in the background i use a dnd esque system that i made for myself and friends, after i got burned out from wotc shenanigans with content creators and no longer wanted to give them my money.

So i started making my own dnd inspired system. Im using that system to give some tension to the battles.

For example, i had intended for the first real fight against the hunter, for Marlin to get bodied and force a tactical retreat and hiding behind trees and such.

I did give the hunter an overconfident and arrogant mentality but he shouldn’t have lost. He kept rolling bad (even gave the dude some rerolls and extra rounds) and marlin still beat him, Marlin got really lucky with how his I can take it kept rolling critical success.

that particular discipline causes people to flinch and waste a small portion of their action tokens.

it gains advantage if you willingly take a crit, which marlin did.

then Marlin got high damage on his axe throw and a crit on his Shield strike, he made short work of that hunters small HP pool.

he got really lucky with his shield blocks too

so how do i do attack rolls?

everyone has 6 action tokens. An attack costs 2 action tokens moving 20 feet takes 2 action tokens defending takes half an action token.

armor class = 3 + proficiency + attribute mod. Which currently for Marlin is 3 + 2 + 2(con mod from bulwark) 9 AC.

with defend you add +12 to your armor class. This makes action economy super important. His shield parry adds a d6 on top of that

using Block or parry, increases defend from half an action token to a full action token.

which he could do because of adrenaline. Adrenaline makes all his move actions cost less action.

If you Use all action tokens you can’t defend yourself and even a moron will crit you in the head.

Fight defensively and most hits will get caught by a shield or glance off armor.

Watch any hema fight and you will know what i mean, it’s quite difficult in a one on one to strike a superior opponent. Or even an opponent who focuses everything on defense. Fighting a charging warrior with a shield and armor, with just a bow and arrow, was suicidal for the Hunter.

Historically when armor became prevalent with shields all over; you could have 1000 archers shoot 1 volley into an infantry company of a 1000 and if you managed to kill about 50 people that was considered successful.

how did that hunter land a crit? (Marlin blocked it) Bulls eye uses a focus token to make the next attack an automatic crit. The attack roll is an automatic 20. For this particular hunter this would have been the automatic finisher but he underestimated Marlin’s skull. Marlin who then laughed it off rolled a critical success in the fear vs will contest, the dice roll on the hunter’s willpower save failed spectacularly. It was meant to be.

if your attack defeats the opponent’s AC by 9 you land a crit. Or more accurately your damage multiplier goes from 1 to 2. And with an attack that beats the AC by 18, 2 to 3.

mechanically brutal and ruthless doubles this increase.

(Rogues lower that 9 point increment for each stage of advantage they get, each stage of advantages gives you a +3)

if Marlin willfully takes a fully charged power attack from bron, Currently with i can take it

aka AC of 9 and bron hits him with a roll of 20 and rolls max damage with his 2 hander dice and power attack dice he would deal

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28x8=224 damage. Bron is an absolute Menace but he himself dies rather quickly if he were to fight himself.

this is why Marlin was constantly on the defensive, mocking and frightening him to lower the attack roll results, so he wouldn’t get vaporized. Being the tank is scary.

he had lowered Bron’s Morale just enough and upped his own AC with 6 with a parry, to not get Critted by an attack multiplied by 4.

Bron did almost kill him.

Marlin has below average strength and often misses entirely because of it, his precision strike has been a massive boon. Even against a gnoll with shitty stats, he fared rather poorly without it.

he is more or less a really scary trashtalker. That is difficult to take down and shitty to fight against.

Fury everyone has a reservoir of 3 maximum fury which you can gain if you are of the martial role or if you have a martial class. 1 fury can be consumed to gain + 1 to an attack roll.

Fury as a base, is not naturally gained. You need disciplines or specific perks for it. Endorphins. an athletic perk or indignation a inspire/intimidate expert perk give you fury as well.

Marlin with heart of Fury has a reservoir of 6 and gains 1 fury every 6 seconds. Bron with martial onslaught, Martial prowess and Heart of Fury, has a reservoir of 10. he generates 2 fury every 6 seconds, gains fury when he crits and also gains a fury when he flourishes. when Bron pops Frenzy, he doubles his current Fury. You can imagine a +10 on an attack roll with 22 strength and a claymore is lethal

as a berserker he can gain a discipline that will increase his damage if he uses fury.

Flourish.

this is needed for most ‘technique’s’. this is the closest, non magical BS gets to being magical. It most certainly is supernatural in nature.

Everyone generates 1 flourish every 6 seconds and starts combat with 2. There is no upper limit. Specialists done right, can keep blasting stuff like precision. The hunter, with Marlin blocking, was barely able to gain flourish which hammered down his dps.

Rage.

Each 2 successful hits within a round,increase your morale by one and you add Proficiency mod to your damage.

Proficiency mod

same as dnd 5e starts at 2 increases by 1 every 4 lvls starting at lvl 1.

Expert doubles proficiency,

master tripples it.

This is why Bradford advised against it for Marlin.

Marlin excels in drugging himself up in endorfin’s, fury, Rage and adrenaline, fine motor skills go out the window for him. He has a maximum of 3 expert slots and 1 master slot. He can’t ever change that, due to heart of fury.

And his level gain is too low to make it worth it unless he needs it for his build

most skill based classes have some way to gain a bit more proficiency.

Morale

This increases or decreases your Proficiency modifier. Trigger enough fear and it lowers someone’s morale, making all your expert and master skills suffer greatly.

This is how warriors and by extension people with intimidate function. By ripping people of their high horse and show them how weak they really are. Berserker, juggernaut and knight gain disciplines that allow them to increase their max morale

Being afraid in a fight sucks, losing hope in a fight sucks more, i myself have experienced this so that’s the inspiration for this particular tidbit. Having controlled anger is often the only way to keep your performance steady.

so thats the difference between a class such as warrior that fights by heavily modifying his or her own morale,

and knights increasing morale of allies

vs

skill based classes that focus on increasing their proficiency.

Skills sets

these govern anything you might expect from a skill set.

take farming for example.

you would know how to use a scythe, a pitchfork, a sickle, dagger/knife, how to harvest, how to sow crops etc.

much like with survival, you would most likely

make you a decent shot with a bow, snares, spears, daggers/knives, small axes tracking, foraging and mental mapping of where you are.

you would need weapon skill sets in order to gain access to techniques.

this is my approach to all skills for everyone.

Magic

all magic perks are concepts that a spell-caster understands, grasps and comprehends. Speaking the right words will give life to that understanding.

magic works very much like how cantrips in dnd. Create flame on its own, something Milly has, is very much like firebolt from dnd.

But that’s where the comparison ends. Combine it with titan fist or dragon claw and you have a spell where someone swipes at you with a burning claw. Or shoves a burning middle finger up your ass.

combine create flame with resonance you create buffs.

Combine it within your chant and everyone hearing that chant will get boosted some way.

point is you can mix and match any action with a magical action and create a unique effects.

Marlin could potentially learn create flame and infuse that into his weapon shield or armor. Or somehow mix it with intimidation skills.

Focus

This is basically a spell slot. Making magical actions more potent. You have a few of them but they come back with 10 minutes of meditation. This gives casters always something up their sleeve but not so ludicrous that they completely dominate the field on higher levels.

the severe lack of hitpoints in this system. Further augments this. Dnd is a team game not a solo game.