[OLOG] Virtue Signalling

Last time on Orc Rehab, I wrote about virtues. This time, I'm taking another swing.

After some discussions on Discord, I realised that, while I still think a system with virtues as its only core stats has legs, my first attempt hewed perhaps too close to the old ability score structure. If each character has just a few virtues from a list of many, the system needs to be built with that in mind rather than trying to make it resemble the ability scores of old.

So, no more numbers. Here's take two.

Orc Laws of Glory: Virtues (and Basic Mechanics)

 

art by Elena Barbieri

There are more orc virtues than may be counted. A virtue is defined as follows:

• A name, which is a single noun.
• A type, which is either (A)ttack, (S)ave, or (C)heck.
• A short phrase detailing when the virtue is primary.

Some examples of virtues:

• Daring (A): Attack an enemy larger than you.
• Acuity (A): Attack from a height advantage or with surprise.
  
• Self-Will (S): Save against the works of the gods.
  
• Diligence (C): Check to complete a task whose main challenge is duration or tedium.
  

Virtues are binary. You either have a virtue or you don't.

A virtue grants a stackable +1 bonus to all rolls of its type. Each (A) virtue grants +1 to Attacks, each (S) virtue +1 to Saves, and each (C) virtue +1 to Checks.

• An Attack is a roll to directly affect or defeat an enemy in a conflict - hitting them with a weapon counts, as do most "combat manoeuvres", but a chess match and a foot race wil also call for Attacks.
• A Save is a roll to avoid or mitigate the effects of a hazard.
• Any other type of action roll (i.e. not damage rolls or rolls on random tables) is a Check.

This will lead to some virtues providing boosts to types of roll that seem odd, like Finesse in a chess match or Diligence while trying to defuse a bomb. This is fine. Orcs interpret their virtues broadly.

When an orc attempts a roll for which they have a primary virtue of the right type, they may also add their level. This bonus doesn't stack. The primary criteria of virtues should be interpreted quite broadly. Daring might apply in social combat, for example, to attacks against a more famous enemy, and Self-Will should apply to saves against the special attacks of divine beings like angels.

Example: Izec is a level 2 orc with the four example virtues listed above. Passively, she gets +2 to Attacks, +1 to Saves, and +1 to Checks. If she makes an attack against a larger enemy, or with height advantage or surprise, she gets an additional +2 bonus thanks to her level, for a total attack bonus of +4. If she attacks a larger enemy and has a height advantage, her attack bonus is still only +4 - she doesn't get to add her level twice.

Failings

Failings are simply virtues inverted. Any virtue may also be a failing, in which case it is a quality in which an orc is notably lacking. Finesse as a failing, for example, would mean a clumsy, bumbling orc.

Failings do not impose a penalty. Rather, if an orc attempts a task for which their Failing is primary, they can't claim any numerical bonuses on their roll. Neither the general bonus from type nor any specific bonus from primary virtues applies, and any class-based bonus also doesn't work.

Example: Yaruv, like Izec, is a level 2 orc with the virtues of Daring and Acuity, but he also has the failing of Vigour (A), whose primary criterion is "Attack for the first time in a conflict". Yaruv encounters an ogre in the badlands and charges it. Normally, Yaruv's attack bonus would be +4 - +2 from his two (A) virtues, and +2 because he's attacking a larger enemy, which is the primary criterion for Daring. However, because he has Vigour as a failing, these bonuses are cancelled, and his first attack against the ogre is made at a +0 bonus.

Design Notes

The details of my still-hypothetical-but-slowly-becoming-more-concrete orc-focused GLOG hack are starting to come together.

The part of my previous post I was least happy with was the fairly constrained virtue list. The whole point of orcish virtues, from a worldbuilding angle, is that they're a huge, wildly diverse set of tools by which orcs define themselves. Having too many virtues in the old system, though, would have been a mess and risked too much overlap and fuzziness about when to use one virtue versus another. I think this version is a bit more defined, a bit more lightweight, and feels more specialised rather than aping ability scores purely for tradition's sake.

One thing notably absent from this post is how you choose virtues and failings, and how you gain them as you advance. I think I'd like it to be a bit more structured than completely random rolling, maybe even a light lifepath character generation system a la Beyond the Wall. In terms of advancement, I don't want characters to pick up too many virtues - their power already increases through the scaling primary bonus. Gaining new virtues might well require swapping out old ones.

How do we feel about this compared to the first post? I'm curious to find out what people prefer.