you can still have a few stats or skills, just don't make it so complex you'd need a full guide just to remember anything :) it's fun to have if you don't mind working out chances and things.
balancing enemies- mostly consider how powerful they are. How strong is each player's character? Is the monster more likely to knock them out or just be a nuisance? It can vary slightly depending on the player's character- for example, i have one character who could instantly get knocked over by a strong gust of wind or something, while one of my more agile characters would probalby be a bit annoying to fight against because he's just a straight-up tank.
Necto
Level 68
Stocking Stuffer
Joined: 12/7/2019
Threads: 21
Posts: 906
Posted: 1/25/2023 at 12:38 PM
Post #22
Fair enough. I don't know which should be used, I might just skip them entirely so people don't get confused. :P
Armor Skills will probably just be extra flavor that occasionally does things, maybe.
Larkian
Level 75
The Tactician
Joined: 5/15/2018
Threads: 105
Posts: 17,021
Posted: 1/25/2023 at 11:39 PM
Post #23
(Orca hath returned :D)
For monsters, it depends on how you're planning to run the battle system. Since it's a text RPG and you're controlling everything, there's a lot more flexibility on what you throw at the players, but like Orca and I said, video game stats and such don't convert perfectly to writing form :P But if you ask me, that might actually make it easier to "balance" enemies and such lol
You could have the monsters' power levels scale with that of the characters, so that even if the player has higher stats, there's still chance involved with whether their attacks hit, how much damage they're likely to take, etc. (The specifics, of course, depend on how you determine the skill checks and whatnot.)
There's also the option of having a more loose battle system, where there's no numbers and you just choose what happens/what the outcome is depending on what you think is best for storytelling. (I figure that if you choose to do this, you can probably just strip the monsters down to their movesets and basic traits, and improv from there without going too in-depth with their stats.)
I'm not sure what other options there are or issues there would be (in my experience those/a combination of those are pretty much the only ways people do enemies or combat in RPGs), let me know if I misinterpreted/missed any problems you might have with balancing?
Oh, by the way here are some examples/more elaboration of the systems I've seen:
Stats/Chance Based
- e.g. Player tries an attack, if higher than a certain number then attack succeeds, subtracted by enemy's defense stat (goes the other way for enemy attack) and then by health or whatever
- The other thing I've seen is character rolls for their turn, if higher than a certain number then they deal damage, if lower then they take damage
- There may be rolls in between for exactly how much damage is done/how much is mitigated, etc.
Non-stats/Loose
- Player tries an attack, narrator decides that the player's character is canonically too weak (like what Orca said about taking into consideration character strength)/it's implausible/plot reasons, character may be injured in some way or the enemy does something, etc. but with no numbers or stats included
- This works more like how characters would interact with stuff in a normal situation, everyone just reacts in whatever way sounds realistic
Combo
- There are definitely a lot of ways to combine them, but here are just a few examples:
- Rolls for attack success, but what exactly that success entails is decided by narrator (similar to other skill checks like observation and stuff, where success can be a probability but the outcome isn't something that can be given in numbers)
- Stats determine level, but there are no skill checks (e.g. if a character has an attack level of 7 and you give their enemy an attack level of 5, the character probably will win in a fight but there's no stat checks or chance involved in the fight itself--more just to give the player an idea of how strong their character is)
If you're giving a character special skills and stuff, those can also be integrated however you want--the skills could have stats for damage and whatnot, or they could just be a thing the character can pull in a fight but with no complex mechanics.
Like, if a character had something like resistance against fire (idk lol), the stats-based route would be that a character fighting an enemy who's trying to set them on fire will literally take a lower number of damage/have a lower chance of fire damage, whereas the more loose route would just be that, ya know, they don't get burned as easily (or however the narrator wants to interpret it).
Edited By Larkian on 1/26/2023 at 12:11 AM.
Necto
Level 68
Stocking Stuffer
Joined: 12/7/2019
Threads: 21
Posts: 906
Posted: 1/26/2023 at 10:48 AM
Post #24
isn't combo edition literally D&D :P
But thank you guys so much for your help, I might have a bit of a concept now. Maybe. I dunno. We'll see.
Orcastration
Level 74
Fishy
Joined: 11/1/2018
Threads: 319
Posts: 33,457
Posted: 1/26/2023 at 8:19 PM
Post #25
no problem anytime
(Unlike Lark, I go the "let's roll a dice and see what happens" with 75% of my enemies vs. player stuff so. That's an option too, if you like things possibly getting strange. Horrible balancing or whatever probably but it's fun sometimes if I'm out of ideas.)
Larkian
Level 75
The Tactician
Joined: 5/15/2018
Threads: 105
Posts: 17,021
Posted: 1/26/2023 at 10:16 PM
Post #26
(...Orca what do ya mean,,, I literally have more stats in my RPGs than you and roll dice for most of them lol?? It's just that I do less fight scenes but that's considering you had the whole video game RPG lol)
Yeah, it's basically the D&D route lol. I once talked to someone who once called RPGs "D&D but with less math" xD
Anyways, yeah, what I personally go with most of the time is a combination of the two where I roll for success level (usually divided into intervals of complete success, moderate success, slight success, and complete failure), and from there decide what that means in context. (This applies to normal skill checks, too, like charisma and such.)
No problem! Looking forward to it :D
Edited By Larkian on 1/26/2023 at 10:37 PM.
Orcastration
Level 74
Fishy
Joined: 11/1/2018
Threads: 319
Posts: 33,457
Posted: 1/26/2023 at 10:56 PM
Post #27
(Oh right I genuinely forgot about those. Sorry bout that. )
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