IKRPG using 2d6 resolution and WM/H stats

[Tamrielo]

As sort of a spinoff from the homebrew thread, has anyone considered this as a possibility? It's a concept my buddy and I have been tossing around as a way to simply and elegantly run an IKRPG game without needing a major overhaul of all the basic rules, or just taking an existing setting and putting IK trappings on it.

Marketing would be easy and drive sales of books (and potential cross-pollination of the games) and provide tons of preexisting, statted out NPCs to a campaign setting.

The main difficulty would be player character creation and advancement. You'd need a way of generating stats and giving players an edge, as well as resolving skill checks.

SPD - movement by any other name, easy to directly adapt.

STR - melee damage rolls, as per WM/H, and for the obvious strength checks.

MAT - melee attack rolls, as per WM/H, and for physical manipulation skill checks (lockpicking, pickpocketing, mechanical aptitude)

RAT - ranged attack rolls, as per WM/H, and for perception-based skill checks (spot, search, etc)

DEF - defense, as per WM/H

ARM - damage reduction, as per WM/H

CMD - charisma and intelligence; this would govern stuff like Will saves and Intelligence checks, as well as your ability to command other NPCs who may be working with you (and 'jack marshalling)

FOC - your magic/ability to buy attacks/boost, again, just like WM/H


In a system like this, you'd make sure CMD and FOC start fairly low, and as they "level up" it's these stats primarily that go up (since in a 2d6 system, the difference between MAT 6 and MAT 7 is pretty significant; you don't want players to be able to get up to MAT 9 or 10 and laugh off most opposition).

If you make it a game, much like WM/H, where players slowly grow to amass allies and allied warjacks (much like mercenary bands would in a more "standard" IKRPG game), the CMD could dictate how many additional NPCs you could command.

[Dais]

actually, i submitted this question (about the 2d6 system anyway) to focus & fury when they did their mattt wilson interview. he didnt directly say yes but he said it would be familiar to warmachine and hordes players. im sure they still have that episode up on their site.

[Spartan1087]

I was thinking something like this would be really cool because you would already have all you stats for enemies with the warmachine and hordes stuff. but how do you roll for stats, how do figure out how much life you have based off the stats. its a cool idea but just very limiting when working with smaller scale number because like you said theres a big difference between a 6 mat and a 7 mat and it would be the same for strength as well just that one difference in strength could make the your character really strong or just average.

[Tamrielo]

@Dais

I'll have to look that up. I'd be thrilled if that were the direction they were going with the RPG. 2d6 is an easy-to-understand system, and accessible RPG systems are all too rare.

@Spartan1087

That's why you'd have to have a system where raising stat points was very, very rare and very, very slow. A boost to CMD or FOC isn't necessarily going to break the game, but a boost to MAT or DEF (or SPD) might.

It's possible you could make it work with the following guidelines:

All primary stats (SPD, STR, MAT, RAT) start at 3, and secondary stats (CMD, FOC) start at 0. You get 12 points with which to raise those stats, to a maximum of 8 in a given stat.

DEF is your SPD + the higher of your MAT or RAT, plus 1 (making average player DEF 13, if they have SPD 6 and MAT/RAT 6). ARM would be something like base 10 + whatever armor you're wearing (so a greatcoat might be +1 ARM, while full platemail + shield would be +6 ARM).

[freedoom]

I believe Virgil38 created just this. His file on the old boards seems to be non-existent but if you PM him i'm sure he can get you a copy.

[Tamrielo]

Ooh, I'll have to ping him for that. I'm curious how he solved some of the stickier problems that end up being created with a system like this.

[Saerko]

Virgil38's system worked out some of the kinks by adding another, RPG-only stat called Mind (MND) which had to be leveled up like any of the other stats, but contributed more to Skill Checks and played into Focus. Stats, skills, spells, and special abilities were all on a point buy, and he made it so you didn't have to make a warcaster, but could essentially re-create any WM/H model at equivalent point cost using the system.

The only place you could really create something overpowered tended to be in building the Warjacks, but the GM would could adjudicate a point cost higher if they thought someone had generated something abusive.

He put a lot of work into that thing, and it's shame PP had him take it off of the boards because it was using their IP without consent. :(

[Virgil38]

Yeah I put together a 150 page document as an entirely self contained RPG completely based on WM/H. Unfortunately I was asked to pull it for legal reasons (kind of like if you don't sue someone you lose the copyright / they have their own in the works). Now, since I don't want to get sued I'm not going to post it, but if you have some questions as to how I did a few things I'd be more than glad to answer them.