Posts have not been very consistent on the blog but that is because I’ve been hard at work on tweaking and toying with the new dice mechanics I’ve decided to implement into the system. While at its core the system seems to be sound, it posed a difficult question to me in terms of social dynamics: How do I balance this new system to compliment the changes made to the core to still be suitable for social dynamics as well?
The idea is to implement a “double up” effect on the Attribute dice. What this would mean is that, for example, if I am rolling a Charm roll with a d4 in Charm I would roll 2d4 to determine a Charm test. This takes care of the base problem at face value but has drawbacks of its own as well. The non-physical Attributes like Smarts, Will and Charm would not suffer any drastic changes other than major buffs as you increase their associated dice (you can imagine a 2d10 getting pretty crazy in a social situation even with the current success setup, but more on that later). But it begs the question how would this affect Combat? A character getting to start with a Strength of d6 at face value would, according to the current rules, be throwing 2d6+1d4 (the d4 being our hypothetical Magika die) while Transformed, right?
Currently, yes. This is balanced out by making combat more difficult in terms of landing hits to damage while also adjusting how the successes work in general. Which brings us to our next topic:
In my attempt to move away from “PbtA” and making Magika Calamitia become its own beast, we are adjusting the base success rate while adding in a “Critical Hit” system as well. While the number has currently been fluxing during this stage of development, the non-combat target has been between 3-5 while combat targets are similar plus the Threat Level of enemies. In the current setup, Threat Level would not affect Magika rolls. Critical Hits would add benefits for every interval of 3-5 hit over the initial (currently, if I keep the target of 5, you would roll a critical success on a roll of 10).
The next thing I have been working on is new Feats and ways to make them more appealing. During testing, it was noted that players would rarely take Feats unless they had no other option to, with only one player opting to take and regularly use a Feat in the last play test that was ran. This problem is being adjusted by allowing players to now have 3 points at character creation in an attempt to encourage players to take a Feat. Depending on how players use this additional creation point, I may nerf an overused function if I feel it is being abused by players (unknowingly or otherwise).
Along with this, I added a new type of Feat to obtain: Roles.
A Role Feat is the closest thing to a “class” Magika Calamitia will have access to in the current version. The current 6 available are Bruiser, Marksman, Guardian, Support, Saboteur and Specialist with 3 levels of each Feat that can be taken. There is always a chance these Feats will be adjusted or even eliminated completely, but it is an attempt to allow players to give their character direction if they choose to take that route.
While I am very excited to try the new changes out, I am unsure if we will make Magpie’s next Community Designer Spotlight for October ‘22 due to personal reasons in my daily life. Regardless, I will keep up the work on building a game that I am happy to share with the world!
Corgimancy Games Development Blog 