Home grown heroes

[LordFruitsnack]

Hey everyone,

I have a home grown hybrid 3.5ish role playing system that I would like to make a ruleset for. I am, at this stage, just trying to find out if it's even possible or likely. I have some game mechanics that are not in the 3.5 ruleset. Can anyone tell me if the following things are doable?

1. My combat system does NOT use a static number for defense (AC) instead every attack roll is countered with a defense roll. Is there a way to do something like this? My idea is that the characters would attack then the attacked person would roll their defense and then the results would automatically be calculated and changes made to the character sheet.

2a. We use damage categories instead of hit points.( 1-11) The categories reflect how injured you are and effect your attack, defense and damage. Is there a way to do this in FG? (See paranoia rules)
2b. Weapon damage is done like the rules for paranoia. Each weapon does an automatic number of categories plus your Strength bonus plus a variable called the boost. The boost is a calculation based on the difference between your attack result minus the defenders result divided by the weapons boost.
So a sword dies 4C4B (4 categories 4Boost) you have a Strength bonus of 3.
So you roll 25 total you opponent rolls 9. 25-9=16
4C+3C+(16÷4=)4C for a total of 11C minus the defender's damage reduction. Can this be done semiautomatically?

3. Can I make a character sheet that only shows limited info to the players? I would like for the players to not have access to the actual numbers or stats and they would only see what they can do like attack, defend, search etc. Can I hide the page or pages from the players that holds all the numbers and create a page that let's them do actions based on the numbers? I'm trying to get the players to do more role playing and less talking about the mechanics.

I have more questions, but if these can't be done the others are unimportant.

[damned]

Welcoem LordFruitsnack

1. I dont know any rulesets that do automatic opposed rolls. I did the Maelstrom RPG which has oppose rolls in Combat and its a 2 step process. Attacker rolls - there is still a CRit Fail | Fail | Success | Crit Success to the roll - if its a S or CS then the defender rolls his Defense and then its compared. The rolls are all made by double clicking weapon skills but the determination of a hit is done by the GM. Then if required damage is rolled and dragged on to the target. It could be done automatically but it was a design decision made in conjunction with the licenseholder.

2a. Yes you can do this. You can do this in two ways. The simplest is to build some static modifier buttons and if your player (or NPC) is wounded they click the appropriate modifier and then make their roll. The more complex way is to build effects. Effects are awesome but they seriously require a lot of programming.

2b. Its a very complex calculation. Not for your brain its not but your brain can handle abstractions like this quite easily. Determining a workflow and logic that takes into account all the elements and the timing would be in my opinion complex. The answer is yes it can be done but the whole logic is complex to start with and actually programming that is also complex.

3. Yes you can have a view for the players and a view for the GM. The Combat Tracker works this way. Id personally avoid it for the Character Sheet. Its extra work and its an edge case - in most cases players would know and see the numbers. You could have a front page with all the stuff they *need* and put the other stuff on secondary tabs.

So... are you a programmer? If so the answer to all of these is yes - but it will take some considerable effort.
If not the answer is still yes but you will need to really knuckle down and learn some programming!
Alternatively 1 and 2a are easily done with CoreRPG (and MoreCore) with zero programming but 2b is going to be a serious of steps.