Pirates of the Western Sea

The aim for Pirates of the Western Sea is for it to basically be Sword and Sorcery style fantasy in tone, inspired by Conan, Pirates of Dark Water, the Joust video game (of all things), Thundarr the Barbarian, just a particular tone that lives in my head but is hard to precisely state. As for rules, the direction I'm aiming for on this one is basically "What if The Fantasy Trip was done in a cleaner, better organized way?" This doesn't mean a totally direct clone, but something inspired by its style of balance, and the variety of characters it supports based on a pretty simple character generation method, etc.

Rules Ruminations

This is going to start out as a list of bullet point ideas that hopefully coalesce into something that has direction I can more fully flesh out. Lemme get to idea dumping:

• TFT uses 3d6 for most resolution. Just to arbitrarily choose my own, let's try 3d20, choose middle? Or maybe better yet, let's ruminate on my other 3d20 system, where 1d is for accuracy and the other 2d can also be used to determine effect. (I know what this is, may describe it again as I go)
• TFT is generally a "Roll equal to or under your Attribute to succeed" system, with difficulty being represented by adding or removing dice, though it also uses +/- modifiers. Talents are not generally about adding to an attribute, but usually more about unlocking the ability to do particular things, or removing die penalties when doing those things. I'd like to preserve the vibes of TFT Talents. They are really good at making you feel a bit special in your ability to use your talent, and they also do a good job at making you feel like... a certain kind of character. As in... they satisfyingly replace classes in making you feel like your character fits into various archetypes and so on.
• TFT Character Creation has a beautiful, deceptively simple character creation. You have Dexterity, Strength, IQ. Each starts at 8. Assign 8 more. Buy talents (you can buy up to your IQ in Talents). That's really the whole story. 8, 8, 8, assign 8, choose Talents, choose Equipment. Each of the 3 attributes has value. Dexterity rolls are made to succeed at almost everything. Strength is also health and unlocks your ability to use certain weapons. IQ gives you points to purchase Talents and Spells and also unlocks more difficult Talents and Spells. There are things I don't love about TFT, but the simplicity that allows for so much variety is a key thing to replicate.
• Imagine a Health system that is in that Blue Planet vein I sometimes consider. Any weapon is potentially deadly with a single blow. Here is an idea: Roll 3d20, 1 a different color to the other 2. Weapons have an effectiveness modifier and possibly a minimum ST or DX to weild. To strike an opponent, roll equal to or under DX on the 1 differently colored d20. For each point of ST or DX you do not meet the weapon's requirements by, subtract 1 DX. If you hit, you now evaluate all 3 dice. Each die that has rolled equal to or under the ST (modified by weapon effectiveness) scores a level of wound. 1 is a light wound, 2 a serious, and 3 a grievous. I like the possibility of all weapons having the chance to be deadly. The minimum ST or DX thing feels like it preserves some of that thing from TFT, without completely preventing people from weilding weapons it seems like they should be able to use. Still have to work out armor...
• 3d20 Dice Tricks: Having the standard roll be 3d20, 1 a different color from the other 2 gives quite a few options - Roll 3d20, evaluate the different colored one for accuracy and all 3 for effect (means the accuracy has a linear style of probability ala DnD). Roll 3d20, evaluate the middle value one for accuracy and all 3 for effect (gives a nice 3d6 style curve on accuracy). Advantage/Disadvantage by rolling 3d20 and taking the higher or lower of the 2 differently colored d20, then evaluating all 3 for effect. "Super Advantage/Disadvantage" by rolling 3d20 and straight taking the highest or lowest for accuracy, and all 3 for effect.
• Another option on difficulty is inspired by games like Errant, where you generally are trying to roll under an attribute, but above a difficulty level. Ties or whatever are generally resolved as "highest roll that succeeds wins." In TFT, difficulty is either through having to roll more or less dice vs. your attribute, or with straight modifiers. This difficulty level thing is kind of like modifiers, but using it in conjuntion with a curved die roll (middle d20 on 3d20, for example) does change the statistical effect. Like, representing difficulty by applying a minus to an attribute hurts more than making it a number you must exceed on the bottom of the distribution.