1. For the trial run I noticed you wanted to keep it simple so what information are you leaving up to me?

Everything other then the stats, race and current situation. Age, description, personality etc are all at the players discretion. Players are free to flesh out the character as they see fit keeping in mind this is a short run. For the actual campaign I would build a detailed history with the player.

2. How are you doing dice rolls?

I found the chat feature has a built in dice roller while poking around the site, we'd use the Places in “Kalya - Trial run ” chat for playing.

I've done tabletop style games in mIRC chat before online, they are a little slower then face to face but with the right group can be very fun.

Seems simple enough.

1. For the trial run I noticed you wanted to keep it simple so what information are you leaving up to me?

2. How are you doing dice rolls?

I've never done a tabletop system online so this is a little weird for me but I can't imagine it being all that different from sitting around in a circle.

Thanks for stopping by, here is a short explanation of the basics of the Kalya Ability Tree system:

Kalya uses 3 branch Ability Trees (AT) to determine the success of an action. One or more die values (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12) represent a character’s skill level in each branch of the tree and are rolled to determine success. ATs break down into 3 parts, basic, advanced and specialized, depending on your training, and each part has a die value attached to it.

As in life, some abilities are relatively simple and anyone can attempt them, while other abilities are more complex and require in-depth training.

In combat there are no hits or misses, attacks have potential damage that they can do while defenders have active and passive defenses to avoid dying. More on that is a second.

Lets say Gwar has no training with any melee weapons, and is attacking with a longsword. Even with no training he can still swing the sword and hope for the best. His AT would look like this:

Melee attacks d4 > Swords 0> Longswords 0

Each swing would cause 1d4 potential damage.

Now lets assume Gwar as received some training in swords, and his skill with melee weapons has improved. Players receive skill points to spend when they level to simulate this.

Melee Attacks d6 > Sword d4 > Longswords 0

Now each attack causes 2-10 potential damage per swing...a little training goes a long way!

Looking at our friend Gwar a bit later on in his career:

Melee Attacks d10 > Swords d8 > Longswords d6

Now he can do 3-24 per swing, or if he chooses break down the attacks and spread them to up to 3 targets (each attack doing one of the die values.)

Now that we've covered killing, lets cover how we avoid getting killed.

Each person has active and passive defenses.

Active defenses include parrying, dodging melee and missile attacks and spells and finally shield blocking. Each attack can have a single active defense applied to try and prevent it from hitting you. Active defenses return to 100% once combat is over.

Passive defenses are health and resistance. Health is the characters actual physical life remaining, if an attack gets past the active defense and any armor you might have it takes away directly from your health. Resistance is applied to magic. Passive defenses recover slowly over time.

Active defenses are calculated as follows:

Parry - the max value of your Ability Tree of the weapon you are using. Max value is the total of the highest values of your die ranks in an AT. For example, Gwar's ability tree of Melee Attacks d10 > Swords d8 > Longswords d6 would give him a parry of 24 (10+8+6) when using a Longsword, 18 when using any other sword and 10 when using anything other then a sword.

Dodging - 1/2 of your highest melee skill tree minus your shield defense value. This is calculated at the beginning of the fight to avoid abuse. Using the numbers above Gwar would have a dodge of 12 regardless of weapon if he wasn't holding a shield.

Shield block - Base melee value + shield defense. Shield defense is based on the size of the shield, the larger it is the more defense value it has. If Gwar was to use a medium shield with a block value of 8 he would have 18 defense, but only 4 dodge.

Armor acts as damage reduction. Padded is a d3 reduction, leather d4, ringed leather d6, Scale or Brigadine d8, mail armor d10, plate armor d112. Scale and higher armors apply a penalty to dodge value. Higher end armor is very expensive, few can afford it.


Passive defenses are based on level.

Resistances are character level *3, for this play thru they aren't as important but still nice to know. Resistances to certain things such as magic or poisons can be increased by using an ability tree (self > Resist > *type*)

Health is character level *5 and is only affected by damage that exceeds your chosen active defense and armor reduction. Once this reaches 0, your character is down and hoping for a miracle.



This is a very basic outline of the system, it can be adapted to be used for any ability. While it may look a little difficult to start once played it becomes incredibly easy to master and modify to suit your individual needs. If the full game weapons can apply bonuses to combat, players can also have ability trees that change themselves (like self > jumping > vertical), the limits are only bound by a persons imagination.

I'm interested but I gotta ask how you plan on doing combat and stats?
Also welcome.

Short run based in evilDM's Kalya setting. This is a test run of the basics of the Kalya system, while it focuses on a brief combat situation there will be a bit of spice added for the players to interact with each other.

As the DM, who is new to this site, is using this as a learning experience there will be a narrow ruleset to follow:

This is expected to be a short 1 time run that if goes well will be a precursor for the DM to start a long term adventure in his world of Kalya.

All characters will have the same basics, a melee combat based character in service of the Empire.

All are human. There will be other options open for the full game but for simplicity we're going bland.

All players will have the needed stats provided, the character descriptions are open.

The game will be run as a traditional table top game with a DM and players.

If you'd like to give me a hand with the test please let me know, I might be a couple forum posts short of getting PMs still so if you'd answer here for now I'd appreciate it!

http://www.roleplaygateway.com/roleplay/kalya-trial-run/