Game Design Theory: Handing out Abilities

[Dragon_Child]

This is probablly the right forum for this...

Recently, I've been intending to start up a homebrew system. Unlike my other attempts, I know I need to come into this with a clear plan, or else it'll be a disaster.

More and more, I've been leaning towards a SAME style system, as it was originally envisioned. Four stats, the basic elemental types, everything has to be an elemental type, low-level skills must be increased to increase high level ones.

My main problem, however, is how to hand out abilities. It seems to me that there's a sliding scale with full freedom at one end, and "level-based" at the other. Full freedom lets you make whatever you want, but it also doesn't do well with themes. "Level-based" is restrictive, but it helps keep characters to a theme and flavor - being a "Knight" or a "Shadow Mage" MEANS something. Now, no matter what happens, obviously, abilities will always be level appropriate. No exceptions.

It seems to me that a few of these ideas could work, but I'm not too sure on any of them:

Full Freedom: You choose whatever abilities you want. You pick up "Fireball" or "Whirlwind Slash" by spending an ability slot, and there you have it. I'm thinking that some abilities might also be upgradable, prehaps by spending multiple ability slots, or by getting "Upgrade Slots" that you use on them. This would allow you to, say, increase your Fireball's range from Medium to Long, or make it harder for people to interrupt all of your Ice spells.

Paths: Paths are groupings of abilities. For example, the "Fire Mage Path" would contain 3 fire spells. When you pick the Fire Mage Path, you learn those 3 spells. Some paths would be direct upgrades - such as FIre Mage Path I, II, and III. Upgrade slots can also be brought into this.

Talents and Training: Sort of similiar to paths, except that you'd have "Talent Points", which are like skill points, but could ONLY be spent on talents. Talents would be stuff like "Fire Magic", "Cavalier Training", "Bastion Defense Manuevers", etc. Putting Talent points into a talent wouldn't give you anything when you do it, however, it would allow you to learn a new ability with training and DM permission. "Fireball" might require "3 points in Fire Magic". Location requirements can also be put in here, much like Frank's SAME Fantasy.

These, to me, seem to be the best three ideas for how to handle abilities in a SAME system. To give a bit more about what I'm designing, the setting is intended to be highly heroic fantasy type of game, that's more than a little over the top. Any suggestions on which one would work best, and what other options exist?

Beyond these three frameworks, I also need to decide on how many abilities to grant. It's a tricky thing - I need to give enough that players feel like they have options, but not so many to drown them in choices.

[User3]

Another option is to divorce the abilities almost entirely from the flavor--i.e., everyone can choose "single target ranged attack" if they want, but some characters will write down "Mighty Longbow" and others will write "Scorching Ray" or "Eldritch Blast" or whatever else they want (as appropriate to elements/attributes).

Make flavor consistency a character requirement, not an ability requirement.

Similarly, "fly" can mean you know how to cast a spell, or that you have wings, or that you cruise around on a flying carpet. Just make sure that none of those is strictly better in-game, and everyone can be happy. Meanwhile, you're laughing all the way to the bank, since you have far fewer mechanical abilities to balance.

[rapanui]

Full freedom is the way to go. Most people will naturally want to fit their characters into a theme. You can also create groups in-game that have thematic requirements for induction into an organization... like prestige classes without the crunch. So to be a member of the Knights of Grey (or whatever), you'd need good standing with the right people, the correct martial skills, and maybe one or two flavorful abilities.

[PhoneLobster]

OK, my current home brew is running off two stats for combat (yeah just two, there are a few additional values but the base attack and defence attributes run off two stats)

As for advancing character abilities it has two basic, dodgey, mechanics.

Background slots. A character basically gets a bunch of points to blow on skills and minor pretty close to inconsequential shite. Only these points each have names like "Ancestor, Parents, Training, Childhood, Home Town" etc... so it doesn't matter what you blow them on they look all thematic and characterful because you got your fricking sword style skill from your Ancestors and improved it by training under a master. Every now and then you might get a new background slot, and its called "the name of that adventure you just had".

Themes and theme advancement. You get access to groups of abilities in matching themes. You also advance in your general strength in themes in a manner similar to levels. When you go up a level all your themes give you new and better stuff.

Of course its the dumbest system in the universe because it does some stupid shit like hand out compulsory disadvantages along with theme advancement, and (at least in the current mostly unwritten draft revision) mixes up what you can spend background slots on between combat, non combat, and strictly unbalanced and superior shit like early or improved theme access, which is utterly wrong and lazy of me, but hey...

Its homebrewed for me specifically. If you think you can take it you can Oberoni Fallacy your ass off when you know you are the only GM who is ever going to have to "fix it" in play.

[Dragon_Child]

Another option is to divorce the abilities almost entirely from the flavor--i.e., everyone can choose "single target ranged attack" if they want, but some characters will write down "Mighty Longbow" and others will write "Scorching Ray" or "Eldritch Blast" or whatever else they want (as appropriate to elements/attributes).

Like the HERO (aka Champions) system does it, basically. I'm quite fond of this - I run a HERO game currently, and play in another one myself. However, through these games, I've noticed it's very hard to keep themes between characters. Any two fire mages don't feel at all connected, and being a "Fire Mage" is just a matter of what color you attack with. I think it would be nice that a guy who was a Fire Mage was actually more offensive, while the Ice Mage was more defensive, or something. Basically, it's fine in theory and in other games, but I'm really leaning towards something that helps support classical fantasy themes more.

Full freedom is the way to go. Most people will naturally want to fit their characters into a theme. You can also create groups in-game that have thematic requirements for induction into an organization...

Yeah, that's pretty much the reason why I'm considering full freedom at all. And the organization idea is a good one - prehaps some 'higher tier' abilities require other abilities. Like the "Zakuram Shield" spell could only be learned if you were a Knight of Zakuram, had 2 Bastion abilities, and 2 Holy Magic abilities (in full freedom, I'd still try to classify abilities, for no other reason than making them easy to search and look over).


PhoneLobster, your system sounds interesting. Any chance you have a computer document version I could look over for ideas?

[Catharz]

1171579578[/unixtime]]

Another option is to divorce the abilities almost entirely from the flavor--i.e., everyone can choose "single target ranged attack" if they want, but some characters will write down "Mighty Longbow" and others will write "Scorching Ray" or "Eldritch Blast" or whatever else they want (as appropriate to elements/attributes).

Like the HERO (aka Champions) system does it, basically. I'm quite fond of this - I run a HERO game currently, and play in another one myself. However, through these games, I've noticed it's very hard to keep themes between characters. Any two fire mages don't feel at all connected, and being a "Fire Mage" is just a matter of what color you attack with. I think it would be nice that a guy who was a Fire Mage was actually more offensive, while the Ice Mage was more defensive, or something. Basically, it's fine in theory and in other games, but I'm really leaning towards something that helps support classical fantasy themes more.

This is one reason I like SAME. The energy/elemental/damage types keep a real game mechanical effect for the 'fire mage' while allowing for the 'arbitrary ranged attack' to be balanced.

[PhoneLobster]

PhoneLobster, your system sounds interesting. Any chance you have a computer document version I could look over for ideas?

Not in its current form.

But when I have some time I'll stick a bit of a more detailed overview of where I'm currently at and where I'm trying to go with it in the My Own Invention forum.

Odds are it will be more enlightening than a document thats half there, half out of date and incompaitable and the third half entirely missing.

Edit: A screw it I'm bored of what I'm doing right now, I'll get to the write up fairly quickly.

[User3]

I have to agree, since M&M and Hero allow you to customize your own flavor. However, the issue is that you may have the problems they have, that one choice is very good becausei t does something else, albeit accidently

[Crissa]

DC: That's called Setting Flavour and should be chosen by whoever made the setting. It should be divorced from the actual rules, but this seperation need not be transparent to the people at the table.

But once you step away from the table and start making your own adventure or setting, there should be complete transparency.

-Crissa

[Dragon_Child]

I understand that's setting flavor - and in case it wasn't clear, that's part of the thing I want to establish with the system. I want to build the system and setting together, rather than just have one tacked on to the other, like they seem to be in so many other games. When I say "The Ice Mages of Ralaa are masters of defensive magics", I want people who take Ice Magic to have more defensive choices than people who take Fire Magic. The question for me is more HOW do you take Ice Magic.

To me, having the setting and the system support each other is important. I don't have any problem writing up generic powers that can be used to model new abilities off of, but I'd rather those be guidelines, and not the bulk of the options.

[User3]

One easy way is to provide suggested starting packages of abilities, e.g. "An initiate to the Ice Mages of Ralaa typically masters Ice Shield (name of generic ability), Ice Armor (name of generic effect), and Sleet Storm (name of generic spell), and goes on to learn ~whatever~". Then, do the same for other major archetype groups.

That soft-codes it into the setting, rather than hard-coding it into the rules, though.

[Modesitt]

What if all ice mages were given a free defensive power(Perhaps a standard one?) on top of their regular abilities? The other mage types would also get a free power of some sort. They would in no way be restricted from choosing whatever other powers they wanted, they'd just have that power too.

---

As for how many abilities - I'd aim for no more than one dozen distinct abilities at any one time. People start to become very forgetful after that point. More complex classes shouldn't have more than two dozen and even then many of those should be challenge-response deals like "If someone casts a spell at me, I can try to counter it as a free action." - Not things you need to consciously think about on your turn.

[Crissa]

I did say, DC, that the transparency of the setting to the system does not need to be apparent to the users of the setting.

You'll want to make the system balanced and consistent. But if you make the setting into the system instead of having a system to gauge with...

...Then you get into varied views of what the measure of a 'Feat' is, like in D&D. They have no clue what level effect is of anything they're doing, because they don't have a system independent of the setting.
-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1171706125[/unixtime]]
You'll want to make the system balanced and consistent. But if you make the setting into the system instead of having a system to gauge with...

...Then you get into varied views of what the measure of a 'Feat' is, like in D&D. They have no clue what level effect is of anything they're doing, because they don't have a system independent of the setting.

The problem is that a lot of abilities do matter on the setting, because stuff you're fighting directly modifies the power of those abilities.

For instance, flight in D&D is very powerful, because you've got a lot of melee-only beasts and most monsters have worse ranged attacks than they do melee attacks. In Shadowrun, not so much. People use pistols and rifles as their primary weapons, so flying generally just means you don't have the benefit of cover.

It even varies depending on the individual campaign. If your game is undead and construct heavy, sneak attack tends to be much less valuable. But in a game where you fight almost all humanoids, a sneak attack ability is ideal.

Your fire resistance may be awesome or it may suck, you really don't know until you start getting into combats.

I would argue that really, the value of an ability is almost entirely based on the setting, except for the most basic bonuses like "+1 on all attack rolls" or something.

[Dragon_Child]

Crissa, I have a feeling we're in agreement, but talking at a cross to each other. I understand what you're saying. I need stuff for benchmarks. I'm going to have benchmarks. However, I am not going to have a LOT of generic abilities - I'm going to get what I need for benchmarks, and then use those to judge how the actual abilities look.

Now, something hit me. What if abilities looked something like this (note, not actual abilities, not intended to be balanced, just quick examples pulled out of my ass):

"Fireball deals 8 damage at medium range. You can reduce the range to touch for +1 damage, increase the range to long for -1 damage, or make it a 20 ft burst for -2 damage."

"Ice Sheets can create a wall of ice composed of eight 2mx2m squares of ice that have 10 HP, 0 defense, 8 soak, fire resistance -8. It can also be used to cover an equal amount of ground, forcing an Agility DC 10 check to anyone who walks on it - failure means they fall prone."

[Crissa]

Well, transparency in design is where you can see inside it. Like I was saying, the users don't have to see or even have access to any of the generic abilities.

But you, as the game designer, should be able to divorce the flavour from the game mechanical effect, so you know what it does.

-Crissa