Posted September 02, 2024 by Martian Muckraker
#combat #creature #playtesting #OSR #new projects #Archetypes #Archetype Balance
One of the feedback I received from GenCon is that it might be ideal to allow each member of the party to have their own Opportunity Die, allowing suits to fail at different times instead of all at once. This is an idea I have been considering for awhile. For now, it is offered as an Optional Rule
Part of the hopelessness the explorers of the Hostile Sun face is that they are being killed by something that is unkillable - the brutal star above, gale winds, radiation. As such most of the systems in Under a Hostile Sun are for Hostile Environments and taming creatures more so than fighting them.
Nonetheless who doesn’t like a brutal alien fight? The Fueled by a Hostile Sun system has experimented with combat in Cryptid Collector and Far From the Sun. But now the Core Rulebook has a combat system as well.
In Hostile Sun, combat against Pure Predators is always fought with the help of tamed Creature’s and Bots. Both the Tamer’s Stats and the Energy Pools/Support Dice of the allied creatures come into play, to represent that this is a joint effort between trainer and trained.
Resources come into the fray as well as some Predators are weak to certain resource types, allowing for extra damage to be done.
Just as tamable creatures are predominately represented by their Energy and their Support Die, Pure Predators have a Damage Die and a Pool of Energy.
This allows the combat system to work through the Support Mechanics already in the game.
In addition, there are combat maneuvers such as Fighting Retreat, Precise Attack and Feral Attack.
The Damage Die directly damages the tamer, and the tamer’s allied creatures lose a point of Energy each time their tamer takes damage.
The tamer rolls against their Might or Dominance for basic attacks, representing the quality of their training. If they succeed the allied creature rolls its Support Die as a Damage Die, harming the Predator’s Energy levels.
Adjustments have been made to the character Archetypes to ensure a different party roll for each. The Medical Archetypes (Priest and Doctor) have adjusted their taming abilities to favor taming creatures that produce Medical Elixir.
The Robotic Archetypes (Roboticist and Smuggler) have been given the ability to establish near-invulnerability for a short time, allowing them to attempt extremely risky things for the party safely.
The ORC License no longer reads [to be determined] as the ORC now has an official Library of Congress Number. The ORC license page has been updated accordingly. Keep up the fight for Open Gaming!
Early experimental development (see my Myriad Myths and Mysteries page) is being done on a game called Fury of the Hostile Sun which unlike Under a Hostile Sun is 100% focused on combat. That game is in the earliest of stages and is being build with Old School Revival/ Nu-OSR design philosophy in mind.