The Gaming Den

So, after a discussion with my group, it sounds like a lvl 10 capped game is what we want but that they'd want a steady progression beyond shortening to 10 lvls. They also would like to have class flexibility beyond the class system which makes me naturally think classless. And they want the system to follow the d20 system (picky fuckers aren't they!)

So has anybody got any help that won't leave me adhoc laying down level advancements for them. It seems like I got to stretch spell casters out and make and make martial types feel relevant throughout. Is this feasible or are we just having a circle jeck?

Uhh... that is a tall order. They are asking for an entirely new system and asking for it to not be a new system at the same time. That is bullshit.

The d20 system is a divergent system where people gain levels and this causes them to gain power along with abilities. Spell levels are diversity and they are strength. A system where you gain diversity but your numbers don't change is not the same system. So if people are telling you that they want to split off from classes and have steady progression and have power levels capped in a general level 10 kind of feel they are telling you that they don't want to play d20. If they are also telling you that they want to be playing d20 while doing this then they are straight lying to you or themselves.

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Now that being said, you can reuse a lot of the terminology and mechanics of d20 without having it be the same system. And these fuckers don't know what they want, so maybe that will be good enough for them. I don't really know.

So for example: you can easily enough have a system where things are all based on a d20, and you can have a multiple tiered advancement system where people gain Spheres, Skill Ranks, and Levels all separately without reference to XP. As long as people are rolling their attack rolls against AC and inflicting hit point damage this might actually be plenty similar for people.

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But honestly, you might just want to append a skill table and 4th edition defenses to the old AD&D rules.

-Username17

ckafrica wrote:So, after a discussion with my group, it sounds like a lvl 10 capped game is what we want but that they'd want a steady progression beyond shortening to 10 lvls. They also would like to have class flexibility beyond the class system which makes me naturally think classless. And they want the system to follow the d20 system (picky fuckers aren't they!)

That's really fucked up. They want to have flexibility beyond the class system, yet they want it to follow the d20 system (which is almost entirely class based).

What the hell?

The most it seems that they want is really powerful feats that let you take crossclass abilities, since feats are the only thing that is really beyond the class system for the most part.

All I can really say is maybe make feats like:

Wizard Training
Prereq: can't have any true wizard casting, Character level 5
Benefit: You cast spells like a 3rd level wizard. You don't gain any of the hit dice or class bonuses of the wizard class beyond its spellcasting. You may not advance the potency of this casting through means other than feats (like prestige class spellcasting advancement).
Special: You may take this feat multiple times, each time you take it, increase the level of your wizard casting by two. You can never have wizard casting of more than your current character level - 2.

And just have similar stuff for each class. That lets people transcend the usual class limits and feel like they can make meaningful nonclass choices.

ckafrica, have you given any fraction of second of brain processing to the suggestion that you just play GURPS?

In any case, I dare present a hackjob: run the sucker classes (you all know what they are) as-is, and make all others gain 1 level per 2 the character actually invested - then find any crap like literally "-" (to compare to fighters) to shove into the alternate levels.

Actually, this is a good thread to post what I was going to post on the "shooting fools" thread.

Upon going back over the source material, I realized that the angels setting *does* have level advancement. In fact, it looks like TNE is very, very close to what I'm trying to do, and I'm going to steal most of those mechanics.

My question: As of yet, we haven't set a relationship between "power" advancement and ability acquisition in TNE, correct? In the process of finishing the system, is it going to be necessary to do so? Or can we decouple the advancement systems entirely?

In other words, what if any are the negative effects of allowing TNE characters to get as many as infinity new "powers" without ever increasing their wound thresholds and damage bonuses?

Boolean wrote:
In other words, what if any are the negative effects of allowing TNE characters to get as many as infinity new "powers" without ever increasing their wound thresholds and damage bonuses?

The only problem is balancing monsters.

The advantage of having a defined advancement system for numbers and powers is that you can set a specific CR for a monster that can act as a benchmark and can have the numbers figured out in advance.

But that's really not as big of an advantage as it may sound.

Aside from that, the numbers are entirely arbitrary. And on a d20 it honestly doesn't matter if you've got a +15 versus a DC 30 or a +5 versus a DC 20. A lot of times having big bonuses only makes the math slower. Though many PCs like big bonuses purely for the psychological effect of seeing a big number.

Having more powers at the same bonus level is going to allow characters to defeat more powerful challenges, but only to a point. It's probably a log or even asymptotic progression.

For some games, it would make sense to constantly increase options without ever increasing the overall scale of the opposition.

Depends on the powers really. If the numbers are flat and the PCs are meant to take on potentially anything then they need a set of base abilities that counter stuff like incorporeality. Other than that you don't have to link numbers to number of abilities. But people might find getting levels really boring and annoying if all they get is bigger numbers.

You I procured some Gurps 4th ed stuff to just see how much it's different and it looks largely the same from a very cursory glance. Any feelings on it?

In 3rd ed. I always found some things like its defence system and range combat system were unwieldly. And the disadvantages become how many characters can you write up who are overconfident, bloodlust lechs. I did notice they were incorporating the techniques of martial arts into the core which is a good thing.

ckafrica wrote:You I procured some Gurps 4th ed stuff to just see how much it's different and it looks largely the same from a very cursory glance. Any feelings on it?

In 3rd ed. I always found some things like its defence system and range combat system were unwieldly. And the disadvantages become how many characters can you write up who are overconfident, bloodlust lechs. I did notice they were incorporating the techniques of martial arts into the core which is a good thing.

I haven't read the entirety of 4E Basic, but all I did read's uniformly better than 3E (hardly surprising given that it pretty much meant streamlining the most important sourcebooks into Basic - WotC should've fvcking learned, "we're using Tome of Battle for 4E" my ass). The common overconfidence/bloodust/lecherousness (also berserk/bloodlust/sadism ...) combination looks to me like problem players pretty much every time it rears its head, so you might as well consider it useful as a warning - but I do feel in the kind of lawless D&D-like game a lot of people want some of those costs should be lowered/cease to exist. What're your problems with defense (defense changed in 4E, range I'm not sure about)? Range was indeed a bit worse than it should in 3E at least - here I can just recommend "get used to it and the problem'll lessen with some time", since I at least feel pretty good about recommending the rest of the system.

Do I still have to calculate how far the guy is, how fast he's moving, and the direction of the prevailing wind, just to shoot a guy in the face? It looked like the techniques were kept the same in that they were like skills than just being a flat point cost to always roll against the default.

Was magic and psionics improved?

ckafrica wrote:Do I still have to calculate how far the guy is, how fast he's moving, and the direction of the prevailing wind, just to shoot a guy in the face?

I ... just said I'm not sure about how whether ranged combat was changed in 4E.

ckafrica wrote:It looked like the techniques were kept the same in that they were like skills than just being a flat point cost to always roll against the default.

I don't understand. GURPS Martial Arts for 3E, at least, allowed anyone to default without any cost (for non-cinematic maneuvers - even cinematic depending on ... campaign style). The point costs were only for lessening the defaulting penalty - and that's how it still works (not just for martial skills - the model was expanded to other stuff), if I'm not on crack.

ckafrica wrote:Was magic and psionics improved?

Both were changed, and I won't pretend I remember all of it right now, but I do remember some important stuff (like, for one of the biggest examples, how psionics == super powers nowadays). But you'll have to define "improved" in that case.

I've the books and can check anything you'd like later.

bigode wrote:

ckafrica wrote:It looked like the techniques were kept the same in that they were like skills than just being a flat point cost to always roll against the default.

I don't understand. GURPS Martial Arts for 3E, at least, allowed anyone to default without any cost (for non-cinematic maneuvers - even cinematic depending on ... campaign style). The point costs were only for lessening the defaulting penalty - and that's how it still works (not just for martial skills - the model was expanded to other stuff), if I'm not on crack.

I've the books and can check anything you'd like later.

Your probably right, I haven't played gurps in something like 10 years.

My guys are talking about what to do for a new campaign, and I'm not sure I can bring myself to play 3e without thinking of all the things that need fixing. I'm just worried some of the guys are gonna balk at a new system or a few of them might become wankers on the disadvantages (I saw it too many times in high school)

My 2 chief worries on any system is that there are plenty of cool things that a character can do and learn and that I won't be faced with a drastic imbalance between character types. Also simple for the geeks-lite that we play with.

ckafrica wrote:My guys are talking about what to do for a new campaign, and I'm not sure I can bring myself to play 3e without thinking of all the things that need fixing. I'm just worried some of the guys are gonna balk at a new system or a few of them might become wankers on the disadvantages (I saw it too many times in high school)

My 2 chief worries on any system is that there are plenty of cool things that a character can do and learn and that I won't be faced with a drastic imbalance between character types. Also simple for the geeks-lite that we play with.

If you don't trust your players, you arguably shouldn't play with them, but you might also ban any disadvantage that seemed like it'd be a no-brainer to them, or ... ban all of them (or possibly just all mental). Note: that's not Oberoni because at no point I claim GURPS has no problems - I just claim it's better for some people that keep playing D&D. So, if there's an argument for disadvantages being a system flaw (which I'm not sure about), you can get rid of them. If they're gonna be a problem for your group specifically, dump them, done. Simple: my argument on it's that it's simpler to play while arguably a bit more complicated to build (and that if you compare D&D Core to GURPS Basic, since D&D dumpster-diving doesn't seem to have equivalent other than perhaps RIFTS). Imbalance between character types: the thing is, there aren't character types so broadly defined, and what a party needs is extremely campaign-dependant - so if something's extremely desired in a particular campaign, everyone can just have it. Lots of stuff: actually, more than the learning part, I find it more beneficial that GURPS explicitly allows people to do more stuff without having declared to learn it during building phase.

dumping them is difficult. I live in Saigon so it's not like I can go to the local hobby shop and round up some more. I trust them be themselves, which means some of them will give up their (character's) left nut if it gives them 3 more points on shinny toys. I used to be the same.

It's really that the disadvantage system encourages people to create these demented characters so they have the points. Having re-read them last night, I'm inclined to say drop the disadvantages completely unless the player makes a really good sell on how it makes their character cool.

Franks commments on disadvantages made sense. If you are blind it should be so that you do something else cool that balances out.

So next issue I'm thinking about is magic. As my guys are all D&D players (or non gamers) we're likely to be aiming for a game that feels like level 3-10 D&D.

I read through the advantages in 4eG core and I liked a lot of what I saw. Many of the advantages could be flavored into at will spells. I'd probably require fatigue cost for most of them.

I only skimmed the magic section proper and it looked like it hadn't changed much. My problem with it in 3eG was that you ended up buy all the prerequisite spells at bare minimum and then maxed out the combat spells. And there were too many of them.

What are your feelings and do you know of any other systems that have been done for 4eG? What about the psionics?