Power Source Transparency and Leveling up

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:40 am

Let's face it, spells slots, the three and the Bo9S "maneuvers" are all just different special types of Power Sources.

Why aren't they just... you know... counted as being the same? Or that they all interact with each other in an equal manner.

I know that most of the systems and ideas that are designed by these boards recognizes the need for power source transparency; but I don't think that we call it that specifically.

The really odd thing is that the people who design games don't seem to get that. Instead they seem to make a few different systems that all interact with each other, and sometimes in unbalanced ways.

Anyway, just something that crossed my mind when thinking about how it would be interesting to see a high level say, fighter, or monk, something eventually become a 'magic' using character.

I mean.... I've seen a game system (a larp) where there is almost none of the character abilities that can't be combined together to achieve synergy.

In fact, there's a character whose player is specifically thinking of making a "non-special" power type of healer who has no combat abilities.

Meaning that they're deliberately taking a hit to their power, as two of the best rated healers in the game and one is one of the better fighters in game (sheild, sword, armour; healing, reaches the highest heals in game) and spellcaster (de-buffer, crowd control, de-curses; reaches the second highest heals in the game).

Yet, they're still a successful character. Since eventually someone will get dropped in almost any fight, and sometimes many people per fight; being the person who does not confront enemies, means that you won't be as likely to be dropped over the course of a game, or over several events, simply because you aren't facing combat directly as often.

Meaning that the system supports being literally any playstyle, and not have a character that is actively punished by the system.

Also, could this idea be applied to D&D. The idea that power sources

The thread on PrC shouldn't take more than one 'detour' level to enter. by Lago made me think that it would be interesting to see a character take a level of Wizard, or Druid, or whatever; and it doesn't gimp the character.

Maybe "levels" give access to things, or something.

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 5:27 am

I think there's actually something to be said for a "tier" style system here.

Most of the abilities you gain each level scale, but the actual ability you get from multiclassing is determined by the tier. So a level 12 wizard who picks up a fighter level gets a more appropriate ability than if he got the abilities of level 1 of fighter under the normal system.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 6:27 am

There are two important conceits of roleplaying game character creation and advancement systems that people recognize. And the tension between them is very hard to manage and leaves many things feel "wrong" on many levels.

The character design and advancement system should be open enough that you can play what you want to play, and balanced enough in that openness that what you want to play is considered viable.
There should be sufficient role protection so that your character's contribution remains noticeable and special.

Most players will agree to both of those claims, and well they should. Both of those claims together sum to allowing you to play your own character concept and be the star of the show sometimes. But the tension should be obvious - the first part is asking that my character be allowed to be whatever I want it to be; but the second part is saying that your character needs to get their jealous hands off my fucking schtick. And balancing those two needs is not easy.

But whatever you do, in a leveled system you need to have people at "level X" actually be that level in terms of "power." And it's also a fact that having options that good in very different situations is better than having options that are largely interchangeable. Both of those are universal facts that you can prove with math. This implies that there should be some kind of power hit for versatility (assuming you allow characters to be more or less versatile), but actually getting that right is extremely hard.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 10:30 am

One question I've never satisfactorily received an answer about role protection:

If you have a system with role protection then what are you going to do if people don't want to respect the roles?

In 4E games I play, people generally want to be the striker and rarely want to be the leader. One time we had three people wanting to be warlocks. So this leads to an obvious imbalance in party makeup and one person has to be the warlord or the cleric.

Now I know that's a bad outcome, but the problem is that if you want to have role protection at all you need to have the roles mean something. Which means that four people playing different roles has to be inherently stronger than four people playing the same one otherwise there's no point in having roles. But you still get cases of people going 'we all want to be warlocks'.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 11:49 am

I don't know about that - in pretty much all games I played there was a way to make most class combinations work. In DnD, given an all rogue or rogue/rogue/ranger/monk party you lose out on the synergy of a diverse party, but on the other hand you suddenly have an all-stealth and possibly an all-ranged-attack party, which opens up entirely new tactics. Similarly in Everquest, while the default party of healer/crowd control/3 damage dealers gives you great synergy, but a party of 6 beastlords allows you to just plow through lower difficulty dungeons, regardless of how many monsters they contain.

What stinks though are roles which can only be done by one character at a time. Being a face comes to mind, as does tanking in many MMORPGs. Obviously having multiples of those roles in your party is next to useless.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 12:12 pm

Lago wrote:One question I've never satisfactorily received an answer about role protection:

If you have a system with role protection then what are you going to do if people don't want to respect the roles?

In 4E games I play, people generally want to be the striker and rarely want to be the leader. One time we had three people wanting to be warlocks. So this leads to an obvious imbalance in party makeup and one person has to be the warlord or the cleric.

You are actually describing "what if people don't want to address all the roles." That's a very different kettle of fish. If people don't want to respect roles, you have a situation where someone is playing a Conjurer or a Healer or something, and then one of the other characters wants to do that as well. That kind of action is usually motivated by jealousy and often feels like an attack on the player who had the previously unique schtick. In that instance, you have to either tell the spotlight stealer "no" or give them a demonstrably weaker version of it, or force them to wait until everyone reaches a training sequence montage so that the character whose schtick is being stolen can grab something new and "cool" and unique.

If you're going to have roles that are being protected, you should have more of them than there are players at the table so that the game retains replayability. So if no one wants to play White Mage that shouldn't be a problem. The MMO standard where there are Tanks, DPS, Crowd Control and Support is fucked. It makes parties standardized, which is easy for online PuG, but fucking pointless for an actual RPG.

The goal is Chrono Trigger, not WoW. Having different characters who contribute different things to the party should be something that happens every time you make a party.

-Username17

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 3:42 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:In 4E games I play, people generally want to be the striker and rarely want to be the leader. One time we had three people wanting to be warlocks. So this leads to an obvious imbalance in party makeup and one person has to be the warlord or the cleric.

I haven’t played any 4E games yet, but I’ve been looking into the rules before I start writing my NaNoWriMo novel next month. What I found was fascinating. Yes it does look as through the striker “role” would be a popular one. Warlock is an interesting class. It looks (at a glance) that the “Fey” flavor of warlock is more of a controller than a striker. (That is how I’m going to write one of the characters in the novel.)

(Actually these imbalances drive most of my plot; poor George Washington will be stated as a paladin – a defender, and a Halfling cleric as the leader, even though he is in “charge” of the party because he is the one who wants to explore the Ohio River. Did I mention that this is a really strange novel?)

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 5:28 pm

In 4E games I play, people generally want to be the striker and rarely want to be the leader. One time we had three people wanting to be warlocks. So this leads to an obvious imbalance in party makeup and one person has to be the warlord or the cleric.

I think that one can deal with this problem in two ways.

1. Ensure that no role is necessary. If you want to play a party of strikers, you should be able to do so competently. That means that you're going to dish out enough damage to take down monsters quickly, but you're going to get hit more often and there's a good chance that you're going to get knocked to the negatives if the monster gets a good hit on you.

2. Allow for some blurring between the roles. This doesn't have to go so far as to destroy role protection, but if someone wants to play a striker and pick up some healing boosts/buffs, he should be able to do so. Perhaps they'll be less effective than the leader's, and perhaps they'll cost extra resources (like the multiclass feats in 4e), but he can serve as a leader in a pinch.

souran · Post by **souran** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 10:11 pm

Psychic Robot wrote:
1. Ensure that no role is necessary. If you want to play a party of strikers, you should be able to do so competently. That means that you're going to dish out enough damage to take down monsters quickly, but you're going to get hit more often and there's a good chance that you're going to get knocked to the negatives if the monster gets a good hit on you.

2. Allow for some blurring between the roles. This doesn't have to go so far as to destroy role protection, but if someone wants to play a striker and pick up some healing boosts/buffs, he should be able to do so. Perhaps they'll be less effective than the leader's, and perhaps they'll cost extra resources (like the multiclass feats in 4e), but he can serve as a leader in a pinch.

The game should be playable without all the roles but that does not mean that the game should be balanced around not having a particular role.

Honestly, the longer I play RPGs the role protection I think becomes more and more important. I have seen to many games fall apart over what was basically table jelousy.

If two peoples characters are two close in role/concept there it always creates problems. About the best you can hope for is that one of them is a table ghost and is willing to mostly roll dice in combat.

The problem is not creating more roles than players, because then you have rolls that are not being picked up and its hard to plan for.

The angle to seek is to have unique and different ways of filling roles. I sort of wonder if 4e had been released with all the classes in PHB 1 and 2 if it would have gotten a slightly better reception.

I know that a lot of people don't like role protection or want to be able to create very flexible heros. Batman doesn't easily fit into defined classes. You cannot be neo or even Indiana Jones in a single character in a game with role protection. You cannot be mouder or skully, or buffy or willow if games are segregating out functions.

However, the problem is that those are terrible concepts for a table top rpg. The problem with all those concepts is that they are the STAR/S of their respective stories.

Robin won't get pissed off and walk out of the comic because he has to be the fucking sidekick AGAIN.

Nobody wants to be Marcus Brody (he got lost in his own meausum) with the person sitting next to them getting to be indiana jones.

I actually have a rule for this.

I call them my Han Solo rules of roleplaying characters. Basically, Han Solo, while a really cool character concept, would be a terrible character to play in an RPG. Infact, if one of your players is getting Han Soloed, they are likely to leave.

Consider:

1) When the story begins Han Solo and Luke each have their own sticks. Luke is taking his first steps in learning the foce and Han Solo has a ship and his own sidekick.

Seems like a fair traide except BY THE END OF THE FIRST STORY Luke has A: His own ship which is the one used to destroy the death star
b: His own sidekick in the form of Obi Wan's ghost
c: A lightsaber which as a class are narratively defined as better than
other existing weapons
d: basic knowledge of a msytical force that makes you better than other people.

What does Han get: A frickan medal that Luke ALSO gets.

Empire:
This is where it gets really bad. Again, if Han was being played at a table the player would pitch a fit and walk out. Theres only 2 items and they are

1) Han is surprised, attacked, and tortured to prove how the villian can only be challenged by another one of the characters.
2) Han is frozen and taken out of the last 3rd of the movie and most of the first 1/4 of the next one.

It doesn't get any better from here. Honestly, if the whole set of movies had been a game in george lucas basement harrison ford would be the player everybody thinks is the angry guy because he once pitched a fit and threw dice around.

Han solo seems to be another hero along with Luke but turns into a sidekick of Luke. Thats the moral

Also very sorry!

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 3:17 pm

Too many unquotes, souran, you broke the thread!

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 9:43 pm

Fix your tags souran.

Hey J_E, wasn't that basically the point of 4uccess? Have you been doing any work on it lately?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:20 pm

souran wrote:Consider:

1) When the story begins Han Solo and Luke each have their own sticks. Luke is taking his first steps in learning the foce and Han Solo has a ship and his own sidekick.

Seems like a fair traide except BY THE END OF THE FIRST STORY Luke has A: His own ship which is the one used to destroy the death star
b: His own sidekick in the form of Obi Wan's ghost
c: A lightsaber which as a class are narratively defined as better than
other existing weapons
d: basic knowledge of a msytical force that makes you better than other people.

What does Han get: A frickan medal that Luke ALSO gets.

Important point #1: Novels and Movies don’t particularly work well in a role playing “team” mode. It’s all about the primary character. The rest are NPCS at best. That’s the way people in general write. It’s also why they are bad examples for role playing. It’s not just the “force” that is with Luke, it’s the whole damn plot.

Point #2: Han also gets a shitload of cash which he needs to pay off Jaba. (The fact that he can’t capitalize on that is another matter, Luke practically looses his ship in the next episode, but is only saved because “the plot is with him.”)

Point #3: If you think Han gets it bad, look at the sidekick’s sidekick Chewbacca.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:12 pm

No Mask, I really haven't.

Souran.... I think that it's not a matter of Han Solo being ripped off, as much as it is a game where the characters are "point-buying" all of their abilities.

Han Solo is the character with about 100-400 points, while Luke only has like... say 40; and gets about 70 by the end of the movie, on his own.

The GM just throws him enough points to get abilities in the tier of the Han Solo Character; so he gives him

[*] A team of "sometimes" Sidekicks (Obi-Wan 'appears' out of no where, the GM just gave the PC that power; later gives or allows the player to buy access to Yoda's spirit, and then his Father's),

[*] A "minimum sized" space ship (the X-Wing was assigned to him, remember? that's GM fiat right there);

[*] A "robot friend (R2-D2)" and "robot protocol droid"

[*] A special weapon that can block ranged attacks (which are super lethal in this game, so PCs try to get abilities like "Lucky Dodge!" or "Han Shot First"), but can forces the character to fight at melee range.

[*] Met a bunch of really powerful characters and interacted with them, either working on the same team as them, or fighting them. Contacts are a pretty important power.

[*]Was told about a trainer for his next tier of skills

There was quite a lot of character developing things that occurred. Han is seriously a higher level character who has pissed off some really vicious people. Which makes him look like he's a lot weaker, since he can't be in public as much, and because he seriously has a Huttesse Bounty on his head. The bounty means that it's automatic and guaranteed cash in the bank if you bag Han Solo. Han seriously had a group of other characters competing to hunt Him.

Then the Empire gets involved, and offers them all an additional bounty, b/c they know that wherever Han is, then Luke is probably nearby, so they effectively offer a double bounty.

Looking at it from a gaming/tactical perspective makes it a little bit more interesting.