makin' a new thing.

Thus is what I want out of a LUMEN game that I make.

Characters

I like the "action figure" style of characters. Like, preset kits, with some wiggle room to change 'em up, rather than purely a la carte abilities.

A curated ability pool is also neat.

But those abilities need spice.

Engines and Toolboxes

Engines are abilities that feed into eachother. Simplest explanation is like, Warrior's loop in FFXIV: Build up the beast gauge with your normal rotation of Heavy Swing -> Maim -> Storm's Eye, dump it on direct-hit buffed Fell Cleaves.

Toolboxes are the other side of this, where instead of being apart of an engine, it's a real neat tool. Pure utility shit, goofy-ass statuses. Pulls, terrain, statuses like Stasis [take no actions, take no damage], a heal buff that needs you to do something to get that heal, shit like that.

On another note, with this slightly more complex framework, another rule sprouts.

It's never just damage.

An ability should never JUST deal damage. Give it some mobility, some self buff, some set up/payoff.

High damage needs to be something achieved, a plan set in motion, but that plan should often be a simple if-then. Set dude on fire with one thing. If a dude's on fire, crit 'em with this other thing.

Simple. Doesn't need get overly complex, because enemies just Being There adds to the complexity of achieving that. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth/no plan survives contact with the enemy.

States over Stacks

I think states, as in one and done stances, buffs that enhance the NEXT move/ability/hit, singular debuffs, are massively preferable over stacks of whatever on someone or something.

I always found shit stacking to fall under a few pitfalls:

• Stack-guy needs so many stacks to get the ball rolling on someone or something that it's better to Just Hit 'Em.
• If a high amount of Stacks are needed, you're just fighting against another HP bar by a different name and more than likely, much easier to kill. Ask any lancer player how strong hackers are. (they're so fucking strong because the enemies with high hacking resistance can get shot to fuck, the enemies with low hacking resistance get throttled by hacks)
• If stack lord can get their stack shit off consistently, then combat takes too long. I've felt this with the ICON playtest, where every fight I was in as a Sealer, who has their mantra die that ticks up to 6, +one per round, got to max. what sucked is that it wasn't even that good, 'cause the reason why it took so long was that every enemy had Path of Exile-esque defensive layers to 'em, and thus just wasn't dying.

So, states. I'd love to simply Ascend after a couple turns or whatever. Easier to keep track of to, I either Ascended, or I didn't.

Grid

Grid. Grids are good. Grids are better than theater of mind for complex shit, grids lets you do silly shit. Grids lets you make the Funny Dangerous Shapes like BLAST or LINE. Grids let you make Silly Maps, like a big donut, or a leedle hallway, or the legendary flat 6x6 fox only final destination whiteroom brawl. And it's easy to make.

Grids are as big as the players can move.

If you only move 3 spaces per round, maps should be at least 6x6, up to 9x9. Don't take more than 3 rounds to cross the map.

Enemies

I like slapping a semi-reactive foe, but they can be real simple under the hood.

The enemy dealing damage at all is gonna feel heavy. I can err on enemies dealing a ""lower"" amount of damage because no matter what, getting slapped is gonna feel like getting slapped.

Their own gameplan has to be simple too, because either the GM, or whatever automation I slap on, is gonna have to run a lot of them.

Make 'em one trick ponies. This guy have a cleave (aoe melee) and that's it. This other guy does more if an enemy is hurt at all. Simple, clean.

Bosses

I like fighting Heug Lads.

Got a template for make 'em great.

• Phases. Have them switch from one 4e enemy role to another with a phase change. Have a wizard controller, having dumped tonnes of magic bullshit on the battlefield, teleport somewhere else, then switch to lil baby cantrips. But they're still a Level 20 Wizard so firebolt is still launching like 8 bolts and it HURTS.

Running the combinatorics on that gives you 56 bosses from the 4e roles +1.

The roles are

• Soldier (Tanky via active defense, has CC)
• Brute (Tanky via higher HP, has damage if something's at half health)
• Skirmisher (Movement on hit, slippery)
• Lurker (Stealth, can't directly hit it sometimes)
• Artillery (Ranged, pure damage)
• Controller (Ranged, statuses/ground effects)
• Leader (Offensive support, action economy shit, sets up other people)
• Supporter (defensive support, buffs other people)

just have a boss go from like... Supporter -> Soldier and see what Kind Of Dude would do that.