Uneven Abilities

[TheWorid]

A common desire I've come across, especially from people with no design knowledge, is to play characters that can do more than one thing, Red Mage-style. Particularly, I also see wanting to play characters that can do one or more things well, but something else poorly: think Lina Inverse being good at black magic, competent at elementalism, but only capable of meager white magic spells.

I considered allowing people to rank abilities: for example, I have Divine Magic I, so I can cast level 1 divine spells, and Arcane Magic II, and can cast level 2 arcane spells, but not level 1. However, that prevents people from having two abilities at the same level, and creates weird situations where you can have 9th level spells, but no other levels.


Is there a good way to set up a system that allows this that doesn't give the finger to balance?

[RobbyPants]

Easily? I doubt it.

Are you talking D&D here, or is this more broad? If it is D&D, are you also including things that aren't spells in the list? That could get hard to balance.

I suppose you could always do some sort of weak gestalt or something. As a 5th level PC, you might be level 5 in one class, 3 in another, and 1 in a third, but combined like a gestalt character. That's a quick-and-dirty way, but like regular gestalt, some combinations are just better than others.

Still, is that what you're after?

[Dean]

Check this out

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51968

It's Sigma's and he's making it right now. Seems really interesting and kinda just what you're talking about.

[TheWorid]

Easily? I doubt it.

Are you talking D&D here, or is this more broad? If it is D&D, are you also including things that aren't spells in the list? That could get hard to balance.

I suppose you could always do some sort of weak gestalt or something. As a 5th level PC, you might be level 5 in one class, 3 in another, and 1 in a third, but combined like a gestalt character. That's a quick-and-dirty way, but like regular gestalt, some combinations are just better than others.

Still, is that what you're after?

I think you would have to make a new system rather than trying to base it heavily on D&D. I was trying to include non-spell effects on the list, like having a "Fighting" ability alongside "Divine" and "Arcane".

The biggest issue I'm trying to avoid is certain combinations being far better than others.

[TheWorid]

Check this out

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51968

It's Sigma's and he's making it right now. Seems really interesting and kinda just what you're talking about.

I've already posted in that thread, if you scroll down. It's interesting, but I'm most interested in allowing PCs to purposefully take their abilities at different degrees, which Sigma's system doesn't do (except when you're leveling up a class at first).

[Spike]

A thought might be to adapt a priority system, like the one FASA used to use in Shadowrun and Mechwarrior.

Pull out the 'everybodies got it stuff' like attributes, skills or money and make the catagories various types of power, including martial power. If the catagories are reasonably well balanced against each other from a game play perspective then people can put their priorities where they like.

So you could have, in theory the following catagories:

Fighting Arts
Expert Arts
White Arts
Black Arts
Red Arts
Blue Arts

Obviously you can't just compare damages, since your White Arts healers don't DO damage, generally speaking, and your Expert Arts (Mundane-ish cool shit like being able to pull a houdini if someone drops you in a box of water... whatever) probably don't either, what you are actually comparing is the ability to contribute to play.


EDIT::: Damnit! Posted too soon. In case you didn't get teh FASA thing, the priority you give a catagory determines HOW MUCH you get of it. The last place priority would provide, in this case, probably nothing, while the first place priority would be your defining trait.

The downside is that its pretty hard to specialize this way, as you'll always have stuff from other catagories cluttering up the mix. No "Black Wizard who ONLY does Black Wizardry".. because he will know at least two other schools of wizardry and at least one set of mundane awesome.

[Maj]

You might want to try to address the underlying problem. Is it a case of not wanting to be useless and unable to participate?

[kzt]

It's not a new concept. Runequest or Champions had that back in the early 80s.

Of course they don't have "character classes" or similar DnDisms that result in people saying that "fighters can't climb trees!" or similar idiocy.

[TheWorid]

You might want to try to address the underlying problem. Is it a case of not wanting to be useless and unable to participate?

Are you going to tell me what you think the underlying problem is?

It's not a new concept. Runequest or Champions had that back in the early 80s.

It's hardly a new concept, but I think we can agree that neither of those games did it in a balanced fashion. I want to have a system that allows people who concentrated in one area and those who wanted to mix-and-match to be on the same tier.

[MGuy]

What do you mean on the same tier? And what do you mean by area? I am confused as to what exactly you mean by these two things. By area do you mean power source?

[Archmage]

Jack-of-all-trades characters are great and popular in fiction, but they're terrible in tabletop RPGs. Almost no matter what kind of system you're using, you have one of several outcomes:

1) Your secondary skills suck too much to be relevant when there's an actual specialist around.
2) Your secondary talents suck too much for you to ever have a reason to use them over your primary abilities except for flavor.
3) Your abilities are almost as good as a specialist's, but you have more of them and are therefore potentially overpowered.

Characters like Lina and Zelgadis fall back on their white magic or their swordfighting either because there's nobody better to do the job (Lina trying to heal someone in an emergency) or because it's dramatically-appropriate (Zel dueling with some swordsman instead of reducing them to ash with a word and a gesture).

Some roles allow for overlap--having a back-up healer is potentially useful, because multiple people can contribute resources to the same task and share the workload. Some don't--what good is it if two people can pick locks, but one of them is way more likely to succeed than the other?

It's probably best to limit people's secondary abilities to flavor abilities or things where having a second person on the team doing the same job contributes overall to the chance of success, especially when they can work together directly. But if your system has any skill or ability set where the party is going to think things like "what are we going to do with another ___?" you probably ought to restrict that skillset to specialists.

[TheWorid]

What do you mean on the same tier? And what do you mean by area? I am confused as to what exactly you mean by these two things. By area do you mean power source?

I was referring to tiers in the way 3.X classes are divided into Wizard Tier, Rogue Tier, etc. As in, getting specialists and Red Mage types to be balanced. Area basically meant power source, yes.

[PoliteNewb]

Jack-of-all-trades characters are great and popular in fiction, but they're terrible in tabletop RPGs. Almost no matter what kind of system you're using, you have one of several outcomes:

1) Your secondary skills suck too much to be relevant when there's an actual specialist around.
2) Your secondary talents suck too much for you to ever have a reason to use them over your primary abilities except for flavor.
3) Your abilities are almost as good as a specialist's, but you have more of them and are therefore potentially overpowered.

I'd say 3 is only a problem because the expectation is that specialists are the default. If generalists were the default, and specialization was the suboptimal choice (because specializing only gave you a slight edge, not a giant bulge, over generalists), the expectation could easily be that everybody does 2-3 things fairly well...and since that's the expectation, it's not overpowered.

Granted, this is simply trading "specializing is suboptimal" for "generalizing is suboptimal", but since nobody seems to have a problem with the latter, I don't see why the trade is a big deal.

[kzt]

It's hardly a new concept, but I think we can agree that neither of those games did it in a balanced fashion. I want to have a system that allows people who concentrated in one area and those who wanted to mix-and-match to be on the same tier.

That doesn't make any sense.

Why would someone concentrate on being a really good fighter if a dilettante who is also a skilled magician, speaks 12 languages fluently and get prostitutes to pay him to sleep with them can fight mr combat expert to a draw?

[PoliteNewb]

It's hardly a new concept, but I think we can agree that neither of those games did it in a balanced fashion. I want to have a system that allows people who concentrated in one area and those who wanted to mix-and-match to be on the same tier.

That doesn't make any sense.

Why would someone concentrate on being a really good fighter if a dilettante who is also a skilled magician, speaks 12 languages fluently and get prostitutes to pay him to sleep with them can fight mr combat expert to a draw?

I don't think the expectation is that the dilettante is just as good as the combat specialist...just that he's not all that much worse. Instead of having Fighting 6 + Magic 6 = Fighting 12, it would be more like Fighting 10 + Magic 8 = Fighting 12.

As to why you'd want that, probably you wouldn't. The option is there for people who want to be "the Pro from Dover" and be the best at their one schtick. But it would be a niche choice...just like being a dilettante is a niche choice right now.

[Red_Rob]

I don't think the expectation is that the dilettante is just as good as the combat specialist...just that he's not all that much worse. Instead of having Fighting 6 + Magic 6 = Fighting 12, it would be more like Fighting 10 + Magic 8 = Fighting 12.

So you want 2e style multiclassing? Thats literally how multiclassing used to work. Just go back to using the second edition xp charts and you're set.

Or, you could go for a system where increased ability gave breadth rather than power. If each level of Wizard gave you a spell, which always had a level appropriate power, and each level of Fighter gave you a combat option, which always had a level appropriate power, a 6/6 or a 12 would both have 12 level appropriate powers. You'd just have to be careful how you handed out the powers to make sure you couldn't dip into every class and get all the best powers.