|
 Valor is a hybrid crunch/narrative RPG system with a focus on over-the-top anime action scenes. It's also a thing I co-wrote! Seven years and one successful Kickstarter later, we're on DTRPG and our own website, where there's a blog where we post complicated adventures. One of them is an Iron Chef homage involving slaying and then cooking delicious monsters in a head-to-head kitchen arena deathmatch. How it Plays The game's a combination level-based pointbuy system, because you can't capture the intended feel without a constant upward spiral of increasing numbers. Each level you increase attributes (Strength, Agility, Spirit, Mind, Guts), become generally more powerful, then get more points to spend on Skills and Techniques. Everything is opposed d10 rolls plus values based on your attributes and level. Skills/Flaws Theoretically it's an ads/disads system, but we've ironed it out long enough that it functions more like a build-your-own-class-package system. No roleplaying 'flaws' for mechanical benefits, no Skills that are required to build a functional character, no serious trap options. There's whole clusters of Skills dedicated to things like Ranger-style companions, reaction-based tanking, or being Naruto. Techniques The real meat of chargen - if you've played D&D 4e, it's like Powers there, except you get to build them yourself. You start with a Core that defines what the technique does - Damage Core to hurt people, Healing Core to un-hurt people, Boost Core to temporarily grant Skills, Summon Core to summon lesser allies to join the fight, et cetera. From there, you add Modifiers that do things like increase the range, make it hit a bigger area, or add extra weird effects like immobilization or bypassing defenses. Then, you add Limits to reduce the cost of using the Technique, like cooldown times, ammunition limits, or requiring Valor to use it. Each level you get points you can use to either expand/upgrade existing Techniques or build new ones, and together they're what you use to do stuff during fights. Valor Every important character has a pool of Valor that resets to 0 each scene, then goes up by 1 each turn. If you act suitably dramatic and over the top, or tie your character motivations back into the scene, you get more Valor. You can spend 3 Valor at any time to retroactively get +5 to a roll, recover a bunch of Health (that you lose again after the scene ends), or other such fun bonuses. The actual intent of Valor is to get your PCs playing up the melodrama and shouting forbidden technique names at the table. Challenge Scenes Valor's got a baked-in framework for things other than combat, which I've seen used for stealth missions, information gathering, social conflicts, cook-offs, Kendo duels, and even actual combat. The core idea is that each scene has a number of Meters, ranging 1-10, which represent various kinds of progress - Enemy Suspicion, Infiltration Progress, Endurance, Troop Morale, Dessert Quality, whatever the scene needs. Some are scene goals, where getting it to 1 or to 10 ends the scene with some kind of outcome. Some are there to affect the road to progress, giving bonuses or penalties to rolls to try and move other meters as they increase or decrease. It's all very straightforward, flexible, and has a bunch of extra support from the Skills pile to make things more complicated. This sounds neat but is it really worth that price? I know this only means so much coming from me, but yes. It's a bit steep, but production values are high, and we're working on getting the next three books out. It honestly is some of the most fun I've ever had playing a system, even after being a part of four or five different campaigns. The next three books Valorous Foes (monster manual, we're working on that one right now), Tools of the Trade (sort of a PHB2/DMG2 book full of Extra poo poo), and an as-of-yet unnamed book for expanded Mecha rules. Here's a simple sample character sheet:    We're very new, and working hard on getting word out, and someone over in F&F suggested I make a thread, so here we are! I'll gladly answer any questions about the game. Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 17, 2017 |
#
¿
Feb 15, 2016 17:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:31 |
|
|
For those curious about what play looks like, here's a text log of a boss fight from aforementioned Persona game.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2016 18:27
|
|
|
Night10194 posted:Could this be used for the wackier parts of hong kong action stuff? I've been looking for a mechanical framework to replace Feng Shui since their 2nd edition didn't actually fix any of the problems I had with the game and this might do it. Yes, absolutely! At low levels, it could do Wuxia swimmingly, and at high levels you get Kung Fu Hustle.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2016 18:32
|
|
|
LeSquide posted:So, this looks neat, but I saw comments about the . Pdf having copy/paste disabled. Is that true? As mentioned in F&F, all the business decisions about pricing and whatnot were handled by the other writer - I have it on good word that he'll be around later today to talk about all this stuff. I'm mostly dev work. Doresh posted:Something I'm kinda sorta missing at the moment from my skimming is some kind of henshin flaw (aka "Go through your stock footage transformation sequence to gain access to your powers"). Then again shows with such a dedicated combat form don't really make it a problem to just transform right before the fight starts, so why should I? For the kind of transformation where you chage up and unleash your true latent power to turn the tables, that's a Transformation, a kind of Ultimate Technique. You get one every 5 levels, and they can be a transformation or a super attack.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2016 19:01
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:I don't recall the kickstarter being promoted on SA previously, was there a reason for that? That was for the carefully well-reasoned logic that I didn't think of doing it until it was too late.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2016 19:43
|
|
|
Countblanc posted:So convince me that this game is well balanced. Games with lots of options, especially ones that let you build options, have a history of having wild power imbalances between characters. The game is supposedly "crunchy" (though I don't really know what that means, there's certainly a lot of numbers so I guess there's that) but I'm more concerned with the options I have available being both powerful/exciting and not objectively better than what my friend has on their sheet than I am with just having a lot of choices for the sake of covering every possible niche. Builds currently being run in games I'm GMing:
All of these characters are competitive, none of them have had any trouble keeping pace. Some of them have had 1v1 duels against each other that came down to clashing their final ultimate techniques while screaming with a sliver of health left on each side. As long as you're pumping 2-3 stats so that your active attributes are maxed out for your level, you're guaranteed to be able to hold your own, because you can use any of your attributes to attack or defend (although there are drawbacks - for example, dodging a non-Agility attack using Agility means you risk taking slightly extra damage if you get hit). We designed all the skills with a few hard design tenets to make sure nothing completely broke the game - attacks always outstrip healing to keep fights from lasting forever, nothing EVER gives you additional attack actions, nothing reliably boosts accuracy or evasion by more than 1-2 points. Keeping any character types from outshining other character types was one of our top priorities during design, and the place where most of our playtesting and design effort went.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2016 04:12
|
|
|
Covok posted:Do you guys have some fillable character sheets? Editable PDF here. I'm actually running a DBZ game right now with that very house rule, and it works perfectly fine. Fiddling with the skill progressions generally won't break the game, as long as you do it the same way for everyone.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2016 05:33
|
|
|
Covok posted:What lead to you guys making this game? In short, because it didn't exist. We both like ridiculous fightmans anime, and we couldn't find an RPG that properly captured the feel. So, we decided to fill the niche. A lot of the early mechanical inspiration came from D&D 4e, Super Robot Wars, a few failed homebrews of my own, and a bunch of D&D 3.5e homebrews Void did with similar objectives.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2016 05:44
|
|
|
Eopia posted:So although the rules text for the Discretion skill is simply that you can choose to take a penalty on any opposed roll, the intended use for it is for if an ally gets caught in an aoe of one of your abilities so that there's a greater chance of them coming out of it unharmed correct? 1. This is correct. 2. There is exactly one circumstance in which one tech can hit the same target more than once, and that's if it hits both A and B, and A uses Cover to tank the hit on B. Otherwise, it always hits a maximum of once, regardless of mods, attack nodes, or refraction points. So, you're right again.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2016 23:37
|
|
|
Wow, that text is kinda confusingly worded, now that I look at it. Intent of the rules, at least, is that multiple Boosts stack, but multiple Boosts that grant the same Skill do not. So, if A Boosts B to give them Iron Defense, and C Boosts B to give them Iron Defense, they don't get Iron Defense level 2.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2016 00:41
|
|
|
Doresh posted:While we're at clarifications, does using Muscle Guard still count as getting actually hit by the attack, including whatever additional effects the attack has? For example, unless the attack has Piercing Strike, the numbers don't really seem to make it likely for the attacker to have a high enough Damage Increment that can actually get through the target's Defense or Resistance. Muscle Guard does not count as getting hit by the attack, so no other effects proc, but the chip damage taken is also unaffected by def/res. So, if an attack does 100 damage and immobilizes, the attacker has a DI of 10, and the defender has 30 defense: On a hit: 100-30=70 damage, immobilized. On a regular miss: 0 damage, not immobilized. On a Muscle Guard miss: 10 damage, not immobilized. This does result in some weird interactions with absurdly high defense vs. very weak attacks where a miss does more damage than a hit - these circumstances are super rare, and my houserule that I ought to talk about doing for errata is either that Muscle Guard doesn't take chip damage if the damage dealt would be less than the DI, or that any attack that hits automatically does at least DI damage.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2016 00:51
|
|
|
That's because you can't build guts-based damaging techniques. It's a very powerful defensive stat (it has the best HP scaling, the best defensive sub rules, and a bunch of nice defensive skills key into it), but the tradeoff is that you can't rely on it for attacking.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2016 04:12
|
|
|
Eopia posted:That seems fair, I've been jumping around in the book a lot and knew you couldn't use it for the Damage Core, but I was thinking more along the lines of using it for Boost or Healing. One question on the Barrier core, it says to select Aura or Intuition for its attribute unlike others which list the primary attributes, that would mean the technique gets the bonuses/penalties of it being Spirit or Mind based, right? That is correct. (Guts tanks who use Guts for healing don't need any more ways to be nigh-unkillable, honestly.)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2016 04:30
|
|
|
NachtSieger posted:Looking through the PDF, how fast is PC/NPC generation? Because PCs and NPCs being constructed the same way gives me horrifying flashbacks to 3.PF, among other systems. It's a bit time-consuming before you get used to it - I can put one together in 5 minutes, but it takes some system mastery before that happens. We're working on a monster manual right now to make that easier.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2016 05:12
|
|
|
Doresh posted:Mmh, since Initiative Limit seems to be a permanent reduction, is there a way to get your Initiative up again? There isn't - however,to run into that limit, you'd have to be extremely slow or use the technique something like ten times in a single scene. I've never seen it happen.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2016 17:58
|
|
|
Doresh posted:So it's basically a funky version of Ammunition? Yup! It's like Ammo Limit, but with a higher ammo count + impact on the turn order if you overdo it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2016 18:37
|
|
|
Eopia posted:So I've got a question about Ultimate Techniques, it says 'An Ultimate Technique is gained three levels higher than you Character Level' but I'm not quite sure what that actually means. Ah wait, it was in the leveling up benefits box. So you get it at level+3 for free at levels 5/10/15/20 and they can be upgraded as usual. That's right - at level 5, you get a free tech level 8 Ultimate Attack or Transformation. After that, you can upgrade it using Tech Points as if it were a normal technique.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2016 14:29
|
|
|
Also notable - even if the GM does let you take every Non-Proficient on the list and max out their Flaws, at +1 SP each, they're trading being full-on incompetent in every Challenge Scene for what, two extra skills? More skills don't directly equate to more power, just more diversity of options. Even the obvious wins like Tough or Physical Attacker are capped in growth so that you can't just pump all your SP into them and become invincible. A decent build that needs those skills could have them maxed even without exploiting gimme Flaws. On the flip side, if you flood your skill selection with Challenge skills and only have half your points left for combat Skills, you can still be plenty powerful in combat - you'll just be building a less complex fighter. All that being said, I do agree that Weak Physical Attacker and Weak Energy Attacker should be moved over to Weaken Flaws.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2016 15:37
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:* The system would seem to inherently discourage splitting between different kinds of attacks because you can only max out so many attributes and not making one of those Guts has its own problems. quote:* Doesn't Persistent Effect allow for effective multiattacks, since you can throw a persistent effect on one turn, and then make your own attack on the next turn when the persistent effect re-triggers? Persistent Effect in particular has the advantages of potentially doing a ton of damage to low-defense enemies if they stay in it for a long time and inflicting extra effects from the technique multiple times, but will do less damage overall than a single strong attack if the enemy's defenses are high, and can be avoided with positioning. quote:* Isn't the same true of Summons, since you command one to attack with a Support action and then get to attack on your own? quote:* Is it as much of a no-brainer as it looks to just give yourself a self-only Boost power that enhances your accuracy or other generic all-good trait and make sure to always use it on cooldown?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2016 18:44
|
|
|
NachtSieger posted:I can't find any mention of it, but when assigning stats, do the stats begin at 1 with no purchase (leaving you with 25 attribute points to spend) or do you begin from 0 (meaning you actually have 20 attribute points to spend)? They begin from 0.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 28, 2016 23:44
|
|
|
NachtSieger posted:Can you use Smart Area of Effect on Barrier Core to selectively remove squares of Barrier, or is SAoE pointless on Barrier? I don't think I've ever considered that combo! I guess by RAW it's fairly open to interpretation, but I'd rule that you can. It definitely wouldn't break anything.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2016 21:55
|
|
|
I do know that shields are getting some big new options in Tools of the Trade, with planned stuff like modifying the terrain to build walls or put personal forcefields over people's HP.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2016 22:25
|
|
|
Covok posted:Hey, does taking Damage Increment stack? Like, if you're surprised and substitute with muscle guard, do you take their damage increment twice? Yup! e: Actually not in this case - Muscle Guard only does the DI on a miss, and the damage bonus from being surprised is only on a hit.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2016 23:01
|
|
|
TurninTrix posted:I know there's going to be a book on this soon, but would mecha campaigns be hard to pull off with the current rules? It works pretty good out of the box for pseudo-magical super robot stuff like Gurren Lagann or Mazinger - the main stuff that the mecha splat will help with is stuff like Gundam/Armored Core, where people more readily swap out into different mechs, and anything where multiple robots combine to form one cooler robot.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 15, 2016 16:42
|
|
|
masam posted:So I know that a monster manual is coming, but does anyone have any ready made characters or kinda a step by step example? I want to run but there is a lot of overhead for a gm new to the system and I want to make sure I'm not horribly under or over powering baddies when I start throwing them at my players Nothing official yet, but: Here are three basic level 1 Elite enemies I just threw together. Here are some experimental rules for eyeballing stats for soldier/flunky class enemies without having to do a full statblock for them. The numbers won't 100% line up with 'correct' values, but they'll be close enough to be balanced against equivalent-level PCs. Quick-and-dirty encounter building: 1 Master = 2 PCs, 1 elite = 1 PC, 2-3 soldiers = 1 PC, 5-8 Flunkies = 1 PC. Make the group slightly less than the party - so, 2-3 elites or 4-6 soldiers is a decent fight for a 4-player party. Fudge numbers up or down a bit if the enemies are lower/higher level than the party.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2016 22:02
|
|
|
Rohan Kishibe posted:Most of the time when I hear about anime RPGs they either tend to be based on stuff like Ninja Scroll, Sailor Moon and Voltron and other anime for old grandfathers or it's about cute girls doing cute things and other anime for weird manchild perverts. What I want to know is is this game good for the other kind of manchild? How shonen can this game get? Can I reach critical levels of punching people to solve problems? Can I make playing tiddlywinks the most tense thing imaginable? The chief sources of inspiration/research for the mechanics during development were things like Dragon Ball Z, Bleach, One Piece and Naruto. Valor was built by and for the latter kind of manchild.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2016 23:31
|
|
|
The Power Level formula was something I came up with for my own DBZ-based campaign. It goes like this:
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2016 23:52
|
|
|
Doresh posted:Oh, and I think I found a little omission: The XP reward for Swarms isn't listed. I suppose it's the same as an Elite, as they are roughly equivalent in difficulty? Whups, yes - Swarms give the same XP as Elites. Doresh posted:And what happens if you're a Balanced Fighter whose base Active Skills are all equal? Do I freeze the game XD ?! If all your Active Attributes are the same, then none of them are lower than your highest one, so it would have no effect. (You probably shouldn't do this.)
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2016 13:25
|
|
|
Kaja Rainbow posted:I've got a few questions about Refresh. What happens if you use it to refresh a multi-effect Boost or Weaken? Do all the effects get refreshed? What about an effect on multiple targets (from Blast Radius or the like)? Does it refresh it on all the targets, or only one? All effects, all targets.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2016 00:54
|
|
|
demota posted:Flunkies get "1/2 starting SP and SP gains." Am I right to assume this refers to all SP gains, including those earned by taking flaws? I've always run it as the reverse - Skills cost full SP, so Flaws grant full SP. RAW could be interpreted for either way, I guess.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2016 21:24
|
|
|
demota posted:Oh yeah. Are characters with Berserk just permanently in Berserk mode until they can get a source of healing or two scenes pass? If you can knock them out, you can stop them, but when they wake up, they'll be in critical health and re-trigger berserk again. Ooh, that's a good catch - it might be better to clarify that berserk mode activates when damage drops you into critical and ends at scene end. Then, if you start a scene in critical, you're stable until you take damage from something. Void, possible errata?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2016 17:54
|
|
|
I'd honestly rule that putting Limits on a Mimic tech doesn't do anything.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2016 21:33
|
|
|
Actually, if you read the wording on Rush Attack, it targets the spaces moved through after moving, so Push Limit and Pull Limit are relative to the space you end your move on.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2016 22:41
|
|
|
TheArchimage posted:are there options for a purely support-based character, like a pacifist cleric or a Navigator Persona? One of my players prefers to enable others in combat rather than personally attack in basically every game and system and I want some assurance they'll have something to do. The game's set up like D&D 4e, where you get an Attack Action and a Support Action each turn - the former is generally used for hurting people, but the latter can be used for healing, buffs, debuffs, laying down barriers, analyzing enemy attack/defense patterns, teleporting, throwing your allies around, et cetera. You can swap our an Attack Action for a second Support Action, so playing a character who never directly attacks is indeed possible. Strictly speaking, a character like that wouldn't be super optimized, but they'd have a shitload of things to do and plenty of opportunities to make their enemies' lives infuriating.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2016 01:58
|
|
|
masam posted:do core abilities add to the level or do core techniques start at level "0"? Or is the base level of technique cores 1. Base core level for techs is 1. The minimum possible attack is a level 1 Damage Core with no mods, which costs 1 TP to build, 3 ST to use, and does 20+Attack damage.
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2016 04:47
|
|
|
While we wait for that, have something else! I just finished a full 1-20 Valor campaign based loosely on Dragon Ball Z, which was wild fun. In the final battle, two PCs took enough punishment to reach -100% HP and actually die (one of them after taking 433 damage from a single attack). The above link contains every enemy statblock I made for the campaign, with some design notes on how they turned out. Feel free to use or tweak them for your own games. There's several dozen, I haven't counted them.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2016 05:35
|
|
|
taichara posted:So this looks really interesting! How well would it handle, say, Saint Seiya and its potential cast of a bazillion high-powered weirdos? Saint Seiya is smack dab in the middle of the scope of genres that Valor handles flawlessly - it is, after all, probably the most direct ancestor of the shows we modeled the mechanics after in the early days of dev (Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, etc). I've actually considered using it to run a StS game myself.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2016 14:53
|
|
|
masam posted:How did you get techniques above 21 at level 18 though? Where did I do that? It's probably an error.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2016 19:57
|
|
|
Max tech level is character level + 3, Tabia is a LV17 Elite, 17 + 3 = 20. It checks out.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2016 00:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:31 |
|
|
masam posted:is anyone planning on a forum or online game? There was a brief DBZ Super game a couple months ago, but it didn't last - I generally think Valor's more suited to roll20 than PBP. I'd totally run something myself but I'm already running several games unrelated to the forums, so I don't have the time.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2016 03:31
|
|