what is valti?
valti is a pencil-and-paper roleplaying game that i have been working on for many years, and is nowhere near finished. at a high level:the underlying design principle of valti is nomological-metaphysical symmetry. there are 3 attributes (body, mind, spirit), each with 3 sub-attributes (body: agility, endurance, might; mind: insight, perception, reason; spirit: harmony, intuition, willpower). each attribute has an associated resource (body: health, mind: acuity, spirit: ataraxia). there are also 9 elements of magic (air, earth, fire, water, nature, arcane, holy, unholy, void). the elements are arranged in a series of relationships that determine how they interact.
agents advance by accruing destiny, which is then spent by investing in paths, or withheld to be used as a resource in its own right (agents gain access to special abilities that use destiny as a currency, and destiny spent on these abilities resets daily). paths can be thought of as similar to skill trees in other games. players may pick and choose which paths their agents pursue, though some paths do have prerequisites and antirequisites that have to be satisfied; there are no strict "classes" per se, but there are paths and groups of paths that will perform similar functions. there is also a matrix of attributes and elemental affinities called the weave, which is advanced semi-randomly by design. agents that are extremely lucky or unlucky on advancement get an abstract scaling benefit or deficit to "normalize" their power level. as destiny is spent, a complementary currency called fate is acquired, which is then used to fuel other abilities.
in combat, agents spend opportunity to perform actions. some actions (such as spellcasting) may take more than a turn's worth of opportunity, so they have to spread the action out over multiple turns. players suffer damage to their resources through expenditure or through incoming attacks. damage is of two varieties; serious damage directly depletes the corresponding resource (wounds deplete health, torpor depletes acuity, depravity depletes ataraxia), and minor damage, called attrition, will gradually build up until it forces a roll to determine if it has become depleting. attacks will generally use some combination of might and agility against the defender's agility and/or endurance.
spells utilize some combination of attributes, elements, or both; most spells have long casting times. paths determine what spells an agent can cast. there are minor magics that can be cast quickly but these generally are more comparable to normal attacks in strength. there is no "spellcasting stat"; a spell may use any attribute for attack or defense, depending on the spell.
most effects, positive or negative, that persist for multiple turns are standardized. depending on the effect, its current magnitude, and the magnitude of repeated applications, it may grow stronger, increase in duration, both, or neither (e.g. if the new effect is negligibly powerful compared to the existing one).