Herding Dice

The Adventure Game Engine has always been on the rules light side of things but the minimal number of classes make it really easy to wonder why they are there at all. Common Class Starting Advancements All classes have some similarities in starting advancement. They vary a little bit in terms of total number of advancements but not enough that we can't smooth it over if necessary. 1 to 2 starting talents (2 for envoy/warrior, 1 for mage/rogue) 0 to 3 starting class abilities (0 for warrior, 3 for mage/rogue/envoy) 1 specialization advancement 2 to 5 weapon groups (2 for mage, 3 for envoy, 4 for rogue, 5 for warrior) 20 to 30 starting HP (20 for mage, 25 for envoy/rogue, 30 for warrior) Common Class Advancements All classes have some similarities in character progression after level 1 from 2 to 20. 19 focus advancements, one for every level after level 1 19 ability score advancements, one for every level after level 1 10 stunt advancements, one for every even level 10 talent advance...

Armor plays a large part in the Adventure Game Engine in the pacing problems. Not only are there large health pools and large chances to miss with defense but there can be hefty armor values to chew through as well. Looking at existing published adversaries armor the median armor is 3 which blocks the average 1d6 attack. Here are the basic number equivalencies useful for armor: 1 AR prevents 1 HP of damage during an attack action 2 HP is healed or damaged per 1TN of action, so 2 AR also equals 1 TN 1 TN is equal to 1 SP Armor is essentially a counter to a stat increase for the attacker. The value is more difficult to calculate with rolled damage with it's average value versus a die roll being slightly less than its paper value. This is because with high enough armor much of a die roll is too small to be fully utilized. As such it's not as helpful to balance against the roll portion and instead balance against the ability score progression. The armor progression is where we will...

TLDR; Improve progression relationship between focuses and ability using the table below. Add up all the focus bonuses within an ability. An ability score bonus is derived from that total and that is added on top of your starting ability scores. Right now in AGE, progression in ability scores and focuses are independent. It seems that you might have some relationship between the two. A high specific skill would likely lead to a decent general skill, but not the other way around. What simple rule could describe such a relationship? I have in the past experimented with an ability first approach that acts as a constraint to the number of focuses but what if we derive an ability score from focuses? A good formula is the sum of integers which is a quadratic formula. We will use the total of all focuses in the ability as the total and then solve for what integer would give that total sum. Here is a table of the number of total focus bonus for a derived ability score.   This looks like a...

  The test roll for the "Adventure Game Engine" is 3d6. I was experimenting with some math and realized the TN 10,11,12 probability chance lines up perfectly with 1d8 die with TN 3,4,5. Therefore you could realistically switch from 3d6 to 1d8+6 without changes to any system numbers. Yes you lose the opportunity to roll doubles but for this thought experiment we are OK with that. There are few main advantages for 1d8+6 over 3d6. The first is a single die which is easier to do math with and does not have a curved probability distribution (it's a straight line). The second is that it maintains a compact rolling range which won't feel as swingy as d20 does. The plus six makes a firm foundation such that the average of the roll is only 50% of the base. Compared to d20 where a modifier of plus 1 is only 9% of the overall roll value. A plus one here is more like a +7 which is 60% of the roll value. So much less of the overall roll value is random. The third advantage is that...

Advanced tests are not advanced enough. The best case is that there are a few rules of thumb in the rule book but they do not take into account a number of critical factors. First factor is the absence of "difficulty" related to the target number and only relying on threshold to convey loose adjective of difficulty. "Average" and "Formidable" are not sufficient and instead target numbers and number or rolls or rounds needs to be established. Second factor is the suggestion that for each roll in an advanced test that you can design about 3 degrees of success. This is inaccurate as explained in a previous blog post - adventure-game-engine-stunt-die-and-advanced-tests . Due to the correlation between overall success and the stunt die you get smaller average successes with easy tests and larger average successes with hard tests. This is offset a bit as the hard tests fail more often. However the rules prescribe the number 3 regardless of target number. A TN 9 ...

In  start-of-new-action-model-for-age-in.html  we have TN = 6 + Value/2 as method for balancing a target number and the value (or MP) of a spell or action. How can we use that in redesigning advanced tests? An advanced test in AGE is when the results of more than one roll added together in a sequence. These are used when a test maybe taken over a period of time. Something like scaling a mountain may be implemented as several tests rather than just one but harder test. The current rules use the stunt die as the value you are adding together. A single 1d6 has a value of 3.5, but is that more like damage or more like increment TN? I think it better fits the TN description. Additionally if you think about the the lower bound of TN 6, adding the stunt die basically gets you to the standard TN 10 action anyway. Let's use the definition that for an advanced test you are adding the stunt die and getting sum of those particular TNs. That leave a 2d6 base die plus 1d6 stunt die. Thinkin...