will need to gain a situational bonus to be trained at all (ya gotta go read a book, dork).
For the sake of clarity, 'success threshold' refers to the number of successes needed to complete an action, while 'dice threshold' refers to the number- usually 7- that must be met or surpassed by a d10 dice roll for it to count as a success.
Example: Jaune has to scale a building to get to the rooftop to catch Cinder. He can either a) enter the building and find a stairwell, b) scale the outside freehanded, or c) ride the Transistor up.
For the sake of simplicity, all actions suggested in this situation require his Athletics stat as a base- at a 4, that's a dice pool of 4d10.
In situation A, Jaune needs 2 successes to completely succeed- he finds a staircase, rushes up them at speed, and finds himself on the rooftop with time to spare. No successes rolled after this matter unless they are a natural 10.
Situations B and C are high-risk, high-reward- both need 4 successes to succeed. However, in situation B, Jaune can add his Hack-Slash stat to the dice pool, since it is freehand climbing and thus benefits from raw strength. This brings it to 8d10, and all but guarantees him success, says a man too regularly burned by hubris to say that kind of thing unironically.
The risk, in this case, comes from the failure states- in both of them, he slips, falls, and takes damage to his Aura- depending on how severe it is, it could easily break through and damage him directly.
Partial Successes occur when successes are gathered, but not enough to succeed completely. In most cases, this generally translates to either a consequence- Jaune slips, falls, takes Aura damage, but makes up for it fast enough that he still reaches the top before it's too late- or in the succeeding actions being significantly harder, such as a shorter timeframe in which to perform, raising the success threshold.
Rolling a 10 is a special case; they are set to the side until all other successes are counted. If it is a partial success, they will be added in as 2 successes. If it is a complete success, they cause it to become a critical success.
Critical successes follow the 'yes, and' rule- yes, you succeed, and something happens to your benefit, or you've done it to such a high standard that it improves your position by a marked degree. To go back to our original example, Jaune chooses to climb the outside of the building- he rolls his 4d10, rolls a 7, 8, 10, and 10, rendering it a critical success. He climbs up the building with such speed and precision that he actually cuts Cinder off at the pass, placing her on the back foot.
Conversely, 1s are critical failures, but they only come into play when the overall action is a failure. In this case, you fail, but something extra happens that detriments you even further, because why wouldn't I pile on the misery?
10s are singular in their use- if you roll a 10, and the success is partial but only missing one, you can add it on and make it a complete success- you can't then turn it into a critical success with that same 10. If you have 2 10s, this problem doesn't occur.
Going back to our example- Jaune chooses to ride the Transistor up and doesn't roll any successes whatsoever, and a 1- he slips on the Transistor, and by the time he's regained his balance, Cinder has realised his plan and begins shooting at him, weakening his Aura. He slips off entirely, falls the full height of the building, and the impact breaks both his Aura and his spine.
Stats, a Summary:
- Dice pool of d10s, dice threshold is seven, minimum roll before maluses is 2d10 keep lowest, highest roll before bonuses is 10d10.
- All actions require a certain number of successes to be performed
- Failures occur when no successes are rolled whatsoever- "no"
- Partial Successes occur when successes are rolled, but not enough to pass the success threshold- "yes, but"
- Success occurs when enough successes occur to pass the threshold- "yes"
- Critical Successes occur when a Success is reached, and a 10 has been rolled- "yes, and"
- Critical Failures occur when no successes are rolled, and also a 1 has been rolled- "no, also fuck you"
Aura and Armour:
Aura is going to be a much softer system than it was- physical damage, on the other hand, is not.
Aura is no longer represented by a hard number- both its states of being and base strength are rooted in emotions, memories, raw, unfettered willpower, and assigning numbers to that kind of thing seems somewhat unwise. It is now represented as four states- Full, Flickering, Fading, and Fractured, and in Jaune's case, these are represented by numbers 0-6:
6/5- Full: How Aura usually starts out- 3 heavy hits or 6 light hits are required to completely break Aura from full. This is your 'green' threshold on a Scroll's Aura gauge..
4/3- Flickering: After a few hits, Aura is no longer as strong as it was- it begins to flicker, warning the user that they are in danger of completely breaking their Aura. At this rate, it would only take two heavy hits to break it completely.
2/1- Fading: Your Aura is ripping itself apart at the seams. Run, before you get hit again.
0- Fractured: Your Aura is completely broken. For a time, you are incapable of fighting on the level of a Huntsman, or using your Semblance properly. You are now capable of taking physical damage.
Aura is replenished at a rate of one point for every action in combat dedicated to disengaging and allowing yourself a few seconds to recharge- once combat ends, it automatically recharges to full.
Growth of Aura is related to both your growth as a person, via the passage of time and the gathering of memories and new emotions, and upgrading of the Arcane stat.
Once Fading is reached, however, it is possible for someone to dig deep and bolster their Aura using something important to them- these moments are rare, only occurring once per battle at most, and requires significant downtime to recharge- it is a Hail Mary, not a get out of jail free card.
Aura gained from the bolster action is temporary- it drains at a rate of one point every two turns of combat, and treats all attacks as being one level higher than they are for damage purposes.
Physical Damage is split into 4 levels:
- Level 1- Mild wounds raise the number of successes needed to complete an action. (Minor injuries- battered, bruised, a new hum in the drum, etc- can occasionally come with status effects.)
- Level 2- A Severe wound gives a malus to your ability to perform- dice pools affected by this level of harm are halved. (More major injuries- deep cuts to limbs, a concussion, outright exhaustion- usually comes with an inherent status effect, like Bleedout or Crumpled.)
- Level 3- You are at Death's door. You are unable to move unassisted, or without making a prohibitively strenuous effort to do so. All actions are locked off besides evading at a severe penalty. Any further damage taken has a coin-flip chance of becoming level 4 harm. (Broken limbs, bad burns, mental breakdown, Semblance aneurysm- at this point status effects are redundant, but I'll probably pile them on anyway just to be mean)
- Level 4- Dead. Done. Finito. There is almost no bouncing back from this.
Injury Chart (sorta):
Level 3 (Ignore this one SV doesn't support asymmetrical tables) (Ignore this one SV doesn't support asymmetrical tables) Level 2 (Ignore this one SV doesn't support asymmetrical tables) Level 1
Every successful strike after someone's Aura is depleted will cause them to take physical harm. Each level of harm can only hold so many injuries before it's automatically upgraded to the next level- for example, if a Beowolf nips your heels enough, the fourth harm at level 1 becomes a level 2 harm- snapped Achilles.
This works both ways, so 'death by a thousand cuts' is possible.
Armour
Armour functions as, well, armour- it automatically reduces the strength of an attack by one level, should it hit that area- however, all armour has certain durability. Crappy composite stuff isn't going to hold up under sustained fire from anything- steel armour with ceramic inlays will hold up to just about anything that isn't a charging boarbatusk.
Once an armour has blocked hits equal to its durability, it breaks, rendering it useless until repaired. In extreme cases, armour may be shredded completely, bringing it beyond the point of repair and requiring the purchase of a new set.
In exchange for such extreme protective capabilities, though, all armour causes the equivalent of a permanent level 1 harm, or level 2 harm if excessive enough, to all movement within combat. Reducing this malus is a learned skill that must be acquired and trained up.
The list goes as follows:
- Composite: layers of hardened plastic riveted into an aluminium frame. Cheapest of the cheap, but so light it feels like you're wearing nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all- Durability- 1. Malus- N/A
- Leather: Tanned animal skin- comfy, tough, and hilariously unethical to some party-poopers. Durability- 3. Malus- Level 1 Harm.
- Chain: Been in use for millennia, ain't gone out of style yet. Durability- 5. Malus- Level 1 Harm.
- Steel: Now we're getting into the real stuff. Weighs the same as a small child, but damn if anything can get through it. Durability- 9. Malus- Level 2 Harm.
- Ceramic Inlays: In a full set of this, you are now functionally invincible to anything besides the personal attention of an Ursa Major or a Grand Boarbatusk- in exchange, however, you move like an anesthetised sloth unless you've been trained to move in it. Durability: Functionally Infinite. Malus- Level 2 Harm.
Aura and Armour, A Summary:
- Aura is split into four stages- Full, Flickering, Fading, and Fractured. Each stage represents how close you are to being susceptible to physical harm.
- Aura is recharged at a rate of one unit per action taken in combat to actively disengage and recover.
- When at Fading Aura, it is possible for someone to Bolster their Aura, filling it back to Full with temporary Aura points that take double damage and fade at a rate of one per round.
- Physical harm occurs when someone is attacked after their Aura has broken, or using an attack that bypasses Aura. It comes in 4 different levels, ranging from minor bruises to outright death.
- Armour automatically treats all attacks as one level lower, should they strike that area. In exchange, however, they have durability ratings. Once a piece of armour has blocked its durability ratings in attacks, it is broken and renders no benefit or malus- you're back to Aura and running.
Combat
Combat is the term used for sections of the quest where people or creatures are trying their damnedest to kill you, and vice versa, and is the general state of Hunters who are on the job.
There are no initiative rolls or action orders in combat- all actions are judged and performed simultaneously, with only one exception; characters rolling to defend against an oncoming attack- the number of successes they roll sets the attacker's success threshold.
All combat can be broken down to four distinct categories of action- Attacks, Assists, Hindrances, and Movement.
Attacks:
Attacks are any given action performed with the express purpose of harming something- slashing at someone with a sword, kicking out their knee, etc. Indirect attacks also count as attacks- slashing at someone with your sword and slashing at a convenient rope to drop a pallet of bricks on them are both attacks.
All attacks use either the Hack-Slash or Arcane stats, depending on the nature of the attack- all defensive manoeuvres use Kinetics, or in some cases, Hack-Slash also.
Attacks are split into two distinct categories- Light Attacks, and Heavy Attacks.
Light Attacks-
Light attacks are the equivalent of a quick jab or slash, a small-mid calibre bullet, or the Transistor's rapid-fire Functions- Ping(), Crash(), Bounce(), etc. They're supposed to be rapid, chipping attacks, probing for a greater weakness or otherwise just whittling your opponent down.
Light attacks are worth half of a weapon's Base Damage- a minimum of 1, fractions round down- and gain bonus dice to meet the Success Threshold, making them a generally more reliable method of dealing damage over time.
Heavy Attacks-
Heavy attacks are the equivalent of a two-handed slash, a large-calibre bullet, a la Crescent Rose, a small explosive, a la Magnhild, or the Transistor's beefier Functions- Breach(), Spin(), or Load(), to name a few. These are the attacks you go in with after putting an opponent off-balance with light attacks, or to break their guard from the get-go.
Heavy Attacks are worth 1.5x a weapon's full Base Damage, but require significantly more effort and leave you in a much worse position if you whiff it.
Special Attack- The Attack Sinister.
The Attack Sinister is a special kind of attack that is only available against enemy Huntsmen you absolutely want dead and is risky enough that it should only be tried when you are certain it will work.
This attack takes advantage of the fact that Aura is Non-Newtonian in nature- it hardens in response to impact, and the harder the impact, the more energy it expends to protect against it. However, this means that soft attacks- a slow knife, or a gently thrown rock, just won't register as an attack against someone's Aura, and will pass right through.
The Attack Sinister always requires 6 total successes- in exchange, it will always deal a severe wound to enemies, without touching their Aura at all- if it's a critical success, it will automatically deal either a level 3 or level 4 Harm, depending on your choice and their defence.
Assistance and Hindrances:
Assistance and Hindrance are significantly more loosey-goosey than Attacks or Movement, but they follow the same basic idea- they are any kind of action that helps allies or hinders enemies. In reality, these are essentially just stat checks performed in combat- they're hard, of course, but very useful if you don't want to just mindlessly whale on someone like a Viking berserker.
Assistance is aimed at your allies- they are any action that gives them a direct advantage in combat, whether that's warning them of an incoming attack, being a distraction against their current enemy, or taking a hit you don't think they can withstand. These confer a situational bonus that varies from a simple +1 to completely changing the flow of battle- like I said, loosey-goosey.
Example: Creme is being rushed from behind by a Boarbatusk who is intent on making her insides her outsides- Jaune sees this, and, using his higher stat of Kinetics, rushes to place himself between her and it and take the brunt of the hit with his better armour, and allowing her to get behind it and start whaling on a more thinly-plated part of its body.
Hindrances are aimed at enemies- whether distracting them from an oncoming attack, rendering their attacks ineffective, or forcing them into a stat check that determines their new position, Hindrances are neat ways to screw over your opponents that don't necessarily involve beating them in the head with a big metal stick.
Example: In a shipyard, Jaune and Lumen are fighting another of his cousins- Lumen and his cousin are evenly matched for the most part, but Jaune sees one a hanging shipping container left on the crane by a negligent worker- with a well-aimed shot, he could break it off the hook and drop it into the scene, breaking up the fight for a moment and adding some cover to it, or he could use his Training (Hacking) stat to take control of the crane itself via the Transistor, and turn it into God's own flail to try and smear Lumen's cousin across the floor.
Movement:
Movement is the act of changing position in battle and uses Kinetics as its base stat.
Every battle takes place on a battlefield- whether this is a complex shipyard full of lanes and nooks and crannies to hide in, or a plain stage with no outstanding features, and movement is based around you, your opponent, your battlefield's outstanding features, and the relative position between all of these.
In short, Movement can be broken down into four things: Moving To Destination, Disengaging, Pressing Forward, and Escaping.
Moving To Destination: Exactly what it says on the tin- moving towards one of the points of interest or other combatants on a battlefield, in order to gain some advantage from it, whether to hide, or dodge incoming fire or to gain higher ground.
Pressing Forward and Disengaging: While it is assumed that most of the time you are in combat you will be within attacking distance of your opponent, they may decide to try and disengage from the fight, stopping to catch their breath- when this happens, you have the option of disengaging as well, allowing you to regain some measure of Aura, or to press the advantage and keep them from doing just that. If you choose to do so, you will make a contested Kinetics check to see whether or not you actually catch them in time- though if you do, and fail, you do not regain the Aura you would have done if you'd disengaged as well.
This all applies in reverse as well, mind- if you choose to disengage, you actively remove yourself from combat for a turn and regain a point of Aura, assuming the opponent does not choose to press forward, or you pass the Kinetics check if they do.
Escaping: Also exactly what it says on the tin- with a particularly good Kinetics check, you can always choose to run like a little sissy baby, completely disengaging from combat. Should this fail, however, your Kinetics and Hack-Slash skills are halved for the purposes of defence rolls- only attempt to escape when you're either desperate, or sure you can manage it, otherwise your opponents will just shoot, stab, or claw you in the back!
Combat, a Summary:
- Combat is a non-turn-based affair, with all actions resolving at the same time. The only thing that is resolved first is defence rolls, as they set the attacker's success threshold.
- Combat revolves around four things: Attacking, Assisting, Maluses, and Movement.
- When attacking someone, they will roll to defend themselves- the number of successes they achieve sets the Success Threshold for the attacker.
- Light and Heavy attacks deal a weapon's base damage, or 1.5x base damage, respectively. Light attacks are more reliable to hit, gaining bonus dice to hit the Success Threshold. Heavy attacks do not, making them riskier, but they do more damage.
- The Attack Sinister is available against enemy Huntsmen- with a fixed ST of 10, passing it allows you to make an attack worth one severe injury, bypassing their Aura completely in the process.
- Assists and Maluses are any actions that cannot be directly considered as causing damage to the enemy using your weapon. They are high-ST stat checks that can either grant an advantage to allies, a disadvantage to enemies or just completely change the battlefield altogether.
- Movement is reliant on the Kinetics stat and is based on four movements: towards a destination, pressing forward and disengaging, and escaping.
- Moving towards a destination is self-explanatory- the destination can either be a point of interest on the battlefield, or other combatants, whether ally or enemy.
- Disengaging and Pressing Forward are the acts of creating distance between yourself and an enemy in order to regain Aura, or denying that same opportunity to them. Performing either requires that you roll your Kinetics stat, either for defence or to overcome theirs- if you fail either, you lose the chance to regain Aura.
- Escaping is the act of fully disengaging from battle, and is very high-risk/high-reward. Should it fail, until the next turn, all defensive rolls are halved- essentially giving enemies a free shot to the back.
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I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
- Pronouns
- He/They
Also, hot damn! Acing college? Good job, dude
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
Glad to hear from you, and good work on acing college! Hope you find a balance that works for you.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Personally, I'm here for the narrative. If using a mechanics-based system becomes too hard to work out or keep consistent, you can always just adopt a purely narrative-based system (whereby you work out the outcomes of encounters based on what you think would likely happen, rather than use dice rolls and modifiers). Still, if you think you can do it, and you want to do it, all the more power to you.
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- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, I didn't even realize this quest had mechanics. It seemed almost purely narrative, with maybe minor decision making happening behind the curtain. And I was fine with that, it worked very well. Good quality.
- Location
- A state of cleverness
Is it HACK and TALK?
IT IS! God I can't believe that stupid meme led to thi--I mean wow what a completely novel and original system, how do you come up with these things. The combat and armor breakdowns look very interesting to me, for reasons that should be obvious.
Also since you didn't post it and it is relevant to the thread's interest, Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett just put up an album of orchestrated Supergiant vocal songs on Spotify. The entire thing is lovely, with particular props to the Transistor songs and In the Flame.
@Prok great system from what I can see of it, very FATE-like. That said my one worry is how helpful it will actually be for you as you run. Since it seems more suited for a group of players playing live on tabletop with turn-by-turn combat. Instead of what you deal with in a quest where you throw down a situation description, get a rough plan from us, and go off of that for an entire chapter of writing. That said if using it as a backend tracker and front-end description tool make things easier for you then go for it.
Frankly from a player's perspective this quest already felt like everything was pure narrative and it worked.
Two additional thoughts:
Hoards of lesser grim or other mooks can be treated as an individual character with "aura" being a stand in for sheer number of opponents.
Boss level grimm having armor thats just that good could work: hunters have to build up enough maluses and bonuses to overcome the armor in a coordinated team attack or else resign themselves to inflicting death by a thousand cuts
On the other hand I have no idea how to represent Proccess shenanigans
Frankly from a player's perspective this quest already felt like everything was pure narrative and it worked.
Two additional thoughts:
Hoards of lesser grim or other mooks can be treated as an individual character with "aura" being a stand in for sheer number of opponents.
Boss level grimm having armor thats just that good could work: hunters have to build up enough maluses and bonuses to overcome the armor in a coordinated team attack or else resign themselves to inflicting death by a thousand cuts
On the other hand I have no idea how to represent Proccess shenanigans
Prok
Go play Star Fetchers
- Location
- Scotland
It's a mix and match of a few things, honestly- I probably stole the success-based stuff from White Wolf, yeah, the physical injury part is from Blades In The Dark, but Aura, Combat, and the HACK/TALK stats are, as far as I'm aware, alllllllll me.
The reason the quest didn't really have mechanics is because, well, yeah, they don't really turn up that often- both because they're actually really rarely relevant, and because I have been sort of ignoring them specifically because it would require me to go thread-diving to find out what I ruled last time.
The reason I don't want to do a narrative-based system is, well, there's too much stuff that requires a system behind it- the Library(), the Process's progression, Cloudbank, money to a certain extent, and creating Functions come to mind, but mainly, it's because a purely narrative-based system feels... cheap? Like, if I can just control the outcome of any fight, any conflict, especially given the things you're gonna have access to eventually, is going to feel either unearned or bullshit, entirely because I can just control the outcome of any fight or conflict.
I know that that's, you know, the point of most traditional fiction, sure, but a quest isn't traditional fiction and I would rather have something else to blame things on when people start baying for my blood because whoops that Myrmek Queen just stabbed Creme in the gut and helped her follow the path of her deer ancestors by making her insides become outsides
More to the point, a good 90% of the narrative is still going to be, well, just narrative- pure talky-talk stuff isn't something I'm going to try to quantify, just the parts where hard numbers are absolutely necessary, so, the things I just mentioned. But as far as the actual narrative beats of this quest go, they're, mostly staying untouched- this is just a better way for me to quantify rewards from classes, training, and helping streamline combat a little.
Fun fact: halfway through coming up with the combat system, I realised that most of it doesn't actually apply to Jaune, since, like in-game, most of his attacks aren't actually designed to do much more than chip damage- they're designed to stack debuffs until one of his heavy-hitting attacks becomes an instant-kill, or at least do enough damage that the second heavy-hitter finishes the job. That second idea isn't only against big Grimm, that's just how Jaune fights.
In creating the universal ground rules for all combatants, I realised very quickly that the main character completely ignores most of it in favour of being an utter fucking debuff goblin, and that did make me laugh a little.
Jaune's ultimate spell will be Death, as is Grey Mage tradition.
THatWhichWillBe
The Squiddly One
- Location
- In The Darkened Deep
Look, Bravo, that's not a downside, we're a SB splinter board, this just means we get to turn Creme into a qt deer cyborg waifu instead of just a qt deer waifu.
I see this as an absolute win.
- Location
- Mt. Holly, North Carolina
You know, I just realized this myself. If Jaune has to fight up close, something has gone very wrong, and I think he is actually happy about that. Granted, when he does fight up close he effectively becomes an edged shield. He isn't meant to kill, but if you force it then chop chop is your fate.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Part of the problem is that it then forces you to actually quantify things that don't really translate well to quantification. Trying to convince Ozpin of something feels cheapened when it comes down to a dice-roll, as opposed to the questers making the right kind of argument, with restrictions on how detailed or exact the write-in or options could be, to avoid just giving Jaune the questers' social skills.
Still, if you think you can pull it off, then go for it.
I don't know, I played Transistor a bit differently? Like, I often had a single heavy hitter spell, but my other spells tended to be mobility/survival or crowd control to temporarily neutralize threats so that I could focus on my target rather than targetting the ones that I'd just debuffed. Later on, I changed the playstyle completely, developing an absolutely lethal combo that turned me into a stealth assassin, giving myself a cloaking ability and then making my "stupidly high damage, short-range, long-wind-up melee attack" utilize the cloaking's "massive bonus damage for a backstab" bonus, allowing me to one-shot even the toughest enemies one at a time, while using Jaunt to dodge and stay alive during cooldowns (and one other spell for modest damage that I could use at any time). I did that because, ultimately, death is the best debuff.
Jaune's strength is his versatility, especially when you combine his Transistor with the Process, which will ramp up into truly substantial combat units in time.
Still, Jaune being a debuff goblin kind of makes him the ultimate unintentional troll in combat.
- Location
- Chile
There's something I'm curious about the narrative of that whole scene with Ludens' death.
Why does the fact that the transistor's lack of soul and true sentience is framed as some kind of pitiful thing that has to be corrected?
Or that Penny doesnt even have her own soul?
It felt kind of weird, like things aren't allowed to exist if they don't follow already established patterns.
It also negates all the scenes that included her before in the quest.
And thematically speaking, Penny being pinnochio would mean that she has a soul and her path is to try to become a real girl, but that scene just absolutely cancelled that.
So, from a narrative and thematic standpoint, what was the whole point of that?
Why does the fact that the transistor's lack of soul and true sentience is framed as some kind of pitiful thing that has to be corrected?
Or that Penny doesnt even have her own soul?
It felt kind of weird, like things aren't allowed to exist if they don't follow already established patterns.
It also negates all the scenes that included her before in the quest.
And thematically speaking, Penny being pinnochio would mean that she has a soul and her path is to try to become a real girl, but that scene just absolutely cancelled that.
So, from a narrative and thematic standpoint, what was the whole point of that?
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