The Colabrian System

How To Play

After we’d decided on the base stats for our TTRPG, we moved onto the next important question: “how will it roll?”. That is to say, what specifically will our players need to do to pass or fail checks and functionally play our TTRPG. In the end we decided on a percentile system that has slight, natural and extreme successes and failures to give more variation in day-to-day play. It also allows us to give buffs and de-buffs more frequently to keep everyone on their toes and to allow Phobias and Madnesses to be a prominent feature of our system.

Key Rules

Rolling

Setting Targets & Rolling Dice

In this system we are using a percentile system, which means you roll a d100 to play. Generally speaking, it’s up to the Game Master (GM) to make a level for the players to beat for a check, but we do have a guideline here for you if you’re not sure!

Easy = 30. Medium = 50. Hard = 70. Deadly =90.

Natural Rolls

If you roll neither a slight or extreme success or failure, it counts as a natural success or failure. In this instance, nothing extra is done to alter the rolls outcome in any skill or social scenario. That is to say no additional or lessened costs, you just simply achieve or don’t achieve what you’re trying to do.

Succeeding a Check

You succeed a check, broadly speaking, as long as you meet or exceed the target set. So to pass an easy target, you would need to meet or beat a 30 on your dice roll after adding modifiers.

Slight Successes

If you succeed a check by 5 or less, you only slightly succeed at whatever skill you’re attempting to use. This means that the skill happens, but it costs 1.5 x the mana or stamina needed to do it.

This extends to social interaction checks at the GM’s discretion. For example, the speech you gave did ralley men to fight but only half the number you were hoping for.

Extreme Successes

If you succeed a check by 20 or more, you manage an extreme success. This also applies if you roll a 100 (the highest possible roll on percentile dice) which is the only way to achieve an extreme success on deadly difficulty targets. In this instance, the skill not only happens, but it costs 0.5 x the amount of mana or stamina normally needed to do it.

This extends to social interaction checks at the GM’s discretion. For example, you convince someone not only that what you’re saying is true, but that everything they ever knew was wrong.

Failing a Check

You fail a check, broadly speaking, as long as you fail to meet or beat the target set by the GM or situation. So should the target be 50, and you, after rolling and adding modifiers, are at 49 or under, you fail.

Slight Failures

If you fail a check by 5 or less, you only slightly fail at whatever skill you’re attempting to use. In this instance, the skill doesn’t happen, but it costs you 0.5 x the amount used instead of the full amount.

This extends to social interaction checks at the GM’s discretion. For example, you didn’t manage to sweet talk the troll into helping your group, but they didn’t decide to attack you either.

Extreme Failures

If you fail a check by 20 or more, you experience an extreme failure. This also applies if you roll a 1 (the lowest possible roll on a percentile die). In this instance, the skill not only doesn’t happen, but it costs you 1.5 x the amount of mana or stamina, and a coin must be flipped to decide whether you get an immediate point of exhaustion.

This extends to social interaction checks at the GM’s discretion. For example, you not only fail to befriend the blacksmith, they get so annoyed with your antics that they attempt to throw you in the fire.

Failing a Sanity Roll

Failing a sanity check has slightly different consequences to other checks. Though the levels of failure are the same numbers wise to those listed above, the consequences are as follows:

Slight Failure: Gives a situational stat decrease (GMs discretion).

Natural Failure: Gain a Short Term Madness or Phobia from their respective tables. This can either be rolled or chosen by the GM.

Extreme Failure: Gain a Long Term Madness from the table. This can either be rolled or chosen by the GM.

Combat

Armour & Hit Chance

In our system, Armour and Hit Chance (HC) are vastly different in what they mean and do in combat. Armour is a static value given by your equipped attire. Whenever you are hit, Armour then reduces the damage taken by its value:

Damage Taken = Damage Dealt - Armour

In contrast, Hit Chance (HC) is how hard it is to hit your character. Some class and stat skills increase your HC to make you harder to hit. For example, the Fool has a skill that increases HC by 15%, as they are skilled at Taunting and Dodging. When calculating if something hits you, it’s fairly simple. If a roll outcome is equal to or greater than your HC, it is successful.

Death & Reaching 0hp

When someone or something hits 0 HP, they have 1 minute in game time (10 rounds) before they die outright. During this time they enter a Slumber and dream of lost family, friends etc in The Dream (GMs discretion). Should the minute pass before they are healed, they die outright and their soul goes to Death’s Dream or Artmus’ Domain.

Rounds in Combat

Combat exists in rounds where in each entity involved takes one turn before the round ends and it moves onto the next. Each completed round take 10 seconds of in game time. Turn order is decided by everyone rolling 1d100 and turns progress in descending order.

Skills & Effects

Exhaustion

There are 5 levels to exhaustion. Each level increases the amount of stamina or mana required to use skills until the exhaustion wares off. Each level of exhaustion makes skills and spells cost an additional 0.5 to do, so at level 1 it’s a simple +0.5, then by level 5 it becomes +2.5. One point of exhaustion is recovered for every 4 hours of sleep, so it can take multiple nights of rest to recover from serious exhaustion.

Stamina and Mana

All skills and spells cost either stamina or mana to do. This, to us, balances the abilities of all classes and forces more strategic thinking from players. That said, there are some universal actions that any class can do which means they’re never going to be completely useless in combat. Having more points in Endurance will increase your Stamina, and having more points in Willpower will increase your Mana.

Stealth

Making a stealth check in this system is slightly more complicated than other systems due to the Presence Stat. Because Presence is all about being seen and known, it works against Nimbleness in stealth checks. When making a roll, it thus becomes:

Stealth = 1d100 + Nimbleness - Presence

Your Nimbleness and Presence value is reflected on their respective Stat Tables.

Optional Rules

Durability

With Armour, there is an optional rule that gives equipped attire durability that reduces with every hit taken. With this rule active, every hit taken reduces Armour by 1 until it hits 0. This does not regenerate naturally, it can only be brought back up to its maximum value by being repaired by a relevant crafter.

Specialisations

This optional addition allows players to select a specialisation that runs alongside their class. These are crafting focuses that level up independently from the main levelling table. As a feature, the idea is to give more ways for players to use downtime and flesh out their character in non-combat areas of the game.

Currently available specialisations are: Gastromancer, Runesmith, Loomsage and Puppetmaster.

Critical Hits

This option relates to combat situations. When making an attack roll, if an attack roll is an extreme success it ignores the targets armour completely, dealing true damage.