# 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.