Commanding an unstoppable force of unrelenting automatons in devastating waves against your foes isn't how you will start out as a tinker. As with all adventurers, a humble beginning is in order. Wizards have their cantrips to change the flavor of food, fighters have their second hand swords and armor that ISN'T plate, and clerics eye scrolls longingly for those extra utility spells to negate the strange and wondrous afflictions they may encounter. You start out with a chunk of metal and legs. But let's start at the beginning and break down the numbers. Mostly this review will cover numbers and mechanics, because to be honest, anything else is just trappings. The specific appearance and manifestation of your mechanical army will probably be as various and interesting as the imagination of the player running the tinker.
This is a Pathfinder Class created by Interjection Games
Link to SRD: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/interjection-games/tinker
Link to Buy: http://paizo.com/products/btpy8yja?The-Tinker-Master-of-Modular-Mechanical-Mayhem#tabs
Base class information
Average hit die of d8, 4+Int skills, Cleric Base Attack Bonus, Reflex is the high save. Their armor is light their weapons are simple and they have basic shield proficiency
This is all pretty ordinary stuff. It seems about on par with things like the alchemist or wizard. The class is intelligence based, so 4+Int (which is low) isn't particularly crippling or anything. The skills that are class skills for the tinker include Use Magic Device, Linguistics, Perception and Disable Device as some noteworthy options. Also noteworthy, the Tinker only suffers arcane spell failure chance for armor they are not proficient with. So if you are proficient in heavy armor, you do not have a chance of failure.
Basic Tinker Gameplay
The tinker main focus is summoning automatons. These start out as small sized constructs with a size based slam attack and a pretty fair amount of Hit Points out of the gate. You can summon an automaton once per level per day. You have a maximum number of standard automaton's summoned based on your level, starting at 1 and topping out at 3. There are abilities that allow you to summon special automatons bringing you up to a total maximum of 5. However there are also abilities that allow you to summon more powerful automatons but have a lower maximum deployed.
Summoning an automaton is a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity. When they are summoned they start with an order (referred to as a directive). Generally this will be to attack a particular enemy, but there are multiple base directives and some special unlockable ones. Giving a new order is also a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity. Orders are given in a special language that acts like spellcasting.
Basic automatons are small sized mindless constructs. They have 10s in their strength and dexterity which are the only stats they have. These stats will improve as you level. They have a 1d4 slam attack and move at a speed of 20ft.
Basic Automaton Stats: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/interjection-games/tinker/tinker-automatons
These automatons are extremely basic and not particularly impressive at level 1. That said, their pool of hit points is far from inferior at this point, and anyone with a 1d4 basic attack can contribute at such an early level.
An example round for a level 1 tinker might go like this.
Move Action: Move to advantageous location.
Standard Action: Deploy automaton with attack order against a target.
Automaton Move: Moves to target.
Automaton Standard: Attacks target.
Some important points to note. Automatons are stupid (no intelligence score), they continue their order regardless of anything else going on. They will attack corpses, they will stand idly while they are attacked, they wont use special abilities of their own accord and they don't by default get attacks of opportunity. If a target dies, you will have to order the automaton to attack a new target, which is another standard action. Fortunately you do have the ability as a free action to order all your automatons to stop what ever they are doing.
Customization of Your Bots
This is the fun part. The automatons by default are bland, boring and will quickly become ineffectual without the true flavoring for your meat and potato minions which is inventions and innovations. Inventions are the special parts, gizmos and traits you give to your minions. Innovations are powerful effects that usually apply to all of your automatons. There is also another effect which improves your minions, the Master's Presence ability. This ability gives a passive bonus to all your minions attacks and defenses while they are within 30ft of the tinker.
Inventions
Every automaton has a blueprint. A list of all the inventions cobbled together to turn your minion into the Frankenstein's monster of finely or poorly tuned destruction and creation. You start out with one blueprint, plus one more for every three points of intelligence bonus. It doesn't seem like much, but you will unlock more as you level up, and since you are an intelligence based class, a 16 is a very likely score you will be using. With a 15 you're probably also fine. At first level, you probably wont end up using more than one of your blueprints anyhow.
Each of your blueprints has a maximum build points total. This total is equal to your level. Each invention has a build point cost. The bulk of the early inventions are going to cost 1 build point. Later on the average cost will rise to about 2 build points with special and powerful inventions being 3 or more.
Each invention gives your automatons a new ability or trait. Some level one inventions are things like; arms, the ability to wield simple weapons (and a free simple weapon when deployed), the ability to be ridden like a mount and tweaks to accuracy at the cost of damage or visa versa.
An example level 3 automaton might have the following inventions.
Arms 1bp
Simple Weapon Proficiency (longspear) 1bp
Stout Design 1bp
This gives you an automaton wielding a longspear who's strength has been increased by 1 point and dexterity reduced by 1.
Innovations
Innovations are abilities that really define what kind of tinker you are. You cannot change them like inventions and they apply to all of your automatons. Your first innovation is gained at level 2 and you proceed to get another every fourth level (2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, 18th). This seems rather limited, however there is a feat to grant you an extra innovation. This allows you to scoop up other great innovations and really focus on your automatons.
Some of the innovations are basic boosts to all your minions, like Improved Construction which gives all your minions +1 strength and +1 dexterity. Some apply to specific minions like preferred blueprint which gives a single blueprint of your choice +1 HD. A few give the tinker abilities like Rapid Orders which allows the tinker to give directives as a swift action twice per day. And there are some that give the automatons new abilities, like my favorite, Kamikaze which turns your minions into self destructing mini fireballs.
Most innovations have requirements. Some are level requirements, some are invention requirements, and even some are ability score requirements. Be sure to check for those when planning your tinker's path to world domination.
Master's Presence
An basic automaton without it's master is about as dangerous as your common lawn ornament. With a master's orders they can take up arms and march against their foe. But for really getting your minions going, you need to stay close and provide the encouragement only a personal touch provides. Master's Presence is an ability that gives your automatons a bonus to their attacks and defenses based on your Base Attack Bonus and Saves. Without it, most often your minions will be swinging their swords/bodies/tentacles ineffectually and inaccurately. Not only that, but given you can only give orders to minions within 60ft, staying close gives you the ability to maneuver and order more easily.
An example of the effects of master's presence at level 5 using a minion with no inventions or other bonuses.
Minions Normal Attack Bonus: +2
With Master's Presence: +5
AC without: 11
With: 14
There are similar bonuses for saves and combat maneuvers, but lets not clutter this page with stat blocks. Needless to say, stay close, but don't get caught in the fire of your latest Kamikaze.
The Other Stuff
There are a few other cool things the Tinker gets later on in their career. Special automatons like the alpha, a bonus to crafting and greater innovations.
The Alpha
At level 4 they get an extra special automaton, the Alpha. This automaton has more build points in it's blueprint, has an intelligence score of 10 (so it doesn't require orders), gains feats and is larger than it's inferior counterparts.
However you must be more careful with this powerful automaton. Firstly, should it become destroyed it is VERY expensive to replace. Secondly, it's inventions can only be changed when you level up. Finally, you can never change it's feats after they are chosen (without taking an innovation to do so).
Craftsman
The tinker makes life (or the semblance of such) with his own two hands on a daily basis. This also happens to cross over into more mundane tasks. For every two levels the tinker gets +1 to all craft checks. This gets fun when combining it with minions specialized for assisting with crafting as it helps you to make more goods faster. Never underestimate the power of an industrial machine that doesn't sleep, eat or sweat.
Greater Innovations
Greater Innovations are innovations that are in every way better than normal innovations. These innovations cannot be taken with a feat, and are only granted at the levels 5, 10 and 15. They have powerful effects from granting all your minions large bonuses to their attributes, to allowing you to deploy another intelligent minion capable of doing activities independently while the master attends to more important (or safer) business.
The Sum of the Parts
The tinker is a highly customizable and unique class with a multitude of recombinant possibilities. Each tinker can go in with the same set of inventions and come out with a vastly different result. It gives you the opportunity to make your own summons. Beyond just the stock items you can find on the SRD there are a handful of supportive rules as well to expand the number of innovations and inventions available to your Tinker.
Showing posts with label Specializations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Specializations. Show all posts
Monday, November 9, 2015
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Abstract System in Application
I'm considering using the Abstract system in application towards my earlier project. However, it seems lacking in a couple areas. Foremost in advancement to the level 100s.
Once the characters reach level 100, their specializations would likely be around 102 and their average and upper limit for even the highest attributes would be around 17.5 to 30. Is this too little? Is it too much? Do attributes then become meaningless? What does a 102 mean in the long run? If I had smithing 102 and the average NPC level was 5 that makes their smithing at 7. What does that mean?
Should I scale the skills slower? Should I increase the effect of attributes to make an average attribute have more dramatic effect? Should I implement the pay to succeed? Or maybe I should consider adding a scaling attribute system for my game. Perhaps every ten levels an attribute can be increased?
Of coarse then we would have rank 13 attributes which would be a problem, every twenty could result in at most a rank 10, and furthermore if I were to limit each attribute to one increase before 50 and one after then it would max out at 7. I think 7 is tolerable. With an average range of 24.5 and an upper limit of 42 it has up to a 40ish% boost to your rank 102 specialization. Not too shabby. Furthermore it can be another point of separation from non-heroic NPCs by not granting them statistic bonuses. This regular numerical increase, does however bring the game a few more steps away from a role playing game and towards a roll playing game, however I wonder if this would be another reward players could be granted to help encourage them to grow and develop.
So the highest roll possible without 'other bonuses' would be 144. I'm fairly certain that there will be other bonuses. Environment probably ranging from 5-30, tools ranging 5-30, perhaps bonuses bringing it up 10-30 and finally a 5-20 oversight bonus. All told, the upper limit becomes 254. With the only random numbers being attributes, setting the range as 7 to 42 making the range 219 to 252. Just short of 1/5 variance.
Not shabby I think. Not shabby at all.
The question becomes, what will the target numbers be? Should we be looking at two master fighters, both specializing in their respective fields to the maximum, (striking and dodging) The dodger would be looking at armor 30, bonuses 30, skill 102 and attribute 21, for a total of 183 and the master striker would be getting 162 + 7d6 with an average of 186.5. This means at the highest levels of combat we notice the attacker has a 3.5 edge against the defender. This edge is the .5 edge gained per die when using a +3 per die for static numbers while there is a 3.5 average per die.
Using http://anydice.com/ this means the attacker has about a 75% chance to hit the defender. Technically I could lean either way in this matter. I could bring the bonus up to a more average number, granting +3 OR 4 per rank of attribute, alternating between and narrowing the advantage, I could increase it to 4 per rank of attribute, and turning the advantage, or leaving it as is. It all depends on my personal agenda.
Alternating between 3 and 4 would make it 'equal' and narrow the odds closer to 50%. It would however complicate setting numbers for each attribute and balance combat times.
Raising the bonus to 4 would make it biased strongly to the defender. This would extend combat times and drop hit rate. It also would make getting the first strike less valuable.
Leaving it as is would make combats faster, give the first strike an advantage, and have generally a higher hit rate.
Having these high numbers would require figuring out the high results anyhow, so I think perhaps that would make a good topic to consider. When the players have received an indication of notable advancement every level. Does this, and SHOULD this still allow lower level application? What variance should even be considered, and can it even be considered? Once again I think that this should be examined with cross sections using extremes and averages. Perhaps it will uncover some form of major flaw.
First, lets look at starting levels, 1, 3, 5. Then I think 40, 43, 45 should be examined, followed by a stretch range of 20 vs 40. Or even 20 vs 100.
Lows will be untrained and minimum attribute at start. Likely a constant number will be used for all levels.
Ave will be a point every other level and two at start for specializations. It will also have average starting stats.
High will be a specialized starting stat and max points every level.
1
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +2, 11
High 4d6 +3, 15
3
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6, +3, 12
High 4d6 +5, 17
5
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +4, 13
High 4d6 +7, 19
Looking at this, we can go ahead and start comparing well go with the notation of instigator, level and specialization rate, vs reacting level and specialization rate.
3L vs 3A: Unable to win as defender wins and the defender has 1 rating higher than attacker. Had they invested at least two points, they would have had a chance.
3A vs 3L: Cant lose, their bonus and minimum rolls are 1 higher than the defender.
3A vs 3H: Small chance of attacker winning. There are three possible rolls for success.
3H vs 3A: Small chance of failing. There are three possible rolls for failure.
Alright with this quick comparison it appears that not taking an applicable specialization can put you in hot water very quickly. Looking at this I wonder if maybe a mitigating factor is necessary. But this may be a bit of a quick knee jerk reaction. If players recognize this on their own, they may be mitigating the problem quickly, or accentuate it with some very situational glass cannons. Of coarse this will result in some of the above pairings. I personally am thinking the problem will continue on to accentuate itself in the future....
40
Ave 3d6 +21, 30
High 4d6 +42, 52
43
Ave 3d6 +22, 31
High 4d6 +44, 54
45
Ave 3d6 +24, 32
High 4d6 +46, 56
And here it is. The problem has become evident. Now anyone who hasn't placed full points into the ability has become unable to compete in a direct trait check. Now this will only become worse in the future and assuming we didn't want to gear the game towards specialists, or allow the strong players to always dominate should we gear the game towards the average players we need to seek to mitigate these numbers.
My first thought is to compare how some of these numbers are mitigated in other games.
DnD 3rd either uses a asymmetrical target number or keeps the numbers far from reaching the large scaling problem we just encountered. In the skill system the characters are generally limited to level 20 (we'll ignore epic levels for now) which means additive skill points will reach an upper limit of 23. Assuming average and high once again the expert would have a bonus of 27 (ability bonus of +4) and the average would have a bonus of 11. Given that 3rd edition uses a d20 for skill that means there is an overlap of three possible results (18-20) assuming ties go to defender and defender is the high number.
Their asymmetrical system is their skill vs DC, attack vs AC, save vs Spell DC system. The ability to boost spell saves is limited to only the base ability and level of spell (A couple feats altering this). The AC is basically based on only money and base statistic. The DC for a skill being a static number based on whatever the hell the GM wants. Furthermore these checks use an always fail or always succeed condition in the upper and lower 5% ranges. Meaning only 90% of the rolls even need the bonuses.
DnD 4th implements a similar skill system, but they widthdrew points and ranks. In fact, you are simply trained in a skill or not, meaning you get +4 in that skill or not. Furthermore the remainder of the bonus is gained simply by your level (half in this case) meaning a direct trait comparison between trained and specialized and untrained and unspecialized will at best have a 8 difference at first level. (This expands at later levels with their increasing base attributes later. Without items probably peaking near 11 or 12)
This also uses the asymmetrical system of AC/DC and so on. (I had to, don't hate me.)
White Wolf systems incorporate always having a chance to fail. The range is ALWAYS zero to rating+ successes. If you include rerolls or double counts (depend on which system you use when you roll a 10 on the d10) you can also get higher than skill results. With ratings varying from at least 1 to 10, there isn't even that much of a difference. A person with one die can succeed against someone with 10.
Savage Worlds is much like the white wolf system, except they also use the asymmetrical system of target numbers like DnD's AC, and have small maximums like White Wolf's ten dice max (I know it can go higher, but just going of base stuff here.)
Heroes Unlimited (based on the Palladium system which I likely may not be completely accurate in the following description due to some variances between games) appears to follow a comparative system, but the bonuses crawl forwards slowly. Possibly gaining one every few levels and with only small bonuses for specializing that MAY add up in the end to be a large number, but probably will not breach 20 in combat very far. This system rolls a d20 just like DnD skills and therefore is looking a lot like comparative DnD skills.
The reason I bring this system up however is that it uses percentile skills. It has the player start out with 20-60% ability within a skill then slowly crawl upwards at a few percent per level. Comparative skill checks would be about distance from your percent, trying to succeed at an action alone would just be aiming below said percent. There's also a hard cap for all skills at 98% for most classes. Any penalties to the skill are cut down from there. The mitigations implemented are a hard cap, competing against your own score and static increase.
So from my experience, the mitigation implemented by systems is generally broken down into some of the following.
Asymmetrical Competitions: Creating a non-specialization based target for rolls that merely grows with the character and may be increased or decreased somewhat based on wealth, preference or other method that can allow boosting past creation. I feel like this will draw away from some of the simplicity of the base system, forcing charts and a number of other advancements.
Soft Difference Limits: Indirect caps such as level that prevent specialization from going too far and creating no-win situations. Apparently such soft difference limits seem to hit around the variance of the die with a 10% chance of success. This means I would have to calculate the variance of the average die to calculate my max level. Somewhat restrictive, it would prevent the broad scale I had in mind.
Hard Difference Limits: I've already implemented one, but going further I could implement a hard limit like the maximum of 98%. For instance, the bonus can never exceed 50, or 100. This makes for an abrupt and artificial feeling cap for additive bonuses, but if the system were a percent one it would naturally flow in. This could be achieved using the current system by ensuring that the leveling process is simply slowed to ensure this cap is reached late game and not half way through. Currently I have it reaching 102 with my current hard difference limit, but it appears that it is necessary to either reduce the hard level cap or the points increased per level. This will require finding the breaking point where specialization creates no-win situations. Which appears to occur somewhere likely in the level 10 region.
Always Conditions: Implementing an always condition like the DnD Asymmetrical system or the bonuses and botching in White Wolf and Savage Worlds would allow for comparisons to become more likely to suddenly fail or succeed. The question becomes how to implement them. With our random range changing per rating of Attribute, the odds would be difficult to set as static results. However, since the dice are added not as success per die, they become more difficult to implement using the White Wolf style.
Forced Advancement: Looking at DnD in 3rd edition saves were forced progression. Everyone got them, and they always increased eventually at a steady rate. They could be increased or decreased by other modifiers, but onwards they trudged. More obviously as brought up the skill system in 4th edition. These ensure the character remains relevant. This system could implement it, a forced advancement in certain relevant skills, possibly as a class system. It will not solve the problem for other skills, but could be a way to force the player to at least be average in some key categories. I don't like the idea as it goes against my initial concept of customization, but seeing some of the mess encountered in GURPS skills, it might be useful.
My first impression is to consider a system of forced advancement, always conditions, the current hard limits and asymmetrical comparison and considering some soft limits.
Forced Advancement would be implemented with classes and possibly races. Combined with the general and specific specializations mentioned in the specializations post. A class would likely have major and minor skills. Major would increase constantly at max or two at start and one every other (not sure which yet.) Minor would have one at start and one every other or third. Similarly with races. Players could increase the specializations on their own above this (as long as it is not a generic one, then they would probably grab a sub category and increase that.)
Always Conditions I am considering implementing as follows. If half or more dice are sixes, then reroll and add the second total as well. If half or more are ones, then no dice are added. Should this be 50/50, bias towards the sixes. Only reroll once. This means if you have one die, you can get from 0 to 12, if you have three 0 to 32, five 0 to 60. It also means the odds of getting an always condition changes as the dice change, but not so impossibly as to require all sixes or all ones.
I didn't cover asymmetrical comparisons previously. That is because asymmetrical comparisons will only apply to player vs task. Such as crafting a sword. Your target number will change depending on the qualities of said sword.
As for the soft limits, I want to see what the results of the above do before considering how that applies to the soft limit balance.
So lets review the earlier comparative checks with the idea of Always Conditions.
1
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +2, 11
High 4d6 +3, 15
3
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6, +3, 12
High 4d6 +5, 17
5
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +4, 13
High 4d6 +7, 19
3L vs 3A: Low is able to win assuming they get at least one six.
3A vs 3L: Low is able to fail if they get 2 ones.
3L vs 3H: Low is able to succeed if they get some good rolls.
3H vs 3L: High cannot fail against low.
1A vs 3A: Definite chance for success.
1A vs 5A: Still fair chance for success.
1A vs 5H: Continuing chance for success.
I like the look of this much better than previously. There is benefit to getting high specializations, but a low specialization does not mean it is impossible to succeed. Let's see how this plays out in later level pairings.
40
Ave 3d6 +21, 30
High 4d6 +42, 52
43
Ave 3d6 +22, 31
High 4d6 +44, 54
45
Ave 3d6 +24, 32
High 4d6 +46, 56
40A vs 40H: There is a chance to succeed. Exactly one. This doesn't appear to work too well still, especially considering the odds of getting two 18s in a row is pretty low to put it lightly.
40A vs 43A: This looks almost identical to the low level similar investment scenarios. Probably doesn't need further investigation.
So we've managed to reduce the difference greatly. But probably not enough. Not enough if I want those who have invested only some to still have a chance to compete with those who invested a lot. Some of the other solutions that could be implemented I'm considering include...
Increasing the variance: Every 20 levels giving the player the option to increase an attribute one die, with a maximum of one increase per stat up to 60 and 80 and 100 allowing a second. That would add a potential 12 to the variance for both, and make the game a bit more high powered. I was also considering the potential of increasing attributes by class and race. This means that should the player be a mage, human let's say, they will get two to INT bringing their variance up to rank 6 dice, at 100 this could be 8 dice. For D6 this isn't that bad as far as number of dice, and at 100 assuming the player assigned one rank and chose a class somewhat relevant brings the variance up a total of 24 for the average rated stat. The specialist gets a total of 48. However, since both can be 0, this makes for a wider potential range of results.
Cutting the Levels: I really don't like this idea. The main reason is that the 100 level system allows for a slow progression of abilities and bonuses in the other half that I wish to develop. With all 100 levels divided for 5 scales of play, and 20 levels within a scale to develop and gain abilities, it grants a decent progression rate allowing players to learn about the abilities they took, then grow.
Alright, let us take a look at the problematic 40 range adapting for attribute increases.
40
Ave 5d6 +21, 36
High 7d6 +42, 63
40A vs 40H: peaks at 81, target 63. That gives us a bit of variance.
40H vs 40A: Still no chance of failure
This is a bit better, it shows the attacker advantage that has been playing into previous concepts, and the higher skill still benefits. The question I'm now asking, is how often should the static number be used? Personally I like having the static number as an option to accelerate tests, but we'll see. For giggles, I'd like to see what happens at 100.
100
Ave 5d6 +51, 66
High 7d6 +102, 123
100A vs 100H: With a peak of 111, there's no chance of success. Odds are there hasn't been for what appears to be about 30 levels or so. Of coarse, after level 70 we've probably reached a high powered point where the characters have probably gained enough tricks to work around such walls. I'll have to be sure to build them in.
I think now I've finally reached the point where I'm willing to settle and move on. So in summary here's what we've got.
Attributes can be increased by class and race by one rating.
An attribute can be increased once every 20 levels, but a specific one cannot be raised more than once before 80 and no more than twice after that.
Critical fails and successes are when the dice rolled have at least half ones, or at least half sixes. With a bias towards successes.
At first level specializations can be bought up to rank 3, after that one point can be allocated per level.
Some specializations will be automatically granted, and can be raised beyond the base allotment up to the same cap as if bought manually.
I need to build work arounds to prevent unbeatable opponents.
Once the characters reach level 100, their specializations would likely be around 102 and their average and upper limit for even the highest attributes would be around 17.5 to 30. Is this too little? Is it too much? Do attributes then become meaningless? What does a 102 mean in the long run? If I had smithing 102 and the average NPC level was 5 that makes their smithing at 7. What does that mean?
Should I scale the skills slower? Should I increase the effect of attributes to make an average attribute have more dramatic effect? Should I implement the pay to succeed? Or maybe I should consider adding a scaling attribute system for my game. Perhaps every ten levels an attribute can be increased?
Of coarse then we would have rank 13 attributes which would be a problem, every twenty could result in at most a rank 10, and furthermore if I were to limit each attribute to one increase before 50 and one after then it would max out at 7. I think 7 is tolerable. With an average range of 24.5 and an upper limit of 42 it has up to a 40ish% boost to your rank 102 specialization. Not too shabby. Furthermore it can be another point of separation from non-heroic NPCs by not granting them statistic bonuses. This regular numerical increase, does however bring the game a few more steps away from a role playing game and towards a roll playing game, however I wonder if this would be another reward players could be granted to help encourage them to grow and develop.
So the highest roll possible without 'other bonuses' would be 144. I'm fairly certain that there will be other bonuses. Environment probably ranging from 5-30, tools ranging 5-30, perhaps bonuses bringing it up 10-30 and finally a 5-20 oversight bonus. All told, the upper limit becomes 254. With the only random numbers being attributes, setting the range as 7 to 42 making the range 219 to 252. Just short of 1/5 variance.
Not shabby I think. Not shabby at all.
The question becomes, what will the target numbers be? Should we be looking at two master fighters, both specializing in their respective fields to the maximum, (striking and dodging) The dodger would be looking at armor 30, bonuses 30, skill 102 and attribute 21, for a total of 183 and the master striker would be getting 162 + 7d6 with an average of 186.5. This means at the highest levels of combat we notice the attacker has a 3.5 edge against the defender. This edge is the .5 edge gained per die when using a +3 per die for static numbers while there is a 3.5 average per die.
Using http://anydice.com/ this means the attacker has about a 75% chance to hit the defender. Technically I could lean either way in this matter. I could bring the bonus up to a more average number, granting +3 OR 4 per rank of attribute, alternating between and narrowing the advantage, I could increase it to 4 per rank of attribute, and turning the advantage, or leaving it as is. It all depends on my personal agenda.
Alternating between 3 and 4 would make it 'equal' and narrow the odds closer to 50%. It would however complicate setting numbers for each attribute and balance combat times.
Raising the bonus to 4 would make it biased strongly to the defender. This would extend combat times and drop hit rate. It also would make getting the first strike less valuable.
Leaving it as is would make combats faster, give the first strike an advantage, and have generally a higher hit rate.
Having these high numbers would require figuring out the high results anyhow, so I think perhaps that would make a good topic to consider. When the players have received an indication of notable advancement every level. Does this, and SHOULD this still allow lower level application? What variance should even be considered, and can it even be considered? Once again I think that this should be examined with cross sections using extremes and averages. Perhaps it will uncover some form of major flaw.
First, lets look at starting levels, 1, 3, 5. Then I think 40, 43, 45 should be examined, followed by a stretch range of 20 vs 40. Or even 20 vs 100.
Lows will be untrained and minimum attribute at start. Likely a constant number will be used for all levels.
Ave will be a point every other level and two at start for specializations. It will also have average starting stats.
High will be a specialized starting stat and max points every level.
1
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +2, 11
High 4d6 +3, 15
3
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6, +3, 12
High 4d6 +5, 17
5
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +4, 13
High 4d6 +7, 19
Looking at this, we can go ahead and start comparing well go with the notation of instigator, level and specialization rate, vs reacting level and specialization rate.
3L vs 3A: Unable to win as defender wins and the defender has 1 rating higher than attacker. Had they invested at least two points, they would have had a chance.
3A vs 3L: Cant lose, their bonus and minimum rolls are 1 higher than the defender.
3A vs 3H: Small chance of attacker winning. There are three possible rolls for success.
3H vs 3A: Small chance of failing. There are three possible rolls for failure.
Alright with this quick comparison it appears that not taking an applicable specialization can put you in hot water very quickly. Looking at this I wonder if maybe a mitigating factor is necessary. But this may be a bit of a quick knee jerk reaction. If players recognize this on their own, they may be mitigating the problem quickly, or accentuate it with some very situational glass cannons. Of coarse this will result in some of the above pairings. I personally am thinking the problem will continue on to accentuate itself in the future....
40
Ave 3d6 +21, 30
High 4d6 +42, 52
43
Ave 3d6 +22, 31
High 4d6 +44, 54
45
Ave 3d6 +24, 32
High 4d6 +46, 56
And here it is. The problem has become evident. Now anyone who hasn't placed full points into the ability has become unable to compete in a direct trait check. Now this will only become worse in the future and assuming we didn't want to gear the game towards specialists, or allow the strong players to always dominate should we gear the game towards the average players we need to seek to mitigate these numbers.
My first thought is to compare how some of these numbers are mitigated in other games.
DnD 3rd either uses a asymmetrical target number or keeps the numbers far from reaching the large scaling problem we just encountered. In the skill system the characters are generally limited to level 20 (we'll ignore epic levels for now) which means additive skill points will reach an upper limit of 23. Assuming average and high once again the expert would have a bonus of 27 (ability bonus of +4) and the average would have a bonus of 11. Given that 3rd edition uses a d20 for skill that means there is an overlap of three possible results (18-20) assuming ties go to defender and defender is the high number.
Their asymmetrical system is their skill vs DC, attack vs AC, save vs Spell DC system. The ability to boost spell saves is limited to only the base ability and level of spell (A couple feats altering this). The AC is basically based on only money and base statistic. The DC for a skill being a static number based on whatever the hell the GM wants. Furthermore these checks use an always fail or always succeed condition in the upper and lower 5% ranges. Meaning only 90% of the rolls even need the bonuses.
DnD 4th implements a similar skill system, but they widthdrew points and ranks. In fact, you are simply trained in a skill or not, meaning you get +4 in that skill or not. Furthermore the remainder of the bonus is gained simply by your level (half in this case) meaning a direct trait comparison between trained and specialized and untrained and unspecialized will at best have a 8 difference at first level. (This expands at later levels with their increasing base attributes later. Without items probably peaking near 11 or 12)
This also uses the asymmetrical system of AC/DC and so on. (I had to, don't hate me.)
White Wolf systems incorporate always having a chance to fail. The range is ALWAYS zero to rating+ successes. If you include rerolls or double counts (depend on which system you use when you roll a 10 on the d10) you can also get higher than skill results. With ratings varying from at least 1 to 10, there isn't even that much of a difference. A person with one die can succeed against someone with 10.
Savage Worlds is much like the white wolf system, except they also use the asymmetrical system of target numbers like DnD's AC, and have small maximums like White Wolf's ten dice max (I know it can go higher, but just going of base stuff here.)
Heroes Unlimited (based on the Palladium system which I likely may not be completely accurate in the following description due to some variances between games) appears to follow a comparative system, but the bonuses crawl forwards slowly. Possibly gaining one every few levels and with only small bonuses for specializing that MAY add up in the end to be a large number, but probably will not breach 20 in combat very far. This system rolls a d20 just like DnD skills and therefore is looking a lot like comparative DnD skills.
The reason I bring this system up however is that it uses percentile skills. It has the player start out with 20-60% ability within a skill then slowly crawl upwards at a few percent per level. Comparative skill checks would be about distance from your percent, trying to succeed at an action alone would just be aiming below said percent. There's also a hard cap for all skills at 98% for most classes. Any penalties to the skill are cut down from there. The mitigations implemented are a hard cap, competing against your own score and static increase.
So from my experience, the mitigation implemented by systems is generally broken down into some of the following.
Asymmetrical Competitions: Creating a non-specialization based target for rolls that merely grows with the character and may be increased or decreased somewhat based on wealth, preference or other method that can allow boosting past creation. I feel like this will draw away from some of the simplicity of the base system, forcing charts and a number of other advancements.
Soft Difference Limits: Indirect caps such as level that prevent specialization from going too far and creating no-win situations. Apparently such soft difference limits seem to hit around the variance of the die with a 10% chance of success. This means I would have to calculate the variance of the average die to calculate my max level. Somewhat restrictive, it would prevent the broad scale I had in mind.
Hard Difference Limits: I've already implemented one, but going further I could implement a hard limit like the maximum of 98%. For instance, the bonus can never exceed 50, or 100. This makes for an abrupt and artificial feeling cap for additive bonuses, but if the system were a percent one it would naturally flow in. This could be achieved using the current system by ensuring that the leveling process is simply slowed to ensure this cap is reached late game and not half way through. Currently I have it reaching 102 with my current hard difference limit, but it appears that it is necessary to either reduce the hard level cap or the points increased per level. This will require finding the breaking point where specialization creates no-win situations. Which appears to occur somewhere likely in the level 10 region.
Always Conditions: Implementing an always condition like the DnD Asymmetrical system or the bonuses and botching in White Wolf and Savage Worlds would allow for comparisons to become more likely to suddenly fail or succeed. The question becomes how to implement them. With our random range changing per rating of Attribute, the odds would be difficult to set as static results. However, since the dice are added not as success per die, they become more difficult to implement using the White Wolf style.
Forced Advancement: Looking at DnD in 3rd edition saves were forced progression. Everyone got them, and they always increased eventually at a steady rate. They could be increased or decreased by other modifiers, but onwards they trudged. More obviously as brought up the skill system in 4th edition. These ensure the character remains relevant. This system could implement it, a forced advancement in certain relevant skills, possibly as a class system. It will not solve the problem for other skills, but could be a way to force the player to at least be average in some key categories. I don't like the idea as it goes against my initial concept of customization, but seeing some of the mess encountered in GURPS skills, it might be useful.
My first impression is to consider a system of forced advancement, always conditions, the current hard limits and asymmetrical comparison and considering some soft limits.
Forced Advancement would be implemented with classes and possibly races. Combined with the general and specific specializations mentioned in the specializations post. A class would likely have major and minor skills. Major would increase constantly at max or two at start and one every other (not sure which yet.) Minor would have one at start and one every other or third. Similarly with races. Players could increase the specializations on their own above this (as long as it is not a generic one, then they would probably grab a sub category and increase that.)
Always Conditions I am considering implementing as follows. If half or more dice are sixes, then reroll and add the second total as well. If half or more are ones, then no dice are added. Should this be 50/50, bias towards the sixes. Only reroll once. This means if you have one die, you can get from 0 to 12, if you have three 0 to 32, five 0 to 60. It also means the odds of getting an always condition changes as the dice change, but not so impossibly as to require all sixes or all ones.
I didn't cover asymmetrical comparisons previously. That is because asymmetrical comparisons will only apply to player vs task. Such as crafting a sword. Your target number will change depending on the qualities of said sword.
As for the soft limits, I want to see what the results of the above do before considering how that applies to the soft limit balance.
So lets review the earlier comparative checks with the idea of Always Conditions.
1
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +2, 11
High 4d6 +3, 15
3
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6, +3, 12
High 4d6 +5, 17
5
Low 2d6, 6
Ave 3d6 +4, 13
High 4d6 +7, 19
3L vs 3A: Low is able to win assuming they get at least one six.
3A vs 3L: Low is able to fail if they get 2 ones.
3L vs 3H: Low is able to succeed if they get some good rolls.
3H vs 3L: High cannot fail against low.
1A vs 3A: Definite chance for success.
1A vs 5A: Still fair chance for success.
1A vs 5H: Continuing chance for success.
I like the look of this much better than previously. There is benefit to getting high specializations, but a low specialization does not mean it is impossible to succeed. Let's see how this plays out in later level pairings.
40
Ave 3d6 +21, 30
High 4d6 +42, 52
43
Ave 3d6 +22, 31
High 4d6 +44, 54
45
Ave 3d6 +24, 32
High 4d6 +46, 56
40A vs 40H: There is a chance to succeed. Exactly one. This doesn't appear to work too well still, especially considering the odds of getting two 18s in a row is pretty low to put it lightly.
40A vs 43A: This looks almost identical to the low level similar investment scenarios. Probably doesn't need further investigation.
So we've managed to reduce the difference greatly. But probably not enough. Not enough if I want those who have invested only some to still have a chance to compete with those who invested a lot. Some of the other solutions that could be implemented I'm considering include...
Increasing the variance: Every 20 levels giving the player the option to increase an attribute one die, with a maximum of one increase per stat up to 60 and 80 and 100 allowing a second. That would add a potential 12 to the variance for both, and make the game a bit more high powered. I was also considering the potential of increasing attributes by class and race. This means that should the player be a mage, human let's say, they will get two to INT bringing their variance up to rank 6 dice, at 100 this could be 8 dice. For D6 this isn't that bad as far as number of dice, and at 100 assuming the player assigned one rank and chose a class somewhat relevant brings the variance up a total of 24 for the average rated stat. The specialist gets a total of 48. However, since both can be 0, this makes for a wider potential range of results.
Cutting the Levels: I really don't like this idea. The main reason is that the 100 level system allows for a slow progression of abilities and bonuses in the other half that I wish to develop. With all 100 levels divided for 5 scales of play, and 20 levels within a scale to develop and gain abilities, it grants a decent progression rate allowing players to learn about the abilities they took, then grow.
Alright, let us take a look at the problematic 40 range adapting for attribute increases.
40
Ave 5d6 +21, 36
High 7d6 +42, 63
40A vs 40H: peaks at 81, target 63. That gives us a bit of variance.
40H vs 40A: Still no chance of failure
This is a bit better, it shows the attacker advantage that has been playing into previous concepts, and the higher skill still benefits. The question I'm now asking, is how often should the static number be used? Personally I like having the static number as an option to accelerate tests, but we'll see. For giggles, I'd like to see what happens at 100.
100
Ave 5d6 +51, 66
High 7d6 +102, 123
100A vs 100H: With a peak of 111, there's no chance of success. Odds are there hasn't been for what appears to be about 30 levels or so. Of coarse, after level 70 we've probably reached a high powered point where the characters have probably gained enough tricks to work around such walls. I'll have to be sure to build them in.
I think now I've finally reached the point where I'm willing to settle and move on. So in summary here's what we've got.
Attributes can be increased by class and race by one rating.
An attribute can be increased once every 20 levels, but a specific one cannot be raised more than once before 80 and no more than twice after that.
Critical fails and successes are when the dice rolled have at least half ones, or at least half sixes. With a bias towards successes.
At first level specializations can be bought up to rank 3, after that one point can be allocated per level.
Some specializations will be automatically granted, and can be raised beyond the base allotment up to the same cap as if bought manually.
I need to build work arounds to prevent unbeatable opponents.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Specializations
Referenced before, the specialization system is a modifier for the attributes. This allows the player to allocate bonuses for particular types of actions.
Currently all information on specializations is in flux, I am currently unsure as to how general or specific they should be.
Tentatively they should operate thusly.
At creation the player can allocate up to three ranks in a specialization. Furthermore on advancement, specialization maximums are increased by one point. Specializations operate as an additive bonus to related rolls. This means, should the vessel have a rank 1 specialization, they gain +1 to rolls related to that specialization, should they have 4 ranks, they get +4. These bonuses are also additive to static targets, therefore a rank 1 attribute and rank 2 specialization create a target of 5.
This has a variety of results when combined with the attribute system.
1. A rank 1 attribute with at least 1 specialization acting on a rank 2 attribute with no specialization has an opportunity to succeed.
2. At start, and for every three levels thereafter the player can increase the vessel's specialization enough to effectively counter a low attribute, or raise one attribute in regards to those specific instances. In truth this would actually alternate due to the real 3.5 average on a d6 by three and four levels for the instigator but with the reaction advantage this is only every three levels.
3. This grants a more accessible opportunity for the player to advance their vessel. Advancement ideally would take less than years to achieve. Likely it could take between weeks and months. The downside is that this advancement will definitely have holes.
Specialization ideally will present more than just general raw ability to perform actions. Early on (until around three advancements) a single rank in ability can still outpace specialization, but a lifetime of training in a particular specialization will allow the specialist to reliably outpace an equivalent ability ranking and eventually outpace the untrained completely. An agent with both high specialization and high ability would be one of the top of their field in the world eventually, but odds are there are many others with a great deal of advancement already, so don't expect those with only a few advancements to be at that level.
Currently the implementation in my mind of specializations has a variety of different implementations. I'm unsure of which to pursue, or if a combination would be warranted. It depends on whether or not this system will implement classes and races or not.
The first question is the how general the specializations should be. I am quite tempted to leave them completely unlisted with the GM as the one to rule on the limitations based on the scope of the game. If the GM wished to have players with a wide breadth of skills, very general specializations would be warranted, if they wished the players to have narrow focused characters, then specific specializations would be appropriate.
A few examples.
Combat - Most generic, probably for campaigns with little physical altercations.
Melee Combat - Still very generic, for cinematic campaigns with little interest in dealing with players having to find appropriate armaments for their regions or training. Likely also for campaigns with highly skilled vessels.
Swords - Probably near the median. This causes the players to specialize their interests a bit, or sacrifice other specializations to master many weapon types.
Fencing - Forces the players not only to specialize in weapon types, but also styles. This further limits weapon selection and possibly even effectiveness against other styles.
Foil - Forces the players to choose each weapon individually. Likely in a game where players will choose combats, be unlikely to lose items, or should be feeling helpless at times.
Foil Strike - VERY specialized, this is a specialization just to HIT with a weapon, likely paired with Foil Damage and perhaps Foil Parry. This is extreme, to master a particular style of combat would probably consume quite a great deal of specialization points.
Further variations could include dual wielding styles as opposed to just singe weapon, and possibly defensive vs offensive and so on. Personally if I were to run this with only one degree of the above I would likely stop at swords. However, I have some other ideas of how this could be implemented outside simply choosing one level.
Allowing all levels and doubling spendable specialization points each time the player chose to drop a level. (Likely would require structuring the specializations before hand.)
1. This would reduce the application of the specialization, but could allow someone to turn one point in combat into 8 points in specific weapons.
2. This would also enable powergaming to a degree. By splitting the points in to many smaller categories a player could have their vessel able to be amazing at precise fields, but useless outside their element.
3. This could decrease required sheet space. By a lot. Imagine, no listing 4 influence skills, just put down 'influence rating 3". Vessels would only be as complicated as the GM/Player wished.
Another variation would be special case general specializations. For instance if classes were implemented, the player could be granted the 'Magery' specialization. Likely this would progress at it's own rate with no opportunity for the player to directly invest, but perhaps the player could choose sub specializations that only cost anything they would add to Magery. For instance...
Bob the Orc is a warrior. Therefore he has taken the Warrior class giving him the Warrior specialization. This gives him +2 at creation to Warrior and another +1 every other advancement.
At creation Bob decides he want's to have a higher sword skill. As his Warrior specialization is +2 by default, Bob only needs to spend 1 point to get a rank of 3 in sword.
However, if Bob wanted to get runecraft (this would be under magery) it would not get a boost from Bob's Warrior unless for some reason the campaign's backdrop stated all orcish warriors had runecraft.
1. This allows classes to smoothly fit into the puzzle and grant bonuses in a simple manner. Most likely the class page would list many of the specializations listed in the book as suggested degrees.
2. This would further reduce sheet consumption, as a general class skill would quickly define a large degree of the character specializations.
3. This would suffer from a fair degree of subjective issues if a player assumed that the class skill covered X when the GM believed it did not.
Beyond this, is the question of how many points should be granted to rank up specializations on creation and at each advancement. I believe that if I assemble a list of recommended specializations and create some sample vessels that perhaps this should be easier to establish. Also perhaps having some other people create some 'sample' vessels might help as well.
Now you may have noted, that so far I have not mentioned much on the association of specializations to abilities other than that specializations are added to ability rolls. This is because specializations will NOT be directly related to any particular ability. Rather than associate all rolls with the sword specialization MUST utilize the Sixth Attribute, you may roll using the sixth attribute to connect with the target, then against the Fourth Attribute to determine the damage.
Currently all information on specializations is in flux, I am currently unsure as to how general or specific they should be.
Tentatively they should operate thusly.
At creation the player can allocate up to three ranks in a specialization. Furthermore on advancement, specialization maximums are increased by one point. Specializations operate as an additive bonus to related rolls. This means, should the vessel have a rank 1 specialization, they gain +1 to rolls related to that specialization, should they have 4 ranks, they get +4. These bonuses are also additive to static targets, therefore a rank 1 attribute and rank 2 specialization create a target of 5.
This has a variety of results when combined with the attribute system.
1. A rank 1 attribute with at least 1 specialization acting on a rank 2 attribute with no specialization has an opportunity to succeed.
2. At start, and for every three levels thereafter the player can increase the vessel's specialization enough to effectively counter a low attribute, or raise one attribute in regards to those specific instances. In truth this would actually alternate due to the real 3.5 average on a d6 by three and four levels for the instigator but with the reaction advantage this is only every three levels.
3. This grants a more accessible opportunity for the player to advance their vessel. Advancement ideally would take less than years to achieve. Likely it could take between weeks and months. The downside is that this advancement will definitely have holes.
Specialization ideally will present more than just general raw ability to perform actions. Early on (until around three advancements) a single rank in ability can still outpace specialization, but a lifetime of training in a particular specialization will allow the specialist to reliably outpace an equivalent ability ranking and eventually outpace the untrained completely. An agent with both high specialization and high ability would be one of the top of their field in the world eventually, but odds are there are many others with a great deal of advancement already, so don't expect those with only a few advancements to be at that level.
Currently the implementation in my mind of specializations has a variety of different implementations. I'm unsure of which to pursue, or if a combination would be warranted. It depends on whether or not this system will implement classes and races or not.
The first question is the how general the specializations should be. I am quite tempted to leave them completely unlisted with the GM as the one to rule on the limitations based on the scope of the game. If the GM wished to have players with a wide breadth of skills, very general specializations would be warranted, if they wished the players to have narrow focused characters, then specific specializations would be appropriate.
A few examples.
Combat - Most generic, probably for campaigns with little physical altercations.
Melee Combat - Still very generic, for cinematic campaigns with little interest in dealing with players having to find appropriate armaments for their regions or training. Likely also for campaigns with highly skilled vessels.
Swords - Probably near the median. This causes the players to specialize their interests a bit, or sacrifice other specializations to master many weapon types.
Fencing - Forces the players not only to specialize in weapon types, but also styles. This further limits weapon selection and possibly even effectiveness against other styles.
Foil - Forces the players to choose each weapon individually. Likely in a game where players will choose combats, be unlikely to lose items, or should be feeling helpless at times.
Foil Strike - VERY specialized, this is a specialization just to HIT with a weapon, likely paired with Foil Damage and perhaps Foil Parry. This is extreme, to master a particular style of combat would probably consume quite a great deal of specialization points.
Further variations could include dual wielding styles as opposed to just singe weapon, and possibly defensive vs offensive and so on. Personally if I were to run this with only one degree of the above I would likely stop at swords. However, I have some other ideas of how this could be implemented outside simply choosing one level.
Allowing all levels and doubling spendable specialization points each time the player chose to drop a level. (Likely would require structuring the specializations before hand.)
1. This would reduce the application of the specialization, but could allow someone to turn one point in combat into 8 points in specific weapons.
2. This would also enable powergaming to a degree. By splitting the points in to many smaller categories a player could have their vessel able to be amazing at precise fields, but useless outside their element.
3. This could decrease required sheet space. By a lot. Imagine, no listing 4 influence skills, just put down 'influence rating 3". Vessels would only be as complicated as the GM/Player wished.
Another variation would be special case general specializations. For instance if classes were implemented, the player could be granted the 'Magery' specialization. Likely this would progress at it's own rate with no opportunity for the player to directly invest, but perhaps the player could choose sub specializations that only cost anything they would add to Magery. For instance...
Bob the Orc is a warrior. Therefore he has taken the Warrior class giving him the Warrior specialization. This gives him +2 at creation to Warrior and another +1 every other advancement.
At creation Bob decides he want's to have a higher sword skill. As his Warrior specialization is +2 by default, Bob only needs to spend 1 point to get a rank of 3 in sword.
However, if Bob wanted to get runecraft (this would be under magery) it would not get a boost from Bob's Warrior unless for some reason the campaign's backdrop stated all orcish warriors had runecraft.
1. This allows classes to smoothly fit into the puzzle and grant bonuses in a simple manner. Most likely the class page would list many of the specializations listed in the book as suggested degrees.
2. This would further reduce sheet consumption, as a general class skill would quickly define a large degree of the character specializations.
3. This would suffer from a fair degree of subjective issues if a player assumed that the class skill covered X when the GM believed it did not.
Beyond this, is the question of how many points should be granted to rank up specializations on creation and at each advancement. I believe that if I assemble a list of recommended specializations and create some sample vessels that perhaps this should be easier to establish. Also perhaps having some other people create some 'sample' vessels might help as well.
Now you may have noted, that so far I have not mentioned much on the association of specializations to abilities other than that specializations are added to ability rolls. This is because specializations will NOT be directly related to any particular ability. Rather than associate all rolls with the sword specialization MUST utilize the Sixth Attribute, you may roll using the sixth attribute to connect with the target, then against the Fourth Attribute to determine the damage.
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