After going through and editing my first draft, I realized that I left a lot of the rules of this RPG game unexplained. I felt I was showing too many numbers and dice rolls as it was, and I didn’t want to get the story bogged down with even more rules. However, I have gotten several comments/questions about how things work, and I did change several rules during the edit because they needed to support the story later on.
So, I am adding these addendums to specific chapters to explain a little more about the game mechanics working behind the scenes that play pivotal roles in the story that I probably didn’t explain enough. I took the time to build a complex rule system for this RPG game I invented, and I want to show it off a little. If this dive into some of the rules doesn’t interest you, feel free to move on to the next chapter and skip these added chapters whenever they come up.
In this addendum, I wanted to talk about the Stun ability Jace has and the Death Save, both of which are vitally important in the rest of the story and introduced in this Ogre fight. I realized I messed both of these up when I got to scenes much later in the book, so I changed the rules on the fly and then had to come back to chapters like the one you just read to fix the contradictions.
First, the Stun spell. When I wrote my first draft, Jace could enact the Stun ability whenever he got a critical hit. As I got later in the story, I realized this was too powerful, so I started to give his enemies Stun protection. But, after they canceled one Stun attempt, they would be susceptible to another Stun attempt in the next attack. Because of this, the ability was still too powerful. So, I decided to treat it like any other spell, and the defender gets to save against it using their magic resistance.
Then I needed to decide how to set the difficulty of the Stun attack. Jace’s low Intelligence score gives him a spell difficulty skill of -6. This is added to his level (8), but that would make his difficulty 2, and almost everyone will have a higher magic resistance than that, plus the defender rolls a die. So, I decided your weapon could also define the spell difficulty, and the game would choose the higher value (either the player or the item.)
An item’s skill rating for most things is based on what a mage’s ability would be at the same level as the weapon if they maxed out the skill. This is explained later in the story. Basically, where would they be if they had 20 Intelligence and put a point in Spell Difficulty at every level? When Jace holds the Halberd, it is a +1 Level 8 item. A level 8 mage who maxed out his Spell difficulty (ignoring feats that would make it much higher) is 26. It will increase to 27 because the weapon is a +1. So Jace’s foes need a saving throw of 27 to avoid being stunned. Here is the Ogre character sheet:
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEX_bJvNwgRIWYw1anRJCN7PGwHUleqguOIw87jVFQW-z7RqVQv7DttQ2uKg5QVIYFiMc_odMNl5Gu35z8E5Ylo764Q7xEe-lw4ZrE-yGORHr5FZ8iXsbHJLN_kxcZXUhSHXOgaWQpQYNvZOdz7xUKlH=w1013-h776-no?authuser=1]
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Their Magic Defense is at 6. Their low Wisdom and Spirit contribute a -4, which adds to their level of 10 and gives them a 6. This means that they would need to roll a 20 (Critical) to avoid being stunned, and while that doesn’t reach 27, the critical success cancels the miss (as long as it is a miss less than 10). None of the ogres roll a 20.
Now onto the ogre chief.
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEXZXc-x_y2AIkMGHeK_9OI87xaI6-sfF3ekDWtZ-9bu14sD3cDOZQZuaT5hRO2O4H3FdzilM9yudb4uJHfQp2fVTDhP23hYoVZcSRLyCw1tXj2i-XQkTaIKgHNK_wIuOtZFdEsSzkYcQd-kt7SoR87m=w1013-h754-no?authuser=1]
He has a magic Defense of 17, meaning he only needed to roll a 10+ to cancel Jace’s Stun. Jace asks Xavier to lower the Chief’s resistance, and the priest casts a spell to bring it down by 10, forcing the Chief to roll a 20 in defense, which he fails to do and is stunned.
The next item I wanted to cover is the Death Save. This happens when the character takes damage from one attack (Magical or Physical) that exceeds half of their total HP. Not their current HP, but the maximum allowable. When this happens, the victim must make a save against the damage or be Penalized along the following chart.
1 Charm/Shock
2 Daze
3 Stun
4 Paralyze
5 Unconscious
6 Death
If the player fails the Death Save by less than 10, they are shocked, which means they take a -5 penalty to all rolls against the person who attacked them. This level of Bane is also called Charm because, depending on the circumstances, that word makes more sense, but it is the same thing, and the character has a -5 penalty. This is explained more once Jace meets Esther, and she has the Charm+ spell.
If they fail the Death Save by 10-19 (a Critical failure), the target is Dazed, meaning they suffer a -5 penalty against everyone. A double critical failure (20-29) makes them Stunned, which means they lose half of their natural AC bonus. For medium-sized characters, that is -5. They can’t cast spells, attack, or defend, but they still make saving throws. A triple critical failure means they are Paralyzed, which means they lose all of their Natural AC, can not make saving throws, and are considered Helpless, which is explained in the game a little later, but I will also write another addendum on it. A quadruple critical failure makes them unconscious. And if you fail by 50+, you enter a Death Spiral.
A Death Spiral means you are knocked unconscious, and you will lose half your current HP rounded up each round. To stabilize someone, you need to heal them equal to half their health. That will stop the loss, and they will stay where they are. If you heal them by more than that, the amount they would have lost is deducted from the healing spell, and they go up the remainder.
The Death Save value for each character is calculated by adding their Magic Defense to their Resist score and Spirit base. For the ogre grunts, that is 6 + 25 – 4 = 27. They have 260 HP, so Jace needs to do 130+ damage to trigger the Death Save. No roll on a 20-sided die will ever get 27 within 50 of 130+, so I don’t go into the numbers in the story.
In most cases in the rest of the story, when Jace triggers a Death Save on an enemy, it will be after a massive strike of 150+, and you can be assured that most foes will not be able to save against it to prevent death. The one exception to this is coming up in a few chapters, but I mention in the story that the defender has tons of magical upgrades that protects him during a Death Save; I just don’t go into the numbers.
Feel free to ask any questions in the comments.