Making a pen and paper RPG with a modern/futuristic setting
 

Exactly what the title says. Basically I'm going for a somewhat comedic/zany angle while not making that the focus. Right now I'm thinking of their being five stats.

Stats

Strength- This factors into melee damage, intimidating people, and a lot of the equipment you can use without being drastically slowed down.

Speed- This helps decided turn order, movement speed, dodging, and sneakery.

Smarts- Determines how high a level of technology you can make, use, and hack.

Style- This is like Charisma and is also used to decide how successful/powerful DJ skills are. Also determines how successful Final Blows are. A successful Final Blow will net you bonus experience after a battle.

Guts- Health and chance to survive a mortal blow. If someone does an attack that would otherwise kill you, roll a d20 and add your Guts. If the result is higher than their attack roll, you survive. Can only be used once per battle.

As is evident, I need to put a bit more thought into balancing them out. The d20 thing is just until I figure out a better rolling system for the game, assuming I do.

Classes

DJ- Base Stat is Style. Secondary Stat is Speed. Works as a buff/debuff character while avoiding direct combat. Speed is important to try and get the buffs/debuffs done before turns, and also to avoid taking damage. Outside of combat use wherever diplomacy is important.

Inventor- Base Stat is Smarts. Uses technology for spell-like effects. Doesn't have a spells-per-day or mana limit, and instead is limited by resources used when using/making technology. Best at chipping away at health of large groups of enemies or healing party members. Outside of combat use wherever you need to hack or operate technology.

Street Tough- Base Stat is Strength. Secondary Stat is Guts. Uses melee weapons to deal massive damage to individual enemies. Also functions as the tank. Outside of combat good for intimidating and smashing down physical barriers.

Gunner- Base Stat is Speed. Secondary Stat is Style. Deals light damage with ranged weapons, but can also inflict status effects depending on ammo. Outside of combat good for thieving/sneaking.


And that's what I've got so far. Can anyone help me flesh this idea out more? Any stats or classes that you think I should add? I admit this is very much in the beginning stages but I'm not too experienced on making a P&P RPG so please be forgiving.

Got to have a hacker like character. Call it a Code Master for shits and giggles. Base Stat Smarts, Secondary stat would be speed. Would deal a stealth like unit that could have backstab capabilities and deal light damage otherwise from either up close or at range

Sounds solid to me as things are, but I agree with Krogo that you may want to expand your class roster a bit.

I think 5 stats is great, you could maybe have a 6th but anymore and it would probably get way to complicated. Its cool having classes good at multiple things, but its usually nice to have pure specialization classes.

If your going to use technology to have spell like effects, I'd suggest using something along the lines of a suit or device that creates the spell-like abilities. Like say a gauntlet that has a energy source and you can use it to create the spell-like effect you want but drains energy from the gauntlet with the amount depending on the power of it. You could also have the equipment that is used to be based on a specific element so they can only use the abilities that are based on that element.

Just a thought

Technically, you could just go the Washu route, too, and have everything sort of technomagically pop up.

Well true, there is that option as well. A techno-magi would be a cool class too

Basically, with the Inventor, it'd be soft-science, AoE stuff for the 'black magic' and probably nano-machines or something else cliche and overdone for the 'white magic'. Basically think of an Inventor like a Red Mage but without the sword skills. Doing more specialization classes does sound like a good idea, so I'll get working on that.

I also need to work on enemy types, weapons, armor, etc.

Basically, I kinda want to create something where you could be playing a game, fighting a mafia family, and then it could randomly turn out that the mafia family is actually demons/robots/aliens/Steve Jobs and you wouldn't even blink an eye.

Armour can be power armour, tech suits that enhance abilities, jet packs, special helmets for also enhancing stuff.

Enemies depending on what setting you get Androids of a mixed type. Humanoid and Animal type. So you could fight a group that has a human controller that contains Androids that are dog type, human type, eagle type or some such combination.

If you give a setting that you're looking forward it would assist in helping create things

Basically, what I'm going for would be about five to ten years in the future in a big city, like New York or some fictional version of it. Very little cyborg/power suit stuff, at least for the heroes. All that stuff would be reserved for the monsters/enemies. Partially for the sake of fun action fight time, but also so that you can shoot enemies several times, or light them on fire, and have them not die, at least immediately.

Inventor is as soft science as it gets, creating electricity fields, setting traps, or setting the field of play on fire. That kind of stuff is what I was going for.

After more thought, the healing would probably just be slightly advanced medical stuff, rather than nanomachines, and it would just be a suspension of disbelief that ten years future medical technology can repair wounds of the caliber that the heroes might suffer.

EDIT: Oh man energy drinks as various temp stat buff potions hells yes.

Well, you must make sure ED-209 makes it into it somehow!

Nano-machines could be incorporated to deal with status effects that don't effect the mind, such as assitting a body to fight off poisons and such and as a method of preventing death from bleeding out as they could be used to seal off wounds. Other then that, you could use stimulus needles or pills as things that would be used to create temporary buffs for your characters.

Instant healing would be an issue that I'm not quite sure how to deal with unless you create drugs that enhancing healing abilities.

You can give the Inventor usage of specific types of grenade type weapons for certain effects. Electricity could be done with Arc weapons similar in design to taser but higher powered.

If you wanted to you could give enemy humans certain cyborg parts for specific groups. Range ones can be given a Cyborg eye to increase accuracy and thugs arms to increase strength. That'd be a fun way to create different action oriented fights that add excitement. I think aliens would be a far fetch unless you think of a great backstory for bringing them in. Demons could be a fun way to add in certain effect, you could go with instead of actually fighting demons you can fight demon possessed enemies that get a huge boost in stats and abilities and maybe some strange characteristics added to them as well.

I think allowing players to eventually get cybernetic enhancements and power suits is a must though, it adds a great spice to things.

Weapons you can easily just take what we use right now and play around with it. Brace Knuckles that produce an electric charge on contact or release a shot of flame would be cool to add in. You can give guns the ability to fire a wide range of specially created bullets similar to D&D arrows.