Descendant

I started working out an idea for a new game. The working title right now is Descendant. Mechanically it’s a basic d20 D&Dish game but with a couple unusual features.

Advancement
The initial idea that kicked it off was how could a campaign stretch across a long time frame instead of just the lifetime of a single adventuring party. So instead of leveling up their characters, the party retires. The GM rolls a d6 to determine how many generations have passed and the players create new characters that are the descendants of their previous characters.

They use the same stats as the previous character but can redistribute a number of ability points equal to the number of generations that have passed.

Also, PCs gain a Legend Point (XP) for every adventure/quest/mission they complete. Those points are spent to improve the next PC in their bloodline. So the party has to decide to risk another dangerous adventure or to retire and let future generations have a better shot. Realistically, how many adventures could a person have in a single lifetime. And how many old adventurers would there be.

Legend Points can be spent on stats, Health Limit, or on increasing the damage or armor rating of Heirloom items.

Heirloom Items are items that get passed down through a family. Each character may designate one item as an Heirloom. So the second character in a bloodline will inherit an item from the previous character and can also designate another item as an heirloom. The third character in a bloodline will inherit both those items and can designate another..

Health and Damage

The other unusual part of the game is Health. A character has a Health Limit. Any damage a character takes is added up until it reaches the Health Limit. Then the character must make a death save by rolling a d20 over their accumulated damage, or Injury Score. If they succeed, they continue as normal. They must make a death save again if they take more damage and roll over the new Injury Score. I got this idea from Daniel Sell’s blog but his version (smash bros HP) is more extreme and I might try it out like that.

I also made a character sheet because I feel like I need one to really test out a game idea.

I don’t know if this will go anywhere or end up as a fun or playable game. It’s just a thought experiment right now.

Here is the early draft rules doc and the character sheet.
I’m sure my maths are super wonky and not working too well but I’ll update it as I play with it.