Animal Stats
Name | Health | Evade/Dodge | Attack | Experience |
---|---|---|---|---|
Rat | 6 | 5/5 | unarmed:6 | 2 |
Spider | 9 | 10/10 | unarmed:6 | 4 |
A turn-based old school rpg
Name | Health | Evade/Dodge | Attack | Experience |
---|---|---|---|---|
Rat | 6 | 5/5 | unarmed:6 | 2 |
Spider | 9 | 10/10 | unarmed:6 | 4 |
Name | Defense vs. bludgeoing | Defense vs. piercing | Defense vs. slashing | Noise |
---|---|---|---|---|
Cloth | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Leather armor | 4 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
Scale mail | 4 | 6 | 6 | 1 |
Chain mail | 8 | 6 | 8 | 3 |
Plate mail | 6 | 10 | 12 | 5 |
Attributes are a resemblance of the characters genetical ability.
Amount of attribute point is fixed and are distributed deliberately
Skills can’ be trained higher than the amount of the corresponding attribute levels accumulated.
Attributes determine the training costs of a skill:
Attribute | Effect on | Associated skills |
---|---|---|
Agility: Reflexes & Flexibility | Attack Defense (Evade & Dodge) Initiative Movement | Armor Weapon |
Charisma: it determines how easy or difficult it is for the PC to hold together a party of differing alignments, and it determines who the PC can romance. I would cast “Friends” to up the charisma of the lead character and the party talked their way out of more combats. Charisma can also increase locally by doing heroic acts in the relevant town. It is not about beautiy but more about personality and negotiation | Ascension Prayer | Haggling/Barer Leadership Persuade |
Dexterity: Hand eye coordination | Critical Strikes | Crafting Lockpicking Traps Weapon (esp. Bow) |
Intelligence, Sagacity: Knowledge & Memory | Spells (Amount, Tier) | Bartering Languages Lockpicking Persuasion Talking ( Dialogue options ) Traps Persuasion |
Intuition; Resistance to stress, Make the right decision, Guide others | ||
Perception: | Vision Range | |
Strength: | Attack Bash doors Carrying capacity (10kg – 50kg, normal 20kg) Damage Movement Poise | Armor Weapon |
Vitality: | Hit Points Movement Resistance to Poison / Disease Stamina Vision Range | Armor (Cloth) |
Value | Level | Description |
---|---|---|
0 – 10 | not possible | |
10 – 14 | poor | crippled, cursed |
15 – 19 | below average | starting value when creating a character |
20 – 24 | average | |
25 – 29 | able | trained or talented |
30 – 34 | outstanding | trained and talented |
35 – 39 | master | trained and talented, main focus of self improvement |
40 – 44 | ascended | only reachable if ascended |
45+ | divine |
There are two ways to raise an attribute:
Traits: This note detailed the old Class and Traits system. Originally, genetic traits did not exist in the game and instead, traits were more like “talents”. A character could have major talents which give massive bonuses to mana, and minor talents which gave small bonuses to other areas.
Negative attributes: I think the most innovation in attribute scores is that it adds negative attributes (things like avarice or superstition) to the mix. Makes up for some pretty fun gameplay situations.
Random increases: Your characters also get stat increases on level-up, but they are completely random. Apparently this leads some power-gamers to save before a level-up and re-load their game if they don’t like the stat increases.
Randomness in Character creation: There is really no need to keep random values in character generation and development – all you do is forcing players to endlessly reroll the dice, reload the gamestates until finally the results are acceptable. Character management should by complex and interesting enough without such shenanigans.
The range of weapons etc. is based on the following table. It is kind of counter intuitive because if you want to reach the tile which is two tiles up you need a range of three. The advantage is that it allows far more options than an intuitive correct mapping from range to tiles, e.g. you can have a weapon with a very short range which disallows directional attacks.
14 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 |
12 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 |
10 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
8 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
7 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
8 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 |
10 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 |
12 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12 |
14 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 14 |
Here is the formula which is used to calculate the range:
x = |PosX1 – PosX2|
y = |PosY1 – PosY2|
(y * 2) -1 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 |
(y * 2) -1 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 |
(y * 2) -1 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 |
(y * 2) -1 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 | (x + y) * 2 – 2 |
0 | (x * 2) -1 | (x * 2) -1 | (x * 2) -1 | (x * 2) -1 |
There will be different means of transportation. Some of them are more or less a commodity for the player where others are critcial to advancing in the world. The different transportation options allow access to areas not reachable otherwise and are an essential item for exploring the game world.
Travelling by foot is possible but rather slow. Water can’t be crossed on foot. Some types of terrain take more time. Some types take a greater toll of your stamina. Roads and bridges provide the easiest travel. More time is needed to pick your way through forests and across glaciers -the treacherous marshes take the most time of all. The drain on your energy ranges from roads up through plains, forests, deserts and glaciers to those treacherous marshes again. Mountains and rivers simply cannot be crossed without other means of transporation. The going is slower after dark, and when your party members are tired. It is impossible when they are exhausted. Transports is also needed to increase carring capacity. They can be stolen though, or if it is an animal die from thirst. Last but not least it is easiert to discover a party if they use a caravan. But it also may be easier to flee an encounter if the party is mounted and the other side on foot.
For every type of transport a parking position exists, player spawns next to this location
If the player is the owner of the transport and uses it she immediatly leaves the settlement using this transport. If not, a pop up dialogue appears which asks if the player wants to steal it.
Transport spawns at the parking position. If the parking position is occupied the player can’t buy this transport.
Transport which the player wants to sell must be in parking position in the settlement. When sold, it disappears.
Message appears which says that transport will be seized by the authorities
Simply enter combat with the party unmounted. Depending on the transport, the combat map depends on the transport (e.g. balloon, galley).
Should a list of bought transports be saved?
There are some teleporters in every imperial settlement: ##LINK## Portal of Defenders of Civilisation (Podoc) Besides that there should not be a way to teleport on the worldmap. For convenience reasons there exists a ##Link Quicktravel option.
“It’s also kind of lame that the Orb works in the middle of combat, enabling instant escape–directly to Lord British’s throne room for healing, if you want–when things get tough. I certainly don’t mind cutting down on travel time, but I think the Avatar should have to visit the stone circles associated with each destination before the Orb will take him there.”
It was back in 2013 when I read an article in a german online news site about Chester Bolingbroke. A guy who wants to play every computer role playing game. Every. “This task is impossible and a person trying to go through it must be insane” were my first thoughts. I thought it is impossible because there are so many crpgs out there and each one takes a lot of time to play. Even when I was in my teens and had a lot of free time, which I glady put into playing crpgs, I haven’t finished most of the ones I started, because at some point they mostly got tedious and too time consuming. And I played only the best rated ones. Today, with a full time job, I hardly have the time to play at all. I probably go through two or three crpgs per year and have the feeling that I spend too much time on crpgs. I couldn’t imagine somebody working full time would suffer through all of them. So I expected that the articles were either based on minimal playing experience or the guy writing them was a bum with nothing better to do which would certainly show up in the articles in the form of a generally low quality.
So i started reading his blog and realized very quickly that I couldn’t be more wrong. The quality of each and every article is simply superb and he really plays most of the games until the end. Even the ones which are more than tedious. Since five years I follow his blog and read everything. Every article, every comment. Yes, comments also, because his blog attracts a lot of crpg players from around the world. They share their experience with the game, a bit of personal history and some insights in the grander things of crpgs. They add even more value to the already very valuable articles. I still can’t imagine that someone has the energy to follow this project for years, but apparently he has. And I am very happy about it.
If you don’t know him you can find the “Crpg Addict blog” here..
The party can rest on the Worldmap and on the Settlement Maps. Resting doesn’t restore and heal everything. This ensures that time spend travelling and battling wears the PCs down. They need a certain amount of efficency to survive. Only when they are in settlements they can fully regain their power, as resting in the wilderness always poses the risk of a random encounter.
Effects:
Modifiers:
Pray: Priests can pray to their gods
If the party rests on the worldmap it is builidng a camp. Setting the camp up needs some time and equipment. If some equipment is missing, or the weather is too bad, the positive effect of resting will be smaller. The party also needs food to rest, otherwise the resting effects are minimal.
Attending a companion: Helps the companion to heal faster.
Conserving food: Meat or other food rots, so it has to be conserved if the meat should be added to the food reserves.
Equipment: Sleeping Roll
Encounters: Party may encounter NPCs during rest. If so, some members of the party will enter the encounter with their condition listed as asleep.
Fireplace: Making a fire restores stamina faster and food and water is used more efficiently. A fire draws more encounters, because it can be seen for a long distance. It also cures the conditions cold.
Hunting for Food: Some campsites are better suited for hunting than others. Forests are good. Icefields, deserts and highways are bad. The Player has to decide who goes hunting. During the hunt these agents could encounter some wild animals, etc. Also enemy NPCs could wait with raiding the camp until some PCs are gone for hunting, thus reducing the amount of defenders.
Scout: Is a scout in the party the player gets feedback, if e.g. lighting a fire makes an encounter more likely or not. He also gives an overall assesment of the situation: Which dangers are about, wild animals, etc.
Party size: The bigger the party the higher the chance of an encounter
Resting in an settlement usually requires the party to pay for in an inn, unless they have the invitation to do so in someones house. They could also scout for empty houses and rest there, but they could be discovered by the local guard or maybe attract local thieves.
Encounters: Party may encounter thieves during rest. If so, some members of the party will enter the encounter with their condition listed as asleep.
Inn Quality: The better the Inn the faster the party recovers. A higher price of a musn’t reflect in a better quality. The inn costs per party member. The cheapest one carry a risk of disease and theft.
Read more about his influence or visit his blog.
It’s system of resting and restoration is, at first glance, drawn from Might & Magic. The party can rest for 8 hours at almost any location, and 8 hours of rest fully restores hit points and spell points. That makes it sound a little too easy, just as Might & Magic noften was, but you have a supply of food that continually depletes as you move and rest, and you can’t rest if it’s gone. nMight & Magic had that, too, but the difference here is that food is rare and expensive. You can find some in the wilderness and buy it in town, but a few days’ supply costs a couple hundred gold pieces, and at the beginning, at least, finances are tight. This means that you can’t abuse the rest system, and the game manages to find that nice balance between individual combat difficulty and accumulation-of-combats difficulty that characterize Might & Magic and Wizardry, respectively.
A few more thoughts on the resting issue: Might & Magic II could have ramped up the tactical level by including more serious consequences to resting too often. Right now, there are only four, and none of them are consequential enough to worry about:
It only gets better in future games as the number of spells increases and give you more options. Because you can only recover spells by sleeping, and because you can’t go to sleep in most places until you’ve cleared them, the game strikes a good balance between individual-combat difficulty (as in Might & Magic) and accumulation-of-combats difficulty (as in Wizardry).
I was going to comment that the rule that characters only get 1 HP restoration from 24 hours’ rest is kind of stupid. Then I thought about it and realized that resting for 2 months to go from death’s door to perfect health is probably about accurate. In much later AD&D-based games like Baldur’s Gate, one night’s rest restores all hit points, I think.
Rest and HP recovery rules in AD&D tabletop have always been brutal. You recovered 1 HP per day of normal rest, and if you were doing a full-on “stay in bed all day” with someone attending to you, you could recover 3HP per day. It was assumed players would use magical healing to get back into fighting shape faster.
Here is an overview of whcih keyboard commands exist and what effect they have based on the map they are executed on. Bold ones are the same on every map.
Key | World | Settlement | Battlefield |
---|---|---|---|
(1-0) | Show player stats | Show player stats | Show player stats |
(a) ttack | none | Initiate combat | Attack |
(c) ast a spell | Cast a spell | Cast a spell | Cast a spell |
(e)nter | Enter a location | Enter location, climb stairs, etc. | none |
(g)et | none | Pick an item up | Pick an item up |
(i) nventory | Display inventory | Display inventory | Display inventory |
(l)ook at | none | Look at something | none |
(q) | Quicktravel | Quicktravel | none |
none | none | Quit combat | |
(r)est | Rest and set up camp | none | none |
(s)earch | none | Search | none |
(t)alk | none | Talk with NPC | none |
(u)se | none | Interact with object on map | none |
E(x)it to Worldmap | none | Leave settlement | Leave battlefield |
(w)ait | Ends player turn | Ends player turn | Ends player turn |
Key | World | Settlement | Battlefield |
---|---|---|---|
Shift + (1-0) | Set active player | Set active player | none |