Against all Evil 1.1.0

[Anastylos]

I have thought about my game for the competition. It was neat. You have to use tactic to win and it even has some playerempowerment. But there are two thinks I did not like: you die to often and its quite repetitive because nothing changes. The third one is that having a stat at 5 and two low is far better then having them all mediocre because it lowers the damage you take and increases the damage you deal.

This is how I want to change the game:
You roll 3 dice and every success offers you three posibilities: deal one damage, prevent one damage you would take or use a special ability. But you can only use the same scill twice, the thirst die has to be a different skill and at least one of them has to be the enemy skill you attack.
E. g. : If you are a warrior and you want to attack the enemys mind stat at least one die has to be mind. Since force is your highest stat you want to use two dice for force. If you want to attack force you can use two force die but still have to choose a second skill for the third die, maybe its awareness.
This gives you some more options for tactical fights, lowers the mortality and makes the fight a bit less depending on luck.

Raising a stat up to four costs one skillpoint, raising it to five or above costs two. Raising a stat above five still makes you fail if you roll a six, but it raises the defense.
This makes imbalanced characters a bit less overpowered.

After a battle all damage is healed. Nothing is worse than beginning a fight with one HP left.

For two skillpoints you can buy a special ability for your character:

Tank skills:
Guard: You can use success to prevent damage other players would recive
Armour: You have two more Hit Points
Defensive Stance: If you prevent at least one point of damage prevent one point more

Damage Dealer:
Whirlwind: You may deal damage to any enemy stat
Beserker: When activated: You may sacrifice any amount of HP to deal an equal amount of damage
Agressive Stance: If you deal at least one point of damage you deal another point of damage

Healer:
Healing: You may use a success to heal one point of damage
Resurrect: When activated: Resurect a defeated character with one HP, only once per character and battle
Advanced healing: If you heal at least one point of damage heal another point of damage.

This gives some new options and allows for more character customisation. Makes gives you an alternative to raising a stat beyond five. I think every character should start with a free special skill.

What do you think? Does it improve the game or am I riding a dead horse? Do you have ideas for more skills?

EDIT: I think Against all Evil is a great game to be played by post. Should i change some of the mechanics to represent that?

[Anastylos]

I think the threats need some improvements, they always feel similar to each other. They need some special abilities as well. The power of the special ability depends on the power of the threat. The more powerful the threat is the less powerfull is the special ability.

Special Abilities could include:

Shieldwall: reduce the damage taken by force attacks by one point of damage,once per round
Rain of Arrows: Damage dealt by Awareness is increased by 1
Continuing assault: players do not heal after the threat

Still looking for advice and comments.

[Anastylos]

I am thinking about adding loot that gives you special abilities. I am thinking about weapons, armour and suport items. But I am not shure how to add it to the game.

[kylesgames]

Maybe make it something that evolves from the foes that the players fight; i.e. after fighting a foe they can "steal" their ability, or an associated ability for the heroic side of things.

Alternatively, those items could bypass a foe's resistance, but only be available to one hero at a time, making their wielders specialized to fight types of foes that have threatened them in the past.

Of course, that means recycling foe elements.

[Anastylos]

I am thinking about using ten index cards, each with a custom special ability as threatcards. Every time a player lifts the doom of his character a special ability is added to represent antagonist etc.

[Anastylos]

One thing that still bugs me is that AaE could be played as play by post, but rolling 3d6 is not suporting the play by post. Maybe I should do something like ffor. Thare the only random number you need is the last digit of the time.
But I like the idea of multiple sucesses and being able to choose what to do.

[Anastylos]

I have throught about my game again and I think I will change some things.

1. You roll one die for each stat, so balancing a character will remain important.
2. After each threat each character gets ramdom loot that gives them special abilities.
3. The players can choose to increase the threatlevel to gain higher tier equipment.

Still need to think about how threats can differ from each other.