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FreakyCheeseMan
2013-02-06, 05:24 PM
Welcome to Part Four of my umpteen-part series, "Thoughts on a Game System that I'm Never Going to Finish Designing." Today's topic is the character and leveling system.

I had four basic goals with this leveling system:


Encourage deep tactical combat.
Allow for a wide variety of character builds and strategies.
Reduce the bulk of calculation as much as possible.
Encourage Breadth-over-Depth for leveling.


What I mean by that last one is that, ideally, characters should not gain a great deal of power as they level up, but should instead gain further options. A 20th-level fighter should not be that much better at swinging a sword than his 1st-level counterpart, but the higher level character should have a greater range of maneuvers and abilities available to him- sneak attacks, counterattacks, even limited spellcasting.

Primary Statistics

This system uses only three primary statistics (the equivalent of D&D's ability scores.) These statistics are Strength, Agility and Intelligence. The base value for each of these is zero; your ability modifier is equal to your ability score. Bonuses are almost nonexistent, and even small values represent a large difference; a character with a strength of three would be pushing the very limits of human might.

Ability modifiers do not have a lot of direct impact; Strength does not improve all melee attacks, Agility does not make you harder to hit, and Intelligence does not give you additional skills. While these abilities do have some direct consequences (You can add your Strength to power attacks, for instance), mostly, they serve as prerequisites for abilities.

Primary Statistics go up at certain levels (T.B.D.), but moving to higher levels of a stat takes more change points than lower levels- so it's easier to boost your intelligence from 0 to 1 than to boost your strength from 2 to 3.

Action Points

This system uses Action Points to determine what you can do during a round; Action Points come in three flavors, Physical, Movement and Thought. You can take certain actions (mostly defensive reactions) off-turn. Action points regenerate at the end of your turn, not the beginning; this allows you to use all of your AP during your turn, without worrying about saving some for defenses.

Action Points go up in basically the same manner as Primary Statistics.


Leveling

Apart from increases in Action Points and Primary Statistics, Leveling is extremely simple- every time you level, you get an additional Ability. No numerical values go up simply by leveling - HP, Spells per Day, etc, all remain constant. All you get is one Ability, of your choice.

A single Ability is the equivalent of a good feat, a hefty investment in a skill, or access to a small set of spells- for instance, "Basic Fire Spells". Most ability chains are fairly brief, and the purely numerical benefits have a relatively low ceiling. Hopefully, this will mean that the most effective leveling strategies will not revolve around maxing out a single number or set of powers, but finding sets of abilities that work well together- a solid sneak attack, plus the ability to turn invisible in order to get into position for such, plus the knowledge skills to allow sneak attacks against non-humanoids, for instance.

Enemies, for the most part, will have a set of things they are highly resistant to; some may have too much armor to face directly, but are vulnerable to sneak attacks. Others may have flight or other abilities to keep their distance, but are vulnerable to ranged attacks or spells. Ideally, proper strategy will be less about raw power, and more about gathering a set of tools that, together, can cover almost every situation.

Classes

This system uses only three classes- Fighter, Thief and Magic user. What class you pick is only important at level one- after that, everyone levels up the same way. Each "Class" is nothing but a set of pre-purchased Abilities, plus a few extra abilities left to the player's choosing, with some restrictions; Magic Users, for instance, would get the Spellcasting Ability (An Ability with little or no value in and of itself, but which serves are a prequisite for alll other casting,) plus a set of Spell Abilities of their choosing. Every Ability that comes as part of a class may be purchased normally- so, as they level, Fighters and Thieves may choose to learn spells, Mages may choose to train their martial abilities, etc.


So, that's the outline. Has anyone ever worked with anything similar? Are there any particular pitfalls I should be aware of?

Grinner
2013-02-06, 06:11 PM
First, I'd like to say that I've enjoyed reading your design notes. :smallsmile:

Second, it occurs to me that unless you provide a significant number and variety of character options, every character will strongly resemble every other equally strong character at higher levels.