:Dice System:

An explanation for how the behind the scenes dice rolling works for this system for those who are interested in those kinds of things.

:Combat:

All enemies start at difficulty 20.

This difficulty is lowered by things such as the weapon being used by the protagonist. The general strength of the enemy involved. Combat items used, etc...

Once all the various effects are calculated a d20 is rolled and if the number is above the resulting final difficulty then the protagonist wins the fight.

As a result of this system, equipping the protagonist correctly and making proper decisions in terms of the battle strategy are important to giving the protagonist a good chance of victory.

An example follows.

The protagonist runs into a goblin.

The goblin starts with a difficulty of 20.

A goblin is an extremely weak monster and it's alone and unarmed. It's difficulty drops by a full 10 points.

The protagonist is going to engage in melee and is wielding a sword that they are adept with and they have high strength. The difficulty is lowered by a further 5.

The protagonist also has a shield they are adept in using which lowers the difficulty by a further 2.

The voices suggest stunning the goblin with the shield before cutting it to pieces with the sword. This is considered a good strategy at least for this example. Difficulty lowers by another 3 points.

The final difficulty is 0.

The protagonist automatically wins this encounter.

Alternatively however this same combat occurs, but the protagonist is not a good fighter.

They run into a goblin. The goblin is alone and unarmed and we've been through this part so we'll skip to the goblin being at difficulty 10.

The protagonist is using a sword they don't really know how to use. They do however still have a weapon so it still gives them a -1 difficulty reduction.

The protagonist is clumsy. The difficulty raises by 2.

The protagonist is wielding a shield, but it's too heavy for them. The difficult lowers by 1 still.

The voice suggests trying to stun the goblin with the shield then hit them with the sword. This is a bad plan since the protagonist is unable to move quickly with the shield. The difficulty raises by another 2.

The final difficulty of the goblin is 12.

The protagonist could still win, but mostly just because lone unarmed goblins are still pretty pathetic, but it's a much harder fight.

If the goblin was something harder like say a minotaur who stayed at a 20 difficulty. The final result of 22 would be an autoloss for the unlucky protagonist.

What should be taken from this is not that some fights are unwinnable, but that the voices suggestions, especially in terms of whether or not to use combat items and overall strategy are extremely important. A good strategy versus the minotaur would have resulted in a difficulty closer to 18 which would still be a very unlikely win, but not impossible.

:Wandering Monster:

A dice is also rolled on every floor after floor 1 for special wandering monsters. The dice is equivalent to how many rooms are available. If the dice lands on the same room the protagonist is in or is going to they will encounter the monster.

The monster can show up in the rest area, but only under certain circumstances. If those circumstances are not met then a roll that would put the wandering monster in the rest area is rerolled.

:Randomized effects:

Certain things will have randomized outcomes. These are of course simply a dice roll of the number of outcomes.

IE: if there are 8 possible outcomes I will simply roll a d8 with each outcome assigned a number out of 8 and the resulting number is that outcome.

:Traps:

There are of course traps in the tower and the protagonist can fall to them. The protagonists likelihood to get caught unaware by a trap is a mixture of the characters intelligence stat and the voices own caution.

The chance to fall into a trap is not a set number like with enemies. Each trap type has a specific difficulty. The protagonists intelligence stat will lower that difficulty by 1, 2 or 3 depending on how high their stat is. Certain effects can increase the difficulty as well. Suggestions from the voices to check for traps or even better if the voices can predict and detail the likely trap will give a bonus anywhere between 1-5.

If the protagonist does fall into a trap then in some cases, but not all, their resourcefulness can help them avoid the majority of negative repercussions, in some cases however such as a bondage trap or magical trap, they may also need to use their intelligence or strength to escape from a trap.

An example follows:

The protagonist walks into a room with a pit trap. The difficulty for the trap is 10.

They are of medium intelligence, so the difficulty is reduced by 2.

The voices have given them a generic warning to be cautious entering the room which reduces the difficulty again by another 1.

The final difficulty is 7.

I roll a d20. On a roll of 8 or higher they avoid the trap entirely, but we'll say they roll a 7 or lower.

They trigger the trap.

They get to make another d20 roll versus the traps 10 difficulty.

They have a resourcefulness level of low. So, they only get a -1 to the difficulty and let's say they have a flaw that makes them unbalanced. So the difficulty actually increases by 2.

The final difficulty is therefore 11.

They roll a d20. On a 12 or higher they manage to avoid falling into the pit, catching themselves on the ledge. However they roll a 11 or lower and they fall into the pit.

Inside the pit they now have one chance to escape before something bad happens.

The pits difficulty is still 10

They can use their strength to try and escape. They have high strength so difficulty is lowered by 3.

A voice suggests using the collapsible ladder they had picked up earlier which is perfect for this trap and lowers the difficulty by 5.

The final difficulty is 2.

The protagonist rolls a d20 and most likely easily escapes unless they roll a 2 or lower in which case even with the ladder they somehow fail to escape and some negative event triggers before they can escape. Most likely a monster arrives.