LoZ RPG MADE EASY

Legend of Zelda RPG Mechanics MADE EASY
Alright, first things first; this is a combat system. You are expected to do all your ROLEplaying freeform. The design intent was that you should never say “I rolled high to convince them”. The point of the game is ROLEplaying, so play your damn role. So, to get to combat, you have to make your character.

This is a DICE POOL system. You add up your attribute, your skill, and your modifiers to find out how many coins you flip. All heads are successes. We recommend d6’s looking for 4, 5, or 6. It’s also typically opposed rolls. Your successes cancel with theirs, whoever has more wins, and the amount of successes more shows how much you beat them by.
Read this, but hold your horses
•	Choose a race
•	Set two attributes to Rank 2 and the other three attributes to Rank 1
•	All characters start with three (3) hearts
•	All characters start with one (1) plus Guts blocks of Stamina
•	All characters start with one (1) plus Wits blocks of Mana
•	Assign fifteen (15) skill points via point buy [Rank 1 costs 1 skill point. Rank 2 costs 2 skill points, plus the cost to raise the skill to Rank 1 (i.e. 1 more skill point). A Rank 2 skill costs, total, 3 skill points.]
•	Sage sets the starting rupees, 200 is normal
•	Refer to pricing on the tables to buy
•	Training cost is 20/sp, 30/mp, 20/action (action cost is only for songs)
•	Details details details
•	????
•	Adventure!
The tables ARE FUCKING HUGE, don’t scare yourself with those yet. Think of those tables as gen 1 yu-gi-oh cards. Every technique and spell and weapon is self contained with a frame work to relate them to one another. All you have to do is find a few that sound cool, because you’ll only be able to buy like, 3 max at chargen. And hell, the basic stuff is the best stuff. Every tech/spell/song is completely described by a single sentence. Pick a few, write them down, know them. Trust your fellow players to do the same, and everything makes sense. You’re only responsible for yourself and the Sage can make shit up as he wants, don’t question rule 0.
Alright, got that? Your race has one REALLY important stat attached to it : SIZE! Size determines what weapons you can wield, how easily you can get thrown around, how much you weigh, that kind of stuff. Everything assumes you’re MEDIUM sized. For example, a MEDIUM human can use a MEDIUM longsword normally. A MEDIUM human can use a LARGE sword clumsily, since it’s 1 above medium. A LARGE player (such as a goron) can use it just like a medium player can use a medium weapon. If Link hands the Master Sword to a goron, they can use it as easily as though Link was using a kokiri dagger. But if a goron hands their sword to Link, he’s going to be clumsy with it, just like Biggoron’s sword in OoT. As a rule of thumb, each size is +/- ¼  H damage.
That said, I’m going to explain everything as though I’m equipping Link.
The Master Sword is a MEDIUM weapon. It does 1H damage. It takes 1 action to swing, and occupies 1 hand. If a Goron picks it up. It still does 1H damage, takes 1 action to swing, and occupies 1 hand, but is so light for him that he can whip it out freely while Link has to spend an Action doing so. This weapon is too large or a kokiri to wield effectively, it would be like a Bastard Sword.
What’s an action you might be asking. You have 3 per turn, they’re valuable. I’ll explain later
A Gladius is a SMALL weapon. It does 3/4H damage, takes 1 action to swing, and occupies 1 hand. This would be a toy for a Goron, but is equivalent to a long sword for a kokiri. Link however, is big enough to whip it out freely.
A Bastard Sword is a LARGE weapon and does 5/4H damage. This is the tricky one, because it’s a ‘hand and a half’ sword quite literally. You can swing it two ways as a medium player. You can use both hands and roll Heavy rather than melee. If you do so, it will take 1 action, and stun for 1 on hit. OR, you can be a man and use one hand. You’ll still roll melee rather than heavy, but it’s so clumsy it takes 2 actions to attack. A goron treats this like a long sword (ie 1 hand, 1 action). This is the heaviest weapon a Kokiri can wield, and he treats it as a Great Sword that does, you guessed it, 5/4H damage. This slot can sacrifice damage to gain REACH, and let you attack someone 2 squares away, rather than just adjacent, but that’s weapon by weapon and not a rule.
A Great Sword is a HEFTY weapon and does 6/4H damage. This is the biggest weapon a medium player can wield, and uses Heavy instead of Melee. It takes both hands to wield, and takes two actions, but stuns on hit. For a Goron, this would be equivalent to a Bastard Sword. A Kokiri could not pick this up. Likewise, a Goron’s Great Sword can’t be picked up by a Hylian.
So lets review. If you want a quick weapon, use 1 size smaller than your racial size. If you want a normal weapon, use your racial size. If you want a situational weapon, use one size above your racial size. If you want a BIG weapon, use two sizes above your racial size. Once you have that picked, it DOES NOT come up again unless you start trading weapons with each other.

NOW : Ranged weapons. Pick the size you are, you can’t shoot above your weight and there’s no benefit to below it. Using a Ranged Weapon is two actions; First you must aim, then you must attack. If you don’t aim, you only roll half the dice.

NOW : Magic. : This shit ain’t easy. Legend of Zelda is about a guy with a sword and some items, not wizards. You want magic? You don’t get it in the easy version.

Got that all? Now let me explain the wonderful world of ACTIONS. You get 3 actions per turn. An action is moving, attacking, using an item, or defending, generally speaking. To think of it easier, there are four phases to combat. The teams first action, which everyone performs simultaneously (simultaneity impacts dodging and stun). Then the team performs the second action. Then the third. Then the enemies take their actions. And repeat. If a player or enemy was stunned before their round started, they lose that many actions BEFORE they can start (ie, if you got hit by a Heavy weapon, you don’t get to act on Action 1). Any action you can act on, you can reserve for later, to defend during the enemy’s turn. You don’t have to, but if you go all out, you’re a sitting duck for the enemy to take free hits on. It doesn’t have to be the third action either. Make the enemy play hopscotch dodging by staggering your reserves!
Alright, moving, attacking, and using items should be very straight forward. Defending is weird. If you have a shield, you can block. If you succeed in blocking, you can continue blocking. If you fail, you flinch and drop your guard, just like in the video game when you go HNNNG and flash red.
Dodging moves where you stand, to somewhere they’re not attacking. If you’re pinned in a corner, you can’t dodge a spin attack (AoE tech), but you can dodge a thrust. Once you’ve dodged though, that was your action. They can attack again if you’re in range, and you’re boned.
SPEAKING OF ATTACKING AGAIN, that’s a tech, I’ll get to those in a second.
If you don’t have a shield, you can try to parry. This doesn’t have the lasting power of blocking, and doesn’t give you your shield’s DR, but a successful parry gives you bonus dice on your next attack. It’s good because you roll melee and you can pretend to be single attribute dependent as a melee guy.

NOW TECHS: you have stamina. You get stamina back by taking a breather for an action to get 4 stamina back. You use stamina to perform special attacks known as techniques, taken from that huge list of techniques. Every tech is self-explanatory. Again, pick ones that sound cool and don’t worry about the others.

CONGRATULATIONS: You can now play this system.
>but anon, that took three pages
Because I’m wordy and redundant
>But what about all these sub systems tacked on like grappling
That shit’s hard to do and was made as an exercise in applying the system. Every system struggles with grappling and stealth and mounted combat and sailing. Don’t use them if you don’t like them, they’re all optional rules.
>But you never explained magic
There’s over 200 spell EFFECTS that procedurally generate over a billion spells and require you to sequence different spells for optimization. It’s a system designed to fluff out enemies that have spell rotations, and to sate crunch wizards. Any average player will learn a few spells and they’ll basically be techs. 1 spell effect => 1 hand => 1 action, that’s all you really need to know