Table of Contents
- Creation
- Charsheet
- Skills
- Quirks
- Weapons
- Armor
- Items
- Equipment
- Attacks
- Spells
- Combat
- Chronomentia
- Vehicles
- Appendix I: History
- Appendix II: World Destroying Spells
- Changelog
Creating a Character
Step 1: The Charsheet
Generally when getting into the game, you'll want a charsheet.
Below is a compact form element and below that, a printout you can place in your text editor. This does double duty as it can potentially demonstrate any likely combination of stats, but just make sure you don't spend more EXP than you have been assigned for your character -- that would be cheating!
Name | ||
EXP | ||
Health | Raw Val: | |
Flux | Raw Val: | |
Agility | Raw Val: | |
Versatility | Raw Val: | |
Magic | Raw Val: | |
Tech | Raw Val: | |
Dodge | Raw Val: | |
React | Raw Val: | |
OUTPUT |
Step 2: Assigning Stats
You take 300 points (or more based on what EXP you earned before, if you're a returning player), and put them into the attributes based on how you want to allocate them. Utilize the form above to place the stats. All the math is done for you. Just watch the "Current EXP Usage" until it hits 300 (or whatever number the GM tells you to set it to). Review with the GM and copy/paste the bottom part into a text editor and save it for later.
Step 3: Obtaining Weapons
Weapons are ad hoc objects the GM assigns to you. Describe your character to the GM and they'll give you one-two weapons to start. If you have a pre-existing character, you'll obtain the weapons that you already have converted to the new system. These weapons can be optionally used to boost power of attacks.
Step 4: Obtaining Armor
Armor is also an ad hoc object assigned to you. Describe what you are likely to have, then the GM will give you the proper stats for your armor. If you have an old character, you will get any old armor items too. Just remember everything is subject to balancing, so if a past system gave you something ridiculous... don't expect to have it here too.
Step 5: Obtaining Skills
You may spend up to (Your Allocation Points) on Skills. Pick from the list below in Skills and choose as many points as you want in them.
Step 6: Obtaining Quirk(s) (OPTIONAL)
Quirks are gameplay-changing alterations, usually meant to help allow non-standard characters/alternate 'classes' if you will, with different abilities compared to a normal Quester. If you want a Quirk or two, ask the GM while making your sheet, and describe what you need. The GM will create something that, for each quirk, has a Pro and a Con and thus will reshape the way you play the game. Record them on your sheet. (See Quirks for details.)
Step 7: Creating Attacks
You may either create attacks on your own, or ask the GM to help you. When creating attacks, follow the instructions below in the Attacks section. Note that it's based on how much Versatility you have. Also note that it's usually best to specialize in Magic or Technology rather than try to do both, at least at first. When you have more points, it's easier to use Magitek style attacks.
Step 8: Magic (OPTIONAL)
Should your character be magically inclined (have invested EXP in the Magic stat), you may spend your Allocation points learning various spells. These spells will then be available to take with you on sessions and cast, using said Magic stat.
Step 9: Leveling Up
As you go in your travels, you will acquire more points. These points can then also be dumped directly into your stats. Re-calculate the resulting stat where appropriate. Use the automatic sheet above to calculate the numbers.
Charsheet
Description of Stats
The system uses a d100 (100-sided die) for most rolls. Everyone has a series of stats that generally go 0 through 300. Points are assigned to the stat; you are given a set amount of points to start, and slowly gain more points to invest in the stats as you play. To calculate the effect of those stats you've built up, use the charsheet is above.
Durability
These stats control how long your character can take punishment.
- Health - You may take this much damage before you are knocked into a 'stagger' state, where you cannot do any action other than heal yourself or flee. Note that the protection of the stagger status goes away after that round, thus you can be KO'd completely after that point. If you have a higher Health Stat, you will have more 'stagger points' which allow you to survive consecutive rounds in this state (although it only triggers with enormous amounts of health) -- but obviously this goes for the enemies too. Don't expect to one-shot hulking monstrosities. In short: Reaching 0 HP or less causes you to be set to 0 HP, an SP is then depleted. You are invulnerable to further damage until it is your turn; if you do nothing about it and remain at 0 HP, you still have to be attacked again to lose another SP. Furthermore, no bosses have SP excepting specific player-like bosses (who will, in turn, also have player-like HP amounts.)
- Flux - Sometimes you just can't win. You do your best in combat, you try everything, and yet you lose. In real life, this would just happen and your loss would just be permanent. But this is a game. Flux points can just be freely spent to increase the value of your rolls. You regain them all between each session. But beware--Flux is said to often just get you INTO situations, it can't get you OUT of them, especially if you spend heavily to get somewhere you couldn't otherwise. So they say... those who live by lucky chances, die by unlucky chances. Speaking of luck, for ever 100 Flux you spend, you gain the ability to use a Luck point -- which lets you either reroll an entire roll of yours (if you're feeling lucky) or lets you immediately succeed at a non-opposed check, or you may also spend it to reduce the outcome of a failed combat roll so that you survive (By the skin of your teeth, as one might say!). There are also sundry random occasions where you may wish to imbue something you've created with the luck point or otherwise play around with it; be creative, by all means.
Ability
These stats control your flexibility in reacting to situations.
- Agility - How much effort can you put into your action? The harder the action, the more agility it takes. Actions are how many actions you can take; your AGI is how much effort you put into the actions. A balance is required; you can have a million AGI but it's worthless if you only put a little bit of effort in. Every action takes AGI; but if you want to double the effect of a spell or attack (or even just a skill check), you may double the AGI up to 4x. Just beware: the costs double each time, so 2x -> 4x. (Agility /4) +1 Actions is the amount of actions you may take per round; the rest, well, is history (or saved AGI you may use to React until your next turn, where it then goes away, so use it or lose it! Of course, you WILL need enough React to do said reactions, so beware!)
- Versatility - Just how diverse is your skillset? This controls how much 'stuff' you can bring into battle: moves, skills, spells, even extra items and equipment potentially.
- Allocation Points - You get 100 even if you don't invest in this stat. But sometimes, options outweigh everything else in usefulness. So if you want to be able to do more than a few kinds of actions or bring only a few weapons in battle, you'll want to invest in this. Through Versatility, of course.
Attack
These stats control your ability to damage and destroy your enemies.
- Magic - How well can you subvert reality? This stat is used to fuel spells. It's also used to gauge how well you can cast them. The higher this is, the better the spells you can cast. Since Magic is not something everybody can do, you can safely choose to ignore this stat, if your character has no ability or interest in using magical spells. Just be warned--you may find yourself pining for this ability later on if you completely ignore it. Of course, you may simply invest points in it to fix that, so no worries.
- Magitek - In lieu of the normal derived 'extra' stat most stats have, there is Magitek, calculated as (Magic + Tech) / 2. It is often associated with Solarians and their specific spells, which are among the most versatile in the game.
- Normal - This is your 'normal' stat, for certain items or Normal moves; just defaults to the highest stat of Tech or Magic.
- Tech - What's your ability to use the latest (and oldest, and everything in between) tech? This stat is used to wield machinery, weapons and other things that require you to know scientific principles.
Defense
These stats control your ability to avoid damage.
- Dodge - This lets you potentially avoid enemy attacks. It costs none of your agility to do. All attacks do chip damage even when they miss. So you gain an Uncanny Dodge point for every 10 Dodge you have. You may use 1 point to make a hit into a 1-point miss (thus, chip damage only), or to negate all chip damage on a miss. You can stack them to push an attack further, so 2 Uncanny Dodge points will negate one single attack!
- Block - Formerly, a part of React, but that was both confusing and made it fairly useless. This is a fusion of Dodge and React -- 1/3 of the two added together. It converts the attack to (d75 /100)*the attack's normal damage and unlike React or Dodge, immediately succeeds, but costs 1 AGI to use in addition to the 'Block Point'. These refuel every round, so you may as well use them when faced with attacks you cannot Parry and where Dodging would similarly be counter-productive.
- React - For every 25 in this stat you may do one parry. Parrying means using an attack to counter another attack -- full accuracy, full damage, should you hit. Should you 'miss', it will still reduce the enemy's attack by the chip damage your attack would normally do, so it's in no way futile. In the case an enemy attack is, however, unparryable -- think various things like a disastrous explosion or hole in reality or disconnected hitboxes -- it'll be noted beforehand.
Dice Rolls
This section is optional to read past the first paragraph about wanting to get high dice if attacker etc. It is kept in here as a system reference, but in normal combat, the dice is done for you by the GM and then in turn calculated by the script the GM uses.
All rolls are d100, aka 100-sided dice, aka percentile dice. Essentially each roll is split between the aggressor and the defender. The person attacking wants a high roll; they get the high part of the dice. The defender wants a low roll; they get the low part of the dice.
Let's say there are two characters, Attacker and Defender. Attacker has an attack with 40 accuracy, and Defender is trying to dodge and has 20 for their dodge. In that case, the attacker types a40d20, and the automatic script calculates the odds of the attack succeeding. In this case, that would be 100 - (100/((Defense/Attack)+1)) or 100 - (100/((20/40)+1)) or 100 - (100/(.5 + 1)) or 100 - (100/1.5) or 100 - 33 or ultimately 66%. Thus, the dice results go as follows:
100-33: Attacker hits Defender.
33-1: Defender dodges the attack. Attack deals chip damage (Damage the attack would normally do * (attack roll / 100)).
Now let's do another example. The Attacker has 20 accuracy, and Defender has 40 dodge. In that case, it looks like this: 100 - (100/((40/20)+1)) or 100 - (100/(2 + 1)) or 100 - (100/3) or 100 - 33 or 66. (Rounding is obviously going on, in these cases.) Thus the rolls look like this:
100-67: Attacker hits Defender
66-1: Defender dodges the attack. Attack deals chip damage (Damage the attack would normally do * (attack roll /100)).
As you might expect, the higher dodge is more likely to succeed.
Now we have an interesting case. The attacker has 60 Accuracy and the Defender has 50 dodge. So what happens? 100 - (100/((50/60)+1) or 100 - (100/(.83+1)) or 100 - (100/1.83) or 100 - 55 or ultimately 45% chance of success for the attacker.
100-56: Attacker hits Defender.
55-1: Defender dodges the attack. Attack deals chip damage (Damage the attack would normally do * (attack roll / 100)).
Now if this is all rather hard to calculate, don't worry. The GM and the GM's dice do all of the fancy percentile effects. All you have to worry about is knowing the numbers for attack and defense before each roll, so as to keep combat rolling.
Skills
Skills represent little niche abilities that you have as a character. You can use them to get out of certain situations faster than if you didn't have them, or approach things from a different angle than the usual 'smash it to pieces' one.
Each skill point you allocate costs 2 Allocation points. So 5 in a skill means you used up 10 Allocation points, and 10 in a skill means 20 allocation points, etc.
Skill rolls use the stat as noted in the list as the base (so if you have 50 EXP spent in Agility, the roll starts with 50 for your roll), then you add your skill ranks onto it. (So if you have 20 Sneak, your Sneak roll is now 70.) The things you are trying to defeat have set amounts of difficulty, which act as the 'defense' you must break.
Skills will always be lower in priority than plot continuity, so don't expect to be able to just spam a few skills to deal with every problem. They are meant to add options, not end the non-combat part of the session in 10 seconds. The final note is, you have to still supply a reasonable explanation with your usage of the skill. So don't go, "I use Acrobatics to solve the math equation" -- it will fail. With that in mind, here's the list:
- Agility
- Sneak: Evade your foes! Evade their traps! Hide about and do whatever it is you need without people seeing you!
- Acrobatics: Leap over, under, and to the side! Shimmy across perilous ledges and squeeze through tight spaces! Make split-second moves to evade the un-evade-able!
- Lockpick: Pick the doors, pick the locks, pick the correct locks to lock the doors, defeat the mechanical puzzles!
- Versatility
- Discourse: Deal with difficult discussions, push ideas that your frenemies might be interested in, and distract people while your allies take their stuff!
- Gadgeteer: Assemble the right parts to make the right team--be it mechanical or organic, figure out the ancient magitek, or just make an incredibly cool statue, whatever strikes your fancy!
- Computer: Break into tough machines! Read ancient crypto-computer-tech! Discombobulate the Reverse Quark Proximitor!
- Attack
- Magitek (Skill): Combine the powers of technology and magic to create useful temporary (or permanent) equipment! Note: Not to be confused with Magitek (Ability), as put on your charsheet.
- Spellcraft: Read the tea leaves and threads of others' spells, or perhaps craft your own.
- Engineer: An ability seen as the domain of the Mad Men of Alsa, utilize this to technologically understand whatever you look at, reverse engineer it, and do super effective attacks at it!
Quirks
Quirks are entirely optional. There isn't anything to do here if you don't have any interest in them. But if you do, read on...
Quirks help make things different. In a normal game with entirely normal characters, you can technically tune out most of everything other than just stomping the enemies, doing the quests and otherwise aiding beneficial NPCs. Maybe you want to be a bit of a pacifist though? Well you can just roleplay that out. But the system doesn't provide a lot out of the box for that sort of character, now does it? Well, most people don't play that kind of character.
But in case that's your goal, the quirks let you do certain things. A Pacificistic Quirk, for example, would grant benefits to your Flux point recovery and also increase your EXP whenever things end in a way where loss of life is prevented. Now if that were just implemented by itself, it'd just be a flat benefit, so there has to be a 'con' to go with the 'pro'. In this case, it'd be the Pacifist having lower attack effectiveness--10% less damage and less accuracy when it comes to attacks that deal damage. So it acts as a challenge to force you to try harder to get your reward.
Every Quirk is entirely optional and if you find it too hard you can have them removed in between sessions, but when you have them, well, it can make life more interesting. If you want a Quirk, specify it during character creation or during an inactive time in the room when the GM is around. Maybe something interesting can result?
In the future, a table of some general purpose quirks shall be here, because what's the point if nobody has any guidance on how to make one?
Weapons
Weapons are an old classic. Everybody has them. Except martial arts masters. But even then, their techniques tend to make their body a weapon instead. So... what is a weapon?
It's just a collection of stats. The stats of the weapon boost your attacks. The only restriction is you have to make the attack and the weapon make sense. So if your weapon is a gun, you can't expect it to work very well with a healing technique: most people die when hit by bullets, after all. Weapons have specific stats that are assigned by the GM. In general, you don't have to think about much except for what it does.
Here is an example:
Baseball Bat
+5 accuracy
+15 damage
Special Effect: Attack rolls that hit 100-91 in accuracy deal an additional 15 damage.
Here's another example:
Sniper Rifle
+25 accuracy
+5 damage
Special Effect: Every additional agility point expended on aiming increases the damage by 5, up to +25 damage.
When you use these with an attack, they add their accuracy and their damage to your attack. The Special Effect only triggers if the condition is met.
The only other thing to consider is that when you equip a weapon, you have it on your person, ready to use. Weapons that aren't equipped can't be used, and you have to spend 1 AGI to take out a weapon you don't actively have equipped and put away the one you currently have equipped. You can have up to two weapons out at any given time.
Now let's say you've had your weapon a while, and it's not doing the job anymore. Then you use some upgrades. Upgrades are modules that make the weapon better. Each upgrade adds +1 to the weapon. So a Baseball Bat with an accuracy upgrade becomes +1 better. Here's some of the upgrades you can get:
- Accuracy: +2 to accuracy.
- Damage: +5 to damage.
- Element: Makes weapon deal elementally aligned damage.
- Range Increaser: Makes weapon able to hit things as a ranged weapon (so will hit both melee and ranged-range).
- Target Increaser: Weapon can hit one more enemy at a time, due to being made broader in some way.
- Magic Link: Weapon gains (Magic/10) damage.
- Tech Link: Weapon gains (Tech/10) accuracy.
- Theft Protector: Weapon can be called back to you using 1 AGI if it falls out of your grasp. (But isn't guaranteed to come back!)
- Transformable: Take another weapon. You can instantly switch between that weapon and this weapon, but both have slightly weakened stats (GM determined).
- Grapple: Weapon can grab onto surfaces and hold enemies, even if it couldn't do that before.
This is only the sample list. You can find more upgrades than this, even collect them; many are limited in quantity and are hard to copy. You can mix and match your upgrades, but you can only ever have up to +10 of upgrades on any single weapon. If your weapon still isn't good enough even with all of those, you should probably go about getting a new one, after all. The main important thing to know is that upgrades can be installed without paying coins or anything; you can also pry them off of enemy weapons you find on the ground. It's up to you, in the end, what you'll make your weapon capable of.
Armor
Armor is never something that gets mentioned much, unless you're Xavier. Most people have other ideas than just wearing a bunch of medieval armor to block attacks. But of course there's more than just that... but it's still limited what it can do. On the flip side, there's always some force fields you can wield... if you have enough power to power them with.
All characters have an armor slot. The armor you wear uses this slot. If the armor is heavier, it'll decrease some stats elsewhere and/or reduce AGI, depending in what way it is heavy.
Armor comes in many shapes and sizes and is generally custom to each character.
Additions are after the modifier, exception: Old equipment that adds to React or Block. To convert the old equipment to the new system, modify it so that its + to react or block is divided by 4, then round it (.5 or higher goes up, below .5 goes down, and if it were to round to 0, then have it contribute at least +1.)
Like equipment, Armor tends to be rather freeform. Here are some examples of armor:
- Kevlar Vest: +1 block/session (gets repaired in between sessions)
- Medieval Knight Plate Armor Suit: +8 react, -20 dodge.
- Solarian Force Field: +300 HP, -10 dodge, -3 react. Recharges between sessions.
- Erastian Heavy Metal Armor MK 1: +13 react, -50 dodge, +150 HP. Requires manual repair to recover HP benefit.
- Rocket Booster: +20 dodge, +1 uncanny dodge, -3 react, each hit deals +20 damage to you and knocks you to ranged-range due to the uncontrolled propulsion.
- Space Suit: -10 to dodge, -3 to react, allows full existence and limited mobility in outer space for up to 2 hours.
Keep in mind what you have will vary. These are just examples. Upgrading armor is also simple: you pay money and the +s and -s increase and decrease, respectively. You can also alter the entire purpose of the armor; such is handled in a freeform manner, but the more huge the changes, the more coins you pay.
Items
As we all know, the world of SSQ is loaded with items. What we don't know is how to use them. So how do we use these items? Well it's simple.
- Every item is single-use unless otherwise stated.
- There is no limit to the number or variety of items that exist.
- Old items from old games will continue working so if you happen to find them or have them on you, yes, they are still valid.
- There isn't anymore any 'standard' items other than some starter ones mentioned here (and you will definitely find better/cheaper ones than these).
- Effects that are the same from different items/sources don't stack, instead the highest single source of the effect takes priority.
- You can have an unlimited number of items.
- Each item uses 2 AGI and 1 action. Items with multiple charges can be used multiple times and still count as the one action, just taking more AGI. Similarly, if you have stacks of items, you may consume multiple of the item (along with multiplied AGI) but still only consume 1 action, as long as it's the same item type.
- New Questers start with 10,000 coins.
Able Juice | Mmm... Tastes like apple juice! | Cures all bad status effects on one ally. | 300 |
Eggman Sandwich | A delicacy imported from Alsa. | Still heals half of your max HP. | 250 |
Ivantek Magic Vial | Ivan Robotnik's magic-giving energy will make you cast all kinds of things. | Halves casting time of all spells you cast for 1 round (although 1 is still the minimum AGI) -- you must drink an additional one of these if you want to halve the length of full-round spells, however. | 500 |
Ivantek Recovery Vial | Ivan Robotnik's patented super-healing vial technology will make you feel better! | Heals all of your HP. | 700 |
Bumper | An Smash favorite that really bounces people around. | Hurl to instantly knock the opponent to the ranged-range/back row, should it hit. Use your Normal stat to aim. | 300 |
Elemental Cube | Oak's elemental energy cubes are still useful even now. | Throw for a guaranteed 4*Magic damage of the element of your choice, should it hit. Use your Magic stat to aim. Unparryable. | 400 |
Fire Extinguisher | This safe item puts out fires or deals damage. | 3.5*Tech ice damage if it hits. Uses Tech to aim. 5 charges. | 500 |
Poison Mushroom | This mushroom has gone bad... | 3*Normal damage to an enemy and if you get 50% or higher on the roll, causes Corrode Status effect. | 300 |
Crescent Fruit | An uninviting, fuzzy, grey, tart fruit. It's surprisingly sweet too. | Increases all rolls by +20, but reduces dodge and reaction-related accuracy rolls by half and adds 1 AGI use to all attacks (and makes full-round attacks unusable). | 500 |
Fury Materia | Makes you as angry as the ancient Quester, Kinnin. | Doubles the rate you can attack (half AGI cost for each attack, 1 minimum AGI use though) but also causes a 50% chance each attack that you end up randomly attacking whoever is near you with one of your 1-AGI attacks as well! Also, you must use an additional one of these in order to halve a full-round attack -- 1 more of these per full-round attack you halve (maximum two full-round attacks in one turn for a total of 3 of this item being used) | 800 |
Metal Cola | The official soda of Xavier Ridgecrest, invented years before those poseurs in Team Fortress 2 made theirs. | This cola warps reality, causing each of your attacks to occur d3-1 times, while dealing 10 damage to you every time you hit the enemy with them. | 400 |
Super Sneakers | Sonic's trademark speed-up sneakers, contained inside the classic monitor they are usually found inside. | Adds +15 to your dodge and puts you first in the order lineup, but they only last 1 round now. Can still make you really fast out of battle too. | 700 |
Air Tank | An old, inexplicably persistent Quester item, often used in the weirdest of places. | Gives an hour's worth of air. Can also be used to cause explosions and propel things, if you have good enough Tech stat. The explosion threatens up to 3 targets near the explosion point for 5 * Normal damage. | 300 |
C-4 | Despite the advent of better door materials than steel, this is still a popular demolition device. | Blow up enemies and doors alike with this--causes huge amounts of damage to anyone exposed to it. Specifically, everything in an entire battle (or if out of battle, about the size of a house) is threatened by a whopping 750 damage--that includes friend and foe alike. Note that it can be disarmed relatively easily by people unplugging the detonator, so don't try it on anyone on foot if you want to have a reasonable success chance. | 600 |
Cell Phone | Original Questers never really 'got' normal cell phones, possibly because they began Questing long before cell phones were ubuiqitous. | Allows you to call up the store from anywhere and buy up to 5 items, which are all warped to you instantly. | 250 |
Duct Tape | It's the handy-dandy fix-all that everybody knows and loves! | Fix a broken item or add another use to a limited-use item, or fix equipment. Note that if the equipment in question is legendarily powerful or does something super-powerful, it can only add 1 use to it. 5 uses. | 300 |
EMP Grenade | An old Quester standby, used to turn off enemy robots and disrupt enemy machines in general. | Disables all non-military electronic devices for one round when used. You must use two to threaten a single military-class electronic device, or three to try and disrupt all electronic devices (including your own). | 700 |
Smokebomb | You, too can be a ninja, with these patented smoke capsules! | Escape from bad situations, or use as a smokescreen to enter bad situations. One per person, so you must stack it up if you wish to help everyone flee. | 300 |
Wilt Shroom | An ancient, wilted mushroom, that is gray in color. | Perfect for chucking at cars on the freeway. Or... maybe something more. Who knows what these things have been planning all this time? Good for swapping out with valuable items when thieving. | 5 |
The Berries noted below are different from the other items. All effects occur automatically if 'held'; you may manually use a berry, but then it will be of lower effect, as denoted in the chart. You can choose a new berry to hold, but only between battles. The berry is consumed when used. When Held, it requires 0 AGI and 1 Action to trigger. When used as an item, it requires 2 AGI and 1 action. Note the low cost: The berries are 'grown' locally by the Questers and staff, so the cost is limited to solely what it costs to make them rather than going for a profit.
Name | Effect (Held) | Effect (Used as an item) | Cost (Coins) |
---|---|---|---|
Aspear Berry | Removes all freeze (legacy status effect only used by Questers normally). | Removes one stack of freeze (legacy status effect only used by Questers normally). | 50 |
Cheri Berry | Removes all stun. | Removes one stack of stun. | 100 |
Rawst Berry | Removes all burn/corrode/bleed. | Removes one stack of burn/corrode/bleed. | 100 |
Persim Berry | Removes all confusion. | Removes one stack of confusion. | 100 |
Petaya Berry | Removes all delete. | Removes one application of delete. | 100 |
Leppa Berry | Removes all slowdown. (Alternatively, can be used early to restore 4 AGI and 2 Actions when you are out of AGI or actions.) | Removes one stack of slowdown or restores 3 AGI and 2 actions. | 175 |
Lum Berry | Removes all of one non-eldritch status effect type. | Removes one single stack of non-eldritch status effect type. | 250 |
Sitrus Berry | Restore 25% HP when HP is below 50%. | Restores 10% of HP. | 125 |
Enigma Berry | Restores 25% HP when hit by a move you are super weak to. | Restores 10% of HP. | 150 |
Equipment
An optional section. Contains the following types of Equipment: Time Devices, Crystals, and Other Important Things.
Time Devices: Contain Time Energy. Can be used a certain amount (depends on the device.) Warps people from one time/space to another. You can only have one equipped at a time.
Crystals: Come in themes, of Order, Chaos, Light, Dark, or if Erastian, even more complex ones. Stacking them up can cause energy cascades and explosions. They can also be used to warp reality and are the currency of Magitek as well as utilized by other forces than just the Solarians.
Other Important Things: Equipment that has a long legacy in SSQ. Smash Dexes, Schnelltott, Vendetta, things like that. They are well known and legendary, and have become such that sometimes, they seem to replicate or return even after being lost. Beware though, they are so well known, others may come to try and take them from you if you have them.
Attacks
There are two kinds of attacks. You get Normal attacks, which are faster-paced, normal attacks that don't require any special focus or concentration to wield. And you get Special attacks, which are the classic special moves you're more used to.
Allocating Attacks
Your Allocation Points (Versatility + 100) are what attacks cost to have. You should leave some left over for skills and other goodies. Normal attacks cost 10 Allocation Points, Special attacks cost 20 Allocation points, and Super Attacks cost 15 Allocation points. You may allocate some or all of your points, and you may revisit and re-allocate your points as you choose. Just that in each session, you may only have up to your Allocation Points' maximum in allocated moves, so keep that in mind.
Normal Attacks
These attacks are simpler. There are only a few decisions to make:
- How much focus on damage and how much focus on attack? You can allocate out of 100 between damage and accuracy.
- Since the Normal Stat mostly consumed space, instead of it, we now use whichever is higher on your character: Tech or Magic. This stat then functions as your 'Normal' stat.
- Once you've decided, say, for example, 20 on damage and 80 on accuracy, then to determine how much your attack deals / what the roll is, multiply that by your Normal stat, then divide by one hundred. So if you have a Normal stat of 50, then this move's damage is 20 * 50 / 100, or 2 * 5, thus 10 damage. And accuracy is 80 * 50 / 100, or 40.
- Then you may decide whether or not to use a weapon with the normal attack. If you use a weapon, pick a weapon that will be set to be the one that works with this attack. If you don't, then you allocate +10 to damage or accuracy as it is unarmed.
- Then you pick a range. Close range means it can only hit people adjacent to you. Long-range means you must subtract an additional 10 from damage and 10 from accuracy. Note that you cannot have negative damage or accuracy, so if that results from the range you wish, adjust the allocation of accuracy/damage and try again. Also if the attack is unarmed, keep in mind that the attack will move you to the distance you've picked--and if that happens to be over a pit or blocked by something... well, tough luck. You'll always have to move that distance when using that unarmed Normal attack.
- Finally you can pick how many targets it hits. Note that, this overrides any other concept of target, e.g. unless otherwise stated, you only can hit one target at a time, even if two foes are standing right up in your face. One target: you can keep your attack as it is. Two targets: Damage is halved between two targets when you swing at two of them. Three or more targets: Damage is split between all three targets when you swing at all of them, and you take a -5 to accuracy when you do that.
- Then you're done. The attack uses 1 AGI and one action. You may intensify the damage or accuracy of the attack by using more AGI, but this costs 4 AGI for 2x and 8 AGI for 4x if you have a weapon included; therefore, it has diminishing returns. If there is no weapon on your normal move, then it costs 2 AGI for 2x and 4 AGI for 4x.
Special Attacks
First off, what's the same: you still allocate 100 percent between ACC and DMG. So you know, you pick things like 30% ACC and 70% DMG, or yes, even 100% ACC and 0% DMG if you wish. But what stat you use for the next calculation changes. You may also choose to make self-buffs. In that case, they use no accuracy and no damage; they only buff. Those get +1 module to play with.
These attacks require a crucial decision: do you use Magic or Tech, or Magitek? Each has a separate set of abilities to it.
There's three types of modules: Normal, Tech, and Magic. Normal modules can be used by either Magic or Tech attacks. Only Magic attacks can use Magic modules. Tech Attacks can use Tech modules. Magitek attacks can use either. The minimum Special attack uses at least two modules, thus costing 2 AGI and 1 action to use. You can make the AGI as high as you want, but beware: too much AGI and you need to wait multiple turns just to use the thing once. Also, you can increase the damage of any special attack by multiplying the force, 2x for 2x more, 4x for 4x more, etc, though it must be doubling each time, so 2x, and 4x are the only acceptable amounts.
You may stack modules as much as you want, as a result. Just that you won't have the time to do it if it gets too big.
Name | Description | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Accurate | Adds (Main Stat)/2 to the attack's accuracy. | ||||||||
Multi-Hits | Attack can potentially hit again. If you roll in the top 50% of your success range, deal another hit's worth of damage. (Subsequent uses of this stack, so 60% or higher -> deal another hit, 70% or higher -> another hit, 80% or higher -> another hit, and if you absolutely are crazy and add yet another one, the final allowable added hit would be at 90% or higher.) Each hit defeats a separate block use, thus forcing the enemy to use multiple blocks to try to thwart you per stack of multi-hits (should they not use enough, each block only prevents 1 multi-hit and causes them to be hit by said multi-hit for the % they would take, but then you roll for your normal attack for the remaining normal hit + chance of any multi-hits that were not blocked.) | ||||||||
Damage | Adds (Main Stat)/2 to the attack's damage. | ||||||||
Charge | Allows access to the in-between charge levels; e.g. 3x, 5x, or 6x multiplication of AGI for the resulting effect to damage. | ||||||||
Weapon | Attack can make use of a weapon to boost its power. You may stack these, but only the highest weapon attributes are taken; E.G. if you combine a +5 ACC +10 DMG weapon and a +22 ACC +4 DMG weapon, you will get +22 ACC and +10 DMG, not +27 ACC and +14 DMG. Remember you must take this module once for every weapon that can be used in the attack. Also if you don't use the weapon(s) you're allowed to use with the attack, you get the AGI back. | ||||||||
Status Effect | If you roll in the top 50% of your success range, the effect of your choice from the contained chart occurs and lasts for 1 round. You may stack multiple status effect types per attack, but you cannot stack multiple of the same on any enemy.
| ||||||||
Range | Can hit enemies that aren't next to you. | ||||||||
Teamup | Move's effectiveness increased by 50% when teamed up with someone else. | ||||||||
Target | Move can hit one more target. Damage and effects are split between the targets, but you roll a full-accuracy roll for each target. | ||||||||
Focus | All attacks become (Main Stat)/4 more accurate. | ||||||||
Flex | All attacks become (Main Stat)/4 more damaging. | ||||||||
Defend | Gain (Main Stat)/10 more block points for 1 round. All the extra points vanish when the round is up. | ||||||||
Speed | Move up (Main Stat)/20 ranks in the turn order and gain (Main Stat)/10 more to dodge and if the move is 2 AGI or less, next round, gain (Main Stat)/100 Actions. | ||||||||
Determination | Gain (Main Stat)/100 stagger points for 1 round, minimum 1. Cannot be used consecutive turns (will only work every other round). | ||||||||
Fury | Deal (Main Stat)/2 additional damage with every attack but also take (Main Stat)/5 more damage to yourself every time you attack! | ||||||||
Unparryable | Attack is inevitable; double the AGI of the attack after adding this module, enemy is forced to dodge or block. | ||||||||
Unremovable Status effect | Status effect cannot be removed, for the turn it is present; adds 2 AGI to the attack instead of just 1, per status effect that is unremovable. | ||||||||
Parry | The attack can be used to Parry without using a React point; of course, this does mean the attack always costs 1 extra AGI instead, so though you may not need to rely on React points, you'll be eating into your AGI more aggressively with it. |
Name | Description | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Heal | Target of move gains (Magic)/2 HP back. | ||||||||
Steal | Steals enemy's equipment (you have to name what you want before you use the attack) if you land in the top 50% of your success range. | ||||||||
Summon | Your attack summons an avatar of whatever the attack is that will continually get turns and do the attack each turn. Lasts (Magic)/10 rounds and has (Magic)*2 HP in case somebody attacks it (and dodges with (Magic)/2 effectiveness when under attack.) Note: Upgrades in a specific order. Second addition of module: Lasts Magic/5 rounds. Third addition of module: Has (Magic)*3 HP. Fourth addition of module: Dodges with (Magic) effectiveness. Fifth addition of module: Does a super move version of the attack on the last round it's up that deals 2x the damage and has twice the accuracy. Also you may only have one Summon out at a time; new summons replace old ones. Also note unlike other status effects, this can indeed last multiple rounds. | ||||||||
Status Effect | If you roll in the top 50% of your success range, the effect of your choice from the contained chart occurs and lasts for 1 round.
| ||||||||
Home | Enemy cannot dodge the attack (must use block or parry). | ||||||||
Repel | Enemies that touch you in melee range take (Magic)/10 damage. |
Name | Description | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Copy | Move copies an enemy ability you have seen. It can be an item, or a move, or a quirk. If it is a move, keep in mind your stats (as in, the stats you have, not the enemy's stats, applied based upon how the move is allocating tech/magic/magitek) are used with the move, not the enemy's, so do not expect to gain hulk-like strength if you copy an unnaturally strong enemy's punch. The copy effect lasts 1 round in combat. Additional restriction: Copying items means it only gets one use. | ||||||||
Hazard | Your attack doesn't directly attack anyone but it sticks around until next round, until it is triggered by somebody encountering it by moving near it. You may disable this effect to make your attack 1 AGI faster. | ||||||||
Pierce | Attack cannot be blocked; enemy must dodge or react. Additionally, chip damage done by this attack is 25% higher against parries. | ||||||||
Scan | Gives you insight on whatever you hit, using the % over the enemy's defense that you hit them to determine how detailed that is. | ||||||||
Status Effect | If you hit the enemy, the effect of your choice from the contained chart occurs and lasts for 1 round.
| ||||||||
Techno | Technology based attacks deal (Technology)/2 more damage for 1 round. | ||||||||
Regen | Regenerate (Technology)/4 HP back for 3 rounds. |
Super Attacks
These attacks, by default, use 100% of your main stat on both ATK and DMG. These also get four modules out of the gate. They cost 1 action and 3 AGI but come with a twist; they must also use one of the downsides below. They also cannot be used until 3 rounds into the battle, by default. Additionally, they can use the full abilities of any weapon you have, whereas eventually, usage of weapon abilities will be limited on Special and Normal moves.
They can also be multiplied in damage by multiplying the AGI usage by 2x or 4x.
Name | Description |
---|---|
Super Bar | This move, and possibly other super moves that all require this, take from a 'Super Bar', which is a stat that builds up every time you hit your target. A miss contributes 1 point to the bar, while a hit contributes 2. A total miss caused by an Uncanny Dodge or being in the wrong range entirely contributes 0. Once you have 10 points, you may use the move. The bar then depletes to 0, although if you hit with the move, you gain 4 points back, and even if you miss but do chip damage, you'll get 2 points back. |
Coin Cost | A pretty simple requirement: you spend 10,000 coins every time you use the move. |
Slow Charge | You must take an entire round charging up to fire the move. |
Final Feud | You must be the target of a super move OR have an enemy knock you into stagger at least once, then that enemy may be targeted by your Super Move. |
Calling For Backup | You must be in range to communicate with your forces. Then, you roll a d3-1 to see if they arrive right now, or as many as 2 rounds from now. Additionally you cannot re-use the move for the rest of the battle. |
Revenge | You must be KO'd by the target and then revived by a party member before you may then use the move once in retaliation. |
Sacrifice | You sacrifice a permanent piece of equipment in order to use this move. |
Item Fuel | The move must be refueled by some sort of limited item. While it will cost you only 3000 coins per use, you can only carry 2 of them on your person at a time. |
External Power Source | You need access to a high amount of electricity, fire, ice, other resources are also possible (but consult with GM first) -- and then at that point you may use the move, noting that it will deplete that resource, so it may have side effects on the nearby terrain or environment. If you lack the resource, you cannot use the move at all. Other places lacking but having some of the resource, may cause it to go off at 50% power. |
Dangerous | The move is uncontrollable, threatening absolutely everyone and everything around you, including allies. They can take cover, but they have to flee the entire battle area to be safe. |
Health Powered | You take damage equal to what you deal in order to power the move. |
Extremely Fatiguing | You permanently lose an action for the rest of the battle per use of the move. |
Stationary | You become unable to move and can only block for the next 2 rounds while you recover from the move. |
Self-KO | You're passed out on the ground and cannot do anything at all for the round afterwards. |
Unreliable | Each time you use the move, there is a 50% chance it doesn't happen at all. You lose no AGI or actions, but you cannot use the move until 2 rounds later when this happens. |
Team Super | Both you and your partner must use super moves in tandem to use this move at all. Their move must have a different requirement than this one. |
Spells
Magic is an essential quality that many beings have in this game's universe. It allows the manipulation of time and space itself, to obtain predictable results that logic and science simply cannot. However, it has a number of limits and important implications to consider.
Magic relies on three key stats. Versatility is foremost. It determines how many spells you can have memorized. You may spend Allocation points on obtaining spells using the table placed beneath this section (keep scrolling down to see the spells.).
Not all spells are obtainable off the bat; some may require prohibitive amounts of Versatility to be spent on them. Others must be bought, or found, or require the actual possession of some sort of item.
If you run out of Allocation Points, you may use a special equipment item, often spellbook or crystal ball related, in order to store more spells. Just note there is a speed cost -- spells cast this way will often take 1 or more extra AGI to cast (depends on item).
The list of spells is chronicled below. Or if you absolutely must look at them, the World Destroying Spells are in Appendix II.
Magic uses (Magic) accuracy when utilized as an attack.
Full Turn abilities require your full turn's AGI to use. Therefore, one cannot use them if one has spent their time blocking or reacting prior. On the flip side, they usually can dramatically turn the tide of an entire battle immediately. But if the enemy can dodge, block, or parry them, you yourself then are in trouble, so beware! Half Turn abilities, similarly, require half of your turn to complete.
You may amp up the power of any spell by multiplying the AGI cost. If the multiple results in using all your AGI (as in, the same amount as 'Full Turn'), it gains another 1x effect on top of that. (Note: it must match all your AGI at the start of your turn. For anything else, you would need a special quirk.) It must also follow the pattern of 2x and 4x noted elsewhere (as well as it only improving the damage, not the accuracy, in this case)--only with quirks or special equipment can you tune it to 3x, 5x or 7x.
Rune Magic
Ancient Vring magic that happens to be pretty good for anybody who wants a fairly decent toolset without spending a lot of Allocation Points to collect the set.. All-round and fairly safe to just learn all of these if you're in need of a simple but useful toolset.
Name | Desc | Casting Time | AP |
---|---|---|---|
Berkano | Reduces enemy's AGI by (Magic)/10 for a round and remove one of their actions. Also lets you stop something that's moving (or slow it down otherwise if it's too big/too fast) out of battle. | 5 | 5 |
Kenaz | Accuracy +10 buff for a round. Out of battle allows you to see in the dark and through smoke/fog. | 1 | 1 |
Laguz | Deals (Magic)*3 water damage with a (Magic + Spellcraft) accuracy check, flooding the area. | Full Turn | 4 |
Teiwaz | Pre-emptive buff that blocks an entire status effect causing move if it hits you. | 2 | 3 |
Inguz | Instantly charges up a move to 2.5x its damage amount. Alternatively: allows you to access in-between charge levels on your moves, though you still have to spend the initial 4 AGI, then for the rest of your turn you may charge your moves up by the amount you wish, including in-between charge levels. | 4 | 4 |
Uruz | Heals (Magic)*3 HP. | 6 | 4 |
Alsan Magic (Cost to master this set: 21 Allocation Points)
The magic of Alsa. Full of tricky things that can be done. Best utilized by those who want to manipulate their way through everything.
Name | Desc | Casting Time | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
Ele | Deals (Magic)*1.5 damage in a chosen element that is undodgable and unparryable (but still blockable), or ((Magic)*3.0)+Spellcraft skill damage if you want to use a (Magic+Spellcraft Skill) accuracy check or more than that if you hit the enemy's elemental weakness. Note that it needs line-of-sight to hit a target and cannot teleport inside anything. | 3 | 3 |
Rejoin | Rejoin either your party members, or objects you dropped, or if in battle, you can warp back to where you last were inside the battle. Can also be cast on other people and things to move them around -- but behaves like any other attack and requires you to hit them (e.g. they can block it entirely should they have a block handy). Also noting that in this case, enemies will rejoin their party -- as in, if the main party attacking you is right there, pretty useless to target them with this. | 4 | 4 |
Ward | Adds (Magic/25) Block points to 1 target for 1 round, or can protect up to (Magic/10) people from various environmental effects (including poison gas, evil spirits, etc) for up to (Magic/10) hours. | 6 | 4 |
Bang | An explosion blasts a target with undodgable and unblockable (but potentially parryable; use Magic accuracy in that case) for (Magic) damage; can be used to hit people internally, counter-attack people, or damage mechanisms. Can teleport through solid matter, although it is still stopped by magical or technological force fields. | 5 | 3 |
Panel | Activate, repair, and power almost any machine of choice. In battle, can deal (Magic)*3 damage to all machines in an area with a (Magic) accuracy check, but note they can potentially dodge it. (They cannot block or parry it, though.) | Full Turn | 4 |
Alter | Summon images, disguise yourself, make other things change in appearance, even make yourself invisible or silent. (One thing per casting.) | 4 | 4 |
Kinesis | Move objects or yourself around the battle (or non-battle) field. Use (Magic) accuracy to attempt to grab hostile people in battle if you want to throw them too. (Can potentially be Dodged.) Can also let you fly for large distances (and in battle, easily from melee range to ranged-range). | 4 | 4 |
Baton Toss | Switch places with somebody else, including an enemy. Use (Magic)+Spellcraft accuracy if you wish to switch places with a hostile target. Distance is unlimited, but you have to have a very good idea of where somebody is; otherwise, you must figure that out before you can try to move them. Size of object being moved is also limited to 2x your own size. Ship-based baton pass requires a proper amplifier and size limits remain in place, and you cannot swap a ship with proper shields with your place. This can be potentially blocked using block points. | 5 | 5 |
Nintendus Magic
The extreme magic of Nintendus. Mostly useful for destroying everything, but there's healing in here as well. (Cost to master this set: 106 Allocation Points)
Name | Description | Casting Time | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
Flamestorm | Immolates enemies with fire. (Magic)*5 fire damage to one target, or (Magic) fire damage to all targets. | 4 | 10 |
Icesplosion | Freezes everything around you. (Magic) ice damage and enemies are frozen solid for (Magic)/10 rounds; frozen enemies cannot dodge or parry (but they can potentially block). Freezing ends when enemy is hit. | 4 | 10 |
Thordain | Rains lightning upon your foes. (Magic) electric damage to one target and (Magic)/2 damage to the ones next to them; the initial target is also stunned (Dodge reduced by 25% for 1 round). | 4 | 10 |
Megid | Fires a disc of pure darkness intent on cutting the enemy's life-force from this world. Opposed Magic check, enemy takes (Magic)*2 damage and Death status effect if they fail. (Death will insta-kill any enemy whose power level is less than half of yours and 50% chance to kill any enemy between that and your power level.) Cannot be blocked. (Deals an additional (Enemy current HP/25) damage to bosses.) | 4 | 12 |
Holy | Lights up an enemy with the holy wrath of positive energy. (Magic)*5 damage to one target; but the target must be evil, otherwise only (Magic) damage. Holy enemies may even be healed by this, if they are holy enough! Cannot be dodged. | 4 | 12 |
Curaga | Heals yourself and everyone on your side fully. | Full Turn | 8 |
Sky Slam | Fly up into the air and do (additional AGI beyond just the casting time of this spell)*(Magic) damage, assuming you hit with an attack roll that can use Magic, Tech, Magitek, or Normal for accuracy against your target. | 2 | 4 |
Bioga | Poisons the enemy heavily. No damage initially; but ((Magic)/3)*Number of Rounds Effect Is Around) damage continually hits them on their turn until the poison is cured. | 6 | 6 |
Another Gate | Attacks the enemy with otherworldly energy. Deals ((Magic/10) * d100-20)+Spellcraft damage; if it goes negative, it damages you instead! | 3 | 8 |
Disjunction | Destroys enemy enchantments, magically created status effects, illusions, and so on. Opposed Magic check; if you win, enemy's effect is damaged based upon the difference in the roll. Low successes will only damage the enchantment, and the enchantment/illusion may have many layers, so it may take multiple disjunctions. If you lose, you take (their Magic) damage. | 4 | 4 |
Solarian Magic
The magic of the Solarians. Useful mostly for creating things or manipulating them. Or just blowing them up. (Cost to master this set: 116 Allocation Points)
Name | Description | Casting Time | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
True Amalgamation | Often nicknamed "Magitek" by those who don't know the history of the spell. Creates magitek items by combining two or more things. Must be fed a steady stream of coins or solar energy to work. Rarely is used with souls due to the often devastating effects to whoever's soul is used (and if the soul is taken hostilely, may result in a cursed item that hates its creator.) While what can be created is fairly open to whatever is wanted by its creator, the more substantial the item, the more likely fate will bend around it and it might become semi-sentient on its own or influence weaker-willed beings around it. Magitek Skill improves your results. | Full Turn | 15 |
Battle Amalgamation | A quick and easy way to create ephemeral items that you can use in combat. These don't combine any pre-existing items and disappear relatively quickly after one use. Confused with "True Amalgamation" but no item survives beyond (Magic + Tech)/10 rounds in combat and vanish when combat is over. Effect of individual items limited to (Magic + Tech); any more than that is capped, and requires True Amalgamation. (e.g. can only heal Magic + Tech HP at most, or deal that much damage, and requires Magic + Tech + Magitek (skill) accuracy roll to hit.) | Half Turn | 10 |
Solarball | Summons a miniature sun, which deals (Magic+Tech+(Magitek Skill, NOT the Magitek Ability stat))*2 damage. | Full Turn | 10 |
Judgment of the Sun | Summons an area-wide blinding energy pulse from the sun. Damages technology and non-Solarian magic spells as well as people. Opposed Magic check against said tech, people and spells determines which things it damages; it dispells enemy spells, it damages technology (GM determines exactly how), and it deals (Magic)/2 damage to people. | Full Turn | 12 |
Radiance of the Soul | Energizes the soul like the sun. Take a constant (5% of current HP)-Magitek Skill damage while it is active; stays active until dismissed or you run out of HP. Attack effects amplified by 4x while it is active. | 4 | 10 |
Warmth of the Stars | Heals all status effects, then also HP. Can be proportionally controlled; cost of spell depends on how much you're healing. Costs 4 AGI to initially heal 1 status effect and 20% of target's HP; +1 more AGI for each status effect and +1 AGI for each 40% of max HP you heal to the target. | 4+ | 12 |
Disruption | Curses technology to turn against its wielders. (Sort of an 'Anti-Panel'.) Opposed Magic roll against said technology to see if it succeeds. If the tech wins, you take (Magic)/2 backlash damage. Note that the effect lasts 1 round. | 5 | 10 |
Time Cop Magic
The magic of the Time Cops. Only some of it has been deciphered by Questers, and its usefulness can be... questionable. (Cost to master this set: 98+? Allocation Points)
Name | Desc | Casting Time | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
Plane | Warp between different planes of existence. In specific: opens a portal to a different world, which can be of whatever--the plane of Air, so on. Cast once to enter it, cast again to exit it. Due to the nature of said movement, can be used to 'jump' long distances. However, ultra-long distances will inflict Chronomentia, so beware. It takes active concentration to keep the portal open, also, so for every round past your own combat round you want the portal open, uses 1 AGI to keep it around. In combat, it can potentially end some foes instantly or send them entirely out of the way. Of course, it is also all or nothing, if you miss, you just wasted your turn. | Full Turn | 12 |
Time Stop | Gain an additional round just for yourself, stopping everyone else in time. Note that in this current incarnation, it consumes your full turn, and so trades your current turn for one where people cannot react, dodge, OR block (unless they themself know Time Stop or other relevant abilities to counter with.) It also increases your Chronomentia by 5. Please read that section as to the deleterious effects of that. | Full Turn | 30 |
Reconstruction | Repairs damage that has been done to the fabric of reality. Doesn't necessarily repair anything else, although other 'decay' or 'entropy' related damage can be healed, sometimes. For every 4 AGI spent on this, heals (Magic/2 round down) "HP" of reality itself/the target it's aimed at. | 4X | 12 |
Re-do | Lets you re-do a single interaction in the past of this battle -- say, an attack where you got hit, an attack you made that failed, etc. For the cost of that action and this spell's cost, the entire interaction is re-done, only now you know what roll they will get in advance and can modify your own actions appropriately (say, if the roll is too good, you could just use an item to heal yourself instead of bothering with wasting your AGI on a failed parry, so you can get that AGI back in the future -- or similarly, get back an item by not using it in the past). | 4 | 12 |
Parallax | Makes an extra clone of yourself shifted in time where you and yourself from the next turn both attack in this turn. Obviously, you don't get a turn next round, but if it works out for you, does it matter? Of course, you only get half of your current turn in addition to the fullness of your future self's turn, or buff your future self... the choices are immense, but every interaction where you directly interact with yourself adds 5 Chronomentia. | Half-Turn | 12 |
Lens of Time | When that move really, absolutely, definitely must hit. Targets a foe using Time Itself instead of normal positional mechanisms, thus creating a 4-dimensional targeting reticule. This does mean that whatever you're using will be restricted to a single target, but this may even be your wish, as it can take uncontrollable hit-all abilities and make them "behave" this way. However, you must spend an entire turn calculating the location -- not to worry though, you don't have to avoid being hit during that turn. Otherwise, Autumnus would have probably deleted this spell for being useless. Anyways, after you've done this, you may make the move of your choice inexorably hit the foe, ignoring all attempts to parry, block, etc -- after all, the lens of time knows what they will do before they do it! | Full Turn | 20 |
Combat
Obviously, the main use for this system is combat. Most of the out of combat scenarios happen in a freeform manner. So how does combat actually go down?
Stage 1: The Initiative
Both sides must roll initiative to see who goes first. Roll d(your agility stat). The highest rolls go first, the slowest ones go last. Ties are decided by who rolled first.
Stage 2: The Turn
Each person gets a turn. The first person in the initiative goes first. Their turn consists of them having as much Agility as their Agility stat says they have as well as how many actions the stat says. So if they have 4 Agility, they get 4. AGI is how much effort an action takes; you can only do your action stat number of actions per turn.
Stage 3: The Action
Each action consumes Agility. This is determined by the kind of action performed. Each attack has a set amount of Agility use. The average attack uses 3 Agility and 1 Action; if you build your attack to use less Agility, though, it will use less. Charge attacks can use variable amounts of Agility. For now, the example will concentrate on the average case and so, the case of having 3 AGI and 1 Action for the cost of a move.
Stage 3a: The Attack Action
If you choose to use a move, then you go through a couple steps. First you check your accuracy (which ranges from 1 to 100), then you roll a(accuracy)d(enemy's defense). The GM dice script compares your accuracy to the enemy's defense of choice and then to the result on the roll. If you succeed, you hit; if the enemy succeeds, their defense action (be it dodge, block or react) occurs instead.
Stage 3b: The Utility action
These always take 1 AGI and 1 action. They involve actions like picking up dropped weapons, moving around the battlefield, pushing buttons, or extended conversations mid-battle.
Stage 4: The Defense Phase
When it's not your turn, it's the Defense Phase. You can be attacked by anything--the battlefield, enemies, even crazed/confused teammates. When you're attacked, the enemy rolls a(enemy's accuracy)d(your defense; choose to dodge, or react and use that value here). The result, as before, is explained by the script. If they hit, their effects occur to you (damage, etc); and they'll notify you. Otherwise, your defense action occurs. So if you choose to block, you take the attack's chip damage determined by a d75 (attack damage*(d75 / 100)), if you react and choose to parry, your parry attack hits the enemy, and if you dodge, the enemy's attack misses you and only does chip damage (attack damage *(attack roll / 100)) to you. Uncanny dodge of course, can mean the attack deals no damage to you at all.
Stage 5: The End Phase
Once all of one side has been defeated or run away, the battle is over. Points are rewarded based on how combat went/who needs it most, and any loot is distributed, then the battle is complete and out-of-combat freeform re-commences.
Chronomentia
Whenever a being warps through time and space, there is always a part of them that fails to make the trip. The more extreme this warp, the worse the effect. Chronomentia is the syndrome that results. Some go far, far too far, and vanish forever. Their body may return, but their mind is not that what it once was, stripped of who they once were. This mechanic tracks that affect; beware, and do not seek the deepest levels. For once there... there is often no way back.
Whenever your character warps more than a week of time back or forwards in time (or more than one galaxy of distance), they gain a point. When the distances start getting larger, the points increase--subject to what the GM says, anyways. Certain spells can also increase your Chronomentia, as Time Cop spells are, inevitably, not friendly to one's mind or soul. As your character gains points, the ill effects of Chronomentia pile up. The only way to decrease the points is a combination of accurately roleplaying the effects of it on your character (which counts as the character expelling the damage through the side effects) or using potentially costly but convenient healing items. Though those cannot heal more advanced cases of Chronomentia.
Here are the point levels and the effects:
Point Value | Name | Description |
---|---|---|
0 | No Chronomentia | There isn't any ill effect going on here. Anybody with this probably doesn't even fly on a plane. |
1-10 | Mild Chronomentia | This is known as a time lag, and is similar to what happens from flying airplanes across multiple time zones. Nothing too problematic other than feeling a bit out of sync with the local time zone. The only real effects are usually a need to sleep, meditate, or otherwise recover. But robots and specific cyborgs with mitigations in place won't really feel this. Also it goes without saying, about 5 points will evaporate on their own per session without any special work needed here. |
11-25 | Moderate Chronomentia | The effects begin to manifest here. A feeling of being disconnected begins, as well as a need to relearn what's currently going on. Only people who wake up from comas after a year or five could really say they've experienced something like this. Tiredness is gone, so sleeping won't help this anymore; it requires time spent to try and figure out what is going on. This is the first level where you actually have to do something to try and get rid of the Chronomentia; it will otherwise only vanish 1 point at a time per session. |
26-50 | Severe Chronomentia | Insanity (as in, disconnection from reality itself) begins. Reality no longer makes sense. Without any sort of valid reference to the current time, an obsessive disorder occurs. The person has to anchor their being in a concept or idea or object that they carry around with them in order to function; otherwise they'll likely just spout word salad, wander around fighting ghosts of the time they originated from, or otherwise be so radically disconnected from the reality they're in they see an alternate world from everyone else. The best example of this is Xavier Ridgecrest's insanity in SSS (and early CONFRONTATION); where all morals and sanity have been replaced with a devotion to his specific focus on nostalgia, to the point he randomly does completely insane things to try to 'bring back the past.' But it was in vain; the past was gone, and the only actual way forwards was to let it go. Without intervention by outside characters in addition to your own working on it, this Chronomentia will become 'stable' and not decrease, but may increase if more warping is undertaken. |
51-75 | Terminal Chronomentia | Basic mental function goes away. Nine out of ten people who get to this state immediately die. It's for a simple reason: as they approach the limits of what their body can take, they no longer understand the problem with warping everywhere, and become addicted to it. Anyone who reaches this state becomes a haggard, old version of their normal self due to continual aging. Completely consumed with warping, they no longer understand life or death and forget the object they were using as an 'anchor', instead becoming a puppet for fate itself. The GM will take control of the character (in the off chance you, the player, intentionally do this) and throw them into various mostly unsurvivable conditions. Odds are that character won't survive. But... only someone who intentionally warps dozens or even hundreds of times (or a few times but all extremely far warps) will ever reach this. The Chronomentia will continue to increase by 1 point per session even if nothing is done to provoke it! |
76-90 | Latent Time Psychosis | A handful of beings survive death. Maybe they're a vampire. Maybe they're cursed. Maybe they're a cyborg whose organic body is just a meat puppet of the computer part. Whatever the case, no truly living beings can sustain this amount of damage. Even if they're purely organic, they have clearly transcended normal living and become a sort of time-seasoned piece of beef jerky. These entities are truly no longer in control; whatever they used to be is gone. At this point the whims of warping and chaos itself controls them. They are a tool of time itself. And they continue to gain more Chronomentia, at the rate of 5 per session. |
91-100 | Malignant Time Psychosis | This isn't even supposed to be possible. There is no actual known mechanism for this to happen. Some entities have such a strong sense of identity they continue, willfully, past the point of mere zombie-like insanity to that of an enlightenment. An enlightenment of knowledge that is complete nonsense to any rational person. They can control others who have lost their senses to time and are immune to further Chronomentia. Killing them is hard as they are not strictly in any one timezone. Indeed, some philosophers suggest they are a 'distributed organism' that exists across multiple planes and timelines at the same time. This plant-like structure means unless you destroy the head Time Psycho, you'll never be rid of them. And sometimes even with the head gone, the weaker lesser nodes will pop up to harass you until they slowly run out. (Even worse, the sub-nodes of the Time Psycho all have the potential to mutate into a new entity that in turn can become a Time Psycho.) The Time Questers tend to go out and take out anything that becomes like this, out of necessity; rarely will any such being stop of their own accord. There is a weird wall that occurs, however. Called the 'island of stability', very few beings in this state can ever reach beyond it, and only certain technology or mutations or magic can ever make it possible to go beyond it. |
101-∞ | [Redacted] | Entities known as [Redacted] or [Redacted] or Psycho Illian have been seen in this state. At this point, they become capable of molding reality itself. The whole point of stopping Malignant cases is to avoid reality erasing/destroying superbeings such as these; they coalesce together into a shared desire to collapse time itself, one way or the other (even if they themself are not fully aware of it). It is academic in nature, as every time they occur, even the fact they existed for any moment of time resulted in the destruction of the current status quo and permanently altered everyone who was in the same galaxy as them. So for the safety of all, it is generally a disaster to be prevented... |
Vehicles
Vehicles: The thing I never make a system for. Until NOW!
To ensure that this system for vehicles makes any sense, let's just... make it really simple for now.
Vehicles have the following attributes:
Vehicle Name
Shields (if any) (May be multiple layers): 0-1,000,000,000
Energy (If relevant to attacks/actions): 0-1,000,000,000
HP: 0-1,000,000,000
Evasion/Defense: 0-300
Will: 0-300
Weapons/Attacks:
- Insert Weapon/Attack name here: XX Attack, YY Damage, ZZ Effects, EE Energy usage (if any)
Vehicles have stats, just like characters do. Since this system is rather ad-hoc, the GM assigns the initial numbers. Upgrades can be had for certain amounts of coins, also determined by the GM. You can upgrade any stat of the ship up to three times. Ships deal 10x the damage and have 10x the HP of normal characters; depending on the ship, it may also do that much to people if in a direct attack, or not, depending on the ship. (Generally smaller ships don't; the bigger ones do, but their accuracy is divided by 10 when firing at tiny targets. The smaller ships get full accuracy, but don't get 10x damage on the non-ship targets.)
Weapons are similar, and can also be upgraded up to three times; up to three more weapon attacks/abilities can be added too.
"Will" is the ability of the pilot to deal with problems that arise on the ship and raw tactical ability. Opposed Will checks occur when the two vehicles are evenly matched, such as a dogfight; the winner's action overrides the loser's action in such a case.
Furthermore, vehicle ranges exist; close range, medium range, far range, and out range, all of these are scaled 10x compared to 'normal' ranges when on foot. Vehicles tend to be able to fight at Medium range, though, as 'close range' weapons are generally problematic unless you're piloting a mecha.
Appendix I: Abridged History of the Setting
Since it's too long to ask any sane person to read, the history is replicated here:
- Erastia was a psychotic dictatorship. Its people were insane, materialistic 1980's sci-fi rejects. This dystopia's citizens lava golfed and built malls on the surface of moons--just because they could, not because it made sense.
- The government of Erastia ran many gladiator battles for fun and amusement. They forced lower class Erastians to fight eachother for their sole way of earning a living.
- Xavier originated from an upper class background. But he found it so boring, he sneaked into the lower class areas so he, too, could be in gladiator battles.
- After many grueling battles in which he lost many limbs, he was recruited to the military. But shortly after that, a mysterious organization named "The Time Cops" appeared.
- The Time Cops, an organization that controls Time Itself using their unknown Time Powers, sought to control history and prevent anyone else from getting the ability to warp through time--usually found in the form of "Time Devices".
- Erastia was secretly working on Time Devices. The insane people running the planet were hellbent on controlling all of time. The Time Cops tried to destroy the devices, but Xavier fled with one of the devices. To make matters worse, he didn't even know what he'd stolen.
- In an event that the details of have been lost to history, Autumnus used some sort of unknown being or technique to destroy Erastia. Most of Erastia's population was destroyed... but somehow the planet survived as a post-apocalyptic mess.
- Xavier fled. Shortly after, he experienced severe memory loss several times. Traces of his past actions left behind suggest he worked with resistance fighters against the Time Cops in the past. More recently, he worked with the Original Questers (which is chronicled in the 'Original SSQ' story logs) and defended a planet named Nintendus from a series of video game villains and some other not-so-video-game-ish villains.
- That ended in disaster when Xavier used his Time Device to warp reality in his favor, allowing the Late-Era Original Questers to destroy all of evil. Reality unraveled, and causality itself attacked the Late-era Original Questers. The Late-era Original Questers then had to destroy causality, causing Nintendus to be destroyed and exiling them to a planet named Alsa.
- The Questers on Alsa (chronicled in the logs of SSQ²'s era) did not have Xavier as a leader. They became free spirited and did various actions that alternatively helped and harmed the planet of Alsa. Ultimately they caused so much chaos, the people of Alsa used an epic spell to recreate Nintendus and exiled the Questers to the recreated Nintendus.
- The reformed Nintendus' citizens reacted to the realization they had been revived from death. They banned the Alsan Questers from actively doing any Quester-like activities, lest Nintendus and its people die again. Thus, the events of SSQ∞ began (also slowly being logged.) In their place, they created the Brawlers and allowed older ex-Original Questers to mentor them. This fell apart due to the machinations of Evil Wolfman, an evil version of the first leader of the Questers from another dimension.
- Evil Wolfman conquered Nintendus and was ultimately only defeated by the combined efforts of the Brawlers, a returning Xavier, a weird clone of an Original Quester named Garrick from the 40K universe, and some scattered Alsan Questers. In the process, all the Smash Energy that powered Nintendus was destroyed.
- The Questers scattered and Nintendus itself became strangely lifeless due to the lack of magical energy. A doppelganger of Xavier named Illian showed up, and realized Nintendus had been destroyed and remade by the Original Questers. He decided to seek vengeance for this, for he was the one that had provided some support to Xavier back when (and was why Xavier had the ability to warp Nintendus to help him win in the late Original Quester era.)
- Xavier, having nearly been assassinated by the clone of Garrick, became morose and drunk. He pined for the past when he worked for the Questers, thus beginning the events of the previous SSQ game known as CONFRONTATION. And then it hit him: he still had the Time Device.
- Xavier figured out a way to go back in time and retrieve some of his old friends, while Illian built a massive military as he allied with Garrick and aimed to kill Xavier.
- Xavier, now with his old friends, presented an existential contradiction to Illian's assertion that "Xavier is crazy and has fallen from the ways of the Questers." Realizing that they had been tricked by Illian, Illian's allies deserted him.
- Xavier reformed the Questers, thus reforming the Original Questers, with some new additions.
- Illian warped reality itself with a device known as "The Book"--the same causality thing from before that powered Nintendus--but Xavier and his allies reached outside of reality itself and deleted Illian, ending the events of CONFRONTATION.
- After this, Xavier created the New Questers, who were working directly with him rather than being indirectly linked to Nintendus. Together, in the previous RPG called REVELATION, they freed Erastia. The Time Cop running Erastia was a rogue one named Omnus, who had betrayed Autumnus. Autumnus allowed Xavier to defeat Omnus in order to defeat Omnus, as both Autumnus and Xavier hated Omnus.
- The Revelation of REVELATION was that the supposedly dead Erastians were, in fact, not all dead.
- There were Erastians who survived the destruction, who after the event declared Xavier their new leader.
- The New Questers gained many allies and defeated the Time Cops several times, ending the reign of Autumnus and his attempted successor Lyx.
- In time they became known as the Time Questers and most of the New Questers left. The remnants form these Time Questers, a group that now searches reality for dangerous artifacts.
- They happened upon an unknown entity whose name is redacted, and had to save the universe from this entity. They succeeded, but at an unknown cost -- their memories of this being.
- Over time, things wound down. The universe became peaceful. Valron and Xavier became the main two Questers remaining. A single man had a vendetta against them -- his name was Loran.
- Loran was a survivor of a place known as Star City -- a place destroyed by past wackiness on Nintendus causing an eldritch monster to slay almost everyone in Star City, including Loran's family.
- Loran took advantage of the fact Valron and Xavier were vacationing on a resort named 'Orionis 11' after their battle against the unknown entity to act as their erstwhile ally. In the end though, he lured them to their doom on the ruins of Star City.
- However, the two were stronger than Loran anticipated, and beat him -- but chose to spare him.
- In the end, the two became intrigued by what happened, and are now exploring the ruins of Star City. Not that anyone else is likely to join them, but should that be a thing, this is all you would know, should you want to join them in their Quest.
Appendix II: World Destroying Spells
These are some seriously old spells, from all the way in SSQ^2. You are unlikely to EVER find them, but they must be listed as a few boss characters may have them, or in a bizarre circumstance you might get a temporary (read: Plot related) access to them. The weird formatting is to help remind one these are old spells and not a part of the current system, merely listed as conveniences in that bizarre edge case.
Also they may reference outdated concepts and probably won't be updated. It is likely they may even be erased from existence eventually... and replaced by new ones.
Summons/World-damaging Spells (All are 1 use per session only and generally only findable on Alsa and there's only one of most of them in existence in the entire universe and you now need to also dedicate some Allocation Points to figure out how to use them. Allocation Point Cost to master this set (if you've lost your mind or become Omnus): 184 )
Name | Desc | Casting Time | Difficulty |
---|---|---|---|
Antimatter Beam | Annihilates target, keeps on going. Leaves no traces and is silent. Can permanently destroy bodies but not souls. (Magic)*1.5 accuracy, ((Magic)*100)+Spellcraft damage, pierces pretty much all defenses in existence. | 4 | 15 |
Armageddon | Mindboggling destruction horrendously damages target. Usually OHKO, although unlike Nullus, doesn't permakill. ((Magic)*2)+Spellcraft accuracy roll, (Magic)*1000 damage. | 6 | 15 |
Capture | Captures the essence of a recently defeated foe; they can be used as a summon. One can be held at a time. Can only be used on defeated foes. If you get additional ones, the previous one's essence is destroyed. Or if the foe is strong, released. So be careful. | 6 | 6 |
Divining Rod | Can find pretty much anything, anywhere. Can also cure status effects that no longer exist in the system, or figure out what old things used to be. However, it comes from a sentient being and not from an objective truth, ergo you may get some false results. Very suspicious... | 1 | 5 |
Energia | Summons immensely strong energy; use to supercharge an attack or power something huge. Can't do anything on its own; when used, multiplies effect of things by (Magic/10) amount, which you can use all at once or divide between things. | 3 | 10 |
Godly Protect | Protect something in a way which is immensely hard to break. Lasts 1 day. Ignores any attempt to damage it, but whatever is inside cannot even be heard or seen and is not effected by time or space -- even basic functions like needing to eat or breathe are no longer needed. Only the caster of this spell may communicate with whatever is inside it, telepathically. | 5 | 7 |
Nullus | Permanently annihilates a being, object, or portal, if it is unguarded. Subject to limitations based upon the power of the person wielding it. That is, you must be powerful enough to destroy that object unassisted if you want to be certain it will STAY gone. | 2 | 10 |
Pure Element | Summons a portal to the plane of the element in question, which damages based on enemy's own element of choice. | 4 | 8 |
Reversal | Send all the enemy's attacks back to them. All of their attacks for the entire battle so far, ripping a hole in reality. The only limitation is you must roll a (Magic) roll for each attack you reverse, and you cannot reverse an attack twice; that would cause it to hit YOU instead! | 4 | 6 |
Sardis Mongul's Space Fleet | Barrages enemy with hundreds of kamikaze space ships, and also blows up the nearby terrain something fierce. Threatens all enemies on the battlefield, deals (Magic)*10 damage, has (Magic) accuracy. | 4 | 5 |
Still | Destroy target's magical abilities... permanently, if you are lucky. Requires that the subject is restrained and cannot, say, attempt some sort of counterattack or run away. Also that said foe is 'defeated'; if they are still not defeated, even in spirit only... your sealing of their abilities will fall apart eventually. Effectiveness is improved by repeated castings / your own Magical Power being strong enough to overcome enemy's Magic stat. | 6 | 20 |
Time Reversal | Relive the past day like certain artifacts in certain stories. However, utilizing it causes Chronomentia, and that stat is so obscure it's not even listed in the system anymore, so don't use it more than once a (IRL) year if you want to stay sane. | 6 | 20 |
Tsunami | Annihilates out entire area with gigantic wave of water. Or at least, an area of a city block, dealing (Magic)*10 damage to people hit by the initial impact wave and with a (Magic)*2 accuracy roll. Recommended to not use anywhere near civilization, if you don't want to be known as an evil villain and hunted down. Oh, and the waves end up having faces on them like it's that certain movie with that certain undead person in it, so they WILL know you caused it. | 6 | 10 |
Interpreting the Changelog
5/12/14 v.0.0.25: The left-most column is the date in mmddyy format. The version number is after v. The version number is three numbers: The first one is the overall version indicator, which indicates major variants of the system. Version 1 was REVELATION and REVOLUTION's system. Version 2 was the system of Gaiden through Orionis. Version 3 begins to be in use as of Infinitus.
The number to the right of it is a sub-release; it's just used to track progress based on major milestones (overhauling entire chunks of the system.) The right-most number is all the changes that have been done, which helps me keep track as to when I should re-check everything for coherency, since it should never get higher than about 150ish without bumping up the number to the left of it...