Marksmanship, Speech and Negotiation

Kay back here, I’m sorry it took me so long to make another update, but I had a bit of a frenetic week, but that is a story for another time.

In these past days I worked on modifying the skill list, I joined up the crossbows and marksmanship skills into a single skill, keeping the marksmanship name, as it didn’t really made that much sense to have 2 separate skills.

I also separated the "persuade" skill into 2 different skills, "speech" and "negotiate", the former aims towards emotion and conversation, while the later aims to logic and discussion, persuade was too much of a single "I succeed in most conversations" skill, so, this should make it a bit more resource intensive.  This required a lot of small changes through the whole rulebook, as well as a modification to the character sheet, but it should require no further change on the skill list.

I also did some changes to the wording of some parts of the character creation section, mainly going from the ridiculous description of the array of skill numbers (5,5,5,5,10,10,10,10,15.....) to a more, textually explained form.

I did not manage to do all the experimentation and research I needed to fix the ranged weapon's ranges so I’ll get that done soon, as well as I should be finally able to add a form-fillable sheet in these next few days. (Edit: form fillable character sheet has been added)

Now, to talk about what follows for Full Plate Harness.

After having a few weeks of continued, post-release development, I came to the conclusion that just setting "I’ll do X and Y fixes/additions for the next week" is very limiting for me and my normal development method, so, from here on I will stop saying what I should get done for the next week and instead try to do as much as I can and release updates when they are properly ready, so I should talk in general about the things I have planned to do overall for the game, without stating what will be done first or next.

So, my current "to-do" list for Full Plate Harness is:

• Improving formatting and readability, changing from single column to the more standard 2 columns, as well as possibly adding symbology to make some terms and mechanics easier to recognize.
• Finish the mechanics for the bloodlines.
• Add the missing maneuvers, currently, bludgeons and flails lack maneuvers, as well as the marksmanship weapons (crossbows and firearms), and some weapon types have fewer maneuvers than others.
• Add a few more schools of magic / spell lists, i have ideas for at least 5 or 6 more schools of magic.
• Add a few more racial feats.
• Finally fix the ranges of ranged weapons.
• Get some more art on the book, I mainly want to get art pieces for the races and maybe some larger mood pieces.
• Fix the grenade mechanics.
• Increase and refine the bestiary.
• Add a "how to fill your character sheet" section
• A "cheat-sheet", that contains the main rules for quick reference, and/or, that could serve as a Game Master screen.
• Once all mechanics are 100% set, with no further change to the base mechanics needed, ill work on making the character sheet have automated calculations

Some ideas that I might implement if testing shows they are actually good and worth of adding:

• A more specialized cover system that accounts for hit locations without being too bothersome.
• A "gradual injury" system, to replace the current binary injury system, giving a timeframe for lethal injuries to be treated to avoid death and maiming.
• A mechanic for making damage from non-lethal sources (which includes less-lethal damage that is lower than 2 times your injury threshold) heal at a faster rate, so, simpler fist fights, bar brawls and other low-stake fights require less time to recover from than actual life-threatening situations.
• Possibly simplifying the hit location system to make it more readable, turning it from "20 small locations", to 13 more broad locations, some with different size, so, for example, while the head would stay as it is, something larger like the waist (that currently is 3 separate locations), would become a single location that takes 3 numbers on the hit location dice; this wouldn’t change the balance of the game in any way, only the form the hit location chart is read.
  The shoulders hit location might be eliminated, and joined alongside the arms, the location number might be reused to make the chest location larger.
• A slot-based equipment encumbrance system, to limit how many weapons one can carry while still being flexible enough.
• A "skill base" mechanic like some other d100 games do, so, instead of having an array of 40 numbers (four times each multiple of 5 from 5 to 50 ) to put in your 40 skills , you could instead just have 20 numbers (four times each multiple of 5 from 30 to 50 ), and the skills you didn't gave one of those 20 numbers should just get a (low) set one, likely, based on the category of the skill, for example, to the body and perception skills you didn't gave a set skill level, you'd instead get a 20 to your skill level, for the Magical aptitude skills without a skill level you could instead just get a 5 to your skill level.
  This should speed up character creation.

These are just ideas, so its not sure they will be implemented

I hope to be able to make constant updates, but for now my priority is testing as much as i can every single part of the game before adding too much new stuff, i also need to simplify some of the more obtuse mechanics and start working on making the game have a bit more of visibility or presence outside of itch.

I will continue working on Full Plate Harness for as long as I can, or, until I’m satisfied with it as a game, maybe I could even do a Spanish translation once I stop fiddling with the main rulebook.

Thank you for reading this devlog and I will try to bring more news soon.