Can the Death Penalty Balance the World?

[Foxwarrior]

So, I've been working on a Tactical RPG where each player can have one or multiple characters (to let the lone hero, dominator wizard, and cackling aristocrat with neverending supply of thugs all be reasonably balanced builds, for one). Currently, each player gets an equal pool of points, and can replace lost characters freely.

However, someone suggested that individual characters could collect "character points", points specific to that character which deduct from their cost to your point pool, partly as a way to make keeping your characters alive have some worth to it (outside of RP). Thinking on it further, that seems like it would allow at least two strategies to flourish: cautiously keeping their characters alive, in order to hold onto plenty of character points and have a better team; or recklessly throwing away most of their characters in every battle, potentially accomplishing more despite having a weaker force.

My gut still says "this reminds me of D&D's level loss mechanism, which is horrible", but mathematically they're very distinct: one makes you the square root of 2 times less relevant every single time you die, with the only solace being that it's faster to level up when you don't matter; and the other can drop you quickly down to a (hopefully still relevant) baseline, but never goes below that.

Insights please.

[K]

Ever played X-Com?

It's a game where you have a squad of soldiers who slowly level-up and get awesome, but the game is super lethal because monsters pop out of hiding and basically one-shot your guys. This means that the ideal tactic is where you level up some of your guys as back-line snipers and psychics and then toss the new recruits into unexplored areas as stalking horses and sometimes as suicide bombers. This means that the only people who don't get crazy-leveled is the crop of new recruits who won't ever last more than a few battles because they get ruthlessly sacrificed in order to spare the leveled characters.

[Foxwarrior]

I haven't although I know enough about it and similar games to have been considering that sort of thing.

One thing I'm wondering is: can it be balanced to have one player play the the crazy-leveled characters, and the other player play the endless cycle of new recruits?

[Avoraciopoctules]

If this were like some kind of wargame where you just get a bigger pool of points to spend on your faction's resources deployed each adventure, you might be able to balance it.

Tracking advancement points for each of your tiny men could create a dynamic where people get really upset about losing 1 footsoldier out of a crowd of them.

Battle for Wesnoth is another (Free!) example of the kind of dynamic individual unit advancement like this can create. Most people in campaign mode save-scum like crazy.

[hogarth]

One thing I'm wondering is: can it be balanced to have one player play the the crazy-leveled characters, and the other player play the endless cycle of new recruits?

In terms of power, I don't see why not; there are games where "peons" are pretty tough and games where "peons" are incredibly weak, so it's certainly possible to move that slider back and forth until you're comfortable with the result.

Is it possible to have it balanced in terms of the game time each player gets to devote to his own PCs? I don't know about that. The natural tendency (in my experience) is for the guy with 5 PCs to spend more time monopolizing everyone's attention compared to the guy with 1 PC -- maybe not 5 times as much, but maybe 2 or 3 times as much. And that's pretty lame.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, I've been working on a Tactical RPG where each player can have one or multiple characters (to let the lone hero, dominator wizard, and cackling aristocrat with neverending supply of thugs all be reasonably balanced builds, for one). Currently, each player gets an equal pool of points, and can replace lost characters freely.

There isn't anything wrong gameplay-wise with your setup, but there are two concerns you have.

[*] As hogarth mentioned one players having more sapient tokens means, all things being equal, a larger share of screentime for the one player.

[*] The flip side is that not everyone wants to dick around with extra tokens on the board. Not just because it's difficult and distracting gameplay-wise, but also because people don't like cutting down on the screentime of their favorite characters. If you really like Starsky, playing him and Hutch at the same time cuts down on your Starsky time and tender thoughts.

The easiest way to avoid this for a game like D&D is to make extra tokens on the board proportionately weaker. A druid has a bunch of extra tokens on the board to dick around with, but they don't steal all that much extra screentime. Well, compared to other primary casters.

[Username17]

I'm thinking Mordheim/Necromunda. Fun enough games, but teams of higher leveled characters simply kick the crap out of low level bullshit. Those campaigns have to be restarted fairly frequently, because teams stratify in power as the winners keep winning and the losers keep losing.


-Username17

[Foxwarrior]

Lago: I'm making some effort to make higher-cost characters more complex, and edging a bit away from D&D towards Warhammer to make simple characters simpler and faster to run in squads.

FrankTrollman: You don't think that problem can be balanced away? There would still be a scaling point pool to go with the character points, so I can enforce a maximum ratio.

[DSMatticus]

What's the maximum number of characters per player? If that number is high, you might want to limit the number that can have experience at all. You really don't want to keep track of the individual awesomeness of 10 different units per player (unless your system is fairly simple).

How is "experience" or whatever distributed? If a character gets some flat amount for surviving a battle, then you're incentivized to have as many people as possible gaining experience. If a player gets some flat amount for winning a battle, how is it distributed among his characters? Equally (that disincentivizes cannon fodder mooks)? As you wish (incentivizes cannon fodder mooks)? Are there penalties for losing characters?

Are there diminishing returns and/or a hard cap on what experience can do for a given unit? If no, then taking a bunch of low-level mooks and trying to turn them into godly heroes over time (X-Com) is pretty valid and probably a winning move. If yes, then you limit the potential of any mook to what is essentially better mookdom, and that preserves the difference between a really good mook and a heroic warrior.

I would probably have only 3-5 characters who could have experience at once (system simplicity raises that number), distribute experience equally among those units (whether they're dead or alive, dead units simply burning their share of the gained experience by virtue of dying), and put in diminishing returns and a hardcap, so people who spend lots of points on significantly bigger, scarier guys always get to say they have bigger, scarier guys.

[Foxwarrior]

XCOM in Ironman mode is an amazing game, and I can clearly see why someone would suggest adding that same fear of losing heroes to other games. However, XCOM sometimes needs a full reset, something which a cooperative multiplayer RPG can't do well (what fraction of players need to want to reset before the game ends? It's a terrible question)


So now I have an idea for an alternative mechanic: skip character points, use a point pool and a maximum starting point cost. Players can't add any units to their squad with a higher point cost than that maximum. However, when the DM hands out increases to the point pool, players can spend those points on upgrading existing units.

This way, all players have ostensibly equal forces. Is it bad that only players who play cautiously and well get to have grand heroic warriors, and players who play recklessly or incompetently are required to play minion masters, or would it be a fun sort of punishment?

[Calibron]

Wow, this place is still churning out good ideas and amazing constructive criticism after all this time.

All my respect, guys.(And continuing to steal your ideas)

[Foxwarrior]

So you wouldn't like to share an opinion, Calibron?

[Sashi]

So now I have an idea for an alternative mechanic: skip character points, use a point pool and a maximum starting point cost. Players can't add any units to their squad with a higher point cost than that maximum. However, when the DM hands out increases to the point pool, players can spend those points on upgrading existing units.

This way, all players have ostensibly equal forces. Is it bad that only players who play cautiously and well get to have grand heroic warriors, and players who play recklessly or incompetently are required to play minion masters, or would it be a fun sort of punishment?

I don't think this does what you think it does. Choosing to be a minion master actually just means getting to declare that you explicitly can't be harmed. Get 100 points of faceless mooks today, and no matter what happens you'll have 100 points of faceless mooks tomorrow. As long as a character made at the starting max is relevant, you'll be relevant.

And a character at the starting max has to be relevant, or else losing your built-up guys is catastrophic. Especially if you build up an A-team or Fellowship of the Ring. When Boromir dies it's over and your 5 man strike team is now a 4 man strike team plus a toddler.

Or you go with the Darth Vader + Stormtroopers approach and have one hero who gets all the bling, plus a pile of ablative minions. The weirdest part is that if a main character dies the horde grows.

Actually, I take it back. That's kind of nifty in a "You either die or become the villain" way. Even if you start out trying to build the A-Team, after the first character death you realize the importance of readily-expendable faceless minions. Every time someone on the team dies your horde gets that much bigger and everyone left advances faster. Until you're left with one really powerful guy with a horde of infinitely replaceable stormtroopers and a chip on his shoulder. That's practically a self-renewing campaign.

[Calibron]

So you wouldn't like to share an opinion, Calibron?

I think a system that will revive, through recruitment, magic, inherent ability, whatever fits the character, your baseline characters and/or fighting mans in between missions is your best bet, unless you want the encounters to be especially deadly and resource draining, in which case you may need to make it more frequent or have players that are okay with being severly weakened over the course of an adventure.

I think you should allow quite a large number of excess fighting mans, but make sure to keep them simple, one-action pieces and eventually squads when you spend enough character points. There can be a second tier of fighting mans that have two to three possible actions that you have access too for them. And a max of two or three complex characters, or even just one, but I think having two would open up more character concepts.

Obviously, as the complex characters and the challenges they face increase in difficulty, so should the baseline for your fighting mans. I'll use an example from X-COM: You'll see quite a massive difference between your starting X-COM guys and those new recruits you get when you have access to the powered flying armor, heavy plasmas, and a hover tank or two to scout and take hits. Obviously at this point your baseline fighting mans have, by necessity, become a bit too complex to run their actions individually and quickly, and must be made into squad entities.

No real new ideas there, just how I imagine the process being most effectively dealt with.

EDIT: Unless you are going to allow single character players to get slightly ahead of the curve with extra experience from not dying and take it away when they do die, leaving them with the same baseline character points everyone has access to at the moment, then I don't recommend letting the more-complex-than-fighting-mans secondary characters get separate experience, and simply have the whole group share the character points. Either way could be done effectively, but it depends on the kind of game your are trying to make.