I've made some changes to the health mechanic a little but to try and give characters a bit more longevity. I have been using a mechanic similar to Cairn, where damage gets applied to a character's stats and when that happens they have to make a saving throw to see if they are still up. After a couple of playlists from a few months ago, I felt that characters were going down too quickly, in some cases after a single hit. I think for a game like Cairn that is fine, but for my game where players may be in the wilderness for days or weeks without a way to heal, going down that quick may be a bit too harsh. 

I've instead added a wound mechanic, inspired a bit from Mothership. What will now happen is that a character will make a saving throw when they take damage to one of their Characteristics and if they fail they will take a wound based upon how much damage they receive. I'm keeping the wounds very open to interpretation here so the players at the table can determine what makes the most sense based upon the damage received. 

I have to play test this still, but hopefully this gives some more longevity to characters and also a bit more role-play drama to an adventure. Characters will not become Incapacitated when their damage received equals their Characteristic. Here's an example: I have a strength of 11, I will be incapacitated when I've taken 11 points of strength damage. This also effectively makes my DC 0 and my ST 20 for that stat. 

When Incapacitated players are not yet dead, but they are effectively dying. They will then continue to take damage after combat as companions rush to try and get them to safely. If their damage then tools double their Characteristic number, they are then dead. I've actually used this mechanic in a similar way while playing Cairn and it worked quite well, so this modified version might make sense. Here's a full example. 

You can read the full information on the GitHub doc for Combat: https://github.com/masupert/BeyondTheTorchlight/blob/main/09.0%20-%20Combat.md

Over the winter holiday I had a chance to sit-down and really crank through some of the ideas I had in my head and complete my first draft of the combat system. 

You can find the complete v0.1 document over on Github and Google Drive, but I'll try to summarize some of the concepts and what I am trying to do with combat. 

General Concept: The Battle Grid

One of the things that will immediately jump out to you when you read through the design document is the Combat Grid. I have been pondering on this concept for a few months, trying to figure out how to combine a few different ideas into a single system. 

I knew from the outset that I didn't want to use the common battle-mat and map layout that you see in D&D. This is partially attributed to the fact that I very frequently play those games so I am personally just sick of that mechanic. I also wanted to explore another way to represent the characters in combat. I have played "theater of the mind" in several RPG systems and more often than not, I have found that my players never are able to full grasp the concept. They always lose track of whom is engaged with whom, and the distances characters are from each other.

How could I find some way to get in-between both systems? How could I have something that is simple and streamlined at the table but at the same time could give some sort of visual representation of where characters are in relation to each other? 

The solution actually came from chess, which several of my regular players are really involved in. I knew from the outset that my combat was going to have players all take their actions at once and then have enemies all take their actions at once. This provided for a common mechanic similar to chess that just seemed to "click" for me. Once I had that idea down, I was able to expand from there to allow for a fairly tactical system that doesn't get bogged down in measuring combat distances in feet. 

Characters can act in combat lanes and can have their "stance" represented by the column they are in. I think there is enough information provided her to give people an idea of where and what they are doing in combat without having to spend five minutes on each of their turns trying to measure out 60 feet of movement. Playtesting I suppose will see if my assumptions play out as much as I hope. 

I would love to get some feedback from anyone who would like to provide a comment either on Github or on the Google Doc linked above.