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Jakinbandw
2013-12-03, 07:05 PM
So this is something I've been working on for a while now. I have the basic idea's on how it will work down, and now I'm trying to get it written so others can understand it and so that I can give it to players and ask them to make characters using it.

The goal of this system is to allow for fairly balanced play with characters who don't have to have everything about them defined at character creation, or who are limited by because they want to put points into skills that aren't normally relevant.


Character Creation
Characters are made up of Abilities and Aspects. Abilities cover whatever skills, items, and attributes they might have. Aspects cover things such as morality, background, luck and relationships with others. There are no limits to the number of Abilities or Aspects a character may take at character creation. Also during play new Aspects or Abilities may be added to the character at any time. However once an Ability or Aspect is written on the character sheet it can't be changed except as noted in character advancement.


Power Level
The Players should be aware what Power Level (PL) the campaign is set at as it will give them an idea of how Unique their Abilities should be while designing their characters. For starting players, their best Abilities should be no higher than 2 ranks above the PL for the setting and they should strive to have a few at least 2 ranks below as well.


Flow(?)
Flow is a resource that all characters have. It represents how closely they are adhering to their PL. It is gained whenever Abilities that have a lower rank than the characters PL are used, or when Aspects have negative consequences. It is lost whenever Abilities with a greater rank than the characters PL are used, or an Aspect has a positive effect. There is no limit to the max amount of Flow, however when Flow hits 0 bad things (tm) happen.


Abilities
Abilities are ranked by Uniqueness and Power. When adding a new ability use the most Unique rank possible, and then note beside it that abilities Power compared to Abilities that are the same with the same Uniqueness.
e.g. Swimmer: 4/-1 (Common/poor)

{table=head]Ability|Rank|Description|Example
Everyone|0|Things everyone in the setting can do|Being able to interact with matter
Majority|2|Things that would be considered a disability if a person is unable to do them| Being able to walk
Common|4| Things that most people in the setting can do| Being able to drive
Specialized|6|Things that most people can't do, but are not considered special|Being a able to repair a computer
Uncommon|8|Things that would be considered special|Being able to play football professionally
Rare|10|Things that only an elite few in a country can do|Being skilled at moving around in space
Minority|12|Things only an elite few in the setting can do|Being an Olympic sprinter
Unique|14|Things that no one else in the setting can do|Fly completely unassisted
[/table]

Power|Rank
Terrible|-3
Bad|-2
Poor|-1
Average|0
Good|+1
Great|+2
Superb|+3


Keep in mind that what is Unique in one setting might be Common in another. In the real world anyone able to do magic would be at Unique, however in a DnD setting they would just be Specialized. Also note that Power can go both higher and Lower than -3 and +3, though it is uncommon.


Using Abilities in play
There are 5 different kinds of ability checks that one makes during play, along with 2 different ways of resolving challenges. Also after every ability check remember to alter the characters current level of Flow (as noted at the end of this section).

When using highly unique abilities in ways that are comparable to less unique abilities use the less unique ability for uniqueness instead. For example if someone has the Unique (14) Ability to run as fast as a Common (4) car, and they are chasing down a car on the highway their uniqueness for as long as they are on the highway is Common (4). If they use that speed to go up a cliff when speed is not an issue then look at who could climb that cliff (say a hobby rock climber which would be Specialized (6)) and use that instead.

Unopposed/Direct
An unopposed/Direct check is just a check to see if a character can do something when how well they do it doesn't matter. For example: Can the character fly? If the character has the ability, they succeed.

Unopposed/Check
An Unopposed/Check requires a roll against a difficulty for the ability to succeed. This should be used when how well the character does is important. For example when trying to disarm a trap. In this case the GM should decide the average Uniqueness that would be required to disarm the trap and have the character roll the Uniqueness of the ability they are using + their characters Power (capped at +2 and -2) + 1d6. If the player rolls equal to the Uniqueness +3 they succeed.
E.g. Bill is trying to race through the city while avoiding traffic. The GM rules that this is would be something only a handful of other people in the city could do. This isn't nation, or setting level, so the GM gives it a difficulty of Uncommon (8) so the roll Bill will be trying to beat will be 11 (8+3). Bill Specializes(+6) in Street Racing, but he is Superb (+3) at it. He uses the Uniqueness of his ability + his Power at it (capped at +2) for a total bonus of +8 on his d6 roll. He rolls a 4 on his d6 for a total of 12 allowing him to safety navigate the city.

Direct/Check
This happens when two or more characters make an opposed check using the same type of ability with the same uniqueness. In this case they both roll their Uniqueness + Power (uncapped). Who ever rolled higher succeeds on what they were trying to do.
e.g. Alice is playing a chess game against Charles. Alice has Chess Player at Common (4) Uniqueness and Good (+1) Power. Charles has Games at Common (4) Uniqueness and Terrible (-3) Power. Alice rolls a 1 on her d6 for a total of 6, while Charles rolls a 4 for a total of 5. This lets Alice win the chess game

Indirect/Check
This happens when two or more characters make an opposed check using the same type of ability with different uniqueness. In this case they both roll their Uniqueness + Power (capped at +2). Who ever rolled higher succeeds on what they were trying to do.
e.g. Alice is in a tug of war with Charles. Alice has strength at Majority (2) Uniqueness and Superb (+3) Power. Charles has Strength at Specialized (6) Uniqueness and Poor (-1) Power. Alice rolls a 4 on her d6 for a total of 8, while Charles rolls a 5 for a total of 10. This lets Charles win the tug of war.

Unopposable/Direct
This happens when two characters are in a conflict and one character uses a type or ability that the other character is unable to match. For example if Alice is chasing Charles on foot and he gets into a car. Alice may be one of the best runners on earth (12) but Charles is still going to get away in his Common (4) car. In this case the character that loses gains flow equal to their PL minus the Uniqueness of the Ability their opponent used. If this number is negative they do not lose PL.

Calculating Flow Gain/Loss
On an Unopposed/Direct Check the character Loses Flow equal to the Uniqueness of the Ability - their PL. They do not gain Flow from not having the right ability or from using an ability that's Uniqueness is lower than the PL. (?)

On all other checks except the Unopposable/Direct the character Gains/loses Flow equal to the difference between their bonus to their roll and the PL of the setting. For instance if the PL was 8 and the final bonus to the roll was 5 they would gain 3 flow. If the PL was 6 and the final bonus to the roll was 10 they would lose 4 flow.


[Work in Progress]

Jakinbandw
2013-12-03, 07:06 PM
Reserved For Aspects

Jakinbandw
2013-12-03, 07:08 PM
Reserved For Combat

Djinn_in_Tonic
2013-12-03, 07:23 PM
Very interested in seeing this. Looking forward to your future posts. :smallbiggrin:

I'll comment more when I see more of the system.

NichG
2013-12-05, 04:40 AM
Rather than using adjectives for the power of abilities, what about defining power with respect to how much concerted effort or preparation would be needed to thwart/counter/resist that power?

So for instance, an effect that would take a few shots to neutralize one person would have a power-scale of 'person' - a single person might be able to thwart the user. An effect that can kill/paralyze/teleport-away a person instantly would have a power-scale of 'group' - as long as there are multiple people opposing this, they might be able to thwart the user. An effect that can disable an entire party of opponents at once would have a power-scale of 'organization' - it takes an entire hierarchy of individuals, one able to deploy multiple parties, in order to thwart its use. An effect that can destroy an entire city at once would have a power-scale of 'country', and so on.

With this kind of scale, it shouldn't really be linear in terms of points though; 1,2,4,8,16,... might make sense.

Another thing that could be interesting to look at is an intentional block against 'unintended consequences' that go far outside of the scale of the power. That is to say, prorate the power rating of an ability based on how the owner actually uses it, such that the way it's used actually has the potential to redefine the power of the ability.

An non-combat example from D&D might be, a wizard who uses Wall of Iron to break the economy effectively has a country-scale power - it requires an entire country legislating the value of iron or new standards of currency to actually fight against the economic power of producing effectively unlimited iron at once. But a wizard who just uses Wall of Iron to put up battlefield obstacles probably has at worst a 'person' scale power. So if said wizard starts using Wall of Iron to mess with economics, suddenly they'd lose a lot more Flow than before.

Edit: For powers that are weaker than 'person' I would use two categories probably. One step less is 'trivial' - these are powers that make things convenient or have some benefit, but do not in their own right constitute a major line of action in any particular situation. That is to say, you couldn't really build a character 'around' that power, nor could the power really be said to outright resolve any given situation. An example might be an effect that provides light in dark places in a campaign that isn't particularly about the perils of darkness, or an ability that lets you get a minor bonus on certain checks.

The step below that would be 'cosmetic' - this is a power that basically just looks cool, but has no real impact of any direct sort on what the character can actually accomplish. A spell that cleans your clothes for you, or the ability to identify every ingredient in a meal (in a game that isn't about cooking contests) would be 'cosmetic'. Occasionally this might be temporarily boosted to 'trivial' - you identify the precise poison used in your meal, or you manage to look clean and presentable for your trial after a night in the dungeons.

Jakinbandw
2013-12-05, 06:39 PM
I'm on the road right now and haven't had much time to type up more of the system but I'd like to address your points.


Rather than using adjectives for the power of abilities, what about defining power with respect to how much concerted effort or preparation would be needed to thwart/counter/resist that power?

So for instance, an effect that would take a few shots to neutralize one person would have a power-scale of 'person' - a single person might be able to thwart the user. An effect that can kill/paralyze/teleport-away a person instantly would have a power-scale of 'group' - as long as there are multiple people opposing this, they might be able to thwart the user. An effect that can disable an entire party of opponents at once would have a power-scale of 'organization' - it takes an entire hierarchy of individuals, one able to deploy multiple parties, in order to thwart its use. An effect that can destroy an entire city at once would have a power-scale of 'country', and so on.

I'm thinking of rather than adjectives to change it to a simple percentage number. X% of population can do Y, for example. The reason I don't want to base my scale around resisting is that there is a lot of utility in abilities outside of opposing others. Furthermore focusing on how many people have this much power gives a really good idea of the setting. If there are people who can at will teleport others into the sun, then there would either have to be some sort of defense in the setting, or those people would be viewed as extremely powerful.

This ties every ability to the setting, and then ties it back to the player. If the players are tossing around Rare or Minority powers commonly, then they should be pretty powerful in the setting. There will be only a few people that can match them, and many of those will be similarly powerful as well. If there are no defenses against the most powerful attacks, then the setting would devolve into rocket tag, which in it's own way could be interesting.

Finally this system is made to handle street racing as well as Dragonball Z. In a system that works off of how many opponents you effect, how do you handle pricing a character that has a rare car?


With this kind of scale, it shouldn't really be linear in terms of points though; 1,2,4,8,16,... might make sense.

I am still working on balancing Flow, but suffice to say that in my tests Flow balances things out rather well. Using abilities that are above your PL will quickly drop you into negatives where Bad Things(tm) happen (I have a few idea's I am bouncing around, but in most of my testing once a character has negative flow, they can't use abilities above their PL till they get out). I am considering making a bigger scale, though that would mostly involve just adding more numbers between each level.

In a setting with a diverse number of creatures I might alter it so that there are base subcategories for race, or region. Trolls might be rare as a species, but among trolls regenerating health is something they all can do. Not sure how I would handle that though. Comparing the number of insects to humans, humans lose out big time. I'll have to think about it, and how to word it.


Another thing that could be interesting to look at is an intentional block against 'unintended consequences' that go far outside of the scale of the power. That is to say, prorate the power rating of an ability based on how the owner actually uses it, such that the way it's used actually has the potential to redefine the power of the ability.

An non-combat example from D&D might be, a wizard who uses Wall of Iron to break the economy effectively has a country-scale power - it requires an entire country legislating the value of iron or new standards of currency to actually fight against the economic power of producing effectively unlimited iron at once. But a wizard who just uses Wall of Iron to put up battlefield obstacles probably has at worst a 'person' scale power. So if said wizard starts using Wall of Iron to mess with economics, suddenly they'd lose a lot more Flow than before.


Ah, this is rather the point of Flow in the first place. Each time the player uses the ability, they burn Flow. Let's take a guy who can use illusions, which are Rare. Each time he uses them in combat that burns Flow. Each time he tricks and Opponent, that burns Flow. Each time he uses it to solve a challenge it burns Flow.
F
Now let's take a guy with the awesome unique ability to kill Immortals. Unless he's fighting a God, the ability doesn't burn any Flow. He can't use it for anything else, so it just sits there on his sheet, costing him nothing. Then, later on, he ends up having to kill an immortal. Well all of a sudden he can. He burns the Flow, and succeeds. Please note however that I am planning to add a section on handling Unique Powers, because some can truly break a setting, while most don't.

For instance one person having the ability to end existence at a whim is truly devastating, however the instant it drops down to Minority, others can do it too, and there are reasons in place why existence is still around that reason acts as a balance to the power.

As for the Wall of Iron trick? I say that's what happens when you decouple the setting from the abilities. If being able to create endless Iron is only Rare, then why hasn't it been done before? Conversely, why isn't everything built out of metal? Why are there mines? That spell shows a complete lack of thinking through the implications of an ability.



Edit: For powers that are weaker than 'person' I would use two categories probably. One step less is 'trivial' - these are powers that make things convenient or have some benefit, but do not in their own right constitute a major line of action in any particular situation. That is to say, you couldn't really build a character 'around' that power, nor could the power really be said to outright resolve any given situation. An example might be an effect that provides light in dark places in a campaign that isn't particularly about the perils of darkness, or an ability that lets you get a minor bonus on certain checks.

The step below that would be 'cosmetic' - this is a power that basically just looks cool, but has no real impact of any direct sort on what the character can actually accomplish. A spell that cleans your clothes for you, or the ability to identify every ingredient in a meal (in a game that isn't about cooking contests) would be 'cosmetic'. Occasionally this might be temporarily boosted to 'trivial' - you identify the precise poison used in your meal, or you manage to look clean and presentable for your trial after a night in the dungeons.

I've talked about most of this, but I want to go in depth on a problem I had with most of my initial system, and how I got around it.

Mainly; Amazing Paint Man.

Amazing paint man exists in our world. He has the unique ability to make paint appear on anything. It can be any color paint, and it has to dry normally. This is a completely unique ability, and also pretty useless most of the time.

However whenever he uses it, it burns massive amounts of Flow and isn't much more effective than anything else right?

Well, actually no. The player can use it most of the time for free because as long as the person has time, they could do everything they wanted with a paintbrush and some paint. Painting is a common ability, and instead of counting as Unique, it counts as common.

What if he wants to use it in a different way though? Say put paint under people feet so they slip? He can instead count at as throwing something slippery down, and while carrying oil might be a bit uncommon, the GM rules that carrying around oil is something of Specialist uniqueness.

Finally what if he gets really clever and uses it to drown people by painting the inside of their lungs? Now all of a sudden you have the power of a unique ability coming into play. It doesn't really have any other mundane ability like it at all (Maybe some type of gas warfare if the GM is feeling nice?). And after that he starts drowning Tanks and plain in paint so no one inside can fly, and plugging guns with paint. All of this is from one simple ability, but now Amazing Paint man is paying through the nose in Flow to manage it.

In this way if amazing paint man just uses his powers for graffiti it costs him nothing. If he uses it to do more, it starts to cost more.

NichG
2013-12-05, 09:08 PM
I'm thinking of rather than adjectives to change it to a simple percentage number. X% of population can do Y, for example. The reason I don't want to base my scale around resisting is that there is a lot of utility in abilities outside of opposing others. Furthermore focusing on how many people have this much power gives a really good idea of the setting. If there are people who can at will teleport others into the sun, then there would either have to be some sort of defense in the setting, or those people would be viewed as extremely powerful.


I didn't mean for what I suggested to replace your Unique/etc scale, I meant to use it in place of your -3 .. +3 modifiers, which are characterized by things like 'Superb' which basically have no real inherent meaning.

E.g. a Unique Cosmetic power would be a thing, as would a Unique Country-scale power. A Unique Cosmetic power might be like someone in the real world being able to change the color of their hair at will. It would be rated at 10: 14 (Unique) - 4 (Cosmetic)

You could also have something like a Everyone Country-scale power, for a very high-end setting. This would be something like Disgaea, where every character is routinely depicted as being able to do impossible things like destroy an armada of ships or extinguish a sun at Lv1, as if it were commonplace. Every character constantly has the ability to change the world with a single action - the hard part in such a setting would be to make anything stick. However, in such a ranking system, an Everyone (0) Country-scale (16) power would still be PL 16 - everyone might be able to go destroy a sun, but its tedious and most people can't be bothered to do it all the time. I think this kind of thing could also work for a game about members of a super-high-tech society in the far future - any one of them can go seize power on a planet of primitives, but it takes time and effort (in the form of costing a lot of Flow despite the power being very common).



Finally this system is made to handle street racing as well as Dragonball Z. In a system that works off of how many opponents you effect, how do you handle pricing a character that has a rare car?


Rare, or supernaturally fast? For a rare car, it gets some cost due to its rarity in your first scale, but then at -4 because its purely a cosmetic detail. You have a rare car, great, but it doesn't go any faster than someone else's.

If its a rare car that is supernaturally fast (lets say it can always outrace any other single car) then its a Rare, Group-scale power. A group of other cars can intercept it by e.g. spreading out and laying in wait, while chasing the car into an ambush point, but no single car of the group can counteract its ability on its own.

For the implicit question about Dragonball Z, the scale of 'how many people are needed to counter it' would not include random hapless humans, because they're not the actual primary elements of the setting. It would be 'how many other cosmic-scale warriors are needed to deal with this' since those are the main protagonists/antagonists.



For instance one person having the ability to end existence at a whim is truly devastating, however the instant it drops down to Minority, others can do it too, and there are reasons in place why existence is still around that reason acts as a balance to the power.

As for the Wall of Iron trick? I say that's what happens when you decouple the setting from the abilities. If being able to create endless Iron is only Rare, then why hasn't it been done before? Conversely, why isn't everything built out of metal? Why are there mines? That spell shows a complete lack of thinking through the implications of an ability.


The problem is, if you want a system that lets someone say spontaneously 'oh by the way, I'm buying this power that does this thing' then you have the difficulty of needing to be able to someone retroactively fix these inconsistencies. When a new ability can be authored on the spot, its generally not going to have implications that are consistent with how the setting has been presented so far.

If cost is based on how something is used it can at least partially overcome this issue (and by your other examples, you seem to agree with me here). That is to say, if Wall of Iron is Everyone, but its consequences are setting-breaking (Country Scale), then it still ends up being 16 points. Which means people won't be throwing it around enough to actually mess up the economics, so it ends up being self-correcting.

Basically, if you find a way to exploit a power at its current cost that produces an effect far beyond what you paid for it, it suddenly becomes more expensive, until the actual effect equalizes out with the actual cost for an effect of that scale.

But as long as someone can basically avoid toeing that line, the power can stay cheap. Everyone is sort of agreeing that there is an implicit, unspoken reason why the more powerful use isn't being pursued, because its in their interests out of character to keep the power cheap.



In this way if amazing paint man just uses his powers for graffiti it costs him nothing. If he uses it to do more, it starts to cost more.

Yes, basically this is analogous to my Wall of Iron example.

JBPuffin
2013-12-05, 10:50 PM
Well, Jak, you've managed to create a demi-FUDGE game, and quite handily too. Waiting for Aspects, but overall I like this. Keep up the creative juices, and drink coffee when you get low; it usually helps.

As for NichG...your idea is cool too, but if Jak doesn't want to go that direction, you can use it for yourself. Heck, get your own thread, too, and then the love gets spread around.

Quick question, though: Why is Cosmetic less powerful than Person? Can't someone create a graphic detail that requires the will of a person to destroy? Or is it just a way to make a simple look-change cheaper?

NichG
2013-12-05, 11:30 PM
Well, Jak, you've managed to create a demi-FUDGE game, and quite handily too. Waiting for Aspects, but overall I like this. Keep up the creative juices, and drink coffee when you get low; it usually helps.

As for NichG...your idea is cool too, but if Jak doesn't want to go that direction, you can use it for yourself. Heck, get your own thread, too, and then the love gets spread around.

Quick question, though: Why is Cosmetic less powerful than Person? Can't someone create a graphic detail that requires the will of a person to destroy? Or is it just a way to make a simple look-change cheaper?

Well I don't think multiple of these systems are needed, I was just pointing out something that bothered me about the 'modifier' table :smallsmile:

Cosmetic is less powerful than Person because its a detail whose influence on events basically can be 'thwarted' by... not bothering to do anything. Its influence is strictly flavor. Think of it in terms of saying 'because of my X ability, the plot will go this way!'. What does it take for someone to say 'nu-uh, it goes this way instead!'? A Cosmetic power is any power that doesn't actually influence the course of events, just how they're described. A Trivial power is one that can contribute to the alteration of the course of events but is insufficient on its own. A 'Person-scale' power can alter the course of events if unopposed, but can in principle be thwarted by the actions of a single one of the user's peers.

Waargh!
2013-12-06, 02:09 AM
I overall think the idea is genius but needs some additional rules to make it work. There are two points that I say need tweaking:
1) Selection of abilities
2) Managing Flow

So you can select any common or lower ability at any time. That seems fine to me, it is more a matter of defining it at a given time as most likely everyone will have it. You are asked to play tennis? OK, you can decide if your character knows or not tennis at that point, no big deal. The question is how do you define the power? Well, if you choose that you are a great driver you will be giving up Flow just to drive around, if you decide you are a terrible one you will gain Flow. Seems balanced.

Moving to Specialized abilities and ones with higher uniqueness. I feel here there should be a cap, someone cannot just be specialized on everything on the spot. Selecting X amount of things you are specialized during character creation should be enough. The players can get creative and also kind of agree with each other. I can choose to be specialized with sniper rifles and you can choose to be specialized with guns which includes sniper rifles. At character creation we can just agree the context of abilities depending on the settings etc etc. For the power level again Flow can function as a balance of choice.

Then regarding the Flow which I would say it is just the key mechanic here as it balances everything. The obvious abuse is to do something easy like taking a joy ride in your car and gaining Flow just to spend it later on something important. I would prefer if you just go to bad things right away but have a degree of bad things like:
a) Spend more than 5 Flow, roll for bad things. If you fail you cannot spend Flow for the day
b) Spend more than 10 Flow, roll for bad things. If you fail you cannot spend Flow and get a -2 on all rolls for the day
c) Spend more than 15 Flows but if you fail your roll something really unfortunate happens to your character
d) ....
Players then typically can use some Flow depending on their luck each day and also gamble to use more or not. This also avoid the book keeping of gaining Flow. Game breaking abilities can also be balanced as they will have a high risk to use with a low PL. Yes you can kill a god but there will be a high chance that you will suffer for it gravely. But what if the god is trying to kill you anyway? Well, that is where the ability selection comes in, you cannot just spontaneously decide you can kill a god. If the GM allows it at that point because it fits the story why not, still it will come with a price. The bad things can happen also regardless of success, so you will think twice about it.

What you are left then is with the question why would someone pick an ability with rank less PL? To answer this I would say you can put a randomness on the Power level, i.e roll a d6. This way if you are not lucky you will just suffer a penalty for that ability. If you are very lucky you will still lose Flow if it ends up higher than your PL. Since we are talking about a lot of possible common abilities it would balance itself. If someone also tries to be more generic on the ability they can risk of being bad on a lot of actions so they also won't abuse by generalizing an ability too much. You of course can allow some abilities to choose a high power level during character creation but allow a cap with the trade-off on having a negative aspect.

JBPuffin
2013-12-06, 02:27 PM
While some guidelines for PL, Ability and Aspect selection/earning would be nice, it really does depend a lot on the setting, much like a FUDGE or FATE game. Still, maybe a demonstration, i.e. sample character?

I do see your point about not taking Superb Majority Abilities; who wants Superb Walking? And Flow does seem to be incredibly integral in this system, meaning that its management is incredibly important.

Ah, so Cosmetic is less powerful because it doesn't actually affect the plot, while Trivial is an Ability that sort of tacks on to another? So if I had, say, Superb Metamagic +3, and I cast a spell, I could make a Metamagic roll of, for example's sake, Trivial/Superb (5+1d6), to determine how much its effect matters or whatever?

NichG
2013-12-06, 03:44 PM
Ah, so Cosmetic is less powerful because it doesn't actually affect the plot, while Trivial is an Ability that sort of tacks on to another? So if I had, say, Superb Metamagic +3, and I cast a spell, I could make a Metamagic roll of, for example's sake, Trivial/Superb (5+1d6), to determine how much its effect matters or whatever?

It's kind weird mixing the Superb/etc descriptors with Cosmetic/Trivial/Group/etc because I was suggesting for the one to replace the other :smallsmile: As a result I'm not quite sure I get your example. So instead I'll give a different example.

A warrior in the setting has a special combat move that lets him perform a strike an enemy from across a great distance and end up next to them. This move isn't too uncommon in the setting, so it has a base rating of Specialized. Taken as a whole (the strike and the movement) this power would be 'Person-scale' - it is used to fight individuals and in-of-itself cannot really let the warrior fight groups of people in a single blow.

Now, take that same power but remove the 'make an attack' at the end of it. Instead, its a power that tacks movement onto the next attack or maneuver he makes. Now, the power can't really be used to fight, but it helps the warrior fight better using his other powers. So now it would be considered Trivial in my proposed rating system.

One could reasonably argue that there's a very fine line here. If the power can be activated as a non-action, what's really the difference between the two? This gets very finnicky around the PL of the setting, and perhaps thats a flaw that needs to be watched for. For example, if the warrior's average strike costs Flow and this power costs Flow, then the 'price' for down-rating the power to Trivial is you have to pay twice. If however, this power ends up below the PL of the setting, then it basically lets you gain Flow for free.

One fix for that would be if all powers must take up a turn to use, so you'd be using the augment during your first turn and then attacking during your second - the price for making the power cheaper is it costs you extra actions. However there are far too many examples of passive powers, powers used as reactions, etc, for me to be entirely comfortable with the idea of just excluding all of those from consideration at all. But I do think that the current proposed system doesn't address those yet (possibly it will show up in Aspects) so its premature to worry too much about that.

OzymandiasX
2013-12-06, 04:19 PM
{table=head]Ability|Rank|Description|Example
Uncommon|8|Things that would be considered special|Being able to play football professionally
Rare|10|Things that only an elite few in a country can do|Being skilled at moving around in space
Minority|12|Things only an elite few in the setting can do|Being an Olympic sprinter
[/table]

You may want to tweak your examples. You could argue either way whether it is more rare to be a professional football player or an Olympic sprinter... While it can go either way, depending on how you define each term, they are actually pretty close in % of the population who qualify and certainly not separated by 2 degrees of magnitude in a scale like this.

Maybe the Rank 8 example would be 'Being able to play football at a collegiate level'

or Rank 12 would be 'Winning an Olympic Gold Medal'


and on a related note, wasn't there someone proposing a system that started very similar to this just earlier this year? Maybe calling it S.T.A.R.S or something?

JBPuffin
2013-12-06, 07:55 PM
It's kind weird mixing the Superb/etc descriptors with Cosmetic/Trivial/Group/etc because I was suggesting for the one to replace the other :smallsmile:

I honestly could not bloody tell which set of descriptors they were supposed to replace; thank you for clarifying.

A warrior takes an Ability called Teleport Strike (Rare/Person) that does something similar to what you described: warrior throws his sword at an opponent, then teleports next to him as the sword hits its mark. Fun power, actually, as its precise functioning (is it the sword's location or the target's he teleports to?) can cause some real shenanigans on the GM's side...anyway, Rare has a base of 10; what's the modifier for Person? Is it the standard, at +0? -1? Basically, what does each descriptor add?

NichG
2013-12-07, 02:16 AM
I honestly could not bloody tell which set of descriptors they were supposed to replace; thank you for clarifying.

A warrior takes an Ability called Teleport Strike (Rare/Person) that does something similar to what you described: warrior throws his sword at an opponent, then teleports next to him as the sword hits its mark. Fun power, actually, as its precise functioning (is it the sword's location or the target's he teleports to?) can cause some real shenanigans on the GM's side...anyway, Rare has a base of 10; what's the modifier for Person? Is it the standard, at +0? -1? Basically, what does each descriptor add?

I would propose that person would be +0, then +1, +2, +4, +8, +16 as you go up.

Trivial would be -1 and Cosmetic -4.

Jakinbandw
2013-12-07, 01:00 PM
These are answered in order of posting, so your name might show up more than once if you made more than one post I want to respond to.

@NicheG
I see what you're saying, but I don't really like it. What is the breaking point and how unique are the people countering the power? To do it effectively, you would either need to say people of X Uniqueness to counter it, which still causes problems in the Dragonball Z universe as the different levels are just too different.

The point of the Power adjectives are just to rank it against other people with the same Ability. You have an Average car, I have a Good car. When we race I have a small advantage. It's not meant to say how good the power is overall. I personally feel that it would be redundant with the Uniqueness rankings.

I don't think it's a terrible idea, and I think you could make it work, but then you are better off ditching the uniqueness scale. Otherwise you are paying double for your abilities.

Okay back onto the wall of Iron problem.

First of all you raise a good point, and making up new abilities on the fly can cause problems. Thinking about that you gave me an idea on how Aspects will work, and that is awesome. So thank you!

Still you can run into problems even there. So let's look at a hypothetical Wall of Iron problem in play.

So you have a Mage who can do a lot of cool stuff in combat. Shoot fire, paralyze people, the like. At one point the party is being chased and he asks his GM if he can use his skill with protection magic to create a Wall of Iron to block the passageway behind him. The GM thinks it through and goes "Sure. It's an Uncommon ability." The Mage casts the spell and blocks off the hallway.

Time passes and the Mage starts to use Wall of Iron more often, for things like bridges and ramps. The GM starts to see how easily abused this one spell is, talk starts going around the table about how this one spell breaks the economy.

There is an option open to the GM here. He can at that point either say that the metal disappears after a certain amount of time, thus it can't be used for anything long term. Now this could cause problems if The player has used the Wall of Iron in situations where it needed to stick around for a long time. Here however the GM can say that while Wall of Iron normally disappears, the Mage has stumbled onto a much rarer, and more unique version that sticks around. From then on whenever the Mage wants his wall of Iron to stick around for a long time he pays for the more unique version, while when he is just tossing up a quick shield he pays for the more common version. Worldbuilding and campaign history are maintained, and everyone goes home happy (except maybe the Mage who was planning on breaking the economy).

@JBPuffin

Thanks. I just had a brainstorm on Aspects that I will get posted soon. They won't quite be like FATE aspects though.

@Waargh!
Two things right off the bat. You don't add power to Abilities if there is no skill check, and you don't gain flow for using abilities that are lower than your PL.

And let me tell you why I hate the idea of limited abilities at higher than PL. Broadness. Say everyone is allowed 3 abilities at higher than PL. Sound balanced right? Well one guy takes the ability that he is specialized at fighting against the undead. He is great at attacking them, blocking against them, and resisting any negative energy effects. The other guy takes Combat. Combat covers everything to do with combat, including resistances, attacking, and defending. The guy who chose combat also has 2 other picks on top of this.

So no. No limited number of abilities.

That said....

Aspects are going to act as a limiting factor. You will not be able to take an ability unless you have an aspect that backs it up. You can add more aspects during play, but the GM is free to Nix them for not matching the setting (just like GMs in every system can Nix characters that don't fit in the setting. "We're playing a fantasy game, you can't have a character with a spaceship! It makes no sense!")

I also don't like random character creation, so I'm tossing out the idea of rolling to see what your power Level is for each ability. It also means you could end up with characters finding multiple ways to take abilities just so they can get stuff on the cheap.

What I do like is your idea's for bad stuff. Also seeing them laid out like that makes me think that maybe I'll make it so that bad stuff is decided from a chart where you add your flow to a dice roll. It would mean that you can dip into the negatives, and make it back out without anything bad happening, and it would also make dropping below a bit more exciting.

@JBPuffin

I'm going to update my post with the idea's I got from reading the responces, and then I'll do a sample play. The characters will be someone who didn't optimize, someone who wants to be awesome at everything, a character who is big on Role Playing, and a character that uses the best optimization I can think of. I'll run each of them through a couple encounters to show how it would work, and to see how well things balance out. I'll use real dice rolls and everything~!

@OzymandiasX
I see your point. I'll probably mess around with this a bit. I'm thinking of instead of examples, just listing either a percentage of the population, or a rough number of people that have said ability for the higher levels.

And is there really that many Olympic Sprinters compared to Football players? I was thinking there would be easily a couple hundred pro football players in the world, where it seems like in the Olympics there are only 20 or so people in the world that compete. Maybe I'm thinking Olympic sprinting finalists. Would that work better? It's supposed to be a small number like 8 or less for a population the size of our world.

Also if there was another system like this I never saw it, but if you can dig up a link for me I'd love to look it over and steal... I mean borrow some ideas.