Below is a legamon type chart. Arrows are pointing towards the type that is weaker. For instance, Fire beats verdant and air, but is beaten by earth and water.

All of the type matchups follow some form of real world logic. The sort of logic that ancient greeks had where they sat around making up reasons why certain things must be true, without actually going out and checking them.

• Fire beats Verdant because plants are vulnerable to burning
• Fire beats Air because air is consumed by the process of burning
• Verdant beats Water because plants need water to survive
• Verdant beats Earth because plants roots dig into the earth and grow from it
• Water beats Fire because water extinguishes fire
• Water beats Metal because it causes rusting
• Air beats Water because it causes evaporation
• Metal beats Verdant because metal easily trims and cuts plants
• Earth beats Fire because it can smother fires

‘Balance’

I don’t entirely believe in balance in role-playing games. Balance is about creating fairness, which is inherently linked to the distribution of power and influence. A lot of balance comes from the game master’s interpretation of the player character’s actions. Perceived likelihood of success, on-the-spot rulings, design decisions for homebrew content, NPC reactions, even the table’s attitude towards the spirit of the rule vs the letter of the rule, all these things affect balance in a way that is impossible to account for when designing a roleplaying game.

And that’s before you start hacking the rules.

Some games give suggestions, options of different rules with an explanation of how your choice might affect gameplay. Others give ongoing design commentary so you can understand why a rule is the way it is. Alternatively, a game might present its vision in such striking terms that most points of contention are easily handled.

It is really important that there is not one option which is obviously way worse than the others because then players won’t pick it and you’ve wasted your development time, word count and design space.

It’s also really important that there is not one option which looks good but actually sucks.

Unlike a video game, I’m not going to have lots of stats and systems to do balance with. And ‘mon video games tend to have lots of visible stats, and even more hidden stats and formulas to tinker with.

So every type gets as many advantages as disadvantages. That’s the balance. That and the advancement system that’s not finished yet. The rest is up to the GM.

Ew your type chart is janky

Why thank you.

Beaten By	Beaten By	Type	Beats	Beats
Earth	Water	Fire	Verdant	Air
Verdant	Air	Water	Fire	Metal
Metal	Fire	Verdant	Earth	Water
	Verdant	Earth	Fire
	Fire	Air	Water
	Water	Metal	Verdant

Thank you very much.

	Fire	Water	Verdant	Earth	Air	Metal
Fire		Bad	Good	Bad	Good
Water	Good		Bad		Bad	Good
Verdant	Bad	Good		Good		Bad
Earth	Good		Bad
Air	Bad	Good
Metal		Bad	Good

The attacker is on the left, defender on the top.

What about other types?

I have lots of ideas for other types. These ones above are core, physical, real-world types.

It’s noticeably missing magic types and types to represent real world phenomena such as ice and electricity. It’s a lot harder to reason the balance of magic-style types. The more secondary physical types I put in, such as ice and electricity, the more janky it became. I think they can be serviced by water and fire respectively. Or by duo types such as Water/Earth and Fire/Air.

Oh yeah, I guess duo types are a thing too.

There is design space for more types since Air, Earth and Metal only have one advantage and disadvantage each.

List of possible magic types

• Aether
• Astral
• Nightmare
• Shadow
• Void
• Fear
• Cosmic
• Decay

List of types that tickle me but I can’t reasonably put into the game at this time

• Snake
• Egg
• Granny
• Hair
• Filth
• Paradox
• Dino
• Mech
• Kaiju
• Candy

Vineapple

My friend Becca_3D made art for Vineapple, a legamon from my previous post.

Wait but you didn’t even say what it means for something to have advantage or beat something else

Yep.

Combat rules are not done yet. But I reckon you could run it as is with minimal elbow grease.