Change Logs, actually released

Just a quick update.  I know a while (see years) ago we mentioned the usage of a change log but never actually went ahead and released those logs.  They are at a very high level and more references for the developers but I figure for those of you out there interested in see the changes here is what we have addressed in the past.  In future posts the hope is that we'll always have a change log to accompany the new changes we are discussing and how they impact the game at large.  Note these are all changes in the past that have been in place for some time as the implementation dates might indicate.

4.3.0 - 1/29/2018

• Dodge Change
• Dodge no longer halves ongoing - instead it increases CR by 3 + 1/2 level.
• Monster Crit Change
• Monsters no longer roll for crits - it does a fixed value.
• Stealth Init
• Stealth now grants +2 init per rank.
• Monster Mass Tweakage
• Monster bonus MP’s has been properly revamped. All monsters now have a fixed number of bonus MP they can put towards favored categories.

4.2.9 - 9/02/2017

• Initiative Valuation Change
• Init is worth less -- this ends up increasing the amount of init gain from talents and stealth. The Qu stat gives only slightly more Init then before, but now it also gives more starting HP.
• A rank in general now increases your recovery by 1-3.

4.2.8 - 7/21/2017

• Player HP
• Starting HP increased by 1
• Themes
• Weapon spec put back to v6, T’s are now 2-7, 5-14, 7-21
• Talents
• Many of the defensive powers have been slightly weakened. Scaling has been changed for the passive reduction abilities to be more inline with other passive scaling.
• Major overhaul of the “Weapon/Magic” Greater Talents. In almost all cases they were weakened.
• Monster Damage Shield Overhaul
• They are cheaper now.
• Spell Critical Overhaul
• See Spell Meta notes spell crit section for details
• Caster Review
• All caster meta has been reviewed and tweaked

4.2.7 - 5/16/2017
A revisit of core powers. Some crazy AoE’s are reduced, many PP’s tweaked...

• Talents
• Dodge buff’s slightly reworked,  all the core “improve dodge” powers now have a minor action or a swift action component.
• Some greater talents got some extra minor perks.Knacks:

• Split Strike now does -1 to damage (-4 from -3)
• Most Knacks are being overhauled / tweaked with AP’s being reduced in power from 13.5 though 40.5 to 13 through 39.
• Themes
• Weapon spec slightly reduced,   T’s are now 2-7, 4-13, 7-20 (down from 5-14 . 7-21)
• Weapons
• Tweaks to unarmed & throw weapons & crits.
• Necromancer
• There have been a number of additional changes and tweaks to this sphere from 4.2.5 up till now.  Still not officially stable but once the sphere is it’ll be marked in a release.
• Racials
• Cut to the Chase is now perform an SSA while charging.

CORPS - The attributes of a character

When we sat down to start on making what would become CORPS one of our first questions was how were we going to define our characters.  Normally RPGs will have character attributes that help define a persons physical and mental capabilities.  Since D&D was one of the influencing factors of the game we had to ask, were the classic 6 attributes from of D&D or other D20 systems enough?  Could we just throw down Strength, Constitution, Dexterity and the rest and call it a day or did we want to explore more abstract/unusual attributes like Sanity in Call of Cthulhu?  After some debate and decision we came up with a set of 8 attributes that would make up a character in CORPS.  After we had gone through our first iterative process of the game we slightly redefined the attributes from what they were to 4 primary attributes and 4 secondary attributes.  The high level classification for the groups were that primary attributes were specific to a particular build and is what was needed by players for their offensive and combat capabilities.  Since the game is literally called Combat Oriented Role-Playing System, pretty much every character will want to focus in on one or two of these four attributes.  The secondary 4 attributes are more universally desired because they primarily help support the players defensive capabilities.  While we had had the same 8 attributes around since the beginning of our design iterations the exact definition of what each attribute did has evolved along the way.  Currently we have the 8 attributes that can range between 9 and 22.  They are:

Strength

The measurement of a character’s raw physical power, strength is a primary combat statistic that determines your bonus to hit and damage with heavy weapons and your damage bonus with balanced weapons.  Strength also determines your character’s lifting/carrying capacity and is used as a bonus for 2 skills.

Constitution

The measurement of a character’s health and fortitude, constitution is the primary stat for determining a character’s hit points and is the stat used for Fortitude saving throws.  Constitution is used as a bonus for 1 skill.

Agility

The measurement of a character’s fine motor skills, agility is a primary combat statistic that determines your bonus to hit and damage with agile weapons, and your hit bonus with balanced weapons.  Agility is also used with 5 skills

Quickness

The measurement of a character’s speed and reflexes, quickness determines a character’s defense bonus against physical attacks, as well as Reflex saving throws and initiative.  A high quickness score can also increase your character’s base speed.  Quickness is not used with any skills.

Reasoning

The measurement of a character’s intelligence, reasoning is a primary magical statistic determines your hit and damage bonus with high magic and slightly increases your character’s power points.  Reasoning is used with 7 skills.

Presence

The measurement of a character’s appearance and ability to influence others,  presence is a primary magical statistic that determines your hit and damage bonus with wild magic and also slightly increases your power points. Presence is used with 4 skills.  

Self Discipline

The measurement of a character’s willpower, self discipline is the primary stat for determining a character’s power points.  It also slightly increases a character's hit points as well as being used for Will saving throws.  Self Discipline is used with 2 skills

Intuition

Intuition increases all of the character's saving throws as well as applying to initiative. Intuition is used with 9 skills.  

So now this brings up a few questions.  The first being, a lot of these attributes affect skills, but what are these skills?  Well I'm sure that'll be around for another post.  Moving on there are a few other hints about the combat system used by CORPS.  We have initiative, saving throws, physical defense, hit points, power points (mana/magic) and a few other things found in most RPGs.  What is perhaps one of my favorite concepts of our system is the use of physical defense.  At first it can seem a little daunting because there are 4 types of physical defense but they are all variants of the same thing.  Each used in specific situations.

*Note: One thing to keep in mind is that this game isn't your normal d20 system.  In fact the standard dice roll is instead 2d12.  This gives a bit more variation but it' something to keep in mind which looking at the values used below.

• Active Defense (Melee Defense)
• Active Defense = 12 + Armor + modified quickness + Equipped Weapon Skill
• The most commonly targeted defense.  Your active defense is how well your character can avoid an attack that they can actively defend against.  Your active defense is determined by your armor, quickness stat bonus, and how well trained you are with your currently equipped implement or weapon.
• Bob the Knight is a young knight.  He wears Platemail armor and is skilled with his longsword.  Bob isn’t terribly quick with 14 quickness.  To figure out Bob’s total active defense we can take his base defense of 12 + 6 from his armor + (2/3) from his quickness modified by his armor which is rounded down to 0 + 1 because he is skilled with his weapon.  The net result is that Bob the Knight has an active defense of 19.  This means an enemy would need to score a 19 or higher on their attack roll in order to land a damaging blow on Bob.
• Ranged Defense
• Most characters do not have an active range defense.  If you are trained and equipped with a shield your range defense is equal to your melee defense.  Some other talents and skills allow you to defend against range attacks using your melee defenses with a penalty. Such as some spell casters have knacks where they can defend against ranged attacks using their active defense -1 or 2.
• Unarmed Defense
• Unarmed Defense = 12 + modified quickness + ½ strength + Unarmed “Weapon” Skill
• This defense is primarily used when your character has been grappled by an enemy and you are attempting to defend against wrestling or close combat attacks.
• Passive Defense
• Passive defense = 12 + Armor + passively modified quickness
• Your passive defense is your defense against physical attacks that you can not properly defend.  This is commonly the case against range and area attacks if you do not have a shield or some form of cover, if you move carelessly past threatening enemies, or you get stunned.  
• Best Active Defense
• This is not a defense per se, this is just a term for your best active defense.  You are able to use your best active defense against blast attacks, as well as range, area and line attacks with cover.

While this might seem confusing at first on a character sheet it's really easy to read.  Defense is lined up like:

AD:20 RD:15 UD:19 PD:15.  It also provides a lot of interesting situations like a character running towards an archer in an open field.  The archer would be targeting the character's ranged defense, which without a shield or a special knack will generally be the same as their passive defense.  In the case of the defenses listed above that would be equivalent to a +5 to hit which is pretty massive as opposed to attacking the character with a melee weapon.  At the same time, an archer might find a warrior barreling down on him with a shield which negates a major benefit of  having a bow.  Of course there are also examples where you could have someone highly trained in hand to hand combat who could easily get in close and bypass someone's shield and weapon putting them at a disadvantage.  Now just think of the possibilities you could encounter with such a simple set of defenses each used in particular situations?

CORPS 3.0! Wait no, 2.5? Eh, Why Not?

Development has continued on with the CORPS (also comically referred to as CORPSE (combat oriented role playing system EXTREME) to the point where we have evolved from 2.0 and moved on to 3.0. As with any of our core game changing implementations we felt it best to increment the internal version number of our game for tracking purposes and because everyone who has a hand in this is a computer programmer and that is just what programmers do. However we quickly found out that the proposed changes introduced in 3.0 cause some major problems in the existing system that frankly, we didn't want to touch with a 10 foot pole. So our solution was to simply revert back to 2.0 but we felt that 3.0 had a lot of good things to offer the game as well. So in the end we called it 2.5. We made some interesting changes from the game setting it apart from just another d20 game or a D&D clone while at the same time further streamlining aspects of the game that were making it more complex than it needed to. So now that I've cryptically gone through CORPS' most recent changes at a high level view, I am sure that one reader who mistaken stumbled upon this site accidently when trying to look up what corpse munging means is curious what exactly some of those changes entail. Well I'm feeling good so I think I'll share.

One of the first big changes made in CORPS 2.5 was streamlining the dice rolls. In some of our play testing we realized it was a little confusing to have a vast number of different rolls. A single character could have a d20+d4+7 melee attack roll, a normal d20+6 ranged attack roll, a reflex saving throw of d20+d8+3 and a will saving throw d20+d4+6. All those different dice you got to roll can get pretty confusing to keep track of, and this only got worse at high levels because some skills would be advanced, increasing up to a d20+d12 while other skills maybe never be increased beyond a simple d20 or d20+d4. So to streamline this we decided to try and keep most of the rolls stay the same. This is pretty much a staple of a d20 game, thus d20 is used for nearly everything. However everyone working on CORPS hates d20s, they are over played, so we said F*#$ it and removed them from the game. Now in place of a d20 + dX we have all dice roles set as 2d12. THAT'S RIGHT, we just took the red headed step child dice among most of RPGs and turned it into our staple dice for the entire game. That's how awesome we are. That combined with a few other quality of life changes has us retesting and reevaluating the material we already have.

Some other overviews to the game, we're still supporting a classless level based system. We like the idea of a classless system because it allows players to form an idea in their head of what kind of character they'd want to play then give them the tools to build something as close to that as possible. There are still some limitations of course, mainly in the realm of spell casters, but overall I feel we've done a good job in providing a lot of different viable options. As I had mentioned the issue with spell casters is that we currently have a sphere based system. That is to say, when a character assigns theme points (I'm pretty sure I mentioned theme points in an earlier post, but if not, there are 4 theme points to assign in 10 slots that determine the type of build your character is. There are 3 categories of spell casters to make the ability of assigning 1 to 3 theme points towards magic. Obviously assigning 0 means your character has no natural magical affinity, but if you have 1 or more you can choose a minor, lesser or greater spell sphere. Currently we have plans for 2 minor, 6 lesser and 6 greater spell spheres. The limiting factor at this point is the sphere itself. Even though there are still multiple build options within a sphere, once you pick a sphere you are limited to spells within the sphere. An example might be the priest sphere. Even though we have a classless system, if you allocate 3 theme points towards magic and pick the priest sphere, it's pretty easy to assume you're playing some kind of magical priest. Granted there are 42 different spells in the sphere and at most a high level player will only be able to pick from 15 of them so it leaves a lot of room for variation, but still it's pretty easy to assume your character can be classified as a priest. It may just be the name of the spheres at the moment though. We are basically usually class names commonly used in other role playing systems to roughly define the spheres of magic we want to include in the game. Down the road if we change the sphere names to something more related to an aspect rather than a commonly conceptualized character class, it might force players to think more about what their character really is to them.

Going back to the Priest Sphere, I think calling it something like the Divine sphere would allow players break away from any preconceived notions about what a Priest may be in their minds. In a game that has a very similiar look and feel of something like D&D 4e, using terms that overlap such as a Priest, can set the player up with certain expectations like having the iconic D&D ability to "Turn Undead". If someone is set on having a character that does this, they may be disappointed to learn that the Priest Sphere in CORPS is not the same thing as say a Priest in Dungeons and Dragons. Perhaps this is something that will get worked out when we actually get down to the nitty gritty of constructing a player's book for the game system itself rather than the manual of rules and how to play documents we currently use now.

There a few other technical changes that are pretty significant to the game play but since no one reading this has played the game it'd be kinda of waste to go into them at any level of detail. That said however, internal testing is going very well and I hope to be able to run some play tests with outside testers at some point in the near future. Another CORPS developer has been running games about once a month with a group who is about to hit level 2, which is pretty monumental for the game. So that leaves me to working towards gathering up a group of players and trying to sit down and hack out a gaming session out of this to see how it turns out. To the few who actually visit this page, from time to time if you or anyone you know is interested in trying out a virtual online gaming session of CORPS let me know and perhaps we can schedule a time try it. Although I might fall out of my chair if I actually hear back on that. Also if anyone has some particular question about the game itself, what has been explained or perhaps left in the dark, I'm always up for discussing my thoughts on the game design process.