Recap

I’ll assume you haven’t read my other posts on Legamon prior to this, so here is the recap:

• Legamon (or just mons) are legally distinct monsters that accompany the characters on adventures
• Mons have 6 types: Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Verdant and Metal. Some mons may be of more than one type.
• Some types against stronger or weaker against others, for example Water is strong against fire. This is shown in the type chart below.

• All mons have abilities relating to their type. For example, Flameingo (an iridescent fire-type pink flamingo) knows the ability Flame Hop, a fire type ability.
• Abilities have tags which tell help inform all the players about what the ability is good at. Flame Hop has the tags: Fire-type; melee; and moving. Other than the type, there are no hard and fast rules about what the tags do. They exist to inform our understanding of the ability and to make it clear to everyone playing what the ability is good at and what it is bad at.
• There are also typeless abilities. While every mon has access to a limited pool of abilities with types, there is an infinite pool of typeless abilities that can be used. The only restrictions are what is reasonable in world, so for example a slug-themed mon could not use a typeless ability called ‘kick’.

Scratch	Bite	Kick	Punch
Chop	Gore	Bash	Slam
Barge	Smack	Clobber	Claw
Bump	Crash	Bang	Wallop

Sidestep	Roll	Jump	Dash
Leap	Dip	Take Cover	Drop
Duck	Crouch	Dive	Go Prone

• You roll an ability dice when you are doing an ability to determine its success. Higher is better.
• Abilities which have a type roll a d6 for their ability dice. Abilities which are typeless roll a d4 for their ability dice.

Modifying the ability dice

If you have advantageous circumstances (from height, a downed opponent, a sneak attack etc.) then roll your ability dice twice and take the higher value.

If you have disadvantageous circumstances (opponent in cover, predictable actions, you are grappled, your ability name doesn’t quite fit what you are trying to do etc.) then roll your ability dice twice and take the lower value.

If you have an advantageous type matchup (eg fire vs verdant) then instead step the dice up (d2->d4->d6->d8->d10).

If you have a disadvantageous type matchup then instead step the dice down (d10->d8->d6->d4->d2).

Example worst case scenario: Flameingo is using the ability Flame Hop on Rocktopus, an Earth-Water hybrid. Flameingo is lying on the ground and Rocktopus is towering over it. Flameingo will roll 1d2 (the d6 has been stepped down twice as fire has a bad matchup against both water and earth) twice and take the lower number (because it has disadvantageous circumstances).

Example best case scenario: Flameingo is using Flame Hop to drop down from above on an unsuspecting Bookerfly, a Verdant-Air hybrid. Flameingo will roll 1d10 (the d6 has been stepped up twice as fire has a good matchup against air and verdant) twice and take the higher number (due to advantageous circumstances).

Spending energy

When a mon uses an ability which has a type, they must spend one energy to do so. The median starting energy for a mon is 3.

When a mon spends an energy they will roll an ability dice to determine the success of their ability.

• If the dice rolls in the upper half of potential values, the energy remains spent.
• If the dice rolls in the lower half of potential values, the energy is regained

So on a d4 roll, a 1 or 2 regain the spent energy, whereas on a d8 roll a 1, 2, 3 or 4 will regain the spent energy.

Combat Rules for one-on-one fights

Combat is made up of rounds. Each round, participants roll 1d6 + speed to determine who goes first that round.

The median speed values for a mon is 3. Whoever rolls higher has their turn first.

On your turn you can move and do an ability. (Instead of an ability you could also use an item or interact with something in the environment.)

If you are going first and you want to do something that does not affect the opposing character, then it will resolve. The gamemaster may ask for a roll to see how successful it is.

If you are going first but you want to do something (for instance an attack) that will affect the opposing character, then the target can choose to either: let it happen and then take their turn after; or forgo their turn and resist the action.

If you are going second and you did not resist the opponents ability, that means you can take your turn now. If you want to do an action that interacts with your opponent, they won’t be able to resist you as they already acted.

Attacking and your opponent does not/cannot resist

Roll your ability dice, the result is subtracted from the opponents Grit.

Grit is a statistic that represents a mons staying power. The median starting grit for a mon is 10. When a mon’s grit reaches 0 or lower they are out of the fight.

Attacking and your opponents resists

Attacker and defender both roll ability dices. The defender’s result is subtracted from the attackers result and the result is subtracted from the defender’s grit. This cannot heal the defender.

The defender is not able to damage the attacker by rolling higher. If they wanted to damage the attacker they should not have resisted, and instead taken the damage and then attacked back.

Using an ability to prevent

Attacker rolls their ability dice. They may spend the resulting value to prevent their opponent from moving or using an ability. 1 point of the value can be spent to prevent the opponent from moving for 1 turn. 3 points can be spent to prevent the opponent from doing an ability for one turn.

Example scenario: Vineapple rolls a 4 when using Vine Lash to wrap their target, Camelamp. Vineapple could either: prevent Camelamp’s next action and next movement; or prevent Camelamp’s next 4 movements.

At the start of any round after the first round in which a mon is prevented from doing something, there is a chance they can passively overcome the prevention. To do so they must roll 4 or higher on a typeless ability roll (this roll does not consume their ability for that round). Each additional round steps the dice up.

Number of turns prevented	1st turn	2nd turn	3rd turn	4th turn	5th turn	6th turn onwards
Passive typeless dice rolled	no dice rolled	d4	d6	d8	d10	d12

The target can use an ability to defend and subtract from the attacker’s roll in the same way as with damaging abilities.

Using an ability to end a prevention early

If you are being prevented then you can use your ability to try to end the prevention early. Roll your ability dice, if you roll a 4 or higher then the prevention ends straight away (this may allow you to spend your ability to end a prevention on your movement, which you can then use).

If you are prevented from using an ability then you cannot try to use your ability to end your prevention on using an ability.

Using an ability to do anything else and other rules

The gamemaster makes a call based on the rules above, their reasoned understanding of of the world and the principles below:

• The logic of the world and the scenario is more important than following the rules.
• The rules only exist to facilitate informed decision making for players and so the gamemaster has guidance to prevent them from making it up on the spot. Making stuff up on the spot is fine, but its harder to do it well for combat, and with combat a poor decision will sting harder.
• What one character does using an ability should not be negated by a movement from an opposing character.
• 0 grit means one cannot carry on fighting, it does not necessarily mean death or fainting. Maybe they are physically exhausted, or mentally drained, or emotionally overwrought. It might mean they flee or collapse or the mon’s human partner offers to parlay or surrender.
• Give disadvantage if a mon uses the same ability in the same way more than once in a row, or any time after the second time. This is predictable for their opponent which is where the disadvantage comes from.

Incomplete rules

The average Mon has 10 grit, 3 energy and 3 speed. Mon advancement/evolution will be covered in a different post. I’d also like to post about how to bond mons (bond not catch, it feels a bit oppressive to go around catching monsters).

If I was making up a new mon and wanted to decrease/increase its energy or speed (for instance, Camelamp above should probably have more than 3 energy as camels store energy) then I would modify the grit of the mon up or down by 2 or 3 hp to make it feel more balanced. The other lever for balance is how many situations you can think of that a mons’ ability would be useful in.

The rules for combat could easily be abstracted out to other contests. Grit represents staying power not physical durability so there doesn’t even need to be a terminology change.

The rules would probably also work for battles with multiple participants but I haven’t tried that out.

Design notes

If you go first then your opponent might trade attacks, but yours will hit first. Otherwise they might try to negate your attack, but then they can’t do damage.

Going second means that if you let your opponent hit you, you get guaranteed damage/prevention on them.

Energy and grit should probably reset at a town, village or some other resting spot – they’re a resource to manage through several encounters/events.

There is a gloggy kernel in this game (the regaining of spent mana and the low hp levels relative to attack values). The gloggy kernel has an fkr coating, with world/genre emulation coming as a top priority over the rules. When I ran a playtest I had less written rules than above, but it seems to me that if I’m making something to publish online I should provide a reasonable level of guidance.

Thanks to Becca, Andy and Morat for playtesting.