Hows it going? Im new to open legends in general. I discovered it about a month or 2 ago & im super hooked already. I ordered the books to add to to my collection & im in the process of setting up my first game as a gm. Been a player of d&d, pathfinder, & anything white wolf for a while but couldnt find a system I was comfortable with running until now. However the setting im planning on running my game in needs a little more resource management in the form of stamina & mana on top of keeping track of health. If theres a thread for alternative rules that’d be great seeing as im not very good with this thread stuff to begin with. I was trying to think of some combination of attributes like with how you determine your health to help decide how much mana & stamina a character will have but nothing i come up with feels right so unless anyone has a suggestion i may just have to go with halving toughness & resolve rounding down. Thanks for the feedback in advance.
New member looking for help
You failed to mention the setting. That would help immensely.
My gut feeling however is that you are trying to stick a round peg in a square hole. OL design isn’t resource tracking heavy; but the setting you are thinking of is. That’s not a good match.
The setting is Legend of Zelda but i dont see how it really matters. Its a magic setting & while i love the idea of “every spell is a cantrip” I dont want for example the gerudo mage to be throwing fireball after firball after fireball every single turn. Im trying to encourage them to think outside the box & not end up being one trick ponies. Which i know for a fact the mage palyer tends to be. The stamina thing just makes sense for my melee fighters too so my goron warrior player does more then just keep knocking the enemy prone.
First of all, welcome to the community! Secondly, I’ll give you a piece of advice that I’ve given to every single newcomer to the system who wants to tinker and modify the system without any experience: Don’t.
Most of the time it’s a bad idea because you lack the necessary experience to make informed decisions on how to implement these ideas properly since you don’t know how the system is supposed to run normally.
So maybe try running at least a couple of test-sessions first before jumping straight into the homebrew territory.
It matters a great deal, actually. Mana in Magic: the Gathering is very different from mana in Zelda games which is very different from mana in the Black & White series. So the more information you can provide, the easier it is for us to recommend something. For example, I could point you to my (WIP) Spellcasting for High-Fantasy settings but it requires some reworking for a Zelda setting.
Again, you’ll need to be more specific with what you mean when you say “Stamina” since Open Legend’s Hit Points are quite interchangeable with the word Stamina. What aspects of HP don’t meet your criteria of being Stamina? And what is Stamina supposed to accomplish in your world that HP currently isn’t?
In addition to what the others have said about trying the system as is first, I want to add a bit of a note on this. Fireballs in OL have essentially the exact same strength as something like mundane Attacks. It’s the exact same mechanic, an Attribute being Rolled against a Defense Score, with only some things like Multi-Targeting and Weapon useage being different.
What tends to make builds and strategies more powerful in Open Legend is diverse options, thanks to the diminishing returns the Advantage mechanic has. One job the GM then has is to provide varied challenges, that can be as simple as having enemies with fire Resistance or ones that spread out to puzzles and terrain.
There was a live actual play show 3 or so years ago that ran using the OL and realms of the wild setting, and they didn’t change anything that I can recall.
Like the others, I’d recommend playing a few sessions first so you get a feel for the system and how everything works together before you start to change things (that’s general advice for any TTRPG system, as a lot of people start to jump on changing things b/c in theory it sounds like it would be good, but theory and actual play end up being different. Not to mention with playing as is, you end up starting to understand the design decisions better, which makes better changes).
A lot of your concern for Stamina and Mana I really don’t think you’ll see you need as much, as that is more about Encounter design then the need for limiting players ability to do their actions (which is more what you are wanting to do than resource management, based on what I’ve read).
This isn’t really what OL is, though I can see how it seems like that coming from DnD and Pathfinder. Those systems have more limits on spells b/c the power curve between those spells and physical can be huge, so that’s why you don’t get endless fireballs.
This can always be a tough thing as a GM, but sometimes, letting a player play in the way they enjoy isn’t a bad thing. Not every player is the same, and not everyone wants the same thing out of a game. You can still challenge them (again going back to encounter design rather then limiting player agency) to see if they’ll come up with something different to do.
All this to say, there are times to adapt and change things up sometimes, to help get the feel for a setting that you are wanting. However, again, it’s better to have a grasp of the system design and why it is doing things before you start to tinker and fiddle. You’ll end up you will make things far better that way.
We say this from experience, having seen people come in and mention changes and things they’ve done only for them to realize they didn’t need to do most of them as the system can already achieve it in other ways as is.
Everyone on this post so far as made small homebrew things for games and suggestions, so we aren’t saying to never, just that you probably don’t need to just yet.
here’s that Zelda universe Open Legend Game I mentioned:
The best example i can think of is Skyrim. If you cast a spell it cost magicka, If you do a power attack it costs stamina. So what i was thinking was if you use a physical attribute to cause a bane it would cost 1 point of stamina & if you cast a boon or a bane using mental or special attributes it costs 1 point of mana. I dont want to complicate it anymore then that with varying costs for different levels of banes & boons so i was just gonna keep that costs at 1 per. So even with my current formula a 5 in fortitude + 10 would get you 15 stamina points. Combat shouldn’t take 15 rounds so they arent actually all that limited but that may make them act more conservative. Plus theyd still get everything back on a short rest anyways per the regular rules.
You make a valid point about my fireball comment. On the other note ive been a gamer all my life so ya even if the fireball scenario happened i already had plans for fire resistant enemies amoung other things i could throw at them to still make it a challenge.
That sounds wholly unnecessary and I don’t see it adding much to a campaign. This only encourages dumbing down combat and only straight-up attacks, making combat blander. Also, most combats only last between 3 and 5 rounds, so this would barely ever come into play, especially if those pools recover just like Hit Points.
First of all. Welcome to Open Legend, its so wonderful to see new faces.
If limiting what they can do is a thing. I understand the desire for that. I agree with the others in saying run a few games using the core mechanics that are already wrote, but i also understand you want little more crunch. A stamina or manna pool is a pretty unique idea. If you come up with a a mana pool systen and want some one to play test i will help.
My other question for this setting is do you plan on weapons breaking? And if so what was your thought on that? Do the weapons have “x” number of attacks?
No matter what you choose to do, enjoy TTRPG with your group. Collective story telling is a great way to bond.
Don’t use any homebrew and just run open legend as is.
Your still new.
Just like what @VanGo said. When you are new, not just to Open Legend, any new system in general. You shouldn’t already try tinkering around with the mechanics.
It would be like trying to create your own custom recipe after only learning how to cook.
Speaking from experience here from when I first started Open Legend I made a whole bunch of stupid rules that I regret and continue to pop up in my games and annoy me to this day. And also the posts I made in the community that I wish just stop existing too lol.
Everything you want to accomplish can be done with fluff and flavor and proper uhh… GMing and wording (crackers I forget words!)
That’s what Open Legend is and how it should be GM’d. At least I think.
If you want players to have the sense of survival you want, just narrate it as such.
“As your travel across the vast gerudo desert in search of the fabled Arbiters Grounds dungeon, days pass and turn to weeks and your resources dwindle. Everyone, roll for Fortitude.”
React to how they respond if they refuse to roll, maybe one claims they have a perk or feat that could help, hear them out and call out a ruling you deem fair and okay. OL is all about making temporary rulings that only lasts that session on the fly because the GM’s word is final, the GM is always the king in the kings game.
They have the vagabond perk? Let them use it. They wanna look around in the vast desert for food with a Perception check instead? Let them!
Whatever you believe will be fair and fun for all!
Mechanics and rules get in the way of storytelling, instead of using mechanics, just tell them how they should be feeling.
When someone fails to cast their spell, tell them it’s because they ran out of mana and now they can’t use that spell anymore until 3 rounds or after combat ends.
If the fighter fails their shot, tell them they hit but that was the last their weapon could handle and so it breaks. Or that they miss entirely because they are out of stamina, making both them and their target either choose to
- take the minimum 3 points of damage
- inflict a bane of PL 3 or less
- or move 10’ without provoking any attacks of opportunity
If your like me and you really just like conveying and encouraging everything using rules, then I posted this thing about resource management which adds a durability system and harder hit point management
https://community.openlegendrpg.com/t/survival-resource-management-homebrew/2124/6
omg this is great, I wish I knew this existed earlier!
Zelda + Open Legend = me wasting a ton of time watching!