Looping the Hen Games

Well, after much ado I decided to just put together the ability buy portion of the point-buy system and see what happens. When it comes right down to it, ability scores have a very limited number of effects. It is true they affect a huge amount of things, but the mechanics are pretty simple.

So anyway, my thought is each character gets 200 ability points to start with. When I worked it out, the average 26-point buy character (in regular D&D) ends up with around 200 ability points according to the following list. I left it at 200 even though I have perception and comeliness because I removed skill point bonuses and hit point bonuses and left them exclusively on the point buy master list because they are the only abilities that 'scale' and get better at every level in the regular system (well, bonus spells fall in here too, but those went away also). Each value in the list below is equal to a +1 check bonus.

DC Check, Spell Level 8
DC Check, Spell 4
To Hit 12
To Hit, Ranged 10
To Hit, Unarmed 10
Grapple 6
Damage 4
Dodge Bonus 12
Will Bonus 5
Fort Bonus 5
Reflex Bonus 5

Str Check 6
Int Check 10
Wis Check 6
Dex Check 10
Con Check 6
Chr Check 6
Com Check 6
Per Check 8

You can only take up to +4 in any category (similar to regular rules limiting characters to an 18 ability score (a +4 bonus)) without penalty; each additional +1 after 4 costs double. So, for example, say I am building a standard fighter type, I would take:

+4 to hit (48 points)
+4 to damage (16 points)
+2 to hit, ranged (20 points)
+3 grapple (18 points)
+2 dodge bonus (24 points)
+2 to each save (30 points)

+1 to strength checks (swimming, jumping, bashing, encumbrance) (6 points)
+1 to dex checks (10 points)
+2 to con checks (12 points)
+2 to per checks (16 points)

Intelligence and dex checks are weighted higher because of the sheer number of checks likely to be made. Perception is next with spot, search, listen, and sense motive.

If there is anything I missed, please let me know; broken down like this, ability scores by the book seem pretty complex. Some people may hate this sytem, and those people will always have the ability to make standard characters. However, as mentioned in some earlier threads, I always disliked that being good at shooting a bow is also exactly equal to how well a character can dodge. Or how hard a swordsman can swing is exactly equal to how well he is at unarmed combat.

For anyone interested, maybe the Saturday following this one (the 17th) we could do a dry run of the entire point buy system and create a few different level characters and run a little arena dueling and see what about the system is currently borken.

Posted by at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (4334)

Not intended to be even near a final copy, just something to do some testing with. My thoughts are 33-point attribute buy, everything starts at 8. Everything 14 and above is 2 points. 60 character points per level. Eventually, that starting 60 points might be used to purchase a creature or type template (or part of one in the case of something like Thri-Kreen, which is CL + 2, or 120 character points at that rate).

Something I'll be working on also is flaws, but everyone is welcome to submit to the list. For example, if you take hobble you have a horrible limp, and your land speed as a human would only be 20" instead of 30" (a pretty significant flaw), but you would get 15-20 extra character points or so. FYI, weak flaws will only get a few extra character points, while extreme challenges (paraplegic) might get a level's worth. There will probably be a max of 2 flaws (one major, one minor) otherwise knowing people like Raistca will be casting fixes with all their extra char points.

Anyhow, here's the list so far, just the Player's Handbook stuff so far. If we come up with something workable from this, we can start with the other books.

Posted by at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am trying to determine whether ability points (e.g. Str, Int) should be purchased from the same pool as all of the other skills, feats, spells, etc. For consistency sake, I think they should be, though I am not sure it is feasible. I have a feeling that trading in a couple of ability points could give a character a pretty big leap in power in more than a few other categories. However, there might be a way to compromise and be able to trade in a certain number of ability points for a set number of character points.

I've been doing some comparisons of the various abilities, and find that I think some are much more valuable than others. Some abilities (Wisdom) are almost worthless to non-cleric/druid characters, while others (Constitution) provide some small value to all characters regardless of class. It might be that there will be 3 levels of attributes, with Strength/Intelligence/Wisdom falling into the most costly category, Dexterity and Constitution into the 2nd, and Charisma/Perception/Comeliness into the least costly category. This is not set in stone yet, because although Charisma and Comeliness have a low perceived value in the two current campaigns, in a high-diplomacy campaign, they will become very valuable. I've started to do it more now, but it will eventually become automatic to roll a reaction check based on chr/com everytime someone encounters someone else.

Anyway, onto the boring analysis part. I know it is not feasible to quantify an exact value for every attribute, but I've tried to break down to a basic value per ability point, based on the most common benefits provided. For example, because I assigned BAB a character point value of 14 and a point of damage at 4 character points, every two points of strength at first level is worth at least 18 character points. Now, strength is an ability that now scales differently depending on whether one is a fighter or a mage (or cleric/rogue). This is because at 20th level, strength for a fighter gives a bonus to hit and damage on 4 attacks, while for a mage they only give a bonus for 2. I won't go into the exact details, but I came up with a minimum value for strength of 9 character points for all classes at first level, to a maximum of 32 character points for a fighter at level 20. This is compared to a maximum of 16 character point value for a mage at level 20.

Strength and Dexterity both end up scaling similarly as they both provide attack bonuses, though Dexterity provides more early value because of the contstant AC/Save bonus. I valued the Dex attack bonus at only 10 points because as I think Eric mentioned recently, ranged weapons typically do less damage than melee weapons. If it is determined that both provide similar value, then at 20th level Strength and Dex scale almost exactly the same because I valued an AC bonus of +1 at 15 character points, whereas a fighter with 4 attacks gets a total of +4 damage potential, which I valued at being worth 16 character points. Hmm. The more I think about it, Dex probably should be in the tier 1 category with Str/Int/Wis.

Now why do I value the other abilities (con, chr, com, per) lower? First, with this system, there is no reason to make any magic charisma based, as there won't really be any sorcerers. Casters will just be casters. If there is a reason to keep charisma as a caster-based attribute, then its value might go up slightly. However, take a look at Constitution. HP's are certainly valuable, but as of right now, one HP has a value of 1 character point. Thus, at first level, 2 points of constitution is only worth 3 character points (1hp + 1 point of saving throw (which I value at 2 CP). At 20th things are a little better, with each 2 points being worth 22 character points (20hp + 1 point of saving throw).

Wisdom is the most skewed of all the attributes, as far as I can tell. The maximum value for a cleric of 2 points of Wisdom (assuming it is between 10-19, as the value of Wisdom after 19 goes down drastically because the only need (other than the save bonus) for a 19 Wisdom is to cast 9th level spells) is 92 points, while the maximum value for a fighter is 2 points (the save bonus). Intelligence is not much better, weighing in at the highest value of any attribute at 118 per 2 points (again, assuming a Wizard is using it to open up spell levels), but the fighter gets 26 CP's per 2 points due to the bonus skill points and languages. (I am assuming going up in Int will get you new languages, although I think in the core rules that is only at 1st level).

I don't know what other rules I might mess up, but it might even be possible to do away with attributes entirely, and you could then purchase your AC bonus for dexterity separately from your +1 to ranged attacks and skill check bonuses and your attack bonus from strength separate from your damage bonus. Thoughts?

Posted by at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

One of the purposes of the proposed Point-Buy system is to allow people to create truly unique characters with a range of abilities greater than what is currently allowed. An example Rodney had was a Rogue who took some of the standard skills (hide, move silently, listen, search), backstab, but then wanted to add some spells that would be useful, such as Alter Self at first level, Invisibility at 3rd, and Greater Image at 5th.

This is what I see as a good use of the point-buy system to add a touch of magic to create a good character. However, there are some challenges. My thought was to have 3 components to casting spells. First, a character would take the 'spell level' ability, which opens up spells in general of a particular level, such as when a wizard goes from 4th to 5th level and can then cast 3rd level spells. The 2nd component was to take particular spells, and the 3rd would be spell points.

Now, this is all well and good for a wizard to spend most of their points on spell-related things, but a rogue who wants a lot of different skills and feats as well would have a hard time fitting all that in just to be able to cast 1 spell per level. So for example, say it normally takes 20 points for a wizard to open and cast 1st level spells, 32 for 2nd level spells, and 44 for 3rd level spells. (these numbers are close to what I am looking at as I broke down the first couple of classes and includes choosing 9 total spells and having 18 spell points at 3rd level) Would it work to offer single use-per-day castings of spells at 5 points for 1st, 10 points for 2nd and 15 points for third?

The value per spell has to be low enough to allow someone to 'splash' it, but high enough to avoid potential abuse. Right now I am worried that too many people would choose a fighter route and then splash fireball, lightning bolt, and magic missile or otherwise using the system to create overpowered characters.

There are a couple possible options for preventing this type of abuse, but I am looking for any others ideas people come up with. First, the system can potentially just put damage-dealing spells in a separate category and say they cost more or require a user to have 'opened up' the whole spell level to use them, thus limiting them to individuals who have put a significant chunk of their character points into spellcasting. I think I might like this option better, because it still gives purpose to a spell-caster type class, which without some benefit would most likely fade away because people cast the same 10% of the total spell list even in our game and without some control would just take the cheapest route to the best spells. Alternately, and probably the hardest to do (time-wise), is recosting spells on an individual basis. This might be the best option also, but would definitely be more work.

This thought process is leading me to think that recosting of some spells might be necessary anyway. For example, cleric's get at 2nd level all of the spells that raise attributes by 4 points (Bull's Strength, Fox's Cunning, Eagle's Splendor, etc). However, at least in our game, the only one that ever gets used is Bull's Strength. So I am of two minds. Do we raise Bull's Strength to 3rd level in the new campaign, or lower all of the other's to 1st level? I am pretty sure even at third level people would still use Bull's Strength because it is a very potent buff. Would anyone use any of the others even as a 1st level spell? It might even be possible to test this in Nihilat by lowering the spell levels on some of Jerel's spells that never get used (as I think he is the only spellcaster left).

I am open to any other ideas as well. It might be in the new world, everyone has equal access to magic so no one really specializes. It might not be unusual to see the rock monster busting off a haste spell or having every third lizardman turning invisible prior to combat. Or it might be that only utilitarian magic is allowed to everyone, and have all damage spells outlawed and only taught by a licensed guild. Maybe spellcasters that have damage spells have to be sheriff's and any township could call on them to enforce the law. So there are definitely different ways of resolving this, I'm just not sure which is best yet! I guess I would like the Point-Buy system to be compatible with different worlds, so I am not sure using a campaign-specific fix would be the best solution.

This reminds me, I'll try to give everyone an overview a little later today of what I am thinking about for a framework for my new world to see if people find it interesting. I'm excited by the possibilities, politically and role-playing-wise, as well as for adventuring, so hope others will be as well! It definitely will not be your standard Tolkein-esque fantasy-fare!

Posted by at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

One of the things I am thinking of doing away with in general, regardless of the point-buy system, is random rolling of characters. Dungeons and Dragons Online, as well as most of the books, are recommending or offering a system where instead of rolling, each character starts all attributes at 8, and then gives a certain number of points (26 I think is the standard...it would be higher for my game because we use 8 attributes instead of 6). All attributes cost 1 point to raise if the score is between 8 and 14, then 2 points if it is over 14 (and it might be higher after 16-17, but I'm not sure). That way there is a good range of abilities for most scores, but if the rogue really wants that high Dex, he has to pay dearly for it at the expense of some other attributes.

My main reason for moving to it is ease of making new characters, and guaranteeing that one character doesn't have an average of 16 for everything while another is stuck with 12's. It is also easy to use this to up-power or down-power characters according to the needs of the campaign. A heroic campaign might want an average stat of 15 while a commoner campaign similar to what Rodney is starting might want lower average scores.

Anyhoo, just another FYI!

Posted by at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In Raistca's last comment he had good questions about people overpowering their characters early, for example by picking higher level spells than a typical first level character would have or getting a high BAB quickly. It was one of my first concerns with any system of this type as well.

I think I might have even discussed a solution with Rodney when I first mentioned this. Every ability would have what I am calling a 'Natural Level', which is really just the equivalent level a character would receive a particular spell or ability in standard D&D. For example, the Natural Level of Base Attack Bonus is 1. Meaning, if a character takes a +1 BAB at first level, it will have a standard cost, for example 15 character points. A character could take a +2 BAB to get a more powerful (in that area) new character, but the 2nd +1 BAB would cost 30 points. That way, a character isn't excluded from doing that, however it means a character has to give up something else to fight above his Natural Level.

The same would apply to spells. For example, if it normally costs 20 CP's (character points, it will be easier to abbreviate!) to open up the 2nd level spell list, if a character wanted to do it at 1st level it would cost 40 CP's. You mention bypassing the lower level spells, and in this case that is certainly viable (assuming there is a per-spell cost as well instead of just a per-spell level cost), however it is possible it will be necessary for there to be pre-requisites to taking 3rd level spells. For example, a player might be required to have 3 spells from each spell level lower than a new spell level before they can get it.

As for doing away with experience points and how that will effect 'levels', I would guess that if each level in standard D&D ends up being 50 points in the new system, you would simply divide your CP's by 50 to get your Natural Level and you will know how much everything costs.

Anyhow, thanks for the input, these are definitely the things I want to hear as I try to figure this out!

Posted by at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Just to find a starting point and give myself something to work with, I did my best to divide the fighter and sorcerer down to their base components to try to find a way to cost their abilities. I picked the fighter as the most basic combat class with the least amount of odd abilities and the sorcerer as the same from the magic side. I actually never realized that sorcerers get their 2nd level spells a level later than Wizards (4th instead of 3rd).

So for the fighter's base abilities I came up with:

BAB +1
Fortitude Save +2
1 base feat
1 bonus feat
8 base skill points
All armour
All simple weapons
All martial weapons
d10 hd (I plugged this into the formula at 5.5 average hp's)

For the sorcerer I came up with:

BAB +.5 (I know this isn't technically accurate as .5 BAB does no one any good, but this is more of a placeholder for the Sorc's BAB overall, which has a .5 progression)
Will Save +2
1 base feat
8 base skill points
All simple weapons
1 spell level (again, I took the liberty of not counting 0-level spells as a spell level, but I did count their spells toward the sorcerer's spell point total)
4 base spell points
A familiar
d4 hd (2.5 average hp's)

Now, there is a way to get a base estimate of the 'value' of some components of a character. For example, because there are feats that give a +2 saving throw, I estimate the value of a feat as twice as much as 1 point of a saving throw. Additionally, there are feats that provide an average of 3-4 skill points, and 3 hit points. All of these allow a base conversion value for feats and a number of other character components.

Next, I took the smallest component I could find, both skill points and hit points, and arbitrarily assigned them a value of 1. From there I assigned the value of a feat as 4 (although a case can be made for it being more or less than this; this is just an early exercise). A point of BAB is 10, as it is valuable not only in and of itself, but because it is the route to multiple attacks. A save point is worth 1.5 (based on the feat value this could easily be 2, but because every class ends up with the same total save points, I'm not too worried about this stat right now). A familiar is 10, light armour use is 5, heavy is an additional 5 (I'm not sure how much value medium armors really provide, so I'll stick with 2 levels of armor for now), and each weapon category is 5. A spell level is 10 and a spell point is 1. (I'm not sure how to get spell selection in here yet, one reason I used the sorcerer as they don't have near so many choices as a wizard or cleric)

Again, most of these are arbitrary but weighted where I could on equivalencies between the various early benefits feats can provide.

I'm surprised the scores for both a 1st level fighter vs. a 1st level sorcerer and a 20th level fighter vs. a 20th level sorcerer are as close as they are, even with just the first version of this system. For example, a 1st level fighter ends up (without taking any ability scores into account) at 54.5 points, while a 1st level sorcerer ends up slightly lower at 51.5 points. I think this mirrors a fighter's overall usefulness at 1st level, if not understating it a little. At 20th level, where your average sorcerer would probably win a 1-on-1, the sorcerer's total points are 522.5 and the fighter's are 484.

Close yet, but those ending scores also point to a potential problem. A 20th level sorcerer is easily more than 20 times as powerful as a 1st level, so I would have guessed they should end up with more than 1000 points. At least one thing to take into account is that spells ramp in power to where 9th level spells are much more than 9 times as effective as a 1st level spell. Thus, I should probably weight each spell level more than the one before it (10 for 1st level spells, 20 for 2nd, 30 for 3rd, etc). Doing this yields 882 points for our 20th level sorcerer. On the fighter's side, we probably need to take into account the benefits of moving from BAB+5 to BAB+6, because it doubles the number of attacks I can make. For this, let's try 10 points per total BAB (thus, at 7th level, it would cost 90 character points because a fighter's attacks are +7/+2). Doing this bumps the fighter to 782 points and the sorcerer to 932 points.

Yes, that's a much bigger difference than I started with, but I think the sorcerer is getting close to the number of char points he should have at 20th level and still is only around 20% different than the fighter, indicating I am the right path (I hope). Simply changing the weight of BAB to 15 points instead of 10 puts our fighter at 1034 points and the sorcerer at 1007.5. I'm not saying that is 'more correct', but it shows the kind of tweaking that will be required to truly make a workable system.

I also think that it can easily be seen that some feats or far more valuable than others. Just a guess, but I would say 'Two-Weapon Fighting' is probably more valuable than 'Additional Turning'. This system will allow an adjustment so that one could take 3 or 4 of the weaker feats in place of 1 more powerful one, potentially allowing some truly 'jack-of-all-trade' characters.

Next post (probably tomorrow) I will work on converting attributes to point values and see how equivalent they are, as now I have some tools to do so. For example, if a BAB is worth 10, we know that 2 points of strength is worth more than that, because it provides +1 to hit as well as damage, among other benefits.

Pondering this some today, I thought it might be interesting because a player could truly make a monster of a character attribute-wise, but they'd have few skills or feats to use them with.

Anyhoo, hope I didn't bore everyone!

Posted by at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)