I was meant to talk about difficulty. But it has been a long time, and it was such a mess, that I decided to kind start over.

I’m using a deck of cards! I know, very innovative.

Stats

Still arranged with dice faces – d4, d6, d12… – for convenience, and because I like it.

The stats themselves are simplified, between Physical and Mental actions/activities, which themselves are subdivided into ‘Attack’ and ‘Defence’ equivalents. They are:

Physical:

• Prowess: Perform active tasks. Such as lifting objects, attacking an oponent.
• Resilience: Resist hardships. Such as perform long tasks, resisting an attack.

Mental:

• Inspiration: E.g.: Convince someone of your words, use magic.
• Willpower: E.g.: Resist being swindled, resistance against magical effects.

Basically yes, Fabula Ultima with different name.

Difficulty

Here is where the deck of cards comes in.

54 cards. Standard deck of 52 plus the two jokers.

Shuffle the deck, pick a card. If the card picked is equal or lower to the attribute being tested – e.g.: drawing a 5 with the relative stat being a d6, it is a success; otherwise, it is a failure.

Ace is always equals to 1.

optional: if the drawn card is exactly equal to the stat – e.g.: 8 vs a d8, it is a critical success. There is no critical failure.

If a joker is pulled, then something completely unexpected happen.

optional: draw a second card after the joker, to determine if the unexpected is good or bad for you.

Once the card is used, it goes to the discard pile. The exception being the joker.

The joker card is always returned to the deck, and the deck reshuffled. But only the remaining cards.

The discard pile is reshuffled into the deck only when the deck has run out.

Oracle

By default, an oracle is a simple yes/no against a difficulty value. Something unlikely would be a d10, and only the face cards would mean it happen. While something likely would be a d4.

I understand it is not balanced. It is not meant to be really.

optional: use the colours and suites to have a more granular answer:

• Cups & Diamonds: no change.
• Clubs: Yes, but / No, but
• Spades: Yes, and / No, and

Got a joker in the oracle? Go wild!

Make a dragon eat the oracle or something.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think there is much more to add, if anything at all.

Will I actually use it? Probably not, maybe for a single session, a few dozen years from now or something.

But it was fun thinking and writing about it.

#SoloRPG #RPG #Oracle #CharacterStats #PlayerCharacter #Difficulty #CardDeck

For the character’s stats, I take heavy inspiration from Fabula Ultima RPG, where you assign dice of particular size to the character's stats, and when the times come to put them in action, you roll then against a set difficulty to see whether you succeeded or not.

The stats themselves are:

• Physical: Which governs any physical activity. This stat could honestly be split in two: - Prowess: the “strength” aspect of the stat; - Deftness: the “dexterity” part of it.
• Mental: Should be used for mental tasks, such as analyses, information gathering (as in piecing together clues), etc.
• Social: Used for any interaction with others.
• Spiritual: Basically force of will. I can see this being part of the Social or Mental stats, but I can also see it used alongside Physical stats: how long can the character endure an arduous task. Considering that I take the Fabula Ultima’s approach to challenge test rather than Ironsworn’s (more when I talk about difficulty), I will keep it separated.

The values for the stats, like in Fabula Ultima, are that of dice size used. Ranging from d4 to d12, though d12 is presently unavailable at character creation.

The stat distribution would work on a point buy system, with a total of 8 points to expend:

• d4: 1 point
• d6: 2 points
• d8: 3 points
• d10: 5 points
• d12: 8 points

This would give the arrays: balanced: d8, d6, d6, d4; specialised: d8, d8, d4, d4; crippling: d10, d4, d4, d4.

To have a d12 in either stat, the others would need to be zero. It could work for some specific scenarios.

I have not fully settled down on this yet, as there is some interactions when it comes to the difficulty challenges (will be explored in a future post).

An alternative system would be to shift the costs, giving the characters a higher range.

• d4: no longer available
• d6: 1 point
• d8: 2 points
• d10: 3 points
• d12: 5 points

Possible arrays being: [d10, d18, d8, d6], [d10, d10, d6, d6], and [d12, d6, d6, d6]

This could also be used as a difference between player characters and random NPCs. As the player character is meant to be a Hero and cut above the rest.

The opposite could also be true, with the lower range used for PC and NPCs alike, while particular NPC, such as villains, would have the higher range.

The possibilities are there, and I have not settle down on any.

The stats themselves would be further improved by Quirks – to be explored in the next post, which is a point for the lower range for PCs.

But there is still the matter of difficulty, which is a point in favour for the higher range.

#RPG #SoloRPG #CharacterStats #PlayerCharacter