Open Questions

Open Questions

Open Questions

Open Questions

Things deliberately left undecided as of 2026-09-27 (design sessions 1-3):

1. Damage during exec: no auto-abort by default - large spells stay viable. Design direction: significant damage triggers a concentration check; the threshold and which stats the check uses are tuning.
2. Reaction PER values: exact phase costs for reaction actions - baseline guideline is short/zero prep, short exec, padded recover as the tax (the 0/1/N shape).
3. Initiative as speed stat: how much prep/recover jitter should initiative shave (and does it compound with zero-phase feats)? Also worth asking whether the speed effect is necessary or even valuable - initiative already provides tick ordering and reaction priority; the jitter may be complexity without payoff.
4. Encumbrance model: weight lands in the exec stat-side for movement (alongside dex) but the concrete numbers are open.
5. Danger tiles and 3D: proposed approach is 3D tiles - there are no "open" tiles; stepping into an open space at your level means falling until you hit the bottom, then you're on that level; fly/levitate keeps you at height unless you take an action to rise or sink. Open because ASCII display is hard: shading on tiles could indicate space above; blank tiles could indicate space below.
6. UI/information design: the stance is settled by Representation and Feedback Doctrine (diegetic representation, numberless player-facing UI in the target state, numbers behind a dev flag during development), so this question is now narrower than it was. Open residue: how ASCII conveys phase state, and whether the player's Lore/Int gates what the UI reveals (identification-tradition style). E.g. a first-ever encounter with a baby dragon - does it show as "d" (dragon) or as "L" (big lizard, because you've never seen one)?
7. Exact tick basis and tile size: confirm the ~10 ticks/foot granularity and the base tile (leaning to 1 cubic foot; human footprint ~2 wide x 1 deep, matching the taller-than-wide roguelike glyph). Per-tile movement baseline at even terrain.
8. Decision-model backend choice: hosted vs local vs fallback, when the judgment layer actually ships.
9. Reaction timing: lean is a uniform rule - all reactions resolve on the tick after their trigger (no same-tick vs next-tick split). Consequence: single-tick execs are effectively uninterruptible by reactions; multi-tick execs have interruption windows (see 17).
10. Reactive builds: acting almost entirely on reactions (a duelist stance that punishes anything acting nearby; reacting during your own reaction's recover to skip the tax). The exploit window makes this risky by design - a feat/stance space to explore.
11. Interruptibility details: which actions pause vs cancel when the actor reacts (concentration-dependent on_react property); the taxonomy needs building out per action.
12. Terrain on all prep/recover?: should terrain influence every action's prep and recover, not just movement? Casting on a mountain ledge in a thunderstorm should be harder than on steady ground. If yes, terrain applies a general prep/recover modifier, with movement-specific rules layered on top.
13. Core resolution mechanic: direction - drop the d20; it's all probabilities on a computer. Use a uniform roll on 0-1. Displaying it as 1-100 percentages (roll*100+1) is confined to dev tooling and tuning logs: the player-facing UI carries no numbers per Representation and Feedback Doctrine. Keep the degrees of success mechanic from Pathfinder - it prevents nat-20/nat-1 -style oversized effects for events that should happen 5% of the time, and gives leveling a solid mechanism (the experienced archer is reliably better). Note: a uniform 0-1 roll is mathematically identical to a d20 (both flat) - the real questions are which thresholds define success/crit bands (PF2e uses +10/-10 over the DC) and whether to keep the distribution flat or move to a bell curve (2d10-style) to tame the tails further. The open residue: how close to Pathfinder's threshold structure vs making it our own.
14. Tick clock scope: direction (initial) - while in the dungeon proper the clock always runs; any actor within XX tiles of activity is part of the PER loop. Open: the XX radius, rest, non-combat behavior, patrols and wandering (phased exploration).
15. Player decision points: direction - player reactions are automated via a player-set decision policy - the first real "let the AI handle something" option for the player. It must be logged so the player can review and tweak their policy. Open: the policy UI, default policies, and this doubling as the testbed for autopilot mode.
16. Group tactics: largely resolved - no separate squad AI. Even in a group, every monster decides independently; team tactics are built into each monster's decision policy as teammate-conditional rules: fighters "if a teammate is within x tiles, move to flank" or "if a teammate caster is present, stand between them and the enemy"; archers "move behind the meat shield / behind cover before firing". The specific rules are tuning.
17. Interrupted or death mid-action: broader than death - what happens to actions interrupted mid-tick? With the uniform next-tick reaction rule (see 9), single-tick execs are effectively uninterruptible; multi-tick execs can be interrupted (many spells, the whirlwind). Interruption behavior is specified per action; default: nothing happens. Example: a two-tick fireball (tick 1 summon, tick 2 shoot) interrupted on tick 2 explodes in the caster's hands. Death is one cause of interruption, not the only one. Open.
18. Senses and attraction: strong direction - alerting monsters is a full sensory model, gated by the monster's nature: noise, smell, distant lights in darkness, the sudden absence of light, a patrol not showing up when it should (which triggers very different responses from lazy goblins vs trained mercenaries). Loud environments mask sounds - near an active forge or rushing waterfall, nothing triggers. Intelligence and Perception are the key drivers. Specs open.