I am so excited! I've been running a campaign in this since about v0.3 came out (I even made a custom implementation on FoundryVTT, though it's a bit homebrewed and kinda hacked together so it's not really releasable, sadly... But it's very pretty, in my opinion! I put a lot of work into it.) and I've been wondering if an update was going to come! Congrats on your first draft of your novel, excited to see the future of this system!
The only real criticism we've noticed I can think of (minus some small, very campaign-specific homebrews I've added) is that out of combat rolls have strange difficult scaling to them. That is, even with exploding dice included, getting a full success gets exponentially rarer the more dice you have. Despite this, the change of getting /any success at all/ gets ridiculously big once you're frankly not that far in to your xp scaling. Out of combat stuff is sorta in this weird thing where, if you make things based off full successes, things get /harder/ the more you level, whereas if you make it based on any success at all, things get so trivially easy quite quickly that there's practically no point in rolling for a majority of things at all. I've sorta resigned to doing a bit of a scaling difficulty wherein the amount of successes matters, but I've honestly wondered what your take on this was. I think the success system is very, VERY cool in combat, and the actual in-combat mechanics of this system have been some of the most fun I've really experienced from many systems. Momentum is awesome, and the flexible break system lets me use 'combat' mechanics and momentum to even do things such as investigation scenes all using the same mechanics (though, of course, running into some of the same success hiccups as mentioned earlier occasionally for non-combat stuff)
But yeah, overall, I've been loving this so much, and I'm really excited to see the grimoire finished up!
Viewing post in On The Horizon: V0.4! comments
I'm so blown away to hear you've been having such a good time with it, I'd love to hear more about your experience!
And yeah, the full success paradox is something I've been conscious of for a while. I worked a lot of the full success mechanics out of the status effects when i did the 0.33 update, but there's still some in there that I'm gonna have to iron out. One of the things I was considering was doing what it sounds like you've already implemented, which would be setting a DC where there's a minimum number of successes required (like you might in dnd) based on the difficulty of the thing being attempted. I'll work on codifying that in the new update as well!
I also absolutely LOVE the idea of putting the break and momentum mechanics to work for non-combat situations, I believe I had some reference to applying the system to non-combat but I think it was just a quick aside, I might work on a full section to give other players some guidance on how and when to use it outside of combat.
But I'm so glad to hear the system is treating you well! It can be hard to tell if anyone is actually playing the games I throw out into the internet, so hearing genuine feedback is super fortifying! If anything else comes to mind, don't hesitate to let me know!
Honestly, I thought I got the idea of the break system thing from the book!! I literally can't remember lol, but I just realised how the system would work with literally anything and sorta figured it out.
I had a session a couple days ago (and I forgot to send this then lol) and I mentioned our conversation, and one of my players told me to bring up a homebrew thing we had made. One issue we ran into in a long-term campaign like ours (a bit over a year, I think?) was that semblances can only go far. Eventually, you reach a point where you are completely satisfied with your semblance, but you still want more growth for your character. Therefore, I added the homebrew rule of specializations which is quite literally just a semblance aspect except for like, anything, instead. You still spend persona points for it as normal - but it allows you to get fancy character gear or abilities that don't necessarily relate to your semblance (oftentimes, in fact, relating to their weapon instead, or giving them some kind of unique combat ability.) This rule is sorta wishy washy, which is my only real problem with it - it works with a creative group you're really comfortable with, but just slinging the idea of 'Do whatever you want with this, but make it fair' is hard with a lot of groups, as I understand. But still, I though I'd bring up the dilemma and my solution anyhow!
While I'm here, I actually had a question we were always confused on what the working meant from the book - it was about team attacks. The first question is rather simple - how do you get persona points from team attacks? Is it every team attack? Is it only super cool ones?
The second question is 'Unlike Build-Up Team Attacks [momentum team attacks] do not deal extra Break damage, but all successes contribute break damage as usual.'
I am slightly confused what this actually means? Does this mean 6s, 5s, etc. don't deal extra break damage? If that's the case - I have a question about build up team attacks... do the rolls you use to assist the team attack give momentum? Or is it only the actual 'team' attack role that does, and all the assisting ones do is link them in with consequences and give you more dice?
Also, I suppose on the topic of team attacks, I might as well add one more detail - the detail of 'the enemy will go automatically after the team attack' has lead to unfortunate issues where the team can't do a team attack without accidentally skipping a teammates turn a few times, especially when they are split up by an enemy (as they can't go over the enemy in the turn order).
Buuut yea, I think that's about it. Sorry for the delay.