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>>44187740
I finally made a PDF with the big lines of this homebrew. Almost nothing is stat-ed yet, I just fill it up when inspiration hit me. I'll put it in the following post.
I use RuneQuest for almost everything in this homebrew. If you want to see what is already half done, go directly to Starting Classes, Characteristics & Attributes and Covenants. Game mechanics is just me throwing my vision of the game and the end of it is more incoherent rambling about bad players.
Now for the questions and suggestions:
-How could we successfully include skills (climbing, ropeworks, mechanics, blacksmithing, etc) in the game? Is it even worth it? (Because, I feel the bullshitstorm coming with some players)
-We need perception checks and a way to make them fair, when it come to traps and ambushes.
-In what's already there, what is missing according to you?
Same OP as last time, by the way.
Here's the pdf
>>44217171
thanks OP, gonna give it a read
>>44217171
Off to a good start, mate.
Take your time and work steadily. Go over to the home brew thread if you need advice
>>44217104
Well, for skills I would ask you this: which is more important to you in the Souls experience - killing giant bosses or navigating poignant ruined landscapes?
My general feeling, I would say keep player skills to a minimum; have the useful shit be NPC exclusive so there's a reason to not murder them for souls (until the end of the game when you don't give a shit about karma). You want it to be worth trekking across The Incredibly Fucked Plains or The Mountains of Total Bullshit to encounter that Blacksmith Joe who happens to know how to infuse elemental ores into your sword. If you have a PC who's a wizard can shits magical items, Blacksmith Joe means nothing.
That said, there should be some skills that allow them to interact with the world around them and I think the two important areas for that would be traversal and lore. Traversal covers anything from climbing, jumping, all that good platformer shit, whereas Lore represents those item descriptions that flesh out the world. You might even have it be more actively useful by having it give IC/OOC hints as to traps, enemy weaknesses, maybe a straight-up +1 versus a boss if you get his lore.
Those are the core areas for maintaining a feel for the series, obviously there will probably need to be a few more than that and you might want it a little granular. But in my head right now it's almost Dungeon World, where you roll to Spout Lore and Evade Peril and that covers a wide array of possible actions.
>>44217104
I'm at work so I'm mostly skimming the notes, but it looks pretty nice so far.
I also think that the party dynamics would work really well if everyone receives the same souls, but equipment is strictly per person. That way it encourages people to divide weapons and items up to those who could use them the best and better works for people getting into their assigned roles.
Covenant as alignment sounds pretty interesting, there could be a neat setup for the games story there. Perhaps it could be similar to having a character backstory. It would also be neat to perhaps figure out a distinction between a regular player and a summoned player.
>>44217104
Not sure if you've already come up with this or not, but here's what I did for my Souls Homebrew:
Give players a number of Souls to spend to improve attributes, buy and upgrade weapons and armour, learn spells and weapon techniques, and upgrade reusable consumables like the Estus Flask. In essence, force characters to choose between upgrading their stats, gear, and getting more tactical options. Base character power not on stat total, but on their 'Soul Level', if you will.
This lets you have characters with high stats and crappy gear stand toe-to-to with characters with excellent equipment and low attributes. It makes spellcasters hesitant to learn EVERY spell in the game, and instead encourages them to focus on a handful of ones they'll find useful.
What do you think?
>>44217104
With skills and just in general, you could have it where the players start out as undead that have been wasting away fro a large period of time (like in DS1). This can be used to say that the players up until being freed had been hallowing and losing memory of what they knew as humans. This could be used with your wizard/blacksmith example:
>Tim the wizard is now undead
>Tim has been hallowing and has forgotten much of his prior life
>Tim does not remember much of his spells, nor how to make equipment.
>Johnny the blacksmith does
Johnny is valuable to the players as he can fill a function none of them can.
This can be used with other npc's:
>Solaire teaches how to summon others, crutch in combat before players get experienced
>Wizard/Pyromancer/Priest teach their respective magic
>Vendors sell items, and its either more convenient to buy from them then to farm, or what they sell can't be made/found by others
>Guides or other more experienced undead could provide advice/exposition or even guide players through areas on a safer path
>>44219712
Not Op but this sounds incredibly legit for a alternative leveling style. The Warrior can either increase his base damage by increasing STR, or increase his sword's damage or add an effect to it to really make it his own.
Kinda like the difference between being Hercules stronk or having Excalibur.
>>44220112
A little along these lines, I was thinking that instead of losing currency, the player would hollow and take a penalty to the characters weakest stat. To use the previous Warrior as an example, sure he is still really strong, but the more he dies without regaining what he has lost the dumber or less faithful he gets. Too a degree. To really keep things in line with DS lore this will lower said sat to a certain base threshold before moving onto the next lowest, thus making it mechanically possible, even if the DM doesn't allow it to go that far (which they more often than not won't and shouldn't unless you're playing hardcore Mode), for a character to completely waste away if they don't smarten up.
>>44220494
That's what I was going for, yeah. In my alternate version of Souls people tend to fade out of existence when killed and reform with all their gear, so you stuff really is part of your character in a way. It also means it can't get stolen, more or less.
I wanted to handle consumable items by EITHER having them be bought with actual money and/or found, OR making it that they have a limited number of uses per 'bonfire' and they count towards your level. I prefer the second even though it's more restrictive just because it makes players more cautious with their consumables and they don't go 'monty haul' with items.
Consumables could be switched out for any other consumables of equal value when you rested at a bonfire, so you could prepare for the challenge ahead properly and not get stuck with your five Anti-Poison items you bought during the swamp dungeon.
Characters would also be able to alter their stats and gear somewhat between adventures, basically by redistributing up to 20% of their Souls between sessions. That way they could (for example) trade out their +3 Rapier for a +3 Scythe, they wouldn't be stuck with weapons they upgraded or bought early on and they could adjust their gear or stats slightly as their playstyle and challenges evolved.
Oh, and my system was designed for convention play and based on the idea of people being able to invade your game whenever a combat encounter started. Having a unified Soul Level system means that it's hard to min-max your character, since you can't claim "But I totally have that +5 Divine Claymore, a friend from another game gave it to me! Those seven Divine Blessings too!"
Drinks estus
Bump
>>44217104
There is far too much slack in that rope, among other obvious problems
>>44217104
Do you have any plans to represent the hollowing that comes with dying and reviving repeatedly in mechanics? Either the basic looking like a corpse and not being able to do certain things/being more fragile, and/or the implied descent into amnesia and madness? On the latter note, while the player character doesn't seem to be afflicted with it in the games, I can only assume that they're meant to be special in some way the PCs in this system might not be. Anyway, that slow rot of sanity could inject some more interesting roleplay opportunity if you have it effect the PCs, I think.
>>44219273
I see what you mean and I like it. Traversal and Lore, seems like a good idea.
>>44219450
I've looked into using a common party pool for the souls or not. It would be amazing, as you say it, to see the party dynamic but I fear that It won't work properly. I'd rather use consumable souls (soul of a great hero, souls of Nashandra) to take the role of that common party pool and leave a personal counter for each player. That way, they wouldn't have to think how to divide each souls rewards by 4-5 (depending on the party composition) and they can see more clearly how many more hollows with a big spear they have to kill to get that missing point in faith. Aside from that, equipment will be personal.
Covenant as a backstory, I like it. Like the "way of white" in the first game? Unfortunately I don't want them to be summons, they are all in same world. Maybe I'll make them talk to an oracle, that would say that it isn't normal. They would all be the chosen undead or something like each of them as a part of the destiny running in their dead veins. Doing otherwise would be risky, because they'll be in the world of a specific player and it would be that player that can win the game.
>>44219712
This is planned (the notes at the end and a mess), but I didn't thought of using the Soul Level as a way to track the average level of power of everyone. Thanks.
>>44220112
This could work to retain them from going full rampage on the NPC.. And at the same time limit the number of skills
>>44223262
Reduction of total HP on subsequent deaths is already planned. I feel like I need to see how the stats and their souls cost are balanced before going in the hollowing part.
>>44224161
>I've looked into using a common party pool for the souls or not. It would be amazing, as you say it, to see the party dynamic but I fear that It won't work properly. I'd rather use consumable souls (soul of a great hero, souls of Nashandra) to take the role of that common party pool and leave a personal counter for each player. That way, they wouldn't have to think how to divide each souls rewards by 4-5 (depending on the party composition) and they can see more clearly how many more hollows with a big spear they have to kill to get that missing point in faith. Aside from that, equipment will be personal.
About this, i was kinda talking about how everyone gets the souls of what the party kills, like when you have a phantom with you. If one player kills a skeleton, everyone gets souls from that.
Though i suppose if they aren't going to be summons then in-universe and in-game that wouldn't actually make sense, so you're right there.
>>44217104
A neat trick you can do, given the setting, is have it so that any time that a given player cannot make a given session, their character simply gets displaced from the rest of the party due to Lordran's convoluted time and worlds.
Like, they rest at a Bonfire and afterwards that one PC simply isn't there. Or as you are on the road they are summoned away/ you all go through a mist gate and don't all come out the other side in the same 'world'.
Then, whenever the player is available again, you run into them again/ find their summon sign and they stick around permanently instead of being on a time limit.
Its a fairly minor concern and one which requires no hard rules, but one which can make scheduling for long running games much less of a hassle because you never have to deal with a playerless character.
