Attack skills for warrior-type characters, are there any?

question
#1

Hello,
I read a lot about ICRPG some time ago and bought all resources, but then I didn’t have the opportunity to play and forgot a good chunk of the rules.

I remember that in the quickstart there were example of warriors and they had abilities, e. g. Whirlwind Attack, charge, those classic things.
However, I couldn’t find a list or examples of it in the core 2e.

The book about magic contains a lot of rules for that, is there anything similar for warrior types? I’m planning to run a classic fantasy setting with magic, but my wife wanted a character that is similar to a warrior/mutant.

I’m far from an experienced GM, so my main concern is creating an extremely unbalanced character (I tried to follow the rules for heroes, but mixing them requires some experience). That is what happened in the trial session, her character was comparatively weak compared to my daughter’s one (my daughter is 3, so I gave her a strong character with the assumption she would do often irrational things).

Any suggestions or where to look for?

#2

correct there is no such thing in the 2e core rules.
but the quickstart 2e is essentially mods to the 2e core rules, so you can choose how you want to do it. or make up your own.

#3

Any recommendations or something to follow? I’m always afraid of making something very unbalanced

#4

I will tell you that i had very similar concerns when i was wrapping my head around ICRPG.

And now I will tell you to not worry about balance or about doing the wrong thing. Fun should be your primary concern. now if something does happen that is unbalanced enough to spoil the fun, just talk to the players and work with them to rectify. That said I’ve never had to have that conversation, because it’s just not a system to concerns itself with balance, and characters that are underpowered in one aspect can still be the hero and in the sportlight in other aspects.

#5

Mh, all good points.
My concern with unbalanced things is… That i don’t want to work out the balance. My time is very limited (2 kids) and I want to spend that playing, not figuring out the math.
Your suggestion is enlightening though. I keep loving how this rpg sets itself compared to others. Thanks!

I was thinking of running an adventure similar to a cartoon for my daughter, using all her duplo animals :rofl:

#6

Yeah there is honestly very little math here. it’s not like D&D when you are going to be roling 4d6+2.

Monsters and characters are so much simpler than D&D, both have significantly lower health, so it’s power curves are much flatter, and thats a good thing.

also about your time. that is probably one of my favourite things about ICRPG, when i prep a session i’m prepping 60-90 minutes, to cover a 3+ hour sessions. that is drastically reduced compared to previous GM prep in other systems.

#7

Go read this, it’s great! :v:

#8

@Fire-Dragon-DoL
If you are interested in activatable abilities for characters, you might want to take a look at my books:


I call them FEATS. Mechanically they are very similar to SPELLS in ICRPG MAGIC, meaning they generally have a HP cost to use.

I already made them reasonably balanced, so you don’t have to do any extra work. Just plug them in your game and play. They cover a lot of variety, and yes, there is Whirlwind attack too! :smile:

#9

I understand the logic of that and that’s the reason why I chose ICRPG.
However at the same time I do need this to be closer to a videogame (read on, don’t kill me).

My daughter is 3, to keep her entertained she needs visual. She won’t understand most of the descriptions, I need to be very creative to make things interesting (instead of “reciting the spell”, I actually have to recite the spell with a lot of emphasis to keep it entertaining). Miniatures help dramatically, so yeah, it turns closer to a board game than a tabletop game, won’t lie. But yeah, the interactions are extremely limited at 3 years old. Plus with COVID her language capabilities have been limited further by lower social interactions.

The other side of it is… She wants to play with all my board games and this is a good hybrid compromise where she doesn’t lose, she doesn’t need to read or count (although we try to count with dice, that’s training).

Now all this must be combined with keeping the thing entertaining for my wife, which is an adult. Hard to balance.

And now that we have a second one (2 months old), I have to figure out how my wife is going to have him in the game too. I was picturing she could be a high dexterity character doing all sorts of stuff while holding a baby. Happens to be a good analogy with being a parent :rofl:

#10

Amazing! Thanks! I’ll get them ASAP!

#11

Oh hey, why not show the wife how to be a GM so you can both be GMs? :smiley:

#12

Point taken, I’ll attempt that, I might not need a giant book filled with rules. :+1:

#13

I’ll just add that there’s no such thing as “balance” in ICRPG, that would be a d&d thing. :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: I second recommending @Khan’s stuff. I personally just steal stuff from dungeon world playbooks these days, but the spells and feats series has so many options that you’ll never feel bored with them ha

#14

I would say that balance does not exist in any TTRPG because Dice + Humans making decisions on the fly throws any kind of “balance” right out the window.

@Fire-Dragon-DoL, the beauty of ICRPG is to just start letting go of all those concepts. Empower your players to come up with those abilities on the fly. Whirlwind attack? Make a HARD melee attack. On a success roll 1d4, you hit that many creatures in range. Charge attack? If you rush into battle at your own risk, your first attack is EASY.

Otherwise, all the other advice here is good stuff. Have fun. Change things if you don’t like how it feels. Check out Khan’s stuff. Sounds like you are going to have a good time gaming with your kids!

#15

Thanks! I really hope to get both engaged, I feel it might turn into a family thing :wink:

#16

I do this all the time. I do tend to simplify things a little bit more.

Cleave!
When you engage in combat with multiple enemies and you are (fictionally) able to hit them all, roll a normal attack and split effort as you see fit between them. Weapon tags command the fiction here, as a dagger will not be able to cleave a bunch of orcs but a greatsword surely will.

This also works for spells and other forms of combat.

In general, I just let players try fictional effects like disarming, grappling or shoving whenever they want, if they roll success, they do it. Just apply hard or offer applying the effect instead of rolling effort!