Dev Log [7.21.26] Character Resources
In which we debate the best method for generating Health, Stamina, and Mana for player characters
In the last character related article, we established the basics of character creation. Each ancestry has their own starting attributes and skill bonuses, and there are now rules to determine the skill ranks for all skills (primary and otherwise). There is only one thing left to figure out to complete the character creation mechanics: generating resources.
By resources, I mean the character’s Health, Stamina, and Mana. These aren’t attributes on their own, and I’ve come up with a couple ideas for how to generate them but haven’t landed on one yet. Before we move into the options, let me define each of the three resources.
Health is pretty simple. This is the number that determines how much damage your character can take, either from combat or from the environment.
Unlike Morrowind, which uses fatigue, I’ve elected to call this resource Stamina. Those of you who have played Skyrim know that fatigue transformed into stamina in the fifth main entry of the series. My rationale for using stamina over fatigue is that fatigue is something you accrue by doing things, while stamina runs out as you do things. Stamina can be spent in combat, for example, to perform a power attack (this is one of the only elements of combat I’m pretty sure of). There will likely be other, non-combat uses for stamina but I haven’t fully fleshed that out yet. I’ve considered allowing Stamina to be used to re-roll a failed skill check, or to enhance a roll (similar to advantage), which would deplete the pool by a set amount. The idea would be the character exerts themselves over and above the normal to accomplish their task.
Finally, there’s Mana. It is also fairly self explanatory. Like The Elder Scrolls’ magicka, mana is the well of arcane power that a character possesses. It is spent to cast spells. I’m considering allowing more mana to be spent to enhance the spell’s effect (basically a magic power attack), as well as allowing more mana to be consumed to re-roll a magic-based skill check, or to enhance a roll.
The question now is how to go about determining a starting value for each of these resources. Part of the difficulty is that setting Health will impact how deadly combat is. As combat in TTRPGs is something I’ve been struggling with lately, I’m looking to make combat quick and fun. Nobody wants to roll dice ten times and only do three points of damage. But, if rolling those ten dice and doing three points of damage defeats a foe, it’s somewhat less of a slog (still a slog). Likewise, PCs having a large health pool requires tweaking damage higher or you run into the slog problem again. There’s no easy answer, unfortunately. So, I’m going to do a bit of crowdsourcing. I’ll present the ideas I have, explain how they would work, and, at the end, let you folks vote on which one to use.
1. Attribute Totals
My first concept, and the one that loosely resembles Morrowind’s method of generating these resources, is to total up the “physical” attributes (Strength, Agility) to determine base health and stamina, and the “intellectual” attributes (Intelligence, Personality) to determine base mana. Considering attributes typically range from 30 to 60 points at character creation, you could have a significant resource pool.
If we use the example character I made in the last character focused article, we would start the game with 95 Health/Stamina and 70 Mana. This is a significant amount I think. We’d have to scale attacks and spells to account for the bloated resource pools. And, of course, this gives us Health and Stamina that are equal.
Dev Note: Having Health and Stamina essentially equal makes me think Stamina and Mana could be generated by Attribute totals while Health is set by ancestry. Thoughts?
2. Attribute Totals Halved
This option would be essentially the same as the first one, except that you’d divide the totals by two and round up to determine the resource pool. In the case of Silverwing, my example character, he’d have 48 Health/Stamina and 35 Mana. This is still a significant amount for the beginning of the game.
3. 4d6 Method
In this method, each resource would be determined by rolling 4d6 for each one, dropping the lowest result and totaling the remaining three dice. In this method, starting resources would be much more limited. It is also possible we could add Health, Stamina, and Mana ancestry bonuses that could increase these some. At first I was hesitant to use dice other than the d100 or d10, but that is a holdover from me trying to make games that only use the d6. That is most likely not going to work for this game. Besides, if you’re playing a game using a d100 you almost certainly have a bunch of d6s laying around.
With this method, Silverwing would have 13 Health, 16 Stamina, and 11 Mana. If you had an idea about the kind of character you want to play, say a mage, you could swap Stamina and Mana.
While the Attribute Total methods give a more Morrowind feel to the character’s resources, it feels unwieldy and potentially turns combat into a slog—which I want to avoid at all costs. I really like the 4d6 (drop lowest) method, as it gives a decent sized pool for each of the three resources without the bloat of the other methods. With this method, I think it would be easy to add Ancestry bonuses to one or two resources.
Dev Note — Lore-based Ancestral Resource Modification: It would make sense from a lore standpoint for Pufforell to have a small bonus to health and mana as they are intimately connected to the lifeforce of their Agarell. Likewise, the Pteron would definitely have a bias towards increased stamina given their mountainous home and ancient flight capacity.
From a design stand point, I think the 4d6(DL) method is the easiest to work with in terms of its integration into the other game systems. But I am interested in the community’s perspective on this. As many of these posts have had in the past, I am including a poll for you folks to vote on your preference. I would also appreciate it if you would drop a comment giving a reason for your choice. My goals for this project are to make a d100 game that emulates the experience and vibe of Morrowind, while also keeping it as simple and intuitive as possible. I also very much want it to continue being a community-facing project. Your opinion matters. Your interaction is essential.
You could have stamina outside of combat work like a pushed roll from Call of Cthulhu. Well it's still just a reroll, if you fail still fail the outcome is worse then if you didn't push the roll.