In this series, I will be focusing on one of game’s mechanics and dig deep into it. This allows me to think about the game’s potential, imagine what’s coming and gets me even more hyped. First in this series for the game of Oathsworn, let’s focus on heroes (playable characters) called the Oathsworns.
What’s Oathsworn?
Oathsworns are playable characters, heroes or champions equivalent in other games and this is what each player controls in the game of Oathsworn into the Deepwood. Since it is confusing to call heroes as Oathsworn because it is the name of the game and game does not call them heroes, from here on I generally refer these as playable character. In some other games, these character may be a direct reflection of a player. For example, Magic the gathering, a player will be attacking another player. In tabletop RPG, one can still have player representing him or herself and have equipments, role etc. but I personally think it’s more fun to have a character that you control having actual art, theme, and own background story.
Based on the actual Oathsworn card above, we can tell each Oathsworn have:
- Might
- Defense
- HP
- Special Ability
- Animus
- Equipment restriction.
Might
Might is a representation of an attack points in this game. In Oathsworn, combat attack is determined by sum of dice roll or card drawn. In this game, player will decide how many base (white) dice to roll (or card to draw). If two or more of dice rolled (or card drawn) are blank, the entire attack is considered missed. So what might represents is how many and what color upgraded dice the character can roll during each attack.
*Order of dice strength is white < yellow < red < black.
For example, if an Oathsworn equips Short Bow, he/she gets an yellow dice on Might. So in each attack, that Oathsworn is allowed to roll one yellow dice and any number of White dice.
Defense
Defense is a parameter, not surprisingly, reduces amount of damage one will incur during an attack. Unlike more conventional method of calculation, in the game of Oathsworn, the total damage is determined by total attack points divided by defense points with all decimals dropped off.
For example, total attack you rolled for an enemy creature targeting your character (in this game, you roll your doom) was 10 and your character has 3 defense. 10 divided by 3 is 3.333 so after ignoring decimals, this is 3. The damage inflicted to your Oathsworn in this case is therefore 3.
HP
Total health points for each Oathsworn at starting, possibly even until the end of game is merely 6. This appears rather low number to have; however, because damage reduction with defense value in this game is a division rather than subtraction, if you gain 2 base defense it is similar to saying you now have 12 HP and with 3 defense, its 18 HP. Basically, in this game each HP point scales up as Oathsworn gains more defense.
Special Ability
Each Oathsworn has characteristic, often play style aiding built in special abilities. The special ability have both thematic and mechanical synergy with ability cards, giving unique feel for each Oathsworn. We will look this more carefully later.
Animus
Animus is a resource point in this game. Number of animus regenerates at the start of each turn is a potentially changing parameter. At the start of game, this is six. Also, there are maximum Animus one can hold i.e. despite one can save and carry over unused Animus to following turn. Basically, no matter how much Animus you save, you cannot go over the maximum. Both of these numbers will change as you progress the story.
Equipment
Main customization of your character comes from equipment along with selection of which Ability cards to including in your seven. Different characters have different restriction of what equipment type one can equip. This is not an uncommon approach in Hero based card game. This type of game design allows controlled synergy and minimize the risk of unintentional synergy breaking the game balance. This allows creation of generally, more powerful cards in a game. .
Equipment cards often have unique, active effect but these effect can only be executed once during an encounter. However, equipment cards may have passive effect or give Might, base defense to change Oathsworn’s stat throughout the entire encounter.
Hidden Stats/Parameters
Character cards shows other stats that are not shown on Oathsworn cards, which are represented by combat tokens.
Each Oathsworn levels up after every chapter/encounter; hence, there is no experience points in this game.
General game design decision this game have taken appears “reducing complexity while keeping fun and excitement”. For example, most player of any game enjoy boss battle over the experience or material grinding encounters in order to just level up your character or craft a legendary equipment. Every encounter in Oathsworn supposedly is a boss battle; therefore, by defeating them, you level up after each encounter.
Based on the character card, we can see Regen and Max Animus are parameter/stat that can evolve. Also, we can think of each of 5 types of combat tokens as separate stats for the character.
These tokens are consumable tokens that each Oathsworn can use during an encounter. Besides character level, equipment, decisions on story part of campaign gives these token.
Companion System
Shadow Borne took an extra step to make this game solo play friendly rather than just solo playable. The main mechanics to support this is “companion” system. Companion is an abbreviated version of Oathsworn.
Companions have simplified stats when compared to full Oathsworn. Each companion has 3 Archetype cards in contrast to 7 ability cards on full Oathsworn.