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Author Topic: What would you change about Novus?  (Read 1287 times)

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Offline AresLunthar

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What would you change about Novus?
« on: December 27, 2018, 11:30:35 PM »
I have a few tweaks that I would do (many of which found their way into my old-school hack).  But, I am curious if anyone else has a few system alterations.

Maestro

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #1 on: December 29, 2018, 01:46:26 AM »
I feel like a lot of number tweaks have found their way into my campaign with my guys, a lot of cost adjustments, base damage tweaks, and some TN tweaks. I don't know if you want to count those or not.
  However, a weird thing that has been coming up a lot lately with nearly all of my players: what should the base damage of a shield be? My players perform shield bashes a lot. (Watching too much Captain America haha!)

Maestro

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #2 on: December 29, 2018, 02:21:19 AM »
Oh! One thing I DO wish we had in Novus:
  A list of the different types of damage and what the in game effect is. Is there any advantage to having lightning damage over ice damage? Why would I want ice damage instead of simply raising my base physical damage? There is nothing in the rules that I have seen, and a simple table or something would be cool.

Offline AresLunthar

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2018, 04:56:09 AM »
That would be nice.  I've always imagined combat boons that you can only access by having certain weapons or attacks.  Actually one of the things that I would do is basically abolish the Combat Moves and have you purchase them as Boons.  I've always felt that would simplify the game in a nice way.  It would eliminate combat styles and moves and replace them with a custom set of critical strikes.

Maestro

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #4 on: January 03, 2019, 05:19:46 AM »
That's one way to do it.
  Right now my players and I are fairly content with the basic combat system laid out in LN #11. As far as the damage types, in another RPG system I played in the past, the elemental types of damage all had effects
,and all armor in the game had listed values against; slashing, piercing, blunt, fire, cold, electricity, and energy. Almost no armor blocked energy because its a special type of damage. To implement armor values like that into Novus would take.... A lot of work, I believe.
  But as far as the effects, here is what the three elemental did: 1. Fire - Natural healing rates are halved against this type of damage, meaning it takes twice as long to heal from a burn. Burn damage had to be kept up with, seperate from ordinary blade strikes, for instance, even though both of them hurt the same HP pool. Also, fire damage has a chance to light you on fire, obviously. The chance of ignition fluctuated depending on how severe the fire damage was.
  2. Ice: damages characters as normal, but inflicts a slow healing All Action Penalty. If you take a major icy blow, you're going to be moving slowly after that. It wasn't a 1 damage for 1 AAP, but unfortunately I can't recall the ratio. This AAP went away as you healed from the ice damage.
  3: Electricity: damages like normal, sometimes penetrating metallic armor. Like ice damage, electricity also inflicts an All Action Penalty, but this penalty goes away very quickly, dwindling from round to round. However, there was a threshold where if you took too much AAP in one blow, the character was rendered unconscious. Damage from electricity heals as normal.

  The above effects were from another RPG system, but I feel like it can be pretty easy to implement these ideas or similar ones into Novus, giving appeal to players for new artifact items. Perhaps special booms can be created just for the damage types. I have seen mentioned in the core Novus book that there is also Holy damage, Infernal Damage, Acid damage, and maybe Sonic damage.
  Holy and Infernal already have rules listed under the White and Black magic schools. Acid... I believe is listed under rules for Dragons at the bottom. Sonic was listed under one of the sub schools for magic in one of the Libram Novus but... I can't remember which one. Also, I think the rules for Sonic were for that attack specifically, as opposed to for ALL sonic damage. Just some options for those that are interested.

Offline AresLunthar

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #5 on: January 03, 2019, 12:38:39 PM »
Sounds like you should draft something to post here!  I like your ideas.  It would be cool to have some boons specific to different elements.

Maestro

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2019, 08:24:49 PM »
Ok sounds good. I'll try to work something up. Should I post it on this topic, or start a new one?

Offline AresLunthar

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2019, 09:25:44 PM »
I'd start a new one.

Offline AresLunthar

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What would you change about Novus?
« Reply #8 on: January 07, 2019, 11:38:32 AM »
Maestro's other post reminded me of this observation made by a player several weeks ago.  "why would I spend a boon point on something they have a chance at resisting?"

He was referring to the 1 point boon:

Disarm Foe*: Foe has to make a Save vs. Str or his weapon goes flying 1'-10' in a random direction. TN for the Save
is 15 + the number of ranks in the Combat Skill used to make the attack.

Now, I haven't scoured the errata to see if this has been adjusted (I know being knocked prone had been), but, it brings up an interesting point.  Why spend a Boon point on something that is not a fixed effect when you have other options that are? 

Maestro's Continuing Damage effects are powerful and so, to me, a SAVE seems appropriate.  Does anyone else have thoughts on this?

Cheers