Toa Tahnok-Kal

Okay. So I have noticed that Lewa is no longer the Toa of Air but the Master of Jungle. Is any body bothered by this? I realize that Lewa's Wahi is a giant jungle, but he has always had air powers. Is he going to lose his control of air and gain plant powers? What do you think?

Whoops. My knowledge of Nova Blasts got warped by Bionicle The Game, which is apparently not cannon. I didn't realize a Nova Blast was that huge. Since that's the case, I don't think we even need to include rules for it. So what do you think about power strength increasing with the amount of Vitality spent?

I kind of like Smudge's idea below. If this is the case, we obviously need to have an advantage to spending a lot of vitality at once. Maybe the strength of a power exponentially increases with the amount of Vitality spent? I like this. Spending lots of Vitality could be a double edge sword. It could grant you big battle changing attack boosts, but it could also wear you out to quickly. That gives players some nice strategical things to consider. In fact, it even supports the whole Unity thing. Toa will have to work together, especially when they are wearing down. Also, I think this should also tie into Nova Blasts. I think Toa should be able to spend a huge amount of Vitality (probably above the Energy level) in dire situations. Of course, there will be consequences, and the Toa will be wiped out for quite some time. Maybe Vitaility would only be restored at a 1/4 rate after a Nova Blast? Hmm, maybe if there is not enough Vitality for a Toa to use a Nova Blast, the player could eat into the Hit Points instead? What do you think?

I'm actually going to be off work next week, so I'm already planning on working extra on the RPG. I can PM you later with some times we can chat. Have you ever used Google Hangouts? I'm also a member of Board Game Designer Forum, and there are some really helpful guys over there. We may not get anymore people to work on the project, but they always have good suggestions. I think I'll ask some of them to read over the rules after we get a little more organized.

"Now don't be hasty master Meriadoc... It take a long time to say anything in old Entish - and - we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say." - Treebeard Kidding aside, it is taking us longer than I expected. Communicating through forums can make the process pretty long. Anyway, I'm not sure why you are asking "Who is with me?" I have been working on the document as much as I can. Oh, and feel free to start adding sections in the document and noting it on this forum. I have been checking BZPower pretty much every day.

Actually, I'm not sure what Energy is. It was initially part of Akavaku's RPG project (we just recently started working together). I grabbed it and threw it into derived stats, but if your definition is what we use, I'm thinking it should be a main stat. Spending Vitality when performing powers was one of my ideas, so I know Energy wasn't tied to Vitality in Akavakaku's original plan. I was kind of under the impression that higher energy increased the effectiveness/damage of powers. Akavakaku, what is your plan for Energy? This is something we should talk about

Hmm. Well, initially I was thinking of having the player choose whether to take Vitality damage or Health damage, but this may not be the best way to do it. I think it may be good to have certain elements tied to specific forms of damage. Fire, Earth, and Rock can do direct damage to Health, while Ice, Air, and Water mostly can do Vitality damage. This can lead to some interesting strategies for Ice, Water, and Air Toa who will have to use their powers in unique ways to damage health. For example, a Toa of Ice could make an enemy slide into a wall to deal damage to Health.

Akavakaku, I forgot to tell you, but I'm working on an action section now in the rulebook. As far as it being too early to work on Mask powers, I don't think so. We may need to make some changes later, but I think it's a good idea to get at least a rough idea out there. Smudge, we actually talked about elemental energy in another topic. We kind of decided to have stats called Energy and Vitality. Energy determines the strength of the elemental attack/action, and Vitality is expended when powers are utilized. Here is the link to the topic http://www.bzpower.com/board/topic/15295-need-info-for-rpg-rahi-character-sheets/. Below is an excerpt from that post sharing my ideas about vitality. Toa Tahnok-Kal: "TBS has many things that I will reuse, but I didn't like the way that TBS does powers, so I'm borrowing some stuff from another system. Toa didn't use their powers all the time, and they would mix their elemental attacks with kicks, punches, and slashes. I wanted to find a way to make my players strategically decide when to use their elemental powers, so I'm going to be borrowing from Star Wars RPG. In that system, each character has two health bars (HP and Vitality). When taking hits, a character's vitality is depleted before receiving killing damage (this is supposed to represent characters expending energy to dodge, block, etc.). The twist for Jedi is that they have to spend vitality points to use the force. I'm going to do the same thing in my game. A Toa will have to tap into his or her vitality points to be able to use elemental attacks. Elemental attacks will be really strong, but they will also cost vitality. This cost will force players to think strategically and also prevent certain attacks from being spammed. Vitality will be recovered by resting while killing damage will require healing." So, the idea is that using powers wear down your Toa. We can probably also apply depleting Vitality to Turaga for any strenuous actions as well. So, to make a long story short, I agree that we should have Toa expending energy to use elemental powers and such, Smudge. Do you have anymore thoughts on this?

Smudge, thanks for offering to help. I think we could use a few more hands (and heads). If you want to help, here is something you could do that I have been wanting to do for awhile but never got to it. You could start converting mask powers into an RPG form and create a list of them. Here is how I have been thinking of doing it. Some masks could have stat boosts. For example, a Pakari could give + 5 strength and a Kakama could give + 5 Speed (+5 seems to be a good number for stat boosts). Other masks could do different things. For example, a Hau could give +X AC. I'm not sure how a Miru would be converted. Anyway, go crazy and throw in any of your ideas. Don't worry about having a perfect +5 or + 10 or whatever value for powers. We can change things as we go along. Oh, you could also share any ideas about weapon powers and damage stats for weapons. I hope I'm not putting you on the spot.

I think those are good suggestions that you put in the comments of the doc. I'll have to start working on this again (Thanksgiving week slowed me down). So what are your thoughts on structuring the personality and appearance section of the character sheet? Do you want to add a section about this in the doc so we can remove the descriptors? Edit: I'm thinking about just having players roll a d6 for action resolution with 6's acing. Any objections? Edit: Hey, how about you come up with how you think a character sheet should look and post an image of it? I can then start filling in rules once I get an idea of what you are looking for.

Oh. That is something we will need to discuss. However, maybe we can put that under a separate Power area. FYI: I have been working on getting a document together so we can work on this project more easily. It's still very rough, but it contains some ideas we have talked about. I also grabbed what you had in your old TRPG post and stuck it in there. Here is the link https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IJhiGt0AyNZnD5RWiq1s6yaH5eGtZ_d46L12HJkJRYU/edit?usp=sharing. Right now the link only allows viewing. To get editting access, please PM me an email address so I can get you set up. EDIT: I am currently working on a section about "Descriptors" in the Google Doc. These are things that may not be directly tied to stats (exception Species), but they are all things that help flesh out characters. My idea for choosing a body style or disposition is as follows. Disposition: Choose two or more adjectives from the list below to describe your character's personality. Happy Cheerful Cocky Gloomy Arrogant Loner Moody Aggressive Passive Ornery Body Style: Choose one body style from the list below. Slender Gangly Buff Stocky Hefty Edit 2 11/24/2014: I'm still working on the rule book document. I currently envision it being divided into three main sections: character creation, action and combat resolution, and campaign material (character sheets and miscellaneous story material - mostly GM stuff). I'm currently working on character creation and getting it aligned with what we have talked about. I think the best way to structure this section is to go through a detailed step by step process on creating a character. As different terms are brought up, they will be explained. After all of the material is presented and the reader is familiar with the terms, then there will be an example at the end. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Akavakaku, I have a question for you. How were you planning on doing combat resolution and action resolution? I know Toa have base 15 stats and Matoran have base 5 stats. Were you planning on rolling a d20 with it? Were you going to use a d6? What were you planning? Thanks.

Well, after an hour of typing, something weird happened and my browser deleted my post in progress (I should have worked in a text editor and saved it). Anyway, here are some of my thoughts. I'll have to add my thoughts about perception checks, derived stats, and combining Charisma and Intelligence into a single stat (Which got deleted). I want to expound further on Sapience later, but I do like the idea of combining Charisma and Intelligence into it. Quick question. When you have a skill with something like "sapience + will" are you saying that the skill bonus level is the sum of the two main stat bonuses? For example, if the Sapience bonus was 5 and the Resilience bonus was 3, the Survival skill would have a level 8 bonus derived from these stats? I just want to make sure. If so, that sounds pretty good. I like your thoughts. My original list was pretty raw. I have added my thoughts on your revised list. Swimming: speed+endurance. Agreed. Rowing: strength+endurance. We can get rid of it. It should fall under Pilot Water Vehicle. Climbing: strength+agility. Agreed. Acrobatics: speed+agility. Agreed on the stats. Yeah, this would include back flips, swinging through trees, and crazy unrealistic body manuevers. Dodging: I'd argue that dodging should be a skill. A person can be naturally agile but still train in the area of dodging. Pilot Vehicle (ground/water/air): sapience+endurance. Agreed. Ride Steed (land/aquatic/flying): agility+endurance. Agreed. Ride Vehicle: speed+sapience. Agreed. Armed Melee: agility+resilience. Agreed. Unarmed Melee: strength+resilience. Agreed Ranged Combat (throw/fire/powers): strength/energy+sapience. Agreed. Healing: sapience+will. Agreed. Stealth: sapience+agility. Makes sense. Streetwise: Let's get rid of it. It was something in Savage Worlds. To me it represents a character's familiarity with a specific area and how to navigate the area without getting harmed (mainly rough city streets). Survival: sapience+resilience. Agreed. Persuasion: sapience Agreed. Perception(?): I think sapience makes the most sense for this one. EDIT: Derived stats: Here is what I'm thinking for derived stats. Hit points could be Endurance x 2. Vitality could be Resilience x 2. Initiative could be something like Speed bonus + Agility bonus. I'm thinking Energy would be a derivative of Strength, Endurance, and Vitality. Maybe energy could be the sum of the Strength, Endurance, and Vitality bonuses. Sapience: I like the idea of Charisma being combined with Intelligence into the stat Sapience. I think this would be useful because it seems that Charisma is underutilized, yet Intelligence seems to tie into many skills. The only thing that I can think of that Charisma would be used for in our game would be for the Persuasion skill, but Sapience would work fine. Then, as you said, each character can have a personality trait that modifies the persuasion roll.

Hey, I compiled a list of stats and skills we might want to include for our game. Please take a look at the list below and see what you think. I tried to make the skills somewhat generic so they could be used for a variety of situations and not be incredibly specialized (I borrowed some from Savage Worlds ). By the way, I flip flopped. Now I'm thinking we should include charisma (I'm so bad ). We'll have to talk some more about it. Main Stats Speed Strength Agility Will Resilience Endurance Intelligence Derived Stats Hit Points Vitality Energy Initiative Charisma Basic Skills Swimming (Strength) Boating (agility) Climbing (strength) Acrobatics (Agility) Dodging (Agility) Piloting/Riding (agility) (Includes Lava Surfing) Fighting (agility/strength) Healing (Intelligence) Rougecraft (Intelligence/Agility) Includes: Lock picking, Swiping, Pickpocketing, Secret Entry Notice/Spot (Intelligence) Persuasion (Charisma) Repairing (Intelligence) Shooting (Agility) Stealth (Agility/Intelligence) Streetwise (Intelligence) (May not include: Probably only used on Metru-Nui) Tracking (Intelligence) Navigating (Intelligence)

Good ideas Danska. Simplicity is really important, although I would be fine with allowing a player to use one modifier with perception for variety. I think the key is to limit how many modifiers are allowed. I'd say the game should only allow one and only one modifier at a time (since I hate having to deal with adding up a ton of numbers). For example, let's say a character has a strength of Far Sight (+5 to perception) and a strength of Sharp Hearing (+3 to perception). When the player performs a perception check, he can only use one of these to modify his skill. Obviously, the player would want to use Far Sight more often, but there might be times when the GM says that it can't be used. A dark room may be one situation where Far Sight can't be used and Sharp Hearing would serve the player well (even though it has less of a bonus). Lol. You are persistent Danska! I like that! I don't know Akavakuku's thoughts on this, but I really don't want to use a system already in existence because players would have to purchase the system. If we make up our own system, it will be free. I realize Savage Worlds is only $10, but everyone loves free. The other reason why I am uncomfortable with Savage World is because there are only (from what I understand) three stat levels (d4, d6, and d10). This just seems to make our options more limited. I just can't see some creatures fitting within this. Take the Morbuzahk for example. The vines could devastate entire buildings. The strength of the vines was much stronger than any Toa could handle, and the only reason the king root was defeated was because of the power of the Great Disks. I just don't feel like this power difference between Matoran and Morbuzahk (and other Bionicle titans) can be faithfully represented within Savage Worlds. Anyway, while I'm not so sure of Savage Worlds, I have really appreciated your feedback on the project. It has been really constructive. Even if we don't use Savage Worlds, I'd be happy for you to be our consultant or something and still work on the project with us (unless you can't stand me anymore ).

I'm sure all of us would be glad to have some extra help and more ideas. Right now we are just trying to flesh out the basic framework of the game. Feel free to share any ideas that you have. Welcome to BZPower! You are not the only new one around here. I'm about as new as you can get as well (only 12 posts). I think I finally get what you were trying to tell me Danska. I can't stand having to add up tons of modifiers as well. I have never played D&D, but when I looked at some example combat calculations, I thought to myself, "Good grief!" The system I have been using for most games is called The Basic System (TBS), and it get's it's name from minimizing the amount of calculations you have to do. When making skill checks in TBS, you total your main stat bonus + your skill level + your d20 roll (I think that's pretty simple, though I do realize Savage Worlds is even simpler). The GM can add modifiers, but it's optional and usually situational. Anyway, I agree with you Danska. I think it would be best to keep it simple, and not have a ton of modifiers in the game. Akavakaku, Danska brings up a good point. Tons of modifiers can make combat and common actions unwieldy. As such, I think we really need to be careful with how many skill/stats we use as modifiers. For example, we don't want to have situations like this: Toa Nuru gets + 5 for being a Leader and - 3 for being Hot Headed and + 1 for being a Strategist, and -3 for being Near Sighted, and etc. Maybe we need to have a limit on how many weaknesses or strengths a character can have. Either that or maybe a modifier cap where the GM can only activate x modifiers at once. By the way, after thinking about it, go ahead and throw Intelligence under the weakness/strength category. Charisma and Intelligence won't be used very often so I don't mind making them a modifier. EDIT: By the way, I really like what you have written down on the Bionicle TRPG topic. Are there more rules that you have compiled but not shared yet, or is the content on that post as far as you have gotten? Either way, I think what you have written is good introductory material for the rulebook.

Nice stats Akavakuku! Those seem pretty good. I like the idea of having charisma as a strength or weakness. After thinking about it, Charisma wouldn't be used very often, so I don't think it is justifiable to have a stat dedicated to it. I'll have to think about leaving out intelligence as a stat. It seems directly tied to perception, and the system I currently use uses the intelligence Main Stat Bonus as a modifier in perception rolls.

It seems to me you're saying that the powers in Savage Worlds are really flexible and that's why you like the system. However, I don't see why we wouldn't have flexibility in our own custom system. I don't think it would be very wise to say something in the rules something like, "Fire can only be used to deal 2d6 damage to an enemy". This would be really restrictive. When I GM games, I usually let players use skills for a wide variety of purposes (as long as it makes sense). For example, let's say someone has a fire kinesis skill that is normally used for throwing fireballs. If the player decides that he wants to create a screen with his fire to block a character's vision, I'd be fine with it. I would just assign a difficulty level that I think is appropriate and have the player roll against it. Or if the player wants to light a candle with his finger, I'd be fine with that too. In fact, I probably wouldn't have him roll for that one. I can do this all within D20, so I'm not sure why Savage Worlds is so crucial. I think I missed your point Danska.

I think those are some good goals. I think it would be great to have a system were one could reenact the Bionicle story, or make up one's own stuff. Personally, my game sessions will place my players in the role of Toa during the 1st year. I'm going to have them create Toa which will replace the respective Toa of the element that they choose. For example, if somebody creates a Toa of Fire, Tahu will be replaced with that player's Toa. However, it would be nice to have the system flexible where players could run a campaign as Matoran, Turaga, Skadi, or even Rahkshi (hmm, playing as Rahkshi and trying to kill the Toa would be interesting). Okay, first things first. If we want to make a framework that will support the first three years of Bionicle, we will need to agree on an RPG system we will use or decide to create the system from scratch. I'm for the latter because players won't have to purchase a rulebook to play the game. I like d20, but I am by no means married to it. Once we have decided on the system or determined which system(s) we will model our game after, we can start working on a rulebook. While this is going on, we can also work on stat sheets for Bionicle characters as well as species. Danska, I know you did a more in depth review of the Savage System on my other topic, but would you mind going over some stuff on this topic as well for others who haven't looked at it? How freeform is the system? How much narrative control does it give PCs? I have played some games with an RPG system called Wushu (which was extremely rules light, combat oriented, and took a ton of control away from the GM), and I didn't like it too much. The reason I didn't like it was because it wasn't very strategic, because the game focused more around player narration than figuring out the best way to fight.

I'm working on my own Bionicle RPG right now, and here is how I'm going to be handling elemental fatigue. The idea is based off of Star Wars RPG. In that system, each character has two health bars (HP and Vitality). When taking hits, a character's vitality is depleted before receiving killing damage. The twist for Jedi is that they have to spend vitality points to use the force. I'm going to do the same thing in my game. A Toa will have to tap into his or her vitality points to be able to use elemental attacks. Elemental attacks will be really strong, but they will also cost vitality. This cost will force players to think strategically and also prevent certain attacks from being spammed. Vitality will be recovered by resting while killing damage will require healing. If vitality is depleted, the character will have to do an endurance save to prevent being knocked out. If HP is depleted, the character will have to have immediate medical attention or the character will die.

It looks like we have a few people who are working on this sort of thing. I have been brainstorming ideas for creating a custom RPG system, and I have been working on getting stat sheets created for the Rahi from year 1. I'm making some good progress with the help of Akavakaku. The link to my topic is below. http://www.bzpower.com/board/topic/15295-need-info-for-rpg-rahi-character-sheets/?do=findComment&comment=760859 Anyway, I think it might be a good idea to pool our resources together if you want to. If anyone is interested in working together on an RPG project, you can PM me. By the way, nice work Takuma Nuva! That Sneak Peak looks great. P.S. If you want some help on your project Akavakaku, you will need to create a new topic or a blog. The old topic is too old and I got "in trouble" for posting on it. Lol.

I understand where you are coming from about the intelligence and charisma stats Akavakaku. I think how important stats are in a game depends on the GM. Personally, I prefer creating a cool story, and I ignore the stats at certain times if it will detract from the story. But anyway, I do think the intelligence and charisma stats (even if they are not used very much) can help players role play. If a player creates a character with a low intelligence, that can remind the player to make a weak argument when role playing a negotiation scene. You don't necessarily have to roll the dice to determine the outcome of the argument. It's all up to the GM. But, I do think those stats can still be useful (especially for a GM trying to keep track of things). By the way, what do you think about what I said about the Muaka and Kane-Ra above?

Ahh, gotcha. I guess I didn't think that the normal definition applied to animal creatures, so I came up with my own interpretation. What you're saying makes sense. 12 Charisma it is. Speaking of Charisma, two Rahi that I think have incredibly low charismas are the Muaka and the Kane-Ra. Both of these are solitary Rahi. I tend to think that the Muaka would be lowest (I think of it like a solitary Jaguar) I guess I'd give Muaka a charisma of 5. I read that Kane-Ra "prefer" to live alone, which must mean that they sometime travel together. If this is the case, I think I'd give Kane-Ra a Charisma of 10. EDIT: That might not be the right value for the Kane-Ra. I'll have to read about how solitary a Tarakava is and compare it to the Kane-Ra.

Good comments about the Tarakava Akavakaku! I see where you are coming from on the charisma value, and I think I need to more clearly define how charisma works in the game. This is the definition from the TBS ruleset: "Charisma: How charming you are and how well you can interact with people". With Rahi, I am mainly looking at charisma from a perspective of how hostile the creature is to Matoran. According to Bionicle Reviews Wiki, after Gali knocked a Tarakava's infected mask off, the Tarakava was no threat to the Matoran. In fact, the Matoran nursed the Tarakava back to health. From this, I deduce that Tarakava are at least tolerable of Matoran and simply avoid them naturally. Therefore, I think they have a fairly high charisma value compared to other Rahi. In contrast, the Kane-Ra seems to be incredibly aggressive, and will attack basically anything that moves. For this reason, I would give the Kane-Ra a really low charisma. I think the Rahi with the highest charisma would probably be the Gukko and Ussal Crabs. I think I'd put their charisma values at 40 since they were domesticated creatures that could have emotional attachments to their keepers. I think Tarakava should fall somewhere between the Kane-Ra and the Ussal Crab in terms of charismatic value. Does that make sense? By the way, I commented on your RPG topic. Thanks for the link! I also added a list of work in progress stats on the first post.

Akavakaku, this is pretty cool! I think you are off to a great start. As you know, I'm working on my own Bionicle RPG project, and I'd be happy to help out with this one if you are still working on it. Maybe we could pool our ideas together. Actually, the stats that I'm working on could easily be converted into the values you are using for your game. Your base Matoran have stats of 5 and your base Toa have stats of 15. My base Matoran have stats of 15 and my base Toa have stats of 45. Either multiplying your stats by 3 or dividing my stats by 3 would get our projects onto a similar plane. Do you have a document that you are working on? What system will this utilize? Is it d20? Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions on the system. I had ideas about water and air doing indirect damage, but I wasn't sure how I was going to pull this off. However, air and water attacks can decrease vitality like you said. Direct damage, like fire and rock blasts, can decrease HP. As far as getting knocked out when your vitality hits zero, I think I'm not going to have it automatically happen. I'll have the player perform an Endurance save to see if the character gets knocked out. All right, I have some Manas stats and now I'm going to move to some other Rahi. I have been reading about Tarakava, and here is what I'm thinking about them. In one of the first comics while Gali is underwater, she says, "That creature can match my speed, but not - Thank the Great Beings - My agility!" She then makes a tight turn and the Tarakava crashes into a sea cave. So, Tarakava have an underwater speed equal to or exceeding Gali. I think I will make Tarakava have a speed of 50. I still have to decide whether a Tarakava has the same level land speed or not. Since the Tarakava couldn't turn in time, I guess I'll give them an agility of 20 (they seem pretty bulky to me). For endurance, I think a Tarakava's level is less than a Toa (since Gali defeated a Tarakava fairly easily in the battle at Ga-Koro). Maybe it should be 25? The Tarakava seem to be fairly strong. In one instance, a Tarakava knocked Gali off her feat into the water unconscious. I'd say that this could be around 50. What do you think? Edit: I forgot to add Charisma, Willpower and Intelligence. Going with a minimum sapience of 40, and seeing that Manas are in the 30's, I'd say that leaves Tarakava intelligence in the 20's (since Nui-Jaga and Kane-Ra are pretty stupid and seem to be in the 10's). I read that Tarakava are not naturally hostile and avoid Matoran. I guess I'd give them a charisma around 30 (Ussal Crabs would probably be at 40 since they could easily be tamed). I'm not sure about Willpower yet. I'll have to do more research.