Age of Equestria, Help Needed

[~Lawful Sturdy Wing~ 522]

Hello everypony, this is Sturdy Wing, lead developer of the Age of Equestria team and i'm looking for a bit of help from you guys, attached to this post is the rough draft for the chapter on "Combat" from the players handbook. It is nearly finished and needs to be edited and checked for flaws. So please read! tell me what you guys think, and comments, criticism, anything is welcome.

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We are working on getting this game out to you guys as quickly as possible.

Age of Equestria Combat.docx

[Sky Warden 2,243]

Hello everypony, this is Sturdy Wing, lead developer of the Age of Equestria team and i'm looking for a bit of help from you guys, attached to this post is the rough draft for the chapter on "Combat" from the players handbook. It is nearly finished and needs to be edited and checked for flaws. So please read! tell me what you guys think, and comments, criticism, anything is welcome.

/)

 

We are working on getting this game out to you guys as quickly as possible.

Okay. Seems interesting. You say that you're the lead developer of the team, can you please give me the link to the first thread so I can get more information about it? What's the genre, platform, etc etc.

 

As for the document, I haven't seen no flaw yet. I think I need more information about the game before I can see any flaw.

[Kamil 315]

Unless I am mistaken, Age of Equestria is a tabletop RPG in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons, not a video game.

 

(Excessively) specific responses to the document:

 

if a pony does not know how to properly defend themselves, their career will be both short lived and painful.

Technically, this sentence is not grammatically correct. The singular "pony" is later refered to by the plural pronouns "themselves" and "their". The use of these pronouns is sometimes accepted as an alternative to using a single gender or no-gender pronoun in english, since no-gender pronouns are almost exclusively used for objects and almost never people. Gramatically speaking, masculine pronouns are correct to use in cases where the gender is unknown or unspecified, though it is also allowed to use the pollitically correct "him/her", or default to whichever gender is more common in that situation even if it could theoretically be either.

 

The following paragraphs will explain in turn by turn detail, the first few rounds of an adventure and encounter

Comma after the word "explain". Alternatively the entire phrase could be rewritten, but that is the easiest change. It is also not entirely apparent what "adventure and encounter" means. Are there adventures without encounters? Are there encounters without adventures? I think this may be a typo or it might make more sense in the larger context of the complete rulebook, but stand-alone it is at best awkward phrasing.

 

Enter Caravans.

...

navigating their way through the rough stone hewn tunnels deep below the surface

Not technically an error, but what the heck are (multiple!) caravans doing in rough-hewn underground tunnels? Or did you mean Caverns? That would make more sense, though I don't think that line is necessary or well-selected in that case. Simply removing it would be fine, but if necessary you can replace it with a more complete sentence or phrase immediately after the characters are introduced.

 

the light is dim and sparse, with Ivory providing much of the groups light.

Group's. Slightly more importantly, having the word "light" at these two locations in the sentence is slightly awkward, and doesn't convey much of a meaning; in fact it kind of implies that the light is dim and sparse BECAUSE Ivory is providing it. I would recommend "there is little light beyond what Ivory can provide."

 

Ivory maintaining ... a dim light

Unnecessary repetition after the previous line, unless it were rephrased to indicate that she can only provide dim light because she is also maintaining the psychic link.

 

Diamond dog caravan

Now that I see it here again, it's possible you just don't know what the word "caravan" means. While not grammatically incorrect, unless the party was ambushed by a bunch of Diamond Dogs that were hauling carts full of gems at the time, it wasn't a caravan.

off guard

Technically, "off-guard".

 

Sturdies player

Sturdy's player.

 

Sturdy Wings player

Sturdy Wing's player.

 

roll a D20, add their initiative modifiers and determine their rolls.

They already determined the roll or else they couldn't add things to it. I would say "roll a d20 (no comma) and add their initiative modifiers to determine their initiative scores" instead.

 

The rolls tally up to 14, 9, 18, 7 and 5; meaning that combat order would follow as such.

"Tallying up" something is usually a phrase for adding everything together. I can't really think of an alternative right now, beyond just saying "The results are etc." That semicolon should be replaced by a comma, and that period should be replaced by a colon.

 

Diamond Dog #5

There are only 3 Diamond Dogs rolling for initiative, so this should probably be a 3 not a 5.

 

Sturdy Wings usually high AC

You know, I'm just going to stop pointing out every case of missed apostrophes. If you have trouble with them feel free to ask again specifically for that, but for now it's just getting in the way of more valuable criticism.

 

The axe slipping through the DM

I think you can tell what's wrong with this phrasing. Simply adding a comma after "through" would work, but using blander descriptions in the example text may make for a more understandable read.

 

The axe, being crudely made only deals 1d6 damage

Comma after "made".

 

his health having been reduced from 20, to 13.

Dramatic turn of events, this time the comma must be removed! (Sorry if this sounds snarky, proofreading carefully is incredibly boring if I don't add something to my responses sometimes.)

 

Round Two

In normal DnD terms, each round is the amount of time it takes for everybody to act, not a separate round for each participant. As long as this change is used consistantly (e.g. spell durations are measured by some time unit other than rounds, or specified as the caster's or target's rounds) it's not a problem.

 

(From this point on I've decided to stop pointing out basic typos. If you want help with that I'll fix them and upload a new document, but typing all of them out would take a lot more time.)

 

Bubblegum’s player rolls and adds for a total of 15, which is more than enough to break the dogs flat-footed AC, though her hoof is not powerful, dealing only 1d4 damage, it takes the attention off of Sturdy for a while.

This should be two sentences, with the first ending after "AC".

 

heals a target for 1d8(2/levels) damage. She rolls two eight sided die (2d8)

I haven't checked the official nomenclature, but if what you are trying to say is "1d8 per 2 levels" or "2d8 per level" then it's much more understandable than 1d8(2/levels) and would much better explain why 2d8 were actually rolled.

 

Sturdy shouts a quick sigh

One does not simply shout sighs. Sturdy should shout a cry or excamation instead.

 

A combat encounter is measured using two terms. “Round” and “Turn” a Round is the name given to the entire combat sequence, a Turn refers to each players individual actions;

Official confirmation that calling the example "a few rounds" is false. It is a few turns by this definition.

 

Dog #3 ends it

Official confirmation that Dog #5 doesn't exist.

 

In multiple places, if there is no official distinction of "light ranged" weapons, then you don't need to continuously write "light melee" weapons instead of just "light" weapons.

 

After reaching the section on charging, it dawns on me that in the example the charging bonus was only +1 and the penalty wasn't applied when Sturdy was attacked afterward.

 

Though this is the only action you may take this round.

"If you take a full attack action, no other action may be taken in the same round."

 

Adding your base attack bonus to Reflex saves is... interesting. If intentional that's fine, but it seems like an overall poor balance choice to me.

 

In addition you may make a double move, moving twice your speed in one turn, or sprinting, which allows you to move quadruple the base speed.

You should note that you cannot also attack if you make a double move. Not sure about sprinting, I don't recall that in regular DnD. Just from this paragraph it seems like you can sprint wherever you want in combat.

 

The Critical Hits description you list is different from the DnD method, which requires making a second attack roll when your first is in the critical hit range, and it only actually is a critical if the second attack roll exceeds the target's AC. Your method would result in a much higher rate of criticals, which could be balanced for. It also doesn't mention whether critical hits are still successful attacks even if that roll would normally not exceed the target's AC. Another difference is in the damage calculation, as I believe the DnD method of critical damage is to roll for damage twice (or thrice for some weapons) and add the results together. Your method would vastly increase the chance of both extremely high damage and relatively low damage. The choice is yours, but if that was not your intent then it is something to review.

Also in the critical hits section, you mention a masterwork weapon getting +1 to damage, not just attack rolls.

 

The entire section on flight combat mechanics seems to just be "Pegasi can fly, but for the most part probably shouldn't in combat." Having to take an action to get airborne is reasonable enough, though I would say using a move action is more reasonable than a standard action, but provoking attacks of opportunity for doing a regular attack in the air? Concentration checks with rapidly increasing difficulty in order to perform any action at all? Complete absence of ranged attacks? Balance is one thing, but at this point flying during combat is pretty useless for anything but the flyby attack and running away.

 

A player may substitute a standard action for another move action if they wish.

This sentence is somewhat ambiguous, I recommend "A player may use their standard action as a second move action if they wish."

 

The whole free/swift/immediate actions thing is not very clear and quite different from what is in DnD, where free actions are unlimited since they don't take up any time (of particular note, drawing weapons is normally NOT a free action) and the other two aren't specified. This may need to be cleared up, but some examples of what may cause swift or immediate actions may be enough.

Edited January 9, 2013 by Kamil

[~Lawful Sturdy Wing~ 522]

Wow, thank you for the incredible criticism. As i stated this is but a rough draft written by me alone late at night and i completely missed many of the things you commented on. Changes will be made, two things in my defense however. I do know what the word caravan means and the second usage of it was correct, the first was a mistype; also i wanted to make flight combat have very visable drawbacks to counter the huge benefits

[Antismurf9001 1,271]

If I knew nothing about DnD, I would've gotten confused by the excess of DnD terminology used in the opening section describing the encounter.  I would recommend putting the encounter example after the run-through of terminology.  That way, the flow of the paper is, "Here is a bunch of rules, and then here's how you apply them," instead of, "Here's how you apply the rules and then here's what the rules actually mean."

 

Also, I would recommend explaining exactly what a d20/8/12/etc. is.  These are terms that most RPG players are familiar with, but the average person may not know.

 

Also, this doesn't really explain how magic works.  Are you taking a certain approach, like the "I have X spells prepared today" or 4th edition DnD's at-will/standard/daily powers, or are you doing something completely new?  Or am I just jumping the gun and rules of magic are going to be explained in a later section?

 

This looks interesting.  Too bad I could never get my group of friends to ever run a game of this...  Only 1 of them is actually a fellow brony...

[Kamil 315]

@@Antismurf9001, I think some of what you're mentioning is planned to be in earlier sections of the book, for example the dice notation would need to be almost the first thing explained while combat mechanics shouldn't come up in detail until well after character creation is complete.

 

@, While I wouldn't personally use caravan to describe anything aggressive, it's not actually an inaccurate description so that's fine. As for the flying combat mechanics, I recognize the need to balance out a very significant tactical advantage provided by flying but I think you overdid it as-is. Being able to use ranged weapons combined with effectively infinite flight time would basically make melee opponents worthless.

 

I have a counter-proposal though: Leave the inability to use ranged weapons; hovering is a very unstable platform and wings create a lot of turbulence, so penalties would have to be pretty incredibly severe to make sense, and flat-out forbidding it is better for balance. Remove the constant concentration checks to remain active while flying (they're annoying to deal with and don't make sense) but add a concentration check after the pegasus takes damage with DC = 10 + damage, and failing that check makes the pegasus fall. If there is enough time, on their turn they can attempt to right themselves, but after failing that check they may not take any action except move actions until they land, and cannot start flying again for some number of turns after they land. Also add a penalty to combat while flying, say Dex and Str bonuses (but not penalties) cannot be applied to attack or damage rolls, or AC while flying due to having a less sturdy position for attacking and dodging. Remove Flyby attack as a standard move entirely, it's extremely OP considering the long movement range of Pegasi when flying.

 

After you do all that, you can add feats to remove some of those weaknesses. For example, I would put something like "fast flying" (my naming sucks) which allows movement through (but not out of) threatened squares without provoking an attack of opportunity, and have it as a prerequisite for Flyby attack.

 

I think that this method is more likely to discourage abusive use of flight (i.e. flyby attack every turn) and turn it instead into an alternative combat style, which offers advantages and disadvantages but can be specialized just like other styles. Of course, all ideas can use refining, but a full alternative interpretation can improve the final iteration even if the original plan remains the base.

Edited January 10, 2013 by Kamil