Friday, September 10, 2010

A Thought About Psychic Combat

I'm pretty satisfied with my treatment of psychic sorcery aka psionics in Dying Sun.  I'm especially pleased with making Psychic Combat mirror physical combat, as that keeps a lot of the cool, tactical nature of Ye Auld Game's system, while making it cleaner too.  But one thing bugs me: it's asymmetrical.  What I mean is that with 5 Modes of each type (Attack and Defense) and three relevant Abilities (INT, WIS, and CHA), you can't match things up neatly.


See, only 1 Attack Mode damages CHA, as opposed to 2 each for INT and WIS.  Because of that, only 1 Defense Mode is good at protecting CHA.  Is this a dumb concern?  Probably.  But you know how I love symmetry in design.  If I were to follow that impulse, I would have to change the whole basis of the thing, by adding another Mode in each category.

Which broaches the larger question: is it worthwhile to keep those names from YEG?  Crikey, is it even legal to use those names?  I never even thought about that.  Hmn.

5 comments:

  1. I hope this helps. The 3.0 version of the SRD had the attack/defense modes. Here they are as listed in the SRD.

    Psionic Attack Modes -- Psionic Defense Modes
    Ego Whip (Dex) -------- Empty Mind
    Id Insinuation (Str) -- Intellect Fortress
    Mind Blast (Cha) ------ Mental Barrier
    Mind Thrust (Int) ----- Thought Shield
    Psychic Crush (Wis) --- Tower of Iron Will

    Mind Blast, Mental Blast? No biggie, I would guess.

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  2. That's great, thanks.

    Incidentally, what is the meaning of the stat in parenthesis?

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  3. 'each attack mode is keyed to a particular ability score. The attacker adds his or her key ability modifier to his or her roll to set the defender’s Will save DC against the attack. The ability also indicates the specific type of temporary ability damage the attack deals if successful'

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  4. From here:

    http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html

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