Trapped in an MMO Blades Hack: The Combo System.
Trapped in an MMO Blades Hack: The Combo System.
So while I’ve mostly been basing the system for Blades in the Database (name is a work in progress) off of Blades in the Dark, I thought I’d raise for discussion the combo system I have incorporated into my version of the game.
So, here it is:
When you make an action roll, you roll dice of a specific colour relating the attribute that the action roll is under (Green – Speed; Red – Strength; Blue – Willpower), equal to your action rating. You must consider 3 things after making a roll:
1. Did you succeed? Just like in blades, you succeed on a 4-6 and receive complications on a 1-5.
2. How many success dice did you roll? What colour are they? Save these dice for later in your Speed/Strength/Willpower pool
3. How many failures did you roll (1-3s). Sum the values and add this to your Threat value.
Players now have 2 sets of abilities, ones for outside of combat, and ones for inside of combat. Combat Abilities cost dice from the pools you have saved from previous rolls and are rolled using these dice. This simulate the cooldown and mana costs of abilities from the game.
This can cause ability chains, as you could roll a 4-6 on an ability dice pool and get to keep the ones you rolled! This means the bigger the dice pool, the longer the potential chain of abilities but the greater the potential threat gain.
Example: Emberblade is an Assassin playbook and wants to use his ability “Assassinate”. To activate Assassinate, Emberblade needs to use 2 of the Speed dice and 1 of the Strength dice they saved from previous rolls. Emberblade rolls these 3 dice and gets a 6 on the Strength die, and a 4, 3 on the Speed dice. He succeeds without complication on using his ability, and gets to add the two successful strength and speed dice back into his saved pools. He also gains 3 threat due to his single failure dice which is considered “spent” and does not return to his saved pools.
By expending 3 dice of the same colour from your saved pools, you can create a Combo Chain.
3 Speed causes your next action roll to have successes explode. (You keep all 4-6s you roll even if they explode)
3 Strength gives you +1d to your next resistance roll and you can regain 1 armour or special armour box.
3 Willpower gives you bonus effect for your next action roll, and for the next two rolls from other players in your party, you gain saved dice equal to those that they saved and of the same colour.
More on Threat in a future post!
