# The Gaming Den

Welcome to the Gaming Den.

Skip to content

## A classless d20

The homebrew forum

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply

- Print view

46 posts

- Previous
- 1
- 2

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Thu Mar 03, 2005 8:33 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1109796137[/unixtime]]
> As to not being able to make someone who is good at fighting Wizards - try someone with high Intelligence and Agility - you hit most of the time against everyone and are rarely hit by anyone. You don't do a huge amount of damage against anyone - but that's just like your write-up of a "Mage Slayer" except that he doesn't completely suck when fighting anyone who isn't a mage.

Well here's the thing, you're supposed to suck against certain character types. That's really how I want to design the system. Only if all your stats are the same should you function equally against everyone. Otherwise there should be some counter system in place.

> Absolutely. But you want that part of the game to be under DM control, not Player Control. It's fine to have people get Favored Enemy Bonuses or specific Energy Types so that certain characters and teams can shine against particular enemies. But making a setup in which players themselves make good or bad characters is just a bad idea all around. When you assign your stats to fit your vision, a min/maxer should not be able to take one look at it and tell you that your build suxxorz and be right.

You're judging this from seeing less than half the game. You're being the guy in D&D right now who goes down the fighter's character sheet, sees his massive BaB and HP and then looks at the wizard's shitty BaB and saves and instantly concludes fighters roxxorz and wizards suxxorz.
That's like the fighter player saying to the wizard "well if you never cast a single spell and the rogue never used any of his class abiliities, I'd totally dominate."
To which most sane people are going to reply "who gives a fuck you still suck."
My system is set up so defensive character use their abilities better, since abilities are based off of the three defenses. This is why the offenses can have a slight edge and I'm not too worried about it. The hulk obviously is going to be less skill oriented, and that's ok, because he's a dumb brute. And he better have an edge at smashing stuff because he's at a disadvantage for doing almost everything else.
Then you can have a batman style character, who is awesome at outwitting his foes and doing other cool stuff like that. And he really shouldn't be physically as tough as the hulk, because his strengths lie in getting a tactical upper hand to counteract his normal disadvantages in a straight up fight.
And in monsters we certainly know that we are definitely going to have big dumb barbarians who think like the hulk, and we're going to have crafty wizards who think like batman, and we're probably going to have people inbetween those extremes.
And I don't find any problem with allowing people to have a numerical edge in a straight up fight. Because if you're one of those people, that's how you want to fight, and you should be good at it. However, it also means you'll have a disadvantage in the crafty combat arena, and so you can still be beaten.
The illusionist doesn't beat the evoker in a stand up fight, that'd be stupid. If he matched blasting spell for blasting spell, the illusionist would get trashed, as he should. If he's going to win, He should be trying to prevent that straight up fight.
And really, what's wrong with that?

> Rc, how is it so hard in Frank#s system to build a mage slayer? Put half of your stats in magic defenses and put the other half in some type of offense. Magic offense means you are the mage who kills other mages, physical offense means you do it like Conan.

Well here's the thing, Frank's system doesn't have different offenses, and I can understand his reasoning for that, beacuse different offenses just hose people who want to use different attacks.
What his system does is merge defenses and offenses into one stat.
His two stat system: Red/blue has physical versus magic, where physical is physical attack/defese and magic is magic attack/defense.
His four stat system is essentially each color split into AC/attack and soak/DR, but since +1 to hit and +1 to damage are the same thing in his damage system, they are more or less the same. So I'll use red/blue because it's simpler to describe a point. If you want to convert red/blue to 4 stat, simply accept that red = the sum of the two physical stats and blue = the sum of the two magic stats. Since +1 attack= +1 damage, it doesn't really matter numerically how you divide them..
Now, Lets take your typical wizard Blue 4.
Now you want to make a mage killer. You suggested Red 2/ Blue 2.
This means you attack him at +2, he attacks you at +2. You're not especially good at killing wizards at all. You're even.
If you go Red 4, then your'e +4 to hit him, he's +4 against you. Again, you've really gained nothing. Now the Red 4 character is a better mage killing assassin, but he better have the element of surprise or he's totally screwed.
All you're basically choosing is how much of a role you'd like surprise to play against wizards. If you go even, then you prefer a drawn out slugging match. If you put it all to red, then basically its more of an assassins duel. But that's it, you aren't in any fashion better suited to kill wizards than the guy who went Blue 4 or Red 4.
And that's actually a feature of the system in that your choices are pretty much meaningless as far as one on one matchups are concerned. You can be given an opponent A, and all other opponents regardless of how they assigned their stats will be 50/50 against A, assuming they're the same level of course.
Basically here, there are no truly meaningful choices in a one on one battle. Your only tactics actually enter into the equation when you have more people, where your tactics are clearly to focus fire your Blue to attack their red first and vice versa. Even this tends to be an odd paradox when you have the same range as your enemies.
Top

Murtak
  Duke
  Posts: 1577
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Murtak » Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:06 pm

Code: Select all

    Character 1 (fighter)[br]Phys	attack		4[br]	damage		4[br]	dodge		4[br]	soak		4[br]Mag	attack		0[br]	damage		0[br]	dodge		0[br]	soak		0

Code: Select all

    Character 2 (allrounder)[br]Phys	attack		2[br]	damage		2[br]	dodge		2[br]	soak		2[br]Mag	attack		2[br]	damage		2[br]	dodge		2[br]	soak		2

Code: Select all

    Character 3 (mage)[br]Phys	attack		0[br]	damage		0[br]	dodge		0[br]	soak		0[br]Mag	attack		4[br]	damage		4[br]	dodge		4[br]	soak		4

Code: Select all

    Character 4 (mageslayer)[br]Phys	attack		4[br]	damage		4[br]	dodge		0[br]	soak		0[br]Mag	attack		0[br]	damage		0[br]	dodge		4[br]	soak		4

1 vs 2
+2 to hit, +2 damage
+2 to hit, +2 damage
balanced
1 vs 3
+4 to hit, +4 damage
+4 to hit, +4 damage
balanced
1 vs 4
+4 to hit, +4 damage
+0 to hit, +0 damage
fighter beats up mage slayer
2 vs 3
+2 to hit, +2 damage
+2 to hit, +2 damage
balanced
2 vs 4
+2 to hit, +2 damage
+2 to hit, +2 damage
balanced
3 vs 4
+0 to hit, +0 damage
+4 to hit, +4 damage
mage slayer beats up mage
Now for the extrme cases

Code: Select all

    Character 5 (barbarian)[br]Phys	attack		8[br]	damage		8[br]	dodge		0[br]	soak		0[br]Mag	attack		0[br]	damage		0[br]	dodge		0[br]	soak		0

Now this guy is balanced against the fighter but kicks everyone else's ass. If you force characters to split their points between defense and offense however you get:

Code: Select all

    Character 6 (split barbarian)[br]Phys	attack		2[br]	damage		6[br]	dodge		2[br]	soak		4[br]Mag	attack		0[br]	damage		0[br]	dodge		0[br]	soak		2

6 vs 1
-2 to hit, +2 damage
+2 to hit, +0 to damage
fighter wears out barbarian
6 vs 2
+0 to hit, +4 damage
+2 to hit, +0 damage
barbarian withstands allrounder's magic long enough to smack him dead
6 vs 3
+2 to hit, +6 damage
+4 to hit, +2 damage
barbarian kills wizard before wizard kills him
6 vs 4
+2 to hit, +6 damage
+2 to hit, +0 damage
barbarian utterly destroys mageslayer
looking good for the barbarian, eh? Enter the slayer mage

Code: Select all

    Character 7 (slayer mage)[br]Phys	attack		0[br]	damage		0[br]	dodge		6[br]	soak		2[br]Mag	attack		2[br]	damage		6[br]	dodge		0[br]	soak		0

6 vs 7
-4 to hit, +4 damage
+2 to hit, +4 damage
slayer mage dodges and kills barbarian
that work for you?
Murtak
Top

User3
  Prince
  Posts: 3974
  Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by User3 » Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:19 pm

I can't log in right now. :shrug:

> RC wrote:Well here's the thing, Frank's system doesn't have different offenses

You've made that claim before. And that's just puzzling. The Berserker behaves differently offensive from the Wizard and differently from the Spellblade. You're the one who is arguing for an "offense" stat that applies equally to all forms of attack.

> RC wrote:That's like the fighter player saying to the wizard "well if you never cast a single spell and the rogue never used any of his class abiliities, I'd totally dominate."

Actually, it's more like "even if you use your abilities, I still own you". It would be like if the mechanics for spellcasting were no different from the mechanics of swording except that spells came with charges.
Unless, of course, you intend to actually make some of these abilities be heretofore unmentioned flat bonuses to attack or defense rolls - in which case the game isn't even close to balanced and runs instantaneous risk of flying off the RNG altogether faster than you can say "Cleric Archer".
The whole point of the damage system that you've said you were using is that mental blasts follow the same protocol as crossbow bolts. So if by numbers alone the Fighter or the Wizard is more effective off the starting stats - then that's just an absolute fact and there's shit all you can do about it.

> Murtak wrote:
> that work for you?

Not remotely. There's no reason to play this character:

Code: Select all

    Character 2 (allrounder)[br]Phys	attack		2[br]	damage		2[br]	dodge		2[br]	soak		2[br]Mag	attack		2[br]	damage		2[br]	dodge		2[br]	soak		2

when you could play this character:

Code: Select all

    Character 8 (Loophole Finder)[br]Phys	attack		4[br]	damage		4[br]	dodge		2[br]	soak		2[br]Mag	attack		0[br]	damage		0[br]	dodge		2[br]	soak		2

Splitting your attack between magic and physical in such a system is provably shitty, because you only get to use one set of powers. Similarly, there's no particular benefit in specializing your defense, since in the long run have defensive strengths and weaknesses is bad for a PC.
So basically, everyone is going to be either Character 8 or the Mirror, because that's provably better than being anybody else. People can make characters with specialized defense who can beat him, but they'll lose to his mirror by equal amount - and any other character is just going to tie or lose to our Loophole Finder.

> RC wrote:Basically here, there are no truly meaningful choices in a one on one battle.

From raw stats? Of course not! If the raw stats provide win/lose match-ups there become "best choices". In order to make a balanced set of unbalanced character match-ups you need some sort of circular system, and circular systems are non-numeric.
-Username17
Top

Murtak
  Duke
  Posts: 1577
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Murtak » Thu Mar 03, 2005 8:54 pm

I looked over my numbers again and sadly Frank seems to be right - unless you want to build an incredily constrained system I can see no way of having both the mageslayer and to have a balanced stat assignment.
Your best bet is probably to go with a balanced system and then add ways to force other characters to play to your strengths - for example to force them to use physical attacks against you. And to have that even remotely workable it will probably end up being rock-paper-scissors, i.e. melee trumps magic trumps arrows trumps melee.
Murtak
Top

fbmf
  The Great Fence Builder
  Posts: 2588
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by fbmf » Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:36 am

> Frank at [unixtime wrote:1109877574[/unixtime]]I can't log in right now. :shrug:

I couldn't earlier on the frost server or azure server. Seems to have cleared up now. If it keeps happening, I'll report it to bbboy.
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Fri Mar 04, 2005 6:48 pm

> Murtak at [unixtime wrote:1109883291[/unixtime]]
> Your best bet is probably to go with a balanced system and then add ways to force other characters to play to your strengths - for example to force them to use physical attacks against you. And to have that even remotely workable it will probably end up being rock-paper-scissors, i.e. melee trumps magic trumps arrows trumps melee.

Well you can actually get more indepth than rock-paper-scissors, assuming your stats are meaningful enough.
I mean you consider a game like starcraft. Every unit has hit points, damage, armor, attack speed, unit size, unit space, damage type, range and area of attack.
Now that may sound pretty complex, but it's really not. RPGs end up having far more numerical stats when you get into elemental resistances, alignment tags, and if you want them, ability scores.
But anyway, each of those is meaningful and creates counters. You may think a unit that does 10 damage and attacks once per second is the same as one that does 5 damage and attacks twice per second, but that's not true due to the armor system. Armor deducts a fixed amount per attack, much like D&D DR, so if you've got a fast attacking unit, a high armor beats it.
You've got some units with area attacks and those beat lots of small groups of units.
Damage types versus unit type make certain damage anywhere fro 25% to 100% dependingon what you're using on what.
And the stat setup alone produces a heck of a lot of counters, and that's ideally what our RPG should look like. It doesn't necessarily have to use Starcraft's set up, but numerically, stats have to mean something. Certain stat groups need to be good against other stat groups, otherwise the entire point of assigning stats is a waste of time. And that's what I don't like about Frank's stat system. I'm not actually doing anything by assigning my stats. In the end it's so equal it just doesn't matter. I could run the same game pretty much just going wtih one "level" stat and using that for everything. Added stats are just having more numbers but not truly adding much strategic or conceptual depth.
Certain stats need to beat other stats, much like how armor beats rate of fire in Starcraft. On the other hand you beat high armor with low rate of fire and high damage. And that's the way things need to work.
You have a bunch of abilities that work well on different things. A summoner should be beaten by a guy with area attacks, but be good against people who can only attack one target at a time. The big tank who gets only one attack at a time is consequently good at taking down the area attacker, since his damage is concentrated.
Really, you can set up your entire game probably on the basis of several interconnected Rock-Paper-Scissors situations.
But to do that, every stat you make has to have its place.
And yes in a well buitl system like that, you can have a mage killer, and it can be balanced.
Top

Murtak
  Duke
  Posts: 1577
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Murtak » Fri Mar 04, 2005 8:10 pm

You pretty much just agreed with me there.
What you describe is adding another layer (or multiple layers) of rock-scissors-paper on top of the actual stats. That system is entirely divorced from the basic stat system though, unless you want to make armor and attack speed player stats that is.
Murtak
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Fri Mar 04, 2005 8:45 pm

> Murtak at [unixtime wrote:1109967006[/unixtime]]You pretty much just agreed with me there.
> What you describe is adding another layer (or multiple layers) of rock-scissors-paper on top of the actual stats. That system is entirely divorced from the basic stat system though, unless you want to make armor and attack speed player stats that is.

Well yeah basically what I'm saying is that your stats should set up some counter system. It doesn't have to be the entire counter system, and it probably shouldn't be anyway, but your stats have to be meaningful choices. And even something as simple as rock-paper-scissors is meaningful, but the choice of Red or Blue isn't especially meaningful at all.
If anything though, I've concluded that my system isn't meaningful enough and probably needs to be revised, as I'd like to set up more of a counter system.
Top

Murtak
  Duke
  Posts: 1577
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Murtak » Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:15 pm

Well, so far I have not been able to think of anything that does all of these:
- balanced
- has no crappy choices
- lets you beat certain stat assignments
- is fairly uncomplicated
- is numerical
So you might be best of with a dual system - a balanced stat system as your main combat engine and starting from that balanced set of stats design special moves / attack / maneuvres / combat modes that allow certain characters to win against other characters.
Alternatively come up with a stat system that does all of the above. Just because I have not been able to think of anything that works so far does not mean it is impossible. I am pretty sure you can't do it with a system like we have been discussing here though - that is a system with cstraight attack and defense modes.
Murtak
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Fri Mar 04, 2005 9:42 pm

I have a feeling it would look something like either be a 3 stat RPS system or a 4 stat circular system. And you'd actually possibly have a few of those. The thing is though that some of the "stats" may actually just end up being tags.
But, I think your base stats should have some degree of counter system built in because they are the core of your basic combat system. Even a simple RPS counter system is better than nothing.
Now going with a binary tag + 2 stats in sequence could work to some effect. And you could have one for offense one for defense.
So you'd look like this.
Offense: Might attack: +1 to attack might, -1 to attack magic.
Defense: Might defense: +2 to defend against might, -2 to defend against magic.
And all three of those could be interchangeable. So in this case, the previously described guy would be weak against a magic attack and a magic defense. But it's fairly easy to imagine how you could have a guy weak against anything or strong against anything. That would permit the easy creation of a mage killer anyway.
Though I'm not sure how far you could go with such a simple system.
Top

Username17
  Serious Badass
  Posts: 29894
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Username17 » Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:18 am

> RC wrote:I mean you consider a game like starcraft.

Considered. To the extent that it is balanced, Starcraft is balanced with unit costs, production times, and required investment. None of those are appropriate in a role playing game.
There are lots of ways to balance having access to troops who are not balanced in a game of generals. You can have access to various superior troops in one group with inferior troops in another - so long as you need both kinds of troops to actually win the game.
The problem with that sort of setup in a role playing game is that each individual really doesn't need to provide every aspect of the game. Starcraft really gets focused in on what makes a good army if you play teams of three with a Terran, a Zerg, and a Protoss on each side with adjacent bases. You really can, and therefore should, have the Protoss (or whatever) build the various tower-style defenses (or whatever) for your shared base, and if you have the various members of the team invest in things they are bad at instead of in things they are good at you are going to lose.
And that's just not acceptable in a Role Playing Game. You can't make investing in secondary schticks be a bad deal, because that makes there be an "optimal team" - and that's bad. Mostly beacuse it means that everyone else is part of the "shitty team".

> RC wrote:Well you can actually get more indepth than rock-paper-scissors, assuming your stats are meaningful enough.

Yes and no. You can get more in-depth than RPS, but it doesn't require a set of especially meaningful stats. You could have a 6 set-up system in which people are at advantage against two kinds of enemies and at disavantage against two kinds of enemies. You could have multiple RPS models of various modalities running in sequence that add up to a very intricate combat system indeed.
But giving people more meaningful stats doesn't help with that. Circular systems are the only thing that give you balanced sets of individual inequities, and those aren't baalnced if they are distrributive.

> RC wrote:Now going with a binary tag + 2 stats in sequence could work to some effect. And you could have one for offense one for defense.
> So you'd look like this.
> Offense: Might attack: +1 to attack might, -1 to attack magic.
> Defense: Might defense: +2 to defend against might, -2 to defend against magic.

That's just running RvB in sequence, and that could be totally balanced (although not the way you've done it here). What it doesn't do is provide any actual advantage to being a Mage Slayer for the purposes of Slaying Mages.
And why not? Because in such a system, the Wizard gets no special bonus from specializing his defense in Magic. Being a "Mage Slayer" is just like being the "Magic Duelist" - the only thing that actually makes you good against specific enemies is specializing your defenses.
There's no reason to not specialize your attack, because other people don't really get anything for specializing their defenses... and so on and so on. Actually, everyone just runs around with balanced defenses and maxxed out attack in whatever category they happen to use.
This is exactly the system Murtak described above - the one where I debunked it with the "Loophole Finder" character.
The optimal character looks like this:
PA: +2
MA: -2
PD: +0
MD: +0
Or this:
PA: -2
MA: +2
PD: +0
MD: +0
Anything else is profoundly suboptimal. And while you could specialize your defense, this makes you strong against half the specialized enemies and weak against the other half of specialized enemies and weak against enemies with balanced attacks.
Specializing your defense is retarded, so Mage Slayers in your example are stupid (and are functionally identical whether they personally attack in physical or magic).
You can set up RvB systems is series. You can set up Circular systems in series. You can set up RvB systems in series with Circular systems. But you can't assign distributive points to circular systems and you can't have RvB by itself generate circularity.
In RvB you can trade Accuracy for Damage (either way), you can trade offense for defense (either way), and you can trade magic for physical (either way). But you can't trade magic attack for physical attack - that's bullshit.
So if you were wedded to having a MA, PA, MD, PD set-up, you'd have to only allow the trades to come in pairs:
MA & PA can be traded for MD & PD
MA & MD can be traded for PA & PD
But you can't trade MA for PA.
-Username17
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Sat Mar 05, 2005 10:01 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1109985493[/unixtime]]
> Considered. To the extent that it is balanced, Starcraft is balanced with unit costs, production times, and required investment. None of those are appropriate in a role playing game.

True, and certain abilities don't work as well in an RPG. However, we can still learn a lot from individual balances. The counters however don't need to be nearly as strong as they are in Starcraft (since this is an RPG and not a strategy game), however they should nonetheless be there.
The main difference with starcraft is that certain units are better than others, because they're more expensive, require more tech or whatever. So basically what you have to do is make the little units that are supposed to be used in numbers into stuff that summoners create. So a summoner type would essentially be the zerglings, and he wouldn't just represent 1 zergling in the case of an RPG, he'd represent 6 or 12. And he'd lose to the kind of things that beats zerglings, namely melee area based attacks. Tactically his force will look like 6-12 zerglings and be handled about the same way.
And a lot of other units can be readily translated as well.
The primary difference that you don't have in a game like that is that you don't have action costs. Like the high templar's psistorm is incredibly powerful, but only because it has the cost requiring you to use it all the time, meaning you can't be commanding troops to do anything else. And that kind of balance just doesn't work in a turn based RPG.
Nor really does charge casting, because charging your templars to full in an RPG is an easy option, while it can be brutal in a real time game where your opponents are constnatly pounding on you.
Which means that spellcasters units probably can't follow the Starcraft balance model at all. But standard military units totally can. We may have to scale them down a bit to keep them more or less on the same page one on one, but the concepts can remain the same. We cna have the firebat that kills zerglings, the hydralisk that kills firebats and the marine that kills hydralisks and the zergling that kills marines.
Certain characters are going to end up more or less general, like dragoons, zealots or hydralisks, where they're decent against anything and the numerical edges are fairly small. Other characters may well end up like dark archons or battlecruisers, who have a very specific role.
And that's ok. But somewhere along the line one character has to be better than another at something. And when you specialize against one thing, you should get weaker against something else.

> And that's just not acceptable in a Role Playing Game. You can't make investing in secondary schticks be a bad deal, because that makes there be an "optimal team" - and that's bad. Mostly beacuse it means that everyone else is part of the "shitty team".

Well, I don't really buy the idea that any of the units in Starcraft is totally useless. Everything has its place and its use, except perhaps for the protoss scout, which totally sucks ass. However some units are very specialized, like the dark archon. And in these cases generally you do run into problems where the unit looks like the "shitty team" if you run into an enemy who doesn't fall into your specialized role. If the other side is carriers and battlecruisers, your dark archons are going to clean up. If on the other hand, they're zealots and vultures, you're going to have trouble. And that's the nature of a counter based system anyway.
Now for an RPG it probably tells us we shouldn't allow anyone to be too specialized. Because being able to annihilate the udnead force but sitting back whenever you fight something living just isn't fun from a game point of view. So we have to limit specialization.

> That's just running RvB in sequence, and that could be totally balanced (although not the way you've done it here). What it doesn't do is provide any actual advantage to being a Mage Slayer for the purposes of Slaying Mages.
> And why not? Because in such a system, the Wizard gets no special bonus from specializing his defense in Magic. Being a "Mage Slayer" is just like being the "Magic Duelist" - the only thing that actually makes you good against specific enemies is specializing your defenses.

well, basically everything is inherently flavor. If someone is "a mage" you define that as magic/magic. And maybe a lot of mage abilities are based that way too. So if you want to cast spells you've got be magic based. There are a variety of ways to do it.

> There's no reason to not specialize your attack, because other people don't really get anything for specializing their defenses... and so on and so on. Actually, everyone just runs around with balanced defenses and maxxed out attack in whatever category they happen to use.

Well not really. Because your attack type and your bonuses are different. A +2 might/-2 magic doesn't mean you get a +2 whenever you attack wtih might. It means you get a +2 whenever you attack a might based defense. And that's remarkably different, because if the guy has a magic based defense, you get a -2. So you never choose which one of those two you use, the other guy's tag does.
The same wtih defenses, except it goes off attacks. If the guy has a might based attack type, you suffer the penatly versus might based attacks. If he has a magic attack type you suffer the penalty versus magic based attacks.
And that's balanced. Not necessarily in one one, but overall. Assuming half the monsters are might and half are magic, you're suffering a penalty half the time and you're gaining a bonus half the time.
Top

Username17
  Serious Badass
  Posts: 29894
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Username17 » Sat Mar 05, 2005 10:52 am

> RC wrote:And that's balanced. Not necessarily in one one, but overall.

No it isn't.
Having a Strong Physical (or Magic) Attack is strong against High Magic Defense, it's strong against Split Defense, and it's Neutral against Strong Physical Defense.
Having Strong Physical (or Magical Defense) is good against Strong Physical attack, and weak against Split Attack or Strong Magical Attack.
So Splitting your Defense is the only intelligent thing to do, because it's superior against two out of three of the opposing stretegies. And Focusing your Attack is the only thing to do because it is in all ways better than not doing so.
It's not balanced. Your opponent could offensively or defensively do three different things, and monsters will do all of them. And there is a choice for Offense and Defense that is good against 2 out of three, while the other choice(s) you have are bad.
It's not balanced. It's not balanced overall. It's just dumb. Sure, the total numbers of wins and losses are always the same, but there are choices you can make where you get more of the losses and choices where you get more of the wins.
-Username17
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Sat Mar 05, 2005 11:15 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1110019933[/unixtime]]
> No it isn't.
> Having a Strong Physical (or Magic) Attack is strong against High Magic Defense, it's strong against Split Defense, and it's Neutral against Strong Physical Defense.

I think you're still missing the system. so let me explain it again.
You have two catagories, attack and defense.
You have an attack type and an attack bonus. Your attack bonuses can be balanced between might or magic. For every +1 you have to attacking either you get a -1 to attacking the other. Now this is not using a given attack. This is attacking a certain defense. a +2 might means you get +2 when attacking an opponent with a defense type of 'might'. And you get a -2 when attacking an opponent with a defense type of 'magic'. This has nothing to do wtih what attack type you choose to use. Your attack is always a might type anyway.
Defense works fundamentally the same. You have a defense ttype and a defense bonus. Like attack bonuses, defense bonuses work against the attacker's attack type. So +2 versus might means you have a +2 to your defense when the attacker has an attack type of might.
And that's going to be balanced assuming a 50/50 split of might and magic types to all opponents.
Top

Murtak
  Duke
  Posts: 1577
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Murtak » Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:31 pm

So you have:
might attack & defense
magic attack & defense
and on of that you add adjustments, leading to:
attack with might vs might
attack with might vs magic
attack with magic vs might
attack with magic vs magic
might defense
magic defense
Is that what you are proposing?
Murtak
Top

Username17
  Serious Badass
  Posts: 29894
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Username17 » Sun Mar 06, 2005 4:40 am

So everyone has:
An offense which is always Red or Blue.
A defense which is always Red or Blue.
The ability to set themselves up to have a +2/-2 spread on attack or defense if their opponent is Red/Blue in defense or offense.
What's the fvcking point? A "Mage Killer" (Red Offense and Defense, Good Offense and Defense against Blue) actually has a +0 mod at all times against a "Wizard" (Blue Offense and Defense, Good Offense and Defense against Red).
The "Magekiller" gets a +2 to attack and a +2 to defense because his opponent is Blue in both attack and defense. But his rival the Wizard gets a +2 to defense and attack because his opponent is Red in both attack and defense. The "Magekiller" doesn't actually accomplish anything. At all.
Plus, under this stupid system, you can't even have a Paladin or Fire Warrior - because you can only be Red or Blue. You can't, under any circumstances, be both Red and Blue. And that sucks. That sucks big time.
You just presented a system i which there are basically 4 total things you can ever be (Red Attack/Red Defense, Blue Attack/Red Defense, Blue Attack/Blue Defense, and Red Attack/Blue Defense) - with the additional stricture that for no reason you also do well against people who may or may not have made the same choice that ou did. But the people you do well against are somewhat surprising.
For instance, the person that the Mage Killer you described really kicks ass against is the "Wizard Hunting Wizard" - which is pretty strange.
So yeah, I see your proposal in all its glory now. That's stupid beyond belief. There's no point in even having numbers if you aren't going to let people do more than one thing. You might as well just go straight RPS, because at that point people would have three completely inflexible choices - which is 50% more inflexible choices than you are giving them now (which is just Red or Blue).
-Username17
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Sun Mar 06, 2005 1:26 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1110084012[/unixtime]]
> What's the fvcking point? A "Mage Killer" (Red Offense and Defense, Good Offense and Defense against Blue) actually has a +0 mod at all times against a "Wizard" (Blue Offense and Defense, Good Offense and Defense against Red).

Right, a mage killing fighter is even against a fighter killing wizard, which actualyl makes a lot of sense. They're each specialized against each other. So that's fine.

> Plus, under this stupid system, you can't even have a Paladin or Fire Warrior - because you can only be Red or Blue. You can't, under any circumstances, be both Red and Blue. And that sucks. That sucks big time.

True, that may be a flaw and a reason I didn't use the might/magic system to begin with. Well, you'd obviously have to add different layers to the system and other ways to distinguish yourself.

> For instance, the person that the Mage Killer you described really kicks ass against is the "Wizard Hunting Wizard" - which is pretty strange.

Right. And that's not really strange at all. The mage killer dos well against wizards. The spell duelist is specialized at wizard vs wizard combat and is in fact a wizard. So the best guy against him is a fighter who kills wizards. That actually makes perfect sense to me, I don't see anything strange about it.

> So yeah, I see your proposal in all its glory now. That's stupid beyond belief. There's no point in even having numbers if you aren't going to let people do more than one thing. You might as well just go straight RPS, because at that point people would have three completely inflexible choices - which is 50% more inflexible choices than you are giving them now (which is just Red or Blue).

Well yeah, though perhaps it might be possible to get around those flaws.
And I don't really propose the might and magic system as a solution, only as an example of what a solution could look like. It obviously has some serious holes that need to be fixed before it could be workable, which is the reason I didn't go with it from the start.
The problem comes from assigning attack and defenses. Assigning defenses can be balanced, however only if attacks are static. If you can choose an attack then having a weakness in defense tends to screw you more than having a defensive strength because your opponents can go after your achilles heel.
Attacks on the other hand, can't really be split at all. Because the only time attacks can be split is if you're forced to sometimes use another attack, which is a bit difficult considering that sometimes people may well only have one type of attack (or at least one type worth mentioning). A barbarian may not have any magic at all, and a full wizard may use magic for everything.
It leaves us with a somewhat difficult system to create in.
But still while difficult, it is very important for a game to have a system with counters. Whenever you add a new number to the game it has to mean something, otherwise you might as well not be adding it.
And this stuff is tough, it's why there has yet to be a truly balanced game produced yet. Either the system becomes unbalanced, too bland or too limiting.
It's mainly why I chose a slightly unbalanced system as my first choice, mainly because I feel that you can try to later use abilities to try to compensate for numeric imbalances.
Alternately we could just have a system wtih one stat Level: X and then a bunch of abilities. This is really what the red/blue system is (And its 4 stat counterpart). Basically you're making choices in this system but they're not particularly meaningful because you end up 50/50 agaisnt everything regadless. Only with ability selection do you get a character specialty. So basically here, you might as well just have one number and a bucket of abilities.
The other system the might/magic and derivitives basially rely on limiting options ot a finite set. They're probably not good for RPGs at all, because RPGs tend to have lots of non numeric specials like invisibility, flight and so on, as well as people want varied character concepts. So while might/magic is inherently a bit more balanced and meaningful it's also probably too limiting.
And I think sooner or later when you're deciding on a game you have to pick one of these three.
Top

Username17
  Serious Badass
  Posts: 29894
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Username17 » Sun Mar 06, 2005 7:37 pm

> RC wrote:Assigning defenses can be balanced, however only if attacks are static.

Actually, no they can't. Assigning defenses is unbalanced if your opponent has at least three choices - and if you are playing in a distributive system the choice to be +1/-1, -1/+1, or +0/+0 count as three choices.
Assigning attacks is just as unbalanced - but in the opposite fashion.
And actually, it is the opposite fashion. An equal and opposite fashion. If you tie peoples' attacks to their defenses, the one rises as the other falls - balance is maintained. Your repeated attempts to make an assignment system where attacks are not linked to defenses is comical. It's never ever going to work.
You can assign attacks and defense modes together. Or you can select a defensive mode. 'Or you can do both. But you can't assign points to defensive modes alone. That's never ever going to be workable unless your game is so simple that I don't want to play it.
-Username17
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Mon Mar 07, 2005 11:36 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1110137852[/unixtime]]
> And actually, it is the opposite fashion. An equal and opposite fashion. If you tie peoples' attacks to their defenses, the one rises as the other falls - balance is maintained.

The problem is, it's the total egalitarian balance, not the overall balance. And total egalitarian balance sucks. It basically says "whatever choice you make doesn't mean a thing", and that's stupid. The goal isn't to create Harrison Bergeron the RPG where everyone is as equal as you can make them. Absolute equality in fact sucks.
Absolute equality tends to just be "lets add more numbers to a sheet to do what we could do with one" It adds more unneeded complexity. Complexity we really don't want. If we can solve something with one number, we might as well, there's no sense splitting it into 2 or 4 numbers when the results are dead on even for all combinations.
Balance should not mean an absence of meaningful choices.
Top

Username17
  Serious Badass
  Posts: 29894
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by Username17 » Tue Mar 08, 2005 12:49 am

But it does matter. You get to choose when you are fighting a slow fight and when you are fighting a fast fight. You get to choose when you are fighting an attrition war and when you are fighting a "big money, big prizes" fight.
And if you do it one way some of the time, you might be faced with doing it another way at a different time. If you are "old reliable" on attack, it's because your Quickness is large, which makes hits against you infrequent (yet comparatively large). If you are a big gambler on your attack, it means that you've tweaked out your Strength and that means that when people attack you they are looking at more hits for less damage.
And does that matter? You bet your sweet ass it matters! Depending upon who you are and what you are doing you'll do variously well against people of power discrencies and in different situations. Being good defensively against a more powerful foe is desirable if your goal is to slow it down long enough for the party rogue to shut off power to the Monolith. Being good defensively against a weaker foe is good if your goal is to maximize the number of them you plow through before they go down. Being good offensively against a stronger foe is better if you are trying to take a long shot of taking them down (or taking them out in a big en masse attack). eing good offensively is good against a weaker foe if you are trying to minimize the effectiveness of the enemy as a speed bump on your way to the Monolith's Power Core.
While any particular match-up at even levels is eve, when you throw in uneven match-ups or victory conditions other than "be the one stil standing at the end" then it becomes a circumstance where different keys fit different doors.
But you know what? It doesn't matter. If you are so fvcking certain that only by making characters be inherently unbalanced in a mathematically provable fashion can the game be interesting and fun - then go right ahead. You go ahead on and make your little game system, and I'll make mine. And I won't even bother you about the mathematical traps you make for yourself because apparently they are a "feature".
-Username17
Top

RandomCasualty
  Prince
  Posts: 3506
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

### Re: A classless d20

- Quote

Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Mar 08, 2005 12:55 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1110242971[/unixtime]]But it does matter. You get to choose when you are fighting a slow fight and when you are fighting a fast fight. You get to choose when you are fighting an attrition war and when you are fighting a "big money, big prizes" fight.

But you don't get to choose slow fight or fast fight, because for every time you're in a slow fight, you're also in a fast fight. Now you do get to choose the frequency of fast/slow fights versus more balanced fights, but that's not much of a meaningful choice really.

> And does that matter? You bet your sweet ass it matters! Depending upon who you are and what you are doing you'll do variously well against people of power discrencies and in different situations. Being good defensively against a more powerful foe is desirable if your goal is to slow it down long enough for the party rogue to shut off power to the Monolith. Being good defensively against a weaker foe is good if your goal is to maximize the number of them you plow through before they go down. Being good offensively against a stronger foe is better if you are trying to take a long shot of taking them down (or taking them out in a big en masse attack). eing good offensively is good against a weaker foe if you are trying to minimize the effectiveness of the enemy as a speed bump on your way to the Monolith's Power Core.

But you don't even really choose this, and that's the problem. If the choice was simply offensive or defensive character that might hold some small meaning. But, being "offensive" only means you're "Defensive" some of the time and vice versa. The only real choice is extreme versus balanced.
And as I said earlier, it only really tends to make a difference when the defender has more ability to dictate who takes damage than the attacker. And either way you do it, the mixed group is either superior or inferior to the single group.
Really, the only place it seems to make a big difference in your system is when one guy gets totally pushed off the RNG. Which I really don't think I'm going to even care about. Since in my system I don't want any kind of invulnerabilities like that.
Everyone gets hit on a 20 and every takes damage on a natural 1, that's the way I'm going to play it anyway. Even if the damage is only a half a box or something.

> But you know what? It doesn't matter. If you are so fvcking certain that only by making characters be inherently unbalanced in a mathematically provable fashion can the game be interesting and fun - then go right ahead. You go ahead on and make your little game system, and I'll make mine. And I won't even bother you about the mathematical traps you make for yourself because apparently they are a "feature".

Well, I'd like them to be balanced, just not perfectly one on one balanced. Because I don't think one on one balance really gets you so many places.
Top
Post Reply

- Print view

Display:
Sort by:
Direction:

46 posts

- Previous
- 1
- 2

Return to “It's My Own Invention...”

Jump to

- Main
- ↳ About the Gaming Den
- ↳ In My Humble Opinion...
- ↳ I Gave the Mouse a Cookie...
- ↳ In The Trenches
- ↳ It's My Own Invention...
- ↳ MPSIMS