After discussing it a bit with certain people I realized that a couple of things in Copper Coins could use changing, for the better and have effected those changes on the alpha now. I could have waited and seen what people thought of the original system, but I thought I might as well anticipate a possible source of trouble already and deal with it. I think the system has grown tighter, simpler and more intuitive because of this minor change. As far as basic progress grows: I’m at 193 pages. The GMing section has been split into two: one giving advice about basic game stuff the GM does, the other talking about tailoring the game to your needs through various mechanisms already included in the game. The Monster Codex hasn’t been started on, but I’ll get to it. I wager it will all hopefully be done in time for a mid-January release of the Alpha document.
So talking about those changes. Here’s what a talent looks like now:
Precise Strike (6 XP) [Weapon Range] {Minor Action}
Roll: Any weapon skill + 5
TN: Enemy Defense
Damage: Weapon damage.
Recover: 8
Description: An extremely accurate attack that targets one enemy.
Level 1: If you have advantage on an opponent, you deal +2 damage.
Level 2: If the attack is successful you gain +3 Defense for 1 round.
Level 3: You can Overexert to inflict Debilitate on your opponent.
Level 4: The first time each round you miss with this talent, reroll and use the new result to determine success or failure.
Level 5: You can give up your Recovery Die if you have a talent awaiting recovery. If so, you score an Exceptional Success with this talent on a 15-20 this turn.
The big difference has been highlighted. The recovery for this talent used to be 2d4+1 rounds. When you used up the talent, you would roll for its recovery and wait that many rounds. No more. Now how it works is all talents have a Recovery Die result that they roll with a d12 – d12 fans rejoice, as your favorite die has a very important use in this game. Every round, you can roll a Recovery Die once, allowing you to possibly recover a talent. A lot of talents also allow you to forego rolling a recovery die for a round if you have a talent awaiting recovery, to trigger an effect. When you roll your recovery die, you have to pick a talent you are rolling for. In the future there will be Perks which interact with the recovery die more, such as allowing you to roll two recovery die if you take certain actions, but for right now I just want to get the basic stuff out there and see how it works. So for the Talent above, I have to roll 8 or higher on my D12 at the end of my turn to recover it. You cannot recover a talent on the same turn that you used it, however.
The Recovery Die mechanic is in my opinion more desirable to folks than tracking how long your cooldowns are in uncertain amounts of rounds. It also allows for a cool element of luck that I enjoy in a game – you could recover a talent and keep whacking with it on subsequent turns, or not recover it and have to switch up your tactics. The recovery die also interacts better with rules than the round cooldowns did. For example, now a lot of talents that used to just mess around with the cooldown times, can do things like add the recovery die to their damage or subtract it from enemy defenses, giving it up for the turn.
