วีดีโอ

Multiple attack penalties have left a bad taste in the mouth since 3e, but here it is so minor that it isn't a big issue, but adding some more dynamism to it, like you suggest, could be a big help!

That's funny! It's the first time I've heard of this style, but it's very interesting and has much deeper implications than I expected at first.

Makes it easy to one shot PCs,..

True. It's impossible to escape bias. We are planning on sharing the full plays and interviews in some way. Trying to figure that out. Thanks for letting us know you'd be interested.

Glad you are enjoying them! And that's the exact reason we want to do these, to help people see which systems they'd like best.

Thanks for watching!

Thanks! Yea it is harder to get a superhero group together for sure. I've got tales from elsewhere on the list of potentials!

@TabletopRPGTrends you're welcome! And yeah it is! But I've recently been able to get back into the hobby so I'm still fairly happy: got some Pirate Borg one-shots running and did session 0 of my Cyberpunk RED campaign Hopefully, I can get a Mythras game running as well; also planning some Vaults of Vaarn but it is difficult to sell my players on it so it might end up merged with the Mythras And I'll be playing in a Walking Dead game! They have been pretty communicative and nice both on TH-cam and Discord! So that'd be great

Thanks!!!

That's on the list! I'll see if we can get it to work

@TabletopRPGTrends yay, looking forward to it!

That's an interesting point, I think it really depends on the world, but yea, some worlds are definitely inherently like that

I'm not sure how fast/slow combat will be once you are all really experienced, but it is definitely a concern. Either way, it's all good, it definitely isn't for everyone! Glad this review helped you decide.

@@TabletopRPGTrends It was really helpful. A lot of competitors have thrown their hats into the "5e adjacent" ring. It's been tricky to find the in depth coverage to make informed choices. My own preference would be "rather less combat detail than 5e". I like to be calling the plays, but not necessarily twisting the rapier, or picking out target locations. My group do get tangled up in the more complex combat mechanics. We tend to fight fairly slow (translation - a couple of players are indecisive and take ages). We've also had the GM totally zone out trying to manage initiative, eight bad guys with two different designs and a spellcasting boss. That's a lot of hitpoints, conditions, turns, ACs,and concentration spells to manage. Titles like Nimble, or Shadowdark seem a better match for my lot.

It is definitely a different attack system. I'm sure there would be something to make fighting a god impossible, but anything super high level will be just as easy to hit yea. It is a weird thought.

Even if you can get past that, I truly can't imagine how this system could possibly sit side by side with 5e and have things be balanced. It's too different. It takes away +to hit and ac for a completely different mechanic, which is bound to throw many monsters off balance, and to claim on top of that that a GM could run these two systems side by side and still make things *faster*?? How??

That's when you put the Master in Game Master. "Your warhammer connects squarely with the God of War's head. He reaches up, grabs your wrist, and squeezes. Your bones crumble like chalk. No, you do not get to use your reaction to defend, you're level four and he's a god. What did you think was going to happen?"

@@Skullivon If that's the kind of GM you want to play with or be, that's fine. That wouldn't fly with the groups I play with, or with me personally. If I'm going to turn the game into a narration, then I'm going to play a game built for narration rather than simulation. Edit: Before anyone says it, yes there is some narration that exists in any roleplaying game. I'm specifically talking about combat or other kinds of danger resolution situations. There is a reason mainstream rpgs focus on those types of mechanical resolutions, people tend to dislike narrative resolutions on that level.

I get the pursuit of it to some degree. If a simple skirmish takes forever in 5e and you can barely fit one in a session then it came be really annoying. At the same time, people often want epic combats and don't mind it being too long, so a system kind of needs to do both. If you want a game that is 20% combat and 80% social/exploration them this kind of system could make perfect sense. But even if you want 50% combat then having super quick combat can be unfulfilling.

We didn't ask about nimble and other game compatibility. Personally, I wouldn't allow a 5e and nimble PC side by side at my table because I think it'll end up with some issues. I definitely wouldn't combine nimble with any other game, like DC20. They are just too different. I'm sure you can do any or all of these, but you had better have a really loose DM with players who aren't min maxers. But for the average table I wouldn't recommend that.

@@TabletopRPGTrends I think Nimble curbing min/maxers at the table is a good thing. I've had m/m's throw the game way off with the way 5e is out of balance past 9th level.

@@leatherguru8904 agreed that it is a good thing for the party to be on the same level. I'm just saying that mixing games will end up creating some potentially broken combos or cutting some things off at the knees.

@@TabletopRPGTrends I'd agree. 5e is already broke enough, lol.

That is a great question. I think superhero games are a very difficult one to get right due to the huge variance in power levels, massive amount of powers,, and high player expectations. Never tried marvel heroic roleplay, but I'd love to give it a shot one day. I believe the skills will have a separate way to track and increase so that it doesn't interrupt the flow, and hopefully feels less crunchy. I would use that variant.

@TabletopRPGTrends not having access to the rules, but having seen a few other systems that do XP for specific skills, and being a teacher myself, I would say the best way to award XP that is also easy for players to remember so that it can fade into the background would be for all failures and all crits to award an XP. That way, progression in a skill helps you to achieve proficiency, but achieving excellence requires a lot of practice. And there's no questions about when to mark XP. If you failed, at least you get the consolation prize. If you crit, and you can remember that you get a bonus effect, you should also be able to remember that you get an XP as well.

@@taejaskudva2543 The way you described gaining Skill XP sounds a lot like how we do it! In Indominant a failed Skill Check grants you 1 XP, a Success grants 2 XP, and a critical success grants you 3 XP. We do think its a fair criticism that having to mark Skill XP at all can pull players out of the moment, so we have a variant rule that will be in our Core Rulebook, which removes the need to track Skill XP as you go.

Masks is still the best hero ttrpg for those who want to emulate the narrative of the genre without getting lost in Power Levels, stats and hyper specific power scalings. It's only real negative and/or positive is that it's PBTA. Would be nice to see a compromise between Masks and these crunchier hero games, only skipping on the hyper specific power rules.

@@bobhill-ol7wp Zarek here, Lead Designer of Indominant. If I am understanding what you are describing correctly, I do think that you might like Indominant! That sort of middle-ground between narrative and crunchy games is what we were going for with the design. We stay to a lower, more grounded power scale in Indominant, because we believe that is where those sorts of mystery and adventure components of superheroes shine! The Indominant Primer PDF is completely free to check out too!

Haha, there's a lot of good systems out there, that's for sure. This one is definitely not for everyone!

Yes, the attack and damage system is quite different and has far reaching outcomes in the game design, like what you just mentioned. Glad the review helped. That's exactly what we were hoping for in this channel! We hope people get enough details (including the good and the rough parts) to understand if the game is for them. Thanks for watching!

That sounds like it could be a great table for nimble, especially if some player are new! Also sounds like a pretty chaotic time. Kudos to you for running that lol

While this is true, a portion of that responsibility fails on the game system to support that. Some games will inherently be faster or slower.

If the system isn't going to give me any meaningful decisions to make outside of my turn, I have no incentive to pay attention. Why pay if nothing is being sold?

Action economy is basically PF2e yea.

As we said in the review, feeling like you wish there was more to do is going to be class dependant, but with the cheat it felt that way. If your aren't getting hit then you won't use your defend reaction, if you are ranged you won't use your Interpose reaction, help reaction isn't that useful, then cheats get a free move, so what what is there to do? You can select some underhanded abilities to do additional stuff sometimes, but that's the way we both felt. Evan has changed cheat abilities so they have to be in melee, so now there will be some dynamism at least Or do you mean imagination like role playing the three attacks more interestingly?

@TabletopRPGTrends sorry if my comment sounded sharp. I see your point about not using the reactions, and then the cheat feels limited. I did mean imagination as roleplay, whether that's investigating for more information about enemy weakness, or doing something to draw attention or change the focus of the fight, or even just describing your hits differently. There's some fun in letting the narrative shine when the gameplay is lower crunch and quick. I also always love it when my players ask me if something crazy is possible, we can work towards the cool moment with a skill check or something, but they've got to ask.

It's all good, no offense taken. You are right that fun in combat often comes down to the player making it a good time. But when reviewing game systems, you kind of have to take the player out of it and look at the rules themselves.

but worse!

Action economy is basically PF2e yea

I'm very interested to see how/if damage scales as you level. Maybe you don't even need it to scale because higher attack turns into higher damage.

Yes indeed it is very different! Feels like you can safely ignore disadvantage with a d12 and advantage gives almost no benefit

I think this is intentional. Missing just isn’t that fun. This also makes monster hp math a bit easier too. There’s also a far more likely chance to crit with smaller dice so big weapons are more for reliable damage and smaller are more chaotic. I think a lot has changed since you played but also I think you probably only played level one in which you haven’t got up subclass or all the other abilities along the way. Which is pretty similar to 5e. That said, I do think I like dc20s curve a bit more but overall since it essentially forces you to do other things with your actions.

@@GagePeterson Missing could be fun if system provides options for player to do something about it. Missing should be an opportunity for desicion to be made. Also, crits make dice explode. Ironically, even with exploding dice mechanic, bigger dice is still better than smaller. Yes, d4 has higher chance to explode, but even so it has lower average result than d12 with lower chance to explode.

Just FYI, we played a variety of levels from 3-5. I know a lot has changed, so I'm sure some of these things are not exactly the same and hopefully have resolved some of these issues. Regarding dice damage, even with Crits, high dice weapons do more damage, but if you are a cheat, then Crits end up doing a lot more.

@@shnobz_kotik I'm pretty sure big damage dice are still supposed to be better, just less so than in 5e. Lower damage dice weapons have other advantages. You're not going to wield a greatsword in one hand, or hide a longsword in your boot like you could with a dagger.

It's definitely got some solid groundwork to take that role!

Indeed it does!

Nice! I can't wait to see up to 4th level, then maybe I'll start a campaign with it

@TabletopRPGTrends the one shot went great, i also plan to add this one shot to our world haha was nice to see a run through of it

These are very fair concerns! I think overall the choices are pretty balanced against each other. Some stand out more than others, but not to an overwhelming degree. The number of little things happening and little modifiers is something I'm definitely concerned about as they reach higher levels. 5e's advantage disadvantage system really helped remove those little bonuses and make things a lot easier to keep track of. But taking that limit off so you can have multiple sources makes it more fun to build them up, but makes it more annoying to track too. Some GMs are pretty secretive when it comes to monster stats, so if you are telling the players they hit 5 over that's not something they want to give out. I don't personally see that being a big issue, there is still a +/-4 range they could be in, so it isn't completely revealing the stat. As for high level stuff, I'm very excited to see that too and how it feels to play. Definitely something to keep an eye on in case there are big issues!

These are concerns I have too.

Depends what you are comparing this game to. There's definitely simpler systems on the market. In general I think for whatever complexity is in the game, it mostly feels like it's "more" complex than 5e/PF2e because those are familiar, but also the complexity better pays off in this. But if you wanted something lighter than 5e there's definitely better systems. To address your reasons though: 1. What are you comparing it to? It's definitely no worse than 5e/PF2e. This system is also a lot more intuitive than those, which I think is what makes it simpler to pick despite increased choice in relevance. Especially when you look at the wording of things in the book, it's way more streamlined than PF2e, for example. 2-3. Kind of the same argument, and I think I agree initially. There's a lot going on. Only time will tell how easily it gets mastered by players and GMs alike. 4. What are you comparing it to? In a few interactions players tend to learn the monster stats anyway, so I find the need to hide them pretty meaningless. It might be marginally easier to get that info with the by 5s system but I don't see how that impacts things very much. 5. Why would raising HP mean you have to lower AC? If the point is higher difficulty, raising HP while lowering AC is just rebalancing, not increasing difficulty. Either one is raised or the other, and as long as it's commensurate with average rolls I don't see why this couldn't be relatively easily balanced.

@LeFlamel i am not comparing it to anything. If I were, I wouldn't have concerns, I would know. No modern game designer is using compounding up and down modifiers. It complicates games and slows down combat. Most people don't equate math to fun. It is similar to ADnD 2e that would have up and down modifiers, but DC20 has a lot more modifiers with adding damage to attack rolls and then using lots of different resource pools. ADnD 2e tried to use resource pools for magic users with the optional rules, and it just got in the way of fun. The monster issue is a bit more of an explanation. So, damage modifiers are added for every 5 points over the AC that the attack succeeds. That means at a high level, characters should be doing high damage against a moderate AC. Let's assume +10 to hit. Now they are fighting a storm giant. The giant has a 15 AC and 20 hitpoints. With a +10 modifer to attack rolls, their bonus damage is going to rip apart this giant in no time, making this fight too trivial for a high-level encounter. So now I raise the AC to 25, negating their +10 attack bonus. They now have to roll a flat 20 to get the bonus damage. At best, they are doing 1-2 damage a round. To take out 20 hitpoints, that's about 10-15 rounds of combat for a since creature. This could take hours to resolve. Now, I could lower the hitpoints to 10, so the 25 AC doesn't drag out combat. However, now a basic orc has more hitpoints than a Storm Giant. Not only that, but monsters are attacking the players under the same conditions. If a character has 20AC and 30 hitpoints, the monsters would never have enough attack modifiers to be a threat to the PCs. You could throw 20 storm giants at the players and it would be 20 rounds before they did enough damage to kill a single player. This problem only gets worse as the level increases.

@@jaysw9585 I didn't disagree that it's a lot to track (at least compared to similar games). But you're doing the same torturing of the balance scenario that is literally an argument ad absurdum. Why is the AC immediately jumping from 15 to 25? You choose this ridiculous example in order to prove it's unbalanced, and don't bother to ask whether or not there is a sane balance point between 15 and 25. It seems more fair to me to suggest that AC doesn't increase linearly with the to-hit modifier. Why not compare to 20 AC? It's kind of disingenuous. Also, you're not accounting for abilities that add to rolls, ways to give yourself advantage, and the existence of other players lol. Even at 25 AC @ +10 to hit and 1 damage weapon, a single martial will do about 1.25 damage if they spend all 4 actions on their attacks (including giving self advantage). Assuming the same for a standard 4 person party = 5 damage per round, which means a 4 round combat. Why are you pretending that the average scenario is a PC solo-ing a storm giant? And this is before you apply conditions, and other ways to boost rolls or weapon damage. Your analysis is really flawed and if you can't admit that then your mind must already be set in stone.

Oh yea! It's great and I hope we can cover more

@@TabletopRPGTrends I mean, I'd come back for that haha

Yes, if you have something in mind, you can spend a LONG time customizing it, which is fantastic. I do think if you already know all the rules, you can create a character pretty quickly, but if you are new, then I think character creation will take longer than other games due to the amount of stuff you need to understand during building. I really enjoyed customizing my own character though, and I know a lot of other people love that too.

Definitely a fair consideration! I think there is more choice paralysis in some ways that didn't exist in 5e due to the vast number of choices, but on the other side, you get 4 actions instead of one, so you don't need to worry so hard about using it so efficiently. I agree that having so many options be viable and interesting is a big design challenge. I think so far he has done a phenomenal job of that, but there are some here and there where it just doesn't match up.

Thanks! I'm glad it's interesting!

Oh that's great! So many options I could imagine turns taking a long time. It took a long long time for us to do 2 rounds of combat, but we were all learning. But glad it can get really quick with familiarity

Exactly this!

Perhaps! I really liked it, but definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

Thanks! We really enjoy it too!

Yea we'd love to do that one too!

It is a great system!

Thanks!

I think it's for players that enjoy combat that is more loose and narrative who don't necessarily want to output so much mental energy and time in combat. But yea, it probably isn't going to work for the type of game where combat is the main focus, like dungeon delves.

Yea it's actually posted on Insight Check's channel here. th-cam.com/video/MLZctQIbx1k/w-d-xo.htmlsi=bUzJQUrLlDe7YlNs

@TabletopRPGTrends Thx! Watching now :)