Character improvment in the various gaming systems

[shadzar]

Even Mythic heroes die when you drop a mountain on them. In D&D you take 10D6.

No, real mythic heroes have to dig their way out!

circumstantial heroism..

the rubble fell only trapping, not crushing our hero, the burning building fell around him not ON him, etc.

[Previn]

Take Shadowrun, for example. It has a lot of advancement, but at no point is anyone ever advancing in a meaningful way. You increase the stats higher and higher while staying within hard-coded RNGs so that some effects are always going to have a baseline lethality.

Forgive me, my Shadowrun experience is second hand at best. Can you expand on why there isn't meaningful advancement in Shadowrun? Is it a limit of buying things individually, or that the system doesn't really progress in abilities as something like D&D does?

[Emerald]

Even Mythic heroes die when you drop a mountain on them. In D&D you take 10D6.

Technically, if by "mountain" you mean a 1-ton slab of rock, you actually take at minimum 11d6 (10d6 for weight, 1d6 for distance), each additional ton adding 10d6 damage, and an actual mountain would contain several orders of magnitude more solid rock than that. One of the "mythic heroes" like Thor or Hercules who aren't more than 9th level or so would have a very good chance of dying from a 2-ton boulder and would definitely die from a real mountain.

[/pedant]

[Vnonymous]

Emerald, are you high? Hercules held THE ENTIRE WORLD on his shoulders. He can handle a mountain. Hell, he could probably juggle 2 ton boulders. I don't know that much about Thor, but Hercules would laugh at a 2 ton boulder.

Maybe you're thinking of Kevin Sorbo?

[shadzar]

Emerald, are you high? Hercules held THE ENTIRE WORLD on his shoulders. He can handle a mountain. Hell, he could probably juggle 2 ton boulders. I don't know that much about Thor, but Hercules would laugh at a 2 ton boulder.

Maybe you're thinking of Kevin Sorbo?

Hercules was not a mythic hero, but a demigod. he wasnt Ulysses, Gilgamesh, etc...

he wasnt mortal, so not restrained by the mortal concepts that make a mythic hero, he was unto a god himself.

the mythical heroes are humans that do things beyond human capabilities, not people who arent even human to begin with.

of course Superman could survive, as well Hercules, because he ISNT human.

[Vnonymous]

Hercules was not a mythic hero, but a demigod. he wasnt Ulysses, Gilgamesh,.

Shadzar, are you high? Gilgamesh was 2/3s god. He was divine. He could also throw things so hard that they hit the stars, so I'm guessing 2 tons wouldn't be that much.

[shadzar]

Hercules was not a mythic hero, but a demigod. he wasnt Ulysses, Gilgamesh,.

Shadzar, are you high? Gilgamesh was 2/3s god. He was divine. He could also throw things so hard that they hit the stars, so I'm guessing 2 tons wouldn't be that much.

ok who was that other G name... i always get confused with the Gs.

[Username17]

You guys are strawman-ing this fumble thing. It is 1 or 2 percent, and then it takes another improbable roll on top of that to stab yourself in the face. MRQ2 combat is pretty realistic and was designed by folks who regularly practice medieval combat.

No. It was designed by people who swing swords at each other and is designed so that anything that could theoretically happen can happen. The problem is that a bunch of that shit isn't even a one in a million. A 1% chance of a skilled swordsman fucking up and having even a 1% chance of stabbing himself in the eye isn't realism, it's stupid. If there is a battle with a thousand people on a side and a non-zero number of people accidentally cut their own head off, your system is ridiculous.

But that is also besides the point. Lets focus, I'll reword it: "Gritty" means that the cavetroll can knock you out with one lucky swing of his greatclub, regardless if you are 20th level Aragorn or 1st level Merry. It is realistic. No human could withstand this amount of punishment. BTW, it should also knock you on your ass (which it would do in MRQ2).

Stop using the word realistic, because it does not mean what you think it means. Cave trolls "realistically" would not be able to stand up because of cube square law issues. However, if you really want to keep everyone with basically mortal health levels, why not just play a game where toughness does not advance? Like, any skill-based system ever?

-Username17

[Fuchs]

People say they play "gritty, realistic and grim" but they actually play "splatter comedy".

[Whipstitch]

Forgive me, my Shadowrun experience is second hand at best. Can you expand on why there isn't meaningful advancement in Shadowrun? Is it a limit of buying things individually, or that the system doesn't really progress in abilities as something like D&D does?

Both, more or less. It's a skill based system, karma costs scale upwards AND there's a number of soft and hard caps involved that keep players within a relatively narrow band of power even if the GM does hand out gobs of karma.

For non-Magicians the best case advancement scenario is typically buying some minor gear tweaks and backfilling your dump stats so that you only mostly suck at a minigame you didn't specialize in as opposed to completely and utterly sucking. As for Magicians, they can get initiate grades and branch out their spell list a bit, which is nice, but the way Shadowrun chargen and magic works there's no RAW reason as to why you shouldn't start play knowing your true bread and butter spells. The magic system simply isn't set up in such a way that you will ever graduate from throwing fireballs around to tearing reality a new asshole like in D&D.

[echoVanguard]

Key words: "appreciable amount."

There are lots of ways to advance that don't meaningfully change the character and only make them better at the general power level they are expected to perform at.

But neither of these statements change the fact that a character at level X and a character at level Y can have significantly different chances of defeating the cave troll while still both being vulnerable to being one-hit-KO'd by it. The statement that "the cave troll can still knock you out with one lucky swing" remains valid even though it only has a .4% chance when you're higher level (and you might have mitigation mechanics that allow you to negate one or more successful hits per day).

A 1% chance of a skilled swordsman fucking up and having even a 1% chance of stabbing himself in the eye isn't realism, it's stupid. If there is a battle with a thousand people on a side and a non-zero number of people accidentally cut their own head off, your system is ridiculous.

This is a bit of a strawman, though, since your system can have fumbles that don't include self-decapitation as one of its potential outcomes. For example, in our system, players who roll a natural 1 on a to-hit roll must make a Fumble check to avoid dropping their weapon. If the fumble check is also a natural 1 (1 in 400 chance, or 0.25%), it is thrown it in a random direction (which can hit any creature, including an ally). Additionally, any character with Weapon Mastery always auto-succeeds on fumble rolls with that weapon.

echo

[RadiantPhoenix]

Additionally, any character with Weapon Mastery always auto-succeeds on fumble rolls with that weapon.

... How about Weapon Proficiency?

[echoVanguard]

Weapon Proficiency (which is by group or type, not individual weapon) grants you a bonus on the fumble roll.

echo

[Username17]

A 1% chance of a skilled swordsman fucking up and having even a 1% chance of stabbing himself in the eye isn't realism, it's stupid. If there is a battle with a thousand people on a side and a non-zero number of people accidentally cut their own head off, your system is ridiculous.

This is a bit of a strawman, though, since your system can have fumbles that don't include self-decapitation as one of its potential outcomes. For example, in our system, players who roll a natural 1 on a to-hit roll must make a Fumble check to avoid dropping their weapon. If the fumble check is also a natural 1 (1 in 400 chance, or 0.25%), it is thrown it in a random direction (which can hit any creature, including an ally). Additionally, any character with Weapon Mastery always auto-succeeds on fumble rolls with that weapon.

echo

I'm not really sure what you're calling a straw man, since at this point you clearly aren't talking about Rune Quest, but instead some d20 variant. In any case, a ~50% chance of dropping your weapon every time you roll a 1 is a 2.5% chance per attack of going butter fingers with a sword.

I don't think I have ever met someone who dropped their sword once every forty swings. Even fictional characters who are made fun of in fandom for dropping their weapons constantly (like the Winchesters in Supernatural) don't drop their weapons that often. That level of fumblage is so ridiculously high that it only has a place in low comedy. Very low. If an MC tried to pull that shit out in a "serious" game, I'd walk away from the table.

-Username17

[Winnah]

I've almost always treated fumbles as weapon damage or malfunctions, when I have used critical failures at all. Even in the couple of RQ games I played.

I can visualise creatures relying on natural weapons harming themselves by striking metal. I can also visualise people inflicting strain injuries on themselves in the heat of combat. I have has enough training in MA to know that disarming someone with experience is challenging, though admittedly I am a novice with weapons and have no experience with 'life and death' melee. I do notice that students tend to not suffer from greasy palms when they focus and put in some practice.

I can see the appeal of fumbles in a RPG, as they add an extra dynamic to combat. Much like critical hits. There does come a point where combat systems become needlessly complex and cumbersome, so I can see how people would think of them as a bad joke.

[echoVanguard]

I'm not really sure what you're calling a straw man, since at this point you clearly aren't talking about Rune Quest, but instead some d20 variant. In any case, a ~50% chance of dropping your weapon every time you roll a 1 is a 2.5% chance per attack of going butter fingers with a sword.

I don't think I have ever met someone who dropped their sword once every forty swings. Even fictional characters who are made fun of in fandom for dropping their weapons constantly (like the Winchesters in Supernatural) don't drop their weapons that often. That level of fumblage is so ridiculously high that it only has a place in low comedy. Very low. If an MC tried to pull that shit out in a "serious" game, I'd walk away from the table.

-Username17

An 'attack' in a TTRPG isn't always synonymous with a 'swing'. In our system (as in d20), an 'attack' is the outcome of a brief but focused period of combat, which may involve any number of swings, jabs, or shots.

Additionally, the ~50% fumble success metric is a shot in the dark, which doesn't happen to be correct - base chance (even if your character is nonproficient in their weapon and has the minimum possible DEX score) is 45%, and the chance for a character with bare-average DEX and proficiency in their weapon is 30%. A melee-focused character should usually have optimum DEX (upper 40% of the ability range), in which case the chance for failure is about 20%. Calculating all the percentages, the nonproficient palsied cripple has a 2.25% chance for a fumble, while Joe Average with Proficiency has a 1.5% chance (or roughly once every 75 periods of focused fighting). For a typical entry-level player character who has spent their points reasonably, the chance is right about 1% - and characters can acquire Weapon Mastery at level 2 if they feel the 1-2% chance is too high.

echo

[RadiantPhoenix]

What exactly is the "Weapon Mastery" you're talking about? The closest things I could find are from the PHBII and require +8 BAB.

[echoVanguard]

What exactly is the "Weapon Mastery" you're talking about? The closest things I could find are from the PHBII and require +8 BAB.

I'm discussing the under-construction system my company is developing (you may have seen posts about it in the IMOI forum). Sorry if I caused any confusion.

echo

[tzor]

An 'attack' in a TTRPG isn't always synonymous with a 'swing'. In our system (as in d20), an 'attack' is the outcome of a brief but focused period of combat, which may involve any number of swings, jabs, or shots.

...

For a typical entry-level player character who has spent their points reasonably, the chance is right about 1% - and characters can acquire Weapon Mastery at level 2 if they feel the 1-2% chance is too high

Even if you consider that a round is X number of seconds, (not just one swing) the notion that you will drop your weapon because your lack of skill on average once every hundred units is massively insane.

In general combat, the biggest reason why people loose their grip on their weapon is because their opponent has disarmed them; that is the skill of the opponent, not the bad luck of the attacker.

To put it in perspective, if we remove the defender completely (and give him a zero dex) one should never see a person drop his weapon, unless that person is an untrained klutz. The lumberjack against the tree should never drop his weapon in the course of felling the tree. NEVER.

[violence in the media]

An 'attack' in a TTRPG isn't always synonymous with a 'swing'. In our system (as in d20), an 'attack' is the outcome of a brief but focused period of combat, which may involve any number of swings, jabs, or shots.

I've never understood why this is done this way or this explaination is relied upon? It never applies to thrown or fired weapons or magic, so why do it with melee? It's not as if the archer or wizard has to tick off 1d6 arrows or wand charges every time they make an "attack".

@Tzor--Didn't Lincoln fumble a lumberjacking check and injure one of his siblings?

[tzor]

I've never understood why this is done this way or this explaination is relied upon? It never applies to thrown or fired weapons or magic, so why do it with melee?

It's an old Gygax thing. One of the stupidest things he ever did. I have the old books at home so I can't reference a quote, but in a game where facing was everything and a combat round was 60 seconds long, melee is a series of attacks while spells/ranged weapons were not. Of course the whole combat thing wasn't as nicely unified as it is today, so it might have made sense at the time, to him.

@Tzor--Didn't Lincoln fumble a lumberjacking check and injure one of his siblings?

I would have to look up the details of the story, but generally most accidents occur after the axe has hit the tree - technically speaking that should be considered a "hit" since the tree takes damage.

Actually, I should point out that baseball players have been known to swing the bat, miss the ball, and let the bat fly into the stands. That happens ... well a whole lot less than 1% more like 0.01% of the time. Then again, baseball players aren't concerned about getting in another attack after the first one, so perhaps they should not count.

[cthulhudarren]

You guys are strawman-ing this fumble thing. It is 1 or 2 percent, and then it takes another improbable roll on top of that to stab yourself in the face. MRQ2 combat is pretty realistic and was designed by folks who regularly practice medieval combat.

No. It was designed by people who swing swords at each other and is designed so that anything that could theoretically happen can happen. The problem is that a bunch of that shit isn't even a one in a million. A 1% chance of a skilled swordsman fucking up and having even a 1% chance of stabbing himself in the eye isn't realism, it's stupid. If there is a battle with a thousand people on a side and a non-zero number of people accidentally cut their own head off, your system is ridiculous.

But that is also besides the point. Lets focus, I'll reword it: "Gritty" means that the cavetroll can knock you out with one lucky swing of his greatclub, regardless if you are 20th level Aragorn or 1st level Merry. It is realistic. No human could withstand this amount of punishment. BTW, it should also knock you on your ass (which it would do in MRQ2).

Stop using the word realistic, because it does not mean what you think it means. Cave trolls "realistically" would not be able to stand up because of cube square law issues. However, if you really want to keep everyone with basically mortal health levels, why not just play a game where toughness does not advance? Like, any skill-based system ever?

-Username17

The fumble stuff can easily be house-ruled out if it bothers a group that much. I don't see that as the main concern. I don't even think cutting your own head off is something that can happen in the rules. You could injure yourself or more likely just stumble, drop a weapon, stuff like that.

I disagree about the cave troll thing, because by your definition an elephant or dinosaur should not exist. That cave troll was not bigger than a modern African Elephant.

MRQ2 would fit the definition of a skill-based system where toughness doesn't advance.

I do like the sentiment mentioned above that save or die is gritty.

[Josh_Kablack]

The posts in this thread don't make any damn sense, so I'm gonna answer the thread title instead:

There are in general 6 schemes for character advancement

1. Level based
2. Character point based
3. Hybrid of points and level
4. No Improvement
5. Treasure Based
6. MC fiat

In Level Based advancement, all (or at least most) of the key abilities of characters are determined by one meta-number, called "level", apparently because Gygax did not own a thesaurus. When a character gains a level, they gain a large pile of bonuses and abilities that are added to the bonuses and abilities they already have. This is (largely) how D&D works. The major features of level based advancement are that there are few discrete packages of advancement, usually 20 or less, and never to my knowledge more than 50. Consequently players (generally) only have very few major choices to make when they gain advancement.


In Character Point Based advancement, characters have a relatively large number of points to spend on a relatively wide selection of abilities and generally gain a few points to advance whatever they want each game session. Sometimes these points are exactly the same as those used in chargen (HERO, Gurps), other times there are radical and exploitable differences between the chargen points and the points handed out for advancement (Shadowrun, Storyteller, Feng Shui). In character point based advancement, characters are constantly receiving a small trickle of improvement and the players have a great deal of flexibility in applying that advancement. This allows for a lot of customization and allows characters to pick up small abilities related to their adventures frequently. It also means that players have to consider a lot of options all the time, characters are unlikely to pick up major new abilities and there is no guarantee that combat numbers or skill rolls within the PC party stay anywhere close to each other.

One interesting variant of this is "abilities on auction" advancement, where the players frequently have the chance to bid some sort of game-related currency on a number of improvements. (See After Sundown). This gives players some control over their customization, while reducing options to a smaller subset. With a random component to reduce self-synergies, this can allow major abilities to be gaining a little more frequently than more point-buy and it can run entertainingly as either a co-operative or competitive minigame depending on the playgroup. However it is still very likely for characters to have abilities which diverge to an unacceptable degree with this variant.


In what I am calling Hybrid Advancement characters have both some abilities pegged to their level and some abilities they can get with points. Sometimes levels give you packages of points to spend on various abilities, as is the case with 3rd ed D&D skill points and most editions of D&D spellcasting, as well as just about everything in 2e Rolemaster. Other times the amount of points you have spent increases your level, as was the case in at least 1e Mutants and Masterminds. Other times, there's a point-tax meta-variable serving as a soft or hard cap on other abilities (1st ed V:tM's Generation). Any of these can work to combine the better parts of point-based and level-based advancement, such as giving characters in level-based systems more flexibility and customization than would otherwise be available or to provide a way for characters in point based systems to stay within a similar range of power for the key parts of the game, Alas, any of these can also be implemented so as to combine the worst of the previous setups - you can end up with games where: level is easily rendered meaningless as a benchmark (PL in M&M 1e); where point treadmills mean players are likely to lose their characters if they customize them in any but one way (HERO Dex and Spd); where players have too many options to consider each level (Vancian Spellcasting), and other issues.

In No Improvement advancement, characters are static. Everway, Baron Munchhausen and in practice, any game run as a single shot (which means most games at Conventions ) work this way. It's not terribly popular as it doesn't provide Pavlovian conditioning and the sense of accomplishment for players that having advancement in an RPG does - but it sure is easy to write and simulates a large amount of serial fiction.


In Treasure Based advancement, the characters' innate abilities do not (generally) increase, but they gain new items with interesting abilities. This can be finding a +N sword in a D&D game, getting outfitted with a boomerang bow tie and poison pellet pen before leaving on a spy mission, or just learning secrets that let you blackmail various NPCs. This is frequently used a a secondary advancement system in level-based, hyrbid or otherwise "no-advancement" games. In D&D (especially 3rd ed and later), characters usually gain new and better items more frequently than they gain levels, and even relatively static characters will sometimes use a weapon or item taken from a prior foe to defeat the current one (see: the Batcave)

In MC Fiat advancement, characters gain abilities whenever the MC says they do, and there are no further rules for it. The big advantage here is that this is really easy. The big downside is that this is completely arbitrary and players can end up with less control than they want over their characters.


There are a few others out there, Amber Diceless's secret advancement within player specified parameters, lifepath advancement (Mekton Zeta, Traveller 1st ed), and I seem to recall seeing an even more detailed version where in addition to lifepath training, a character had to devote X amount of their weekly schedule to maintaining proficiencies - but such things are rare and kind of out-of-fashion in RPGs anymore, as well as potentially a subset of one of the above schemes.

[tzor]

I disagree about the cave troll thing, because by your definition an elephant or dinosaur should not exist. That cave troll was not bigger than a modern African Elephant.

Note that an elephant requires four legs and cannot physically jump.

Note that a two legged dinosaur requires a very large tail to balance itself.

There was once a Scientific American article where they tried to upscale a lobster to larger and larger sizes. By the time they threw out all the problems of having a lobster at extreemely large sizes they wound up with a T-Rex.

I can't find it, but here is a more reasonable article. But really who wants to let reason get in the way of our fantasy!

[cthulhudarren]

I disagree about the cave troll thing, because by your definition an elephant or dinosaur should not exist. That cave troll was not bigger than a modern African Elephant.

Note that an elephant requires four legs and cannot physically jump.

Note that a two legged dinosaur requires a very large tail to balance itself.

The same principle applies though. If a T-REx chomps down on your head... no matter how "advanced" of a human you are... You die.

I am "arguing" for a system in that the level of physical punishment the human body can endure, that the physics of force and mass doesn't change a whole lot unless you have magic involved. Casting Stoneskin to make you harder to cut is okay. Character advancement would be more along the lines of better skills, casting defensive spells, better gear, better talents... even a heroic ability like deflecting an arrow with a sword. But the human body is still the human body.

Now in a system where by some supernatural means you become tougher as you advance, that would be okay. If Achilles being dipped in a magical river made him invulnerable, I can live with that.

I realize that abstract systems like DnD are trying to model both skills, stamina, and physical toughness all in one number with HPs. I just do not enjoy that much abstractness in a game of combat.