ooo... vampire: the requiem has a skill called Brawl

i think I should look into its other ones

@doppelgreener A thought: wealth-gathering, and the direct connection between monetary gain and combat power, is crucial to most of the inspiration sources you're drawing from.

There are a lot of ways you could represent this, but it should be included somehow.

Hmm. Most of those sources have a straightforward model of get gold -> buy items -> fight monsters -> get more gold -> get better items -> fight bigger monsters. But the kinds of items I'm interested in aren't the kind you buy from a shop or continuously replace with bigger better newer stuff, and I'm not interested in engaging in the upgrade loop.

Two ideas.

One: tie gold to Refresh.

Two: tie gold to magic.

In the past I've toyed with the idea of a truly magical currency system, which would mesh nicely with your "everyone can use magic, but some can use it well" world notion.

Dark Souls, however, has a different approach: the enemies you slay give you Souls. Larger, more formidable enemies give you more powerful souls. In-game, souls are a currency you trade for new equipment, spend for upgrading your existing equipment, or which you spend on your own character's progression.

That is, in a world where magic is ubiquitous, the currency system uses magic: coins are made of substances which enhance magic somehow, or are actually little chunks of magic themselves.

But most items that are worth having are found on enemies, not purchased. So most of what you'll do with your souls is buy ammunition, acquire various single-use or special items (like a storage trunk), or increase your stats.

@BESW That kind of thing could work with currency being something metaphysical like Souls. :D

Yup!

I once ran a 3.5 game where the Ancient Civilisations Whose Ruins We Are Ransacking made coins from a metal which absorbed ambient magic. You could channel the absorbed magic into a spell, granting it metamagic feat effects without raising its level or even having the feat whose effect you were creating.

Neat >:D

Though personally, I prefer "magic is our currency" over "our currency is magic[al]"

@BESW (oh my!)

it's likely though that i simply won't add wealth acquisition, and be the odd one out, and see if the players are unhappy with that

buying stuff isn't important and character advancement doesn't take place at the speed of looting

Yar. Maybe work it in later.

aye aye, maybe i'll eventually come across a currency-sized gap

@doppelgreener [reminderpoke] re: Doctor Who.

@BESW oh yes

my brain has been in hack and slash mode

I know. Just making sure that doesn't fall out entirely.

Suddenly, a thought: no weapon skills. (No Bow or Blade, no Ranged or Melee.) Instead, you have various other skills (e.g. Quickness, Toughness, Smarts), and you have a weapon. When you perform actions using your weapon, either: (a) you pick a justifiable skill and apply it, or (b) your weapon is keyed to a single, or two, skills, and you attack, defend, etc with its keyed skills.

Interesting, that could work well.

\o/ I'm glad you think so.

Notion: use the six D&D ability stats as inspiration for the skills.

Other notion: magic works the same way: to cast a spell you need an implement to channel through, and each implement is tied to a skill or two.

@BESW i will, but I'm also going to look to games without that weird wis/int overlap or etc

e.g. Dark Soul's stats: darksouls.wikidot.com/stats

@BESW Yes, exactly! And unarmed combat works the same way: your fists are your weapons.

So you can pick up a Faith-tied staff, but if you dumped your Faith stat... why?

If necessary this leaves me room to add a layer or two to weapons, e.g. designating them as 'blunt-force' or 'sharp' if there's mechanical use for it.

On the other hand, a big brawny fighter might find a lot of use in a Vitality-tied amulet.

@BESW Characters pick the attuned skill, I think. Or, if there's 2-3 attuned skills, the GM could pick one.

but also if you dumped your Faith stat, you're probably not the guy the GM put the staff there for.

e.g. big brawny brawler holding a staff going "I WILL BE THE STRONGEST WITH THIS" whilst the cleric is weeping and begging for it. "NEVER! YOU ARE NOT THE STRONGEST."

"I FEEL DIVINELY INSPIRED TO HIT THINGS REALLY HARD WITH THIS DELICATE WOODEN INSTRUMENT!!"

for the most part, though, if the characters are going to have this equipment for a while, I think weapons should have large blanks for the players to fill in with what they really want from their weapon.

the GM makes a suggestion by filling in less than half the blanks.

Sounds good.

thoughts: if we're limited to 3 pieces of armor, then...

the magic user might have a staff + two pieces of armor.

the rogue might have a piece of armor + two daggers. (or, two pieces of armor, plus two daggers modelled as one weapon.)

the ranger, however, may want a sword and a bow. or the barbarian may want a big axe and also a big hammer.

the ranger and barbarian will probably only have one weapon out at once, and a weapon's stunts only apply to things you're doing with that weapon.

thus, the ranger and barbarian may have greater versatility than their companions, but they pay for it by having fewer items active at once.

(alternately, consider the Knight who can either wield his Shield and Sword, or his Greataxe, but not both.)

I wonder if I should do something about this. Should people have, say, 3 active item slots and 2 reserve item slots? Reserve slot items do nothing, they're just there and available. That way the people who want multiple weapons can do that, whilst still perpetually being able to have three items active.

So equipment moves from a "3 items total, all of them always active" model from "5 items total, pick 3"

... reserve could also be used for fantastic equipment, like Richor's Superascending Grappling Rope Gun.