» Fri Dec 24, 2010 12:00 pm This is one of the areas that I have been flipping back and forth on for some time now, and I can never seem to decide just where I want the mechanics behind Attributes to actually fall. As described in my above post, one of the methods I had considered was actually having the player randomly roll for their Attributes, essentially providing each individual Race potential racial caps to the level of a particular Attribute, but at the same time allowing for some more diversity to a starting level character than is normally seen in the video game series. On the same respect, there is a lot to be said for the simple method Bethesda has applied to the different game lines - such as the Daggerfall-esque method you have described there, or even the general Morrowind method of just setting them to certain numbers based on Race and Gender alone, and allowing those to be modified by further parts of character creation.
My idea is actually a mix between Daggerfall and Morrowind/Oblivion. Each race has base attriibutes which are equal to the base attributes in Morrowind and Oblivion, except Luck which has a base value of 30. Then the player is given 100 points that he can distribute among the attributes however he pleases, though with the limitation of not going over 70. You'll have to work to get that 100 Strength.
I really like that skill method that you have described there, and the formula you have there is pretty much painless overall. I do agree something needs to be figured out with the armor skills though, as they are far more difficult to work with in regards to pen/paper RPGs than a video game. I am not terribly familiar with D&D, so I am not sure how their Feat System works (though I imagine similar to Feat Systems in other game lines) - the real question here is what else can be associated to feats to make that system more robust for the player and GM to use. I think I have a few items in my current list of skills in the above posting that would be best to translate into some kind of feat system (Backstabbing).
The way D&D handles armor in 3rd and 4th edition is that there are 3 proficiency feats, one for each class of armor (light, medium, heavy). If you use armor that you aren't proficient with you're punished with an attack penalty. And you need to be proficient with light armor before you can become proficienty with medium and you need to be proficient with both light and medium armor before you can take proficiency with heavy armor.
I think this is a good point to discuss feats in further detail. Feats are basically various benefits that improve your character that aren't covered by skills and attributes. One might compare them to Oblivion's skill perks, exept they aren't tied to a specific skill.
I think a pretty good rate to gain feats would be one feat every other level. Yes, I'm bringing level back into my system because it is a neat way of recording character milestones and assessing general power. However, I'd base it on attributes rather than skills and characters would advance one level for every 10 points by which they improve their attributes. Since in my system starting attributes average out at 50 that means players could advance 5 levels per attribute or 40 levels in total. This in turn yields 20 feats which I think is a reasonable number. Especially if we consider that most characters won't make it that far.
But how will you deal with unarmored skill? If armor skills are completely scrapped, it makes armor (or a shield spell) necessary, which reduces some character choices. Character choices, imo, were the best part about Morrowind, as few things were really underpowered.
Ah, yes. I forgot to mention the defensive skills. Unarmored would be called Dodge and it would be one of three defensive skills along with Block and Parry. When you attack someone and make you weapon skill check they make an opposed defensive skill check and if they roll higher than you, you missed. This could be simplified by introducing passive defences. You get the passive defence by adding together you effective defensive skill and 50 (the average result of a d100 roll). For example if a character has an effective Dodge skill of 63 their passive Dodge would be 63 + 50 = 113. Then if the character is trying to dodge incoming attacks anyone trying to hit them would have to make a weapon skill check with a DC of 113.
As for armor being necessary, in a straightforward battle between soldiers that is a realistic thing. But players wouldn't just be fighting warriors, they'd also be up against spellcasters and fireballs aren't bothered by AR. Heavier armor would also have drawbacks. For example it could have penalties to dodge and various stealth skills or slow you down.
So what I have emerging here is a sort of rock-paper-scissors system with combat being rock, magic being paper, and stealth being scissors.
Actually I would cut Armorer because I do not consider weapon and armor condition to be fun. To make up for it though I would include a Smithcraft skill that would allow players to forge their own equipment.
Make fatigue a stat that handles how many attacks/blocks/armor absorptions/magicka resists/moves you can make in a full turn of combat? It could be equal to willpower mod + endurance mod, and sure, that could translate to 20+ attacks in a turn, but the need for armor or magic defense or blocks would keep you from using all twenty unless completely necessary. Maybe you could allow block/armor/magicka checks with 0 fatigue, but on a successful check you are rendered flat footed (all further skill checks until a successful move are made at -10, stacking) and on a failed check knocked down? Either way, it would allow for some fast and rather lethal combat. (well, actually, this method may just make it boring and slow, since so many dice rolls have to be made. I do think fatigue should be included in some form, and flat footedness/knockdowns seem like likely candidates for ensuring fatigue is obeyed, but flexible for characters with a low fatigue score.)
I am not in favor of this. Having some sort of action points as in Fallout 1 & 2 is not a bad idea, but I wouldn't make it based on Fatigue. I'd still rather get rid of it entirely. Though of course there is nothing stopping us from making two variant game systems.
edit: I know it's odd to say, but for some reason the damage scale seems very inflexible. If you have a set weapon and a set strength against a target with a set armor, you'll be doing the same damage with every successful swing. Sure, it reduces the number of dice rolls, but it feels odd.
We could easily make it that longswords do 2d10 damage instead of a fixed 10 damage and up the AR by 1 to get the same average result.
edit2: on the thoughts of feats and the governing attributes for skills... I think perhaps that having two governing attributes for your weapon should be possible, but at the same time, using the example of long blade, agility seems like an odd choice for all characters. For example, a hulking, slow nord with a claymore should be just as effective as a quick and agile Dunmer with a longsword, since they are both masters of their weapon.
I disagree. Any sword, no matter how large still requires a degree of finesse. That's what makes them different from axes and other impact weapons. The slow hulking Nord would be better of with a battleaxe.
Another thing is that we don't have to use Short Blade and Long Blade skills. We could also decide to use the skills Greatswords, Swords, and Daggers instead.
I was thinking something similar for fatigue, but a slight bit more dynamic to add in a little extra flair to the combat system. Essentially, there would be different Maneuvers that one could attempt to apply while in combat (a Basic Attack being the general default). Some of these could incur some penalties during the actual strike roll, and each would have an amount of Fatigue Cost per success/failure (failure costing more). Similar could be done for magic and the sort by applying penalties for various levels of fatigue while in combat (and could cost a small investment of Fatigue with their Magicka investment as well on a casting).
Okay, this would make it sensible to have a Fatigue afterall.
I don't think, however, that health should be directly equal to your endurance ("I hit him with a damage endurance spell!" "For how much?" "100 points!" "Your target dies..." "I hit the next guy with the same spell!"). At game start it should be equal to ( 20 + Willpower Mod + Endurance Mod + Strength Mod) Meaning that most characters would receive around 25 or so starting health, which is fair at level 1. On every level-up after that you should gain an amount equal to your endurance modifier (Meaning a possible 400+ health at max level). Fortify Endurance, of course, would add a temporary health boost equal to the increase in your endurance, while damage endurance should do the opposite. Which means a powerful damage endurance could kill a player, making some diseases very, very dangerous. (For balance reasons, I don't think that damage attribute effects should stack, as they then become impossibly broken. But that could be dealt with later on, when you get to the magic system.)
Yes, if Health is tied to Endurance you coud kill anything by doing 100 points of damage to their Endurance. But who says Damage Endurance should be easy to cast? Why can't it be a really hard spell to use with a high Magicka cost?
Well, I was actually thinking quite a bit about this, and I am thinking about employing a combination of the basic leveling system seen in the game in conjunction with a couple of well designed character advancement mods I have seen made for the respective games. Basically, something along the lines of this:
Each Skill would come with a simple "fill in the dots" tracker by each Skill, this in turn would be constructed out of nine (9) empty dots (for consolidation of space, and the fact that the 10th would be redundant). You actual character Level would have the exact same kind of tracker located next to it, as would your Attributes.
Now, on each successful Skill usage, the player would fill in one (1) of the dots in the tracker next to that Skill, and for every failed Skill usage the player would fill in two (2) dots on the tracker (essentially providing to the idea that we can learn more from failures than successes). Once a player has successfully filled in all ten (10) dots on their skill tracker (don't forget the "phantom" dot), then the skill would increase by a single point. For your character level, the skills would still get broken into Major/Minor/Misc skills. Everytime you increase one of your Major/Minor Skills (or the ones related to your chosen profession) then you will fill in a single tick on the Character Level tracker provided. Similarly to Skills, the character will increase in Level by one (1) point once they have filled in their tracker for Level which is again ten (10) dots if you include the "phantom" dot. Each Skill, in turn, has a Governing Attribute trait that is associated to it. Anytime a skill increases that is tied to an Attribute from the Major/Minor/Misc (Misc is included in this aspect, but not on Character Level), then it will provide a tick to the tracker for that particular Attribute. Again, once the Attribute has acquired the needed ten (10) dots filled in, then it can be increased by one (1) point.
Each Skill would come with a simple "fill in the dots" tracker by each Skill, this in turn would be constructed out of nine (9) empty dots (for consolidation of space, and the fact that the 10th would be redundant). You actual character Level would have the exact same kind of tracker located next to it, as would your Attributes.
Now, on each successful Skill usage, the player would fill in one (1) of the dots in the tracker next to that Skill, and for every failed Skill usage the player would fill in two (2) dots on the tracker (essentially providing to the idea that we can learn more from failures than successes). Once a player has successfully filled in all ten (10) dots on their skill tracker (don't forget the "phantom" dot), then the skill would increase by a single point. For your character level, the skills would still get broken into Major/Minor/Misc skills. Everytime you increase one of your Major/Minor Skills (or the ones related to your chosen profession) then you will fill in a single tick on the Character Level tracker provided. Similarly to Skills, the character will increase in Level by one (1) point once they have filled in their tracker for Level which is again ten (10) dots if you include the "phantom" dot. Each Skill, in turn, has a Governing Attribute trait that is associated to it. Anytime a skill increases that is tied to an Attribute from the Major/Minor/Misc (Misc is included in this aspect, but not on Character Level), then it will provide a tick to the tracker for that particular Attribute. Again, once the Attribute has acquired the needed ten (10) dots filled in, then it can be increased by one (1) point.
I like the sound of this quite a lot, except fo a few details. One is that as I mentioned I'd rather make leveling based on attributes rather than skills. If you base it on skill then each new skill we add to the game will increase the amount of levels that can be gained and the number of feats that players can get. Basing it on attributes though would allow us to throw in as many skills as we wanted to without worrying that it might break the system.
The second thing is that learning through failure would promote players to search for impossible tasks. For example they might buy a box and have it outfitted with a high quality lock then go at it until they all had decen Security skills. Of course it's the GM's job to regulate this, but not all GMs are equally assertive and I think it's our job to fix s many loopholes as we can. Also while it is realistic to learn from your failures that is true only to a certain degree. Repeatedly failing at an impossible task doesn't teach you much.
In a computer game I would handle this by giving skill exp on success but then multiplying this gained exp with the chance of failure. So for example opening a lock when you have 60% chance to succeed (40% chance of failure) would give twice as much skill exp as opening a lock when you have 80% chance of success (20% chance of failure). However, this isn't a practical way to handle things in a pen & paper game. So instead I'd tie this in with what I proposed earlier.
When you succesfully make a skillcheck you compare the d100 roll you just made with your base skill. If the roll is higher you gain a dot towards the skill increase. This would maintain the effect that low skills are easier to increase without promoting palyers to keep attempting the impossible to grind their skills.
The third thing is that the proposed system doesn't adress the issue of some skills being used much more often than others. Each enemy you fight will require several weapon skill checks while a lock might be beaten by a single check. This in turn would lead to weapon skills skyrocketing in compare to other less often invoked skills.
This can be solved in the same way the computer games did it. Rarely used skills could provide more dots.
