(Solved) Attempting to create D20 Monster Capture system, but hitting a bit of a wall

Much of the combat comes from something called Techniques, which players and monsters can use (though players get limited in different ways - Monsters can only learn certain ones, Players can learn any but there is 'Tech XP' and depending on build, some Techniques are cheaper or more expensive)

Issue comes with the lower power ones - I've been making it a general system so I can split it up among other ideas (plus it makes notes tidier, and doing a ctrl+h to swap all Pow: 5, then all Pow: 10, and so on with the dice rolls needed makes it make sense to do a simple system like that). Power goes up by 5 until you hit 150 BP, in which case it goes up by 10. But with lower power ones, well, 1d4+1 is going to hit stronger than 1d6 on average for example, and raising the power of the stronger ones could quickly lead to some nasty stuff that could lead to potential easy party wipes. Any suggestions?

I've been puzzling over this for a while and I'm sure I could figure it out eventually myself, more hoping for some nudge that might help me hit that idea sooner

So far, the two ideas coming to mind is, "Round it to 10, have anything that deals damage over time or has the Multi Hit tag deal flat damage if it would be a BP 5 normally" - But it still has some small problems with the lower power, or something to do with the tier system (Techniques in this system can "evolve" - So a Scorch could become a Blaze or a Burning Wall, depending on how you're building things) - though that may hit the problem of Tier 4 and 5 techniques being way too strong

EDIT: Essentially the problem boils down to either the really weak Techniques and ones that either hit several times or do damage over time, or the really strong Techniques

EDIT 2: This is why making threads at 2:30 in the morning is a bad idea. You forget to add details

I've played with 3.5, Scion, Mutants & Masterminds, and Pokemon Tabletop Adventures, but it's been a while as I've been working on world building so a bit rusty. What I do 100% know is that PTA is... The system with moves hasn't exactly been the best done with power progression, but it's also the only one of these systems that I've played in that have a system like that for 'spells'

EDIT 3: Other factors are that I am going to play around with a mana system and that Techniques cost most Stat Exp the higher the tier is. But if the higher tier ones are too powerful or the lower tier ones and multihit and DoT ones are too strong, then that would skew things badly

I don't think I really follow you here. You have a point-buy system, and you're trying to balance damage against cost?

That said, if you're doing what I think you're doing--trying to construct a unified set of guidelines for power creation--I really would suggest starting from a base of Mutants and Masterminds. The system is flexible enough to manage just about any ability you can imagine, and the overall balance and math are about as good as you can expect for that sort of thing. When I was my d20 Exalted hack, I started off by building each of the basically-spells as M&M abilities and working out their price. I used those numbers to sort them into three broad tiers of cost, which became sort-of-spell-levels. Maybe an approach like that would help?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant

I don't think I really follow you here. You have a point-buy system, and you're trying to balance damage against cost?

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Essentially, with some issues of making sure all the damage is balanced out so lower power Techniques don't end up potentially being better just because of +/-, and that higher damage doesn't become obscene. I probably should have left the thread til after I slept

Thanks, forgot about M&M's flexibility, that'll probably help me figure out the damage issues. Thank you

EDIT: Essentially the damage rolls are what was causing difficulty. Didn't find an exact solution in the M&M manual, but it let something click. So yeah, problem should now be solved

EDIT 2: Ok, this looks way better than my previous attempts, think I have it figured out

BP - Dice (Average Roll)
10 - 1d4 (2-3)
20 - 1d6 (3-4)
30 - 1d8 (4-5)
40 - 1d10 (5-6)
50 - 1d12 (6-7)
60 - 2d6+1 (8)
70 - 2d8 (9)
80 - 2d8+1 (10)
90 - 2d10 (11)
100 - 2d10+1 (12)
110 - 2d12 (13)
120 - 2d12+1 (14)
130 - 3d8+1 (14-15)
140 - 3d8+2 (15-16)
150 - 3d10 (16-17)
160 - 3d10+1 (17-18)

And so on (though it is pretty rare for even strong Techniques to go above 160 unless they are forbidden or god spells in essence, so not really worried there

EDIT 2: Yep, some small scenario tests with rolls are working out VERY well, so I am at least able to move on to testing other parts while I continue to tweak this

Well, uh, glad I could help?

Seems like it is moot now, but out of curiosity:

What exactly is "Power" in this context? You capitalise it and give it example numerical values, so it seems like it is a term of art for your system, rathet than just the plain English meaning of the word. But you just start talking about it in the OP without defining it - makes things a bit difficult to follow.