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pseudovere
2008-07-09, 09:23 PM
This system was quite literally thought up in less than 30 seconds (I wish I could explain it in less than 30 seconds) by combining and mutilating several existing skill and ability systems. (Although admittedly one of which is my creation.) Understanding that, any advice, constructive criticism, or feedback of any sort would be much appreciated.

Explanation of my goal in this project:
I have been thinking alot about most ability systems recently (by that I mean the past 30 minutes), especially the dnd system, my homebrew system (see link in signature (the spoiler I believe)), the "tri-stat" system, and the proposed A Song of Ice and Fire system.

I have had criticism on my game about how it has abilities that most people won't use, how it is too complicated, and how even dnd has too complicated a stat system. I find that I have to agree: each player needs to memorize exactly what each stat does what. On the other end, you have the tri-stat system, which while simple, from its lack of abilities gives you a very limited number of choices in what to do with your character. (For example, you cannot have a strong, yet clumsy character, as physical is lumped into one stat.)

However, I found the proposed Song of Ice and Fire system (if I'm talking about it so much, I should probably give a link to the pdf (http://64.17.155.164/gr_files/SiF_Fastplay.pdf), and tell you that the ability information starts on page 5 (7 of 35)) very intriguing. It actually manages to blend typical ability scores with something a bit more like a dnd 3.5 skill system.

However, it had the error of making specialization in specific skills too strange, and, it occurred to me, creating odd boundaries for characters. Why can't somebody have a combat style based on agility rather than the catch-all 'fighting?' What happens if you want to specialize in skills based on the same ability? What if you want a character who is gullible as a result of their inability to understand facial expressions (low awareness score) but with extraordinarily good senses otherwise? (high awareness score)

I then realized that this was even more apparent in dnd, and even my system. Seeing as my system is designed to be freeform, with skills being invented by the player, decided I needed to revise the ability system that eliminated this problem with flexibility, but had a good amount of simplicity. And thus I came up with what you see before you.

THE SYSTEM:

Each character has a certain amount of XP, which can increase through (big surprise) experience. XP can be spent in multiple ways, the only 2 of which I will bother to describe here being Abilities and Skills. On each individual skill or ability, you may invest up to your skill maximum in XP. Your skill maximum is your total XP divided by 10, rounded up. (10XP Skill Maximum=1, 20XP Skill Max=2, 341XP Skill Max=35)

Skills: Skills represent a training on a specific task. Skills can be anything that you can think up, whether physical, magical, social or mental. They must also be very specific. For example, "Parry" would not be a suitable skill, while "Longsword: Parry" would.

When you make a roll to see whether or not you succeed at a specific skill, you roll 1d20 and add all XP spent on the skill to the roll. (example: A character has 4 points in Spot or similar skill, depending on the choice of the player. (Visual Awareness, Vision, Seeing, etc.) To check whether the character notices a strange marking on the wall as the character walks past, the player rolls 1d20 and adds 4. They roll a 8, giving them a total of 12.)

Abilities: Abilities grant bonuses to skill rolls. For example, you could take an ability such as "Parry" to grant bonuses on all skills involving parries. Other examples include "Toughness," "Art," "Entertaining," "Acrobatics," "Awareness," "Breaking and Entering Thievery," and basically anything else you can think of, as long as it does not apply to one specific action, in which case it is a skill, and does not describe a result to an action rather than the action itself. (For example, "Staying Alive," "Omnipotence," and "Wealth" are not suitable abilities, or skills for that matter.)

While abilities are useful for characters that have a wide variety of similar skills, (a longsword fighter could much benefit from the skill "Longswords" as it would most likely entail basically any reasonable combat maneuver involving a longsword they could think of) they simply aren't as effective as skills at specific tasks. For every 2 XP you invest in an ability, you only get a +1 bonus on any involved skill. Thus a character with 100 XP would only be able to invest a maximum of 10 points in any one ability, thus achieving a maximum of a +5 bonus on any one skill without investing points in the skills themselves. A character can have multiple abilities, but when more than one effects a single skill roll, only the ability with the largest amount of XP counts.

Using Skills and Abilities in Combination: A character can gain bonuses from XP invested in both skills and abilities in one skill roll. However, the character may not gain bonuses in the skill that exceed it's skill maximum.

For example, a character with 100 total XP could have 10 XP in the ability "Illusion Magic" and the skills "Feint" with 2 XP, "Entertainment" with 5 XP, "Disguise" with 10 XP, and "Bridge Building" with 8 XP. The character would get a +7 (5 from the ability, 2 from the skill) to its Feint rolls, +10 to Entertainment (5 from the ability, 5 from the skill), +10 on Disguise (5 from the ability, 10 from the skill, putting the character over their Skill Maximum of 10, so the ability is limited back to 10) and a +8 on Bridge Building (+0 from the ability, unless its an illusionary bridge, +8 from the skill, but probably only if it's still a real bridge.)

erikun
2008-07-09, 10:33 PM
Okay, let's try to break your system.

I'm looking at creating an ice mage, so the first think I pick up is Cryomancy [ability]. Assuming that we're sitting at 100 XP, I'll put 10 XP into Cryomancy for the +5.

Next, I'll buy some skills. Ice Blade for a close up attack, Freezing Burst for a ranged attack, Ice Wall for creating cover to hide behind, and Snow Veil as a blurring effect against close attacks. Heck, let's throw in Freeze Floor and Chill Fog for messing around with people.

I'll only spend 5 XP on each skill, giving myself a +5 to each. I see no reason to spend the full 10 XP if I am limited to a total of +10 bonus, and each version of ice magic is going to use my Cryomancy ability anyways. Where does that put us?

Cryomancy [ability]: 10 XP
Ice Blade: 5 XP
Freezing Burst: 5 XP
Ice Wall: 5 XP
Snow Veil: 5 XP
Freeze Floor: 5 XP
Chill Fog: 5 XP
Total spent: 40 XP

So, I've spent less than half my 100 XP budget, and have a +10 to swinging a magic sword, a +10 to hurling a magic ball, a +10 to blocking ranged attacks, a +10 to dodging anything, a +10 to knocking people to the ground, and a +10 to blocking people's sight. I'm not sure if that's what you had in mind, but unless you have some other restrictions, that's what can be made with your system.

pseudovere
2008-07-10, 02:46 AM
That is hardly broken.

In fact, that is perfectly normal, since anybody who has trained as hard as you in any form of combat skill, is also just as deadly in whatever they chose. For example, a fighter could have ranks in longsword (ability), for parry, disarm, feint, strike, impale, trip, sweep, vital attack, armor piercing strike, lunge... The list goes on and on.

Also, might I add, that skills are EVERYTHING? Skills represent basically everything that the character has ever learned. Without them, you are basically like a level one human commoner, except with no chance to have above average ability scores, no skills, and no feats.

And when I say everything, I mean everything beyond a basic knowledge of your surroundings, how to dress yourself, walk, and other basic biological requirements.

Want to read? Thats entirely optional.
Want to be able to move fast? That's optional too.
Want to be able to maintain any of those spells for more than a couple seconds? Still optional.
Want to see the guy sneaking up on you with a knife so that you can dodge him and use a damage reducing skill against his attack since you only have a constant amount of HP as you go up in level and you only have a chance in defending yourself if you know its there? (Seriously. Turn around NOW! Didn't see anything? I told you you need better awareness skills.) Still optional.
Want to not instantly keel over when targeted with a mental attack? Once again, optional.
And I don't think you could get away with using ice magic for any of those. (No, before anybody asks, using a snowboard to get around is ridiculous, about on the level of trying to propel yourself by blowing really hard in a certain direction. You could do it, it would just be REALLY ineffective, and you would probably be better off walking.)

Another thing to mention is this system is not designed to be solely based on combat. It is designed gives you more than you need to be decent at combat, and have a fair amount of utility too.

Finally, +10 is completely relative. What exactly it means in power level has yet to be playtested, but that is fairly irrelevant. Anything you would be fighting would most likely have something around that power level.

However, I still see your point. 40% of your XP might be a bit low, although if it is, I have to say I doubt it's much off of the mark. I need to playtest it still and see if I need to lower the effectiveness of abilities. Perhaps down to 1/3 instead of 1/2. Or maybe I'll just put a cap on the maximum you have in one ability. Either way, thank you for bringing that to my attention.

erikun
2008-07-10, 09:19 PM
Oh, I'm not saying it's broken - I'm just saying that it's what you're going to see people doing in your games based off the system. Most people who are seriously interested in creating powerful characters will stick with a few "core" abilities and just spend half-XP on their skills for the full bonus. This means that, rather than getting +10 on 10 skills, they'll have +10 on around 18 skills.

I'm not sure that dropping the ability's bonus from 1/2 to 1/3 will help with the problem - all that does is mask it, or delay it's effect until higher levels. Rather, going in the other direction would probably be more benificial. Say, a character at 100 XP - let's call it "level 10" - can only have 10 ranks in an ability or skill. So, they could spend 20 XP on Longsword [ability] and 10 XP on slash/block/parry/shine, for a total of +20 on all relevant rolls. When they get up to 110 XP and "level 11", then they can buy their skills and abilities up to 11.

If you want to slow down ability creep, make the XP expense equal to the level, rather than 2. For example, it costs 10 XP to increase from Longsword 10 to Longsword 11, rather than 2 XP.

Also, making everything a skill runs into two problems. First, low level characters are quite incompotent. The can't swing swords, they can't find traps, and they can't wear armor. Secondly, you'll begin to run into the D&D 3.5e issue at higher levels - either you are maxed out on your Dodge Attacks from Behind skill and always dodge, or you aren't and always fail. I'm not sure how much of an effect a +10, +20, or +500 has on the system yet, but at some point, we would see the have/have nots seperate based on who has the skills.

pseudovere
2008-07-11, 03:43 AM
Oh, I'm not saying it's broken - I'm just saying that it's what you're going to see people doing in your games based off the system. Most people who are seriously interested in creating powerful characters will stick with a few "core" abilities and just spend half-XP on their skills for the full bonus. This means that, rather than getting +10 on 10 skills, they'll have +10 on around 18 skills.

This is intended. However, if they have something that can be just defined by one ability, they will effectively be an idiot savant, capable of only one type of action, which is basically a death sentence in any game that has you do anything with any sort of variety. I.E. Doing more than fighting enemies who don't use any form of tactics or variety. In the sort of game that this system is designed for, that sort of character would not be able to do anything except in choice situations.


I'm not sure that dropping the ability's bonus from 1/2 to 1/3 will help with the problem - all that does is mask it, or delay it's effect until higher levels. Rather, going in the other direction would probably be more benificial. Say, a character at 100 XP - let's call it "level 10" - can only have 10 ranks in an ability or skill. So, they could spend 20 XP on Longsword [ability] and 10 XP on slash/block/parry/shine, for a total of +20 on all relevant rolls. When they get up to 110 XP and "level 11", then they can buy their skills and abilities up to 11.

If you want to slow down ability creep, make the XP expense equal to the level, rather than 2. For example, it costs 10 XP to increase from Longsword 10 to Longsword 11, rather than 2 XP.

No. This scenario flagrantly violates two integral rules to this system about your skill maximum. Your skill maximum defines two things:
1)you may not INVEST more XP in any one ability or skill than your skill maximum. Thus a character with 100 XP could never put over 10 XP into Longsword [ability], thus limiting the maximum bonus on skill checks to +5.
2)you may not increase the total to any one skill over a certain amount. Regardless if you have 10 xp in both an ability and a skill, even though it would look like it would give you a bonus of 15, that would go over the skill maximum, so it is cut back down to 10.

Moreover, I hardly see how cutting the ability's value would be beneficial to the character. Supposing I cut it back from 1/2 to 1/3, character with 100XP who wanted to max out all of their skills by putting them all into one ability would have to spend 9 points on one ability to get a +3 on all relevant skills, and therefore spend 7 on each wanted skill to get a +10 bonus. This makes it so that rather than the 18 skills you listed above they would only get 13. If I cut it back to 1/4, then you would only be able to have 11.5, which would actually be almost completely useless.


Also, making everything a skill runs into two problems. First, low level characters are quite incompotent. The can't swing swords, they can't find traps, and they can't wear armor. Secondly, you'll begin to run into the D&D 3.5e issue at higher levels - either you are maxed out on your Dodge Attacks from Behind skill and always dodge, or you aren't and always fail. I'm not sure how much of an effect a +10, +20, or +500 has on the system yet, but at some point, we would see the have/have nots seperate based on who has the skills.

I understand the concern here. When system at ridiculously high levels of XP only skills that are maxed out, or within 10 points would matter when in direct competition with another character of equivalent level. However, I would not promote campaigns held at that level anyway.

Once again, if you want something ridiculously epic, this is not your system. The goal here is to create something that functions with a more gritty feel, where mortality is always an issue. The options are to make a game where everybody is good at everything at a high level, so good that any high level character is better than any average character at things the character hadn't even practiced at, or one where all characters are hopelessly specialized. Since the former gives a much too epic feel to it, I chose the later.

In addition, I have another mechanic, meant to remedy this problem. When a character solves a situation better than other characters through something impressive on the player's part, they receive bonus XP, which functions like normal XP, except it does not count towards the calculation of your Skill Maximum, thus expanding the character's versatility rather than it's power. This promotes versatility even more on the skill selection: it's hard to be impressive using your character in only one situation which may or may not occur.