TOASTER_TEAM'S PROFILE

An example:
Rogue rolls 2 die while goblin rolls 1.
Rogue gets: 3 and 4 Goblin gets 3.

Rogue wins by one.

1-2: 1 damage
2: 2 damage
3: 3 damage
4: 4 damage
5: damage

Five tiers.

Goblin wears a leather armor with a protection of 1 and a durability of 10.
Goblin doesn't take any damage but armor durability goes down by 1. So maybe the weapon damage is too low. Something like:


0: grazing 1 damage
1: 2 damage
2: 3 damage
3: 4 damage
4: 5 damage
5: 6 damage

That would probably work better. No? In that example, the goblin would take one health damage point and one durability. Wouldn't that work?

I want to keep the health in a lower digit like the other characteristics so that's why I need to be careful when setting the armors and weapons.

Feel free to provide an example of your own, I find it's easier to understand with an in-game example.

If you want to keep things simple, I would go with making movement cost more for the dwarf. That way you could just list the movement cost in energy for the dwarf and it will feel like any other action (since, if I understand it correctly, all actions have movement costs). The downside to this method is that you'll need to use larger values so that you can have smaller gradients in movement (so not 1 vs 2 but more like 2 vs 3 or 4 vs 5).

I don't want to have higher increments, it would clash with the rest. The highest score for a stat would be 10 which is pretty much legendary.

What I did was to add a movement value (the boot icon):


This means the Rogue can move 4 tiles free of charge (energy-wise). Any extra tiles beyond that would cost 1 energy:



Regarding armor, I'll just go more or less with this:

As for the armor, in the example you quoted I intended the character to still take damage to HP anytime damage exceeded the armor's protection value.

Light armor provides 1 protection and various durability depending on the armor.
Medium armor provides 2 and various durability depending on the armor.
Heavy armor provides 3 and various durability depending on the armor.
Exceptional/unique armor would provide 4 (and various durability).

For example, you could have a wizard garb and the cloak. While both provide a protection of 1, the durability for the cloak if 10 while the wizard garb is 5.

Every time the character is struck, damage is reduced by the protection of the armor. For example, a damage of 4 would be reduced by 1, meaning 3 damage would be taken.

Durability goes down depending on the damage taken. Here I have two choices:
a) durability is reduced by the damage protection. For example, taking a hit of 4 for a cloak would reduce durability by 1.
A chain mail, with a protection of 2, would lose 2 durability.
The problem with this is that in a way in doesn't make sense. A blow of 4 should reduce durability of the cloak a more than the chain mail. So this doesn't really work.
b) Have armor lose the same durability regardless of the blow with every hit, say 1. This would make things easier to keep track of but it doesn't make sense either. A powerful blow should damage armor more than a light one...

I don't want the second skin option. So I need to find a better solution for durability management.

@Mirak: Erilex's screen is definiely not pixel art.

@Erilex: I like the modern setting, it's looking good. The only thing bothering me are the tiles which are bland compared to the rest and break immersion.

Heavy WIP

I'm experimenting with the idea of a hedge maze (never mind the big tree in the lower left, I'm experimenting):
1. How would you assemble the hedge from the stairs? I'm stumped.
2. Do you think the hedge is high/thick enough compared to the miniatures?
3. What else could I include to break the monotony inside the maze? Roots? Patches of grass? Statues?

Thank you!

If you want to stick with a single die as damage, definitely go with the idea of using the next highest totals after ties, because that ups the advantage of having additional dice. Otherwise, the extra dice feel really worthless (imagine how you would feel if you roll 6, 6, 6, 6 and the other guy rolls 6, 2, 1, 1 and then wins the re-roll).

The problem with this is that it negates grazing. I wanted both characters to get damaged if they rolled a tie. I think I could use the next highest roll only if a 6 is rolled? I think that's likely solution.

As for my confusing comment, when I wrote "5 damage levels" I just meant that right now you're proposing at most three damage levels for weapons (1-2, 3-4, 5) and I'm just saying you should have one level for each possibility (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). That doesn't mean you can't have weapons which do the same damage for more than one level. It just means that you can have weapons that will do different damage for all levels. Restricting things to at most three tiers is just a method of reducing the randomness. And as I tried to hint at in my previous post, if you're making dice a big part of the game, embrace the randomness that comes with it. You will get unlucky. You will suddenly take a ton of damage, or have a bad fight. So embrace it. Just make sure that there are ways for the player to recover from a string of horrible luck (quick restarts, not a lot of lost progress, or just raw mitigation techniques like the MP stat you suggested).

Yes, it is to reduce the randomness. Hmm... I'm still on the fence about this. It'd require a lot more design time to tailor all damage levels than 3 to be honest. I know, that's not the best approach but I need to be very cautious of the scope. Keep things limited, don't go overboard. Most important lesson in indie game design for me: keep scope limited.

That said, if you are willing to keep your stats very strictly controlled, you can do flat reductions effectively. It's just hard from my side to say much about that, then. As mentioned, doing flat reductions definitely run the risk of allowing the player to become invincible.

So I need to find something else then.

Perhaps with armor protection and durability, you could make it so that the amount of durability used is how much damage is prevented, not how much gets through. So if you had 2 protection and took 1 damage, you would lose 1 durability. If you took 5 damage, you'd lose only 2. That means the armor wears out even if it blocks all of the damage, but won't wear out any faster if you do take damage. So no invincibility, but there's still a (small) advantage in facing damage rolls which are smaller than your protection value.

I like that idea as long as it doesn't mean that armor goes first and life after like Binding of Isaac, I don't want that. I don't want armor to act like a second skin. I want it to reduce damage, not nullify it (regarding your last paragraph).

I've found someone. Thank you!