Abyss is designed for pulp science fiction campaigns. Think Star Trek, Mass Effect, Halo, Metroid, Battlestar Galactica. So far, it takes mechanical inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons 4E, Star Wars Saga, Mutants and Masterminds, and Storyteller. I'm also working on an Abyss campaign setting (also inspired by pulp scifi) to go with the system, but that's a second priority to finishing the actual rules. If this thread gets me the PEACHing I want, it will turn into sort of a development blog.
I'll start with a (very) basic summary in the OP.
Character Generation
Character stats in Abyss are purchased through point buy at the beginning of the campaign, and can be boosted throughout the game by spending experience points. The stats you can sink points into are Abilities, Skills, and Talents.
Abilities
Abyss uses the classic Gygaxian ability scores: strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. Boosting an ability score costs your current score plus five (for instance, if your strength is three and you want to increase it to four, you'll have to spend 8 points). During character generation, all ability scores start at 1.
Ability scores are the most expensive stats to boost, because they grant bonuses to everything else. To make a melee attack, you roll 1d20 and add your Strength plus your Melee skill. To climb a long elevator shaft, roll 1d20 and add Strength plus Athletics. As in most other games, many different skills can benefit from the same ability.
Ability scores are the most expensive stats to boost, because they grant bonuses to everything else. To make a melee attack, you roll 1d20 and add your Strength plus your Melee skill. To climb a long elevator shaft, roll 1d20 and add Strength plus Athletics. As in most other games, many different skills can benefit from the same ability.
Obvious thing that needs to be fixed: with indistinct "actions", I can attack thrice per turn. Most of the time, that will probably mean everything dies horribly. Might want to actually classify actions...
Generally speaking, attacks will do less damage than they do in DnD. Despite that, however, it is still meant to be slightly deadlier than DnD (at least the most recent incarnation of DnD).
If attacks are still too easy to make, I have a couple options I'm playing with. Tell me if you think implementing one or both of these would make it better:
1. You can spend your Reaction to defend yourself from an attack (not sure if this would automatically negate the incoming attack, or just give you a solid defense bonus. Probably the latter).
2. Aiming in melee requires an action just as it does in ranged, meaning it will be rare for anyone to attack more than twice in a turn.
Thoughts?
1. You can only make ranged opportunity attacks against enemies moving toward you.
2. During surprise rounds, the surprising combatants can take only one action.
I'm still not sure if the action system as implemented needs to change or not.
Anyway, I'm going to post a playtest battle scenario later today. Perhaps we'll see then if the action system is too deadly like Armisael said.
Some Talents allow you to take more than one Reaction in a round, but it burns a proportionate number of actions from your next turn.
1. Ranged attacks are considered unaimed when used in melee. This is to balance ranged combat in the new Reaction system.
2. Critical hits deal x1.5 damage, instead of x2. Make things slightly less deadly.
Alright, here's my first testplay. The combatants look like this (note; the following statblocks only include combat-relevant information. A full writup would include a variety of other skills and talents, as well as a breakdown of which bonuses come from equipment):
Also, Zerg is
worthy in my book. 