Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Username17 »


Catharz wrote:Generally speaking, what are your thouughts on a broad/tight skill system similar (but not identical) to D&D?


I've thought about it. I've decided that it runs into several problems:

[*] People end up not being able to make good use of some of the tight skills, and being very required to have others. When "Interaction" contains "Leadership" (that ends up giving your team mates bonuses) and "Expression" (that doesn't) - the bard gets screwed over the Marshall.

[*] Far more damning, however, is the fact that it has the current skill point problem of "If you weren't god at this, you'll never be ood at this) only much more so because you've already spent the points from your Survival Skill on Climbing - so if you decide you need Swimming, your expenditures on Survival are capped and you can't continue to raise climbing at all if you want to have a meaningful swimming roll (which let's face it, you probably can't get anyway).

[*] Finally, it means that things which people decide to be good at raise really fast compared to other things - which means that if it becomes important for someone to spot someone's sleight of hand roll or something it becomes extremely unlikely for those numbers to be even on the same RNG.

I vastly prefer a system of skill proficiencies. Have some general skills - like 8 or 12 - and then have people be proficient or non-proficient in certain applications. That way, if you want to become a dancer at level 16, you just grab Dancing Proficiency and immediately your whole Presence skill adds in.

Individual uses of skills could be usable without proficiency at a penalty or unusable without proficiency. So you need some specific training to disarm traps, but you have it at a level appropriate level when you get it.

---

Catharz wrote:P.S.: What is your view on d20 vs. 3d6?


3d6 is bad. I really like Champions, but generating numbers on 3d6 is an unfortunate choice. Here's why:

[*] Lack of transparency: A +1 on a d20 means 5%, what does it mean on 3d6? From 3-4, it's a change of 31.4%, but from 10-11 it's a change of 12.5%. This means that as a DM, it is hard to know how modifiers are going to effect probability in actual play. Setting a DC becomes much more frought, certainly.

[*] Hard to Design For: Even worse than the above is trying to write up coherent target number modifiers ahead of time. Ouch, that +1 modifier you write in could vary by a factor of more than 25 (less than half a percent in the 17-18 bracket, 12.5% in the 9-10 bracket).

[*] Hard on Newbs: Not only does the average player have a hard time juggling that kind of statistical data, but people who have small penalties actually have huge penalties. The guy who hits on an 11+ hits half the time, the guy who hits on a 14+ hits less than one sixth of the time - a +3 bonus is a times three increase in success rate. That hurts if you keep missing opportunities for synergy, or if you're a level behind the rest of the party for any reason.

---

Catharz wrote:It adds another level of complexity, but it seems to me that it would work as a method to let characters take skills like Profession (Chef) without shooting themselves in the foot.


The best system I've ever seen for this is Shadowrun's Knowledge Skills. These are skills that specifically have no meaning except solving RP problems and getting Info. Thus, the skill "Obscure Trivia" is just as good as "Italian Cookery", is just as good as "Wuxia Films" is just as good as blah blah blah. Since you don't need them, if you want to have them at all (and you do, honestly), you should just split up the points into "Good Skills" and "Flavor Skills".

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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

I got a hold of 3rd ed shadowrun and I've been reading it over and I really do like that concept of knowledge skills. I think a lot of games, including D&D could benefit from it. Giving every character knowledges is cool. Though there's still a dividing line between useful knowledges and purely flavorful stuff.

Knowledge (SWAT Teams) and knowledge (Arms Dealers) is a lot more useful than Knowledge (Cooking) or whatever. So even still you could be throwing away knowledge points on stuff that really is useless or you could be buying useful stuff.

There comes a point I think where there has to be some DM choice about what is purely flavor and what is somewhat useful. The thing is that you really need some DM choice there because what knowledge classifies as useful is entirely based on the campaign itself, so I don't think any particular rules set can accurately value in.

And that kinda goes for active skills too. In some settings, being a blacksmith may just be background flavor, in other games it may actually be worth something. And the game should somehow take that into account.

Things that are entirely flavor based really shouldn't cost you anything and should just be limited by the scope of whatever the DM thinks is reasonable.

But aside from that, I kind of like Shadowrun's knowledge system. A target number based system still keeps low dice knowledges somewhat useful, as opposed to a DC system which eventually phases them out completely.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Username17 »

Even then, though. The knowledge of SWAT teams can be helpful... but so too can a knowledge of Cooking. The basic Mission: Impossible setup means that being a gourmet chef can be far more mission-critical than even the most detailed knowledge of military deployment and equipment.

Depending upon the mission, of course.

And since the PCs design their own mission strategies, they can build things around the fact that one of their number actually is a gourmet chef. Or ballet dancer. Or has a comprehensive knowledge of 20th century flatvids. Or whatever.

There comes a certain degree of munchkinism where there are knowledge skills that specifically effect how you can perform extended tasks that improve your character in various ways (Computer Theory, Medicine, Talismongering) or even grant combat bonuses (Small Unit Tactics). That's a problem. But the basic chasis is really nice.

I think it's ultimately the direction that things want to go.

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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1107663010[/unixtime]]Even then, though. The knowledge of SWAT teams can be helpful... but so too can a knowledge of Cooking. The basic Mission: Impossible setup means that being a gourmet chef can be far more mission-critical than even the most detailed knowledge of military deployment and equipment.

Depending upon the mission, of course.


Yeah, that's why I think the DM, who is the only person who really knows the kinds of missions you'll be going on, should assign a certain value to knowledge skills, some arbitrary scale like 0-2. 0 being a flavor ability (and thus free) and 1 being a skill that may be useful at some point, and 2 being a skill that almost always will be, like knowledge (arcana) in D&D.

So if you're running a campaign featuring espionage, some of those knowledges may actually pay off. But if you're doing the typical D&D hack and slash, being able to dance should probably just be a flavor ability.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Murtak »

Sounds like you could do a decent implementation of that system in DnD, with just a few modifications.

1) there are regular skills (someone please think up a better name for these) and knowledges/professions

2) knowledges never have direct combat appliance (like, say, tumble)

3) combine the currently weak skills (jump, etc.) into useful skills (i.e.: combine jump, swim, climb, possibly tumble into athletics)

4) split skill points into two pools, one of them to be used for knowledges only.

5) make sure characters get enough skill points to actually catch up in at least one skill they belatedly realize they want.

Now if you want characters to be able to immediatly max out their skill ranks so to speak you pretty much have to go with proficiencies, which runs into another problem - maximum number of skills to get. Even given 20 skills, eventually players will have all of them. And if you want rogues to be able to lie, sneak, pick locks and climb from level 1 on and bards to be able to sing, motivate and recognize odd bits of lore from level 1 then a multiclassing character will most likely be able to get at least half of all the skills in the game at level 3, at max ranks.

I am not sure I like that solution. You might compromise between the two by simply having less skill ranks (1 every 3 levels), so you can catch up more rapidly but still have skills left to get after level 3. You could then attach extra effects to the ranks, like:
sneak:
1: hide, move silently
2: rehide after sniping
3: bluff to hide
4: hide in plain sight
5: go invisible
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

The concept of skill points just doesn't work. Because eventually it will result in people falling behind. There's no way to simply give people more points to fix it.

Actually if anything skill points need to be static. You hand out X number of skill points and people get a bonus from that. The rest of the skill bonus is simply determined by level.

So you have say "hide +6" and so your hide score is your level +6.

And you can know skills at various levels. But that level doesn't go up. That is you stay wtih "hide +6" at all times.

If you wanted to pick up another skill, you can lower existing ones and pick up the new one. So say you wanted to take spellcraft. You could switch your hide from +6 or +4 and then get "spellcraft +2"

And if you wanted to be more realistic you could put limits on how many points can be shifted at one time, but in any case, you allow characters to reasonably catch up with a semiuseful skill.

Other characters may choose to be really good at only a handful of skills. You'd probably want a cap of some sort, probably between +5 and +10 where you can't take any more base bonuses in any one skill. Whether you ever hand out more skill points in this set up is dependent on how diverse you want people to be. You mostly just let their levels handle the power.

That's a system for DC based skills.

If you want Target number/success based, like Shadowrun, you can just use Shadowrun's system. I think it's a nice system for knowledges, because has a nice guideline as to how much your skill tells you, as opposed to all or nothing.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Username17 »

The concept of skill points in a level system doesn't work. But if the skill points are your level, it just might.

Here's how you do it:

Skill Proficiencies

You only have 8 active skills, two tied to each attribute:

[*] Survival (Str) - Climb, Jump
[*] Name (Str) - Swing Swords
[*] Stealth (Quk) - Hide, Move Silently
[*] Precision (Quk) - Shoot Bows, Tie Ropes
[*] Perception (Int) - See, Hear
[*] Tinker (Int) - Diable Traps, Pick Locks
[*] Composure? (Cha) - Gather Information, Resist Confusion
[*] Expression? (Cha) - Lie, Lead Troops

Some of them I haven't settled on a name for, but you get the idea. You only have 8 skills, and if you're a PC you can only raise them to within 4 points of each other (the backstory I'm going to use for this is that PCs all have a certain kind of magic that makes them kick-ass named characters and raises all their stats and skills faster and higher than normal - but only to keep them roughly even - but you can do it however you want).

Then, any particular task can only be done with a penalty without a relevent proficiency - if it can be done at all. So if you don't have the "Hide in Plain Sight" proficiency, you are taking a penalty if you try to hide without something to hide behind. If you don't have the "Throw Lightning Bolt" proficiency, you can't throw lightning bolts at all.

Some things can be in more than one place. For instance, the "Acting" proficiency would allow you to use one of your Charisma skills to disguise yourself by convincing others that you were something else than what you were. But another proficiency would let you use your stealth to disguise yourself in a dex dependent fashion just by covering up your distinguishing features and lying low.

In order to get any o these proficiencies you just need to make the prereqs for them and spend the time. Evey spell and ability and weapon proficiency is really just the same thing - it's a check mark that allows you to roll one of your eight skills to do something.

It's not level based exactly, and someone who has a +10 in Precision and Tinker is about equal to someone who has a +12 in Precision and a +8 in Tinker, thanks to the marvels of Binary Choice Theory. As such, it has some of the advantages people are looking for in a Skill-based system and retains the balanceability of a Level-based system.

---

Knowledge skills could be done one of two ways: either they could just be skill proficiencies too (congratulations, you can now roll Tinker to make Chemistry checks!) or they could be a whole separate tally where you don't keep track of skill minimums or really care that much.

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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Sma »

You only have 8 active skills, two tied to each attribute:

# Survival (Str) - Climb, Jump
# Name (Str) - Swing Swords
# Stealth (Quk) - Hide, Move Silently
# Precision (Quk) - Shoot Bows, Tie Ropes
# Perception (Int) - See, Hear
# Tinker (Int) - Diable Traps, Pick Locks
# Composure? (Cha) - Gather Information, Resist Confusion
# Expression? (Cha) - Lie, Lead Troops

Some of them I haven't settled on a name for, but you get the idea. You only have 8 skills, and if you're a PC you can only raise them to within 4 points of each other (the backstory I'm going to use for this is that PCs all have a certain kind of magic that makes them kick-ass named characters and raises all their stats and skills faster and higher than normal - but only to keep them roughly even - but you can do it however you want).


Yay Earthdawn ;b

Sounds pretty good, because it can cover a pretty wide range of characters, and is simple. Which I fond to be more and more important the longer I play D&D.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Username17 »

Yeah, Earthdawn has a lot to offer us. Unfortunately, I can't get behind their use of polygonal dice, nor do I find the whole Horrors thing particularly interesting. As is, I don't go in for actually paying Earthdawn, but there are a number of things I would personally like to steal from it.

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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Murtak »


Ok, so basically that is like getting 2 skill points per category per level, with a cap of how far skills can be apart, right? So your skills could look like this:
10/10, 12/8, 11/9, 8/12

I guess that works if you are willing to state that everyone is pretty decent at everything - in this regard I like my solution better (see below).

RandomCasualty wrote:The concept of skill points just doesn't work. Because eventually it will result in people falling behind. There's no way to simply give people more points to fix it.

Perhaps I was not clear enough. Skill points that give you bonuses do not work well. The system can still work out ok if you are looking at it on a limited scale, that being a fixed amount of levels, a low maximum amount of ranks and a high amount of skill points.

Skill points being used in other ways may work better though, especially if you want the game to scale indefinitely. Let us pretend a rogue gets 3 skill points per level. He invests one of those skill points into hide. Now, in DnD this gives him a +1 to hide. But you do not need to handle it that way.

You could instead let that first rank in hide give him his level as a bonus to hide checks (thus ensuring it will always be a level-appropriate ability). And then instead of later hide ranks giving numerical bonuses to hide checks they give you additional abilities, like sniping from cover, hiding in plain sight and the likes. You will want to keep the number of skill points and and maximum ranks pretty low, so not everyone has all the basic skills from level 2 on.

So our first level rogue might pick hide, move silently and disable device as skills - all at their basic uses only. And later on he can decide if he wants to pull weird tricks with his existing skills or if he wants to learn entirely new skills.

This system has it's own disadvantages - at low levels characters might not be as diverse as first level DnD characters are now, skillwise. Also you will eventually run out of advanced skill uses to take. Overall though I think it would work.

RandomCasualty wrote:If you want Target number/success based, like Shadowrun, you can just use Shadowrun's system. I think it's a nice system for knowledges, because has a nice guideline as to how much your skill tells you, as opposed to all or nothing.

As long as you actually use a different dice system, yes. The Shadowrun system is terrible as far as breaking points go. (Shadowrun still uses d6, reroll on a 6, right?)
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

Murtak at [unixtime wrote:1107782984[/unixtime]]
So our first level rogue might pick hide, move silently and disable device as skills - all at their basic uses only. And later on he can decide if he wants to pull weird tricks with his existing skills or if he wants to learn entirely new skills.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. That could be workable.


As long as you actually use a different dice system, yes. The Shadowrun system is terrible as far as breaking points go. (Shadowrun still uses d6, reroll on a 6, right?)


Yeah, Shadowrun's dice system is kinda screwy. I'd really like to see another type of dice used. Maybe d10s like white wolf.

What I do like about Shadowrun knowledge is how you set a target number based on how obscure something is, and then the number of successes determine how much you know. And it's nice having knowlede rolls that aren't binary. It's also nice allowing people with relatively low scores to have a small chance of partial success at any knowledge roll.

The system seems a lot better than a DC based knowledge system where you either know it or you don't. I like the idea of a partial success.

Really, despite the shadowrun target number system being awful, if we took the shadowrun system right out of the box, I'd really prefer it to the current D&D system.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Username17 »

Murtak wrote:I guess that works if you are willing to state that everyone is pretty decent at everything


Um... no. Everyone is level-appropriately decent at everything they are good at, which is not the same thing. Just because your Stealth is 8 and your Perception is 12 doesn't mean that you have to have any of the stealth-related abilties, it's just that if you did have any of them, they'd only be 4 points down from the best thing you could do.

Also, it's not equivalent to 2 skill points/category/level - it's equivalent to 8 skill points/level. You could have 6/6/6/6/10/10/10/10 by the time you've picked up 64 skill points. Also, your levels come 1/8 pf a level at a time in that you get the skill point individually instead of all at once, so the giant leaps of level aren't as noticable.

Our two systems aren't that different, but those differences that do exist are:

[*] My proposed system allows for smoother progression - each bonus (equivalent to 1/8 of a level in your proposal) can be handed out separately, each ability (equivalent to a skill point in your system) can be gained individually as well.

[*] My system is more customizable. People can choose to be up to +2 or -2 on any field of endeavor, and as they gain power they can move those bonuses and penalties around. Furthermore, they can take the "advanced uses" you propose in any order, because they are represented as text rather than numbers.

[*] A character sheet looks like this:

Code: Select all

[br]S 3      Skills:             Equipment:[br]Q 4      Survival: 3         ________[br]I 6      Name: 4             ________[br]C 6      Stealth: 5[br]          Tinker: 5[br]          Perception: 7[br]          Precision: 3[br]          Name: 4[br]          Name: 3[br]Special Abilitiities:[br]Microscopic Vision (Per)[br]Vanish (Ste)[br]Climb Sheer Surfaces (Sur)[br]Swim (Sur)[br]Pick Locks (Tin)[br]Active Petrifying Gaze (Per)


In your system it would instead have a set of numbers after each of the skills that you had (so the character in question would have Climb 1 or Climb 2, for instance). Also, as I understand you, there would also have spaces for feats and spells and stuff, so I don't know how that would work out.

Here, I'm converting everything to a skill ability. Everything. Without exception.

Murtak wrote:As long as you actually use a different dice system, yes. The Shadowrun system is terrible as far as breaking points go. (Shadowrun still uses d6, reroll on a 6, right?)


Yes, but as long as you keep TNs static, it's extremely intuitive and easy to use. Using he static TN of 4, you get 3/5 of a success per die and the dice pools vary. It works fine. I personally prefer just using a d20 and capping the knowledge skills pretty low and capping the DCs pretty low. Make people take up Ballroom Dancing rather than get increasingly good at Cake Decoration looking for those really high DC Cake Decoration rolls that they'll need to make at high level.

RC wrote:Yeah, Shadowrun's dice system is kinda screwy. I'd really like to see another type of dice used. Maybe d10s like white wolf.


Not just no, hell no. d10s are in all ways worse than d6s. They cost more, they are harder to find, they don't roll as well, they are easier to cheat with, they hurt more when you step on them, and they aren't even polyhedrons. The d10 is superior, slightly, to the d4, but only barely.

I point out that the current White Wholf system averages one success per die, it wouldn't lose anything if it was just done with d6s and the TN was 5.

RC wrote:
Really, despite the shadowrun target number system being awful, if we took the shadowrun system right out of the box, I'd really prefer it to the current D&D system.


That's probably why I am currently running two Shadowrun games and playing in another Shadowrun game.

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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1107801754[/unixtime]]
Not just no, hell no. d10s are in all ways worse than d6s. They cost more, they are harder to find, they don't roll as well, they are easier to cheat with, they hurt more when you step on them, and they aren't even polyhedrons. The d10 is superior, slightly, to the d4, but only barely.

Well, the main advantage of d10s is that you can have slightly more modifiers.

The main problem with Shadowrun is that you get hit with a total +1 modifier, and TN 5, and it's bad. You get hit with a total +2 modifier, and it's crippling. But after TN 6 you more or less enter a don't care state where further modifiers aren't nearly as damning. So a +2 modifier can either totally screw you over, or do almost nothing.

On a d10 you've got a little more room to numerical modify things, and wound penalties are actually somewhat bearable.

As a player of many a character who was pretty much rendered a nonfactor in Shadowrun by a moderate wound, I can say that it would be kinda nice to get some kind of modifier that didn't totally kill you.

I also remember trying to dual wield guns in Shadowrun with that +2 penalty. I mean... after playing a bit under those rules you wish you were a TWFer in D&D.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Murtak »

Using d10s instead of d6s but keeping Shadowrun's crazy "reroll for higher numbers" system will simply give you a humongous problem at TNs 8 to 11 instead of a large problem at 4 to 7.

The basic system of rerolling is flawed by itself. if you want a TN system and want everyone to have a chance you should take a look at the (non d20) Rokugan game. I never did any analysis on it but it looked decent in that regard.

Basically it works like this - you want to, say, hit your opponent. You look at your agility and weapon skill. Both should usually be numbers from 1 to 5. You roll a number of dice equal to the two combined. You then get to keep a number of them equal to your agility stat. You reroll 10s (or 6s, or whatever your dice are).

So let's say you have a 3 agility and 2 swordmanship. You roll 5 dice, 10, 8, 6, 2, 3. You reroll the 10 and get a 4, for a total of 14. You pick 3 of those dice: the 14, 8 and 6. Add these up for a total of 28. That is the TN you hit.

Open ended, TN based and much much better then the SR system. Degrees of success are realized by voluntary raising your TN, but it works better if you just look at how much you beat the TN by I think. I am sure it still has some breakpoints but nowhere near the scale of Shadowrun's breakpoints.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

Murtak at [unixtime wrote:1107820670[/unixtime]]Using d10s instead of d6s but keeping Shadowrun's crazy "reroll for higher numbers" system will simply give you a humongous problem at TNs 8 to 11 instead of a large problem at 4 to 7.



Well I was thinking of using White wolf's threshold system perhaps. Where after the TN goes above some number, like 9, instead of increasing the number you need, you simply subtract successes.

So if you had a task of difficulty 11, it would be 9 (2 threshold), so if you rolled 3 successes, this would only be 1 success.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Username17 »

Moving Target Numbers around when the number of dice you roll is moving around is a terible idea all around. If you change the number of dice being rolled, don't change the target numbers. If you change the target numbers, don't change the number of dice being rolled.

Shadowrun was the first game that changed both, in an effort to be able to simulate virtually any possible range of probability. And it can, but only at the cost of making the math intractable even to me.

Having the ability to simulate any possible range of chance only makes any difference or sense if you actually know what it is that you are simulating. And let's face it, by the time you are checking to see how many sixes you roll on 8 dice, none of you can accurately estimate your chance of getting 3 or more in a reasonable amount of time (say, the time it takes for the player to ask you what his TN is while rolling the dice). None of you can do it, because even Rain Man has a problem with permutations that complicated.

While in the "real world" there is alwaysa chance of failure and success that can occassionally become pretty infuriating if you minimize it to 5% - the fact is that if something is so unlikely that it can't be represented on a d20 we should probably just have it not happen. Stupidly unlikely coincidences make for bad stories, so if something gets pushed off the Random Number Generator for the game, it's perfectly OK to just have the crazily unlikely event not happen.

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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1107855694[/unixtime]]
While in the "real world" there is alwaysa chance of failure and success that can occassionally become pretty infuriating if you minimize it to 5% - the fact is that if something is so unlikely that it can't be represented on a d20 we should probably just have it not happen. Stupidly unlikely coincidences make for bad stories, so if something gets pushed off the Random Number Generator for the game, it's perfectly OK to just have the crazily unlikely event not happen.


While for the most part I can agree, I think botches do have an important part in the story. Like when the hero drops the keys to the door (or some other important item) in the middle of a fight, possibly either being destroyed landing in some other dangerous environment. Sometimes the controls to extend the bridge do get damaged during the firefight. Sometimes the hero (or villain's) gun does jam even though the chances are stastically less than 5%.

Though I'm not even really sure how you adequately simulate any of that beyond just a random chance of a botch, and the DM deciding what goes wrong. But stuff like this is a definite part of storytelling.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Essence »

RC wrote:Stuff like that happens all the time in storytelling.


DMing is not storytelling. That said, if you as the DM deem it dramatically appropriate for the controls to break or the keys to fall into the sewer, don't roll for it. Just make it happen. If your players don't trust you enough for you to agree to that bit of dramatic suspense, you shouldn't be DMing them in the first place.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Username17 »

I think you should probably have it be something along the lines of:

Whim of Fate:

At the start of every adventure, every character rolls three unluck dice. Every 6 rolled on those dice generates a point of "bad karma" and the player has to roll an extra die. The player then rolls three luck dice. Every 6 rolled on those dice generates a point of "good karma", and the player rolls an extra die. These extra dice can further generate karma and extra dice, and so on without limit (provided you keep rolling sixes).

If you end the adventure with any good or bad karma, you get no experience for that adventure.

Spending Karma:

Karma can be spent at any time, but only one point of good or bad karma can be spent during any scene. If you spend a point of good karma, something unlikely and cool happens, or you get a second chance to succeed at an action. If you spend a point of bad karma, something unlikely and bad happens, or you retroactively fail something important.

---

Horribly unfair? Oh hell yes, but at least it feels less arbitrary (since you actually request it just before you get punched in the balls), and doesn't reward people who avoid rolling dice (like how most D&D Save-or-Die Wizards are immune to proposed critical fumble systems because they don't roll dice), and doesn't reward pointless die rolling (like how Runequest gives you XP proportional to how many times you roll dice).

-Username17
RandomCasualty
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1107920705[/unixtime]]
and doesn't reward people who avoid rolling dice (like how most D&D Save-or-Die Wizards are immune to proposed critical fumble systems because they don't roll dice),


This is another thing that warrants some major fixing I think. Everyone should have to make some kind of roll for whatever they do. That way, if you want to have some kind of universal penalty, like the penaltys in Shadowrun, you can.

One thing nice about SR was that a penalty hurt everyone, no matter if you were a warrior, a wizard, a decker or a rigger.

D&D's system of being able to avoid penalties by not rolling dice really sucks ass.
rapanui
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by rapanui »


FrankT wrote:Whim of Fate:

At the start of every adventure, every character rolls three unluck dice. Every 6 rolled on those dice generates a point of "bad karma" and the player has to roll an extra die. The player then rolls three luck dice. Every 6 rolled on those dice generates a point of "good karma", and the player rolls an extra die. These extra dice can further generate karma and extra dice, and so on without limit (provided you keep rolling sixes).

If you end the adventure with any good or bad karma, you get no experience for that adventure.

Spending Karma:

Karma can be spent at any time, but only one point of good or bad karma can be spent during any scene. If you spend a point of good karma, something unlikely and cool happens, or you get a second chance to succeed at an action. If you spend a point of bad karma, something unlikely and bad happens, or you retroactively fail something important.


Oh, this is good. Really good. There are a couple of problems however:

1. All encounters would have to be equally dangerous. Otherwise, people would spend their Bad Karma on mook encounters (turning them slightly more lethal) than on BBEG encounters (turning them into almost certainly lethal affairs).

2. Frank, XP discrepancies aren't much fun.

3. Need some guidelines to establish exactly how bad a situation needs to be to count for spending a point of Bad Karma, and how good they can be for Good Karma.

Rapa's Solutions:

Each encounter, characters have to spend 1 Bad Karma point. Anyone out of Bad Karma is safe (note that antagonists have Karma too, although since they don't go on 'adventures', the exact number of points would be determined differently). Anyone with any Bad Karma must spend the target number points before the end of the Encounter, or lose all Good Karma they have. Good Karma can be spent at any time.

Bad Karma carries from adventure to adventure, and anyone who accumulates 10 points of Bad Karma dies due to extreme bad luck (like falling asleep drunk in a puddle, having a fatal aneurism, or getting hit by a falling meteor while sleeping), no save. So it's wise to spend it.

Good Karma doesn't carry from adventure to adventure, so it's wise to spend it.

With your permission, I'm totally stealing this.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by User3 »

Well, since the result of bad karma points isn't specified, one of the effects could be to turn a mook encounter into a non-mook encounter. Reinforcements suddenly show up, the enemies don't turn out to be what you think they are, there's suddenly a hostage involved, etc. etc.

In the BBEG fight, on the other hand, the direct consequences might be smaller, but the overall impact should be about the same.
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Maj
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by Maj »

rapanui wrote:Frank, XP discrepancies aren't much fun.


He put in the XP thing as a different way of saying exactly what you did:

rapanui wrote:Bad Karma carries from adventure to adventure, and anyone who accumulates 10 points of Bad Karma dies due to extreme bad luck (like falling asleep drunk in a puddle, having a fatal aneurism, or getting hit by a falling meteor while sleeping), no save. So it's wise to spend it.

Good Karma doesn't carry from adventure to adventure, so it's wise to spend it.


In other words, if you've been waiting for something awesome for your Good Karma to do, but the end of the adventure is approaching, you'd better use it up on finding a naked five dollar bill lying on the ground before the DM calls it quits. Likewise, if you've got some Bad Karma over your head, perhaps it's time for you to place that five dollar bill in the dirt where it belongs.

;)
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by User3 »

OK, the d20 vs 3d6 thing makes a lot of sense when you put it that way.



OTOH, a skill-based combat system with no caps and unlimited advancement just seems impossible to balance.

How about an options-based skill system and ability score-based combat system?

Initiative: Inteligence.
Number of actions: Agility.
Physical attack: Strength.
Physical dodge: Agility.
Magical attack: Willpower.
Magical dodge: Inteligence.

Seems to give even enough balance to all ability scores, with incentive to dump points into at least three of the abilities, and less damage to the dual-classers.

That way, whenever someone makes a physical attack, it is just Str. Their skill ranks in Swashbuckler (or whatever) determines what kinds of physical attacks can be made. Like stunning, tripping, backstab, disarm, etc.

At that point you no longer have options vs. bonuses, you have two seperate systems for each.

And with each character gaining a set number of ability points and skill points per 'level' (1 & 4?), characters can't really diverge too much. It just becomes a matter of broader options vs. specialized options.

Please forgive me if this is old news.
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Re: Building things from scratch: Design Principles.

Post by RandomCasualty »

I've always been of the train of thought that if you have ability scores, they should be useful for everyone. Dump stats just shouldn't exist. If your stat is so weak as to be a "dump stat" then it either needs to be improved or it should just be folded into another stat.

Either that or eliminate ability scores altogether. I'm still not positive that we need them at all.
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