Making a Roleplaying Base System (Extreme WIP, please help)

[...You Lost Me]

---- This Post was on (20/1/2011) (before approval)

So, for my senior project, I'm writing up a roleplaying game. I have no idea what the name is, but I have a general direction...

All right, I posted some stuff here before and lots of it got shot down. Moooooving on to more of the ideas I'm tossing around...

Important Character Traits... Statistics
You get three base stats: Agility (Agi), Bulk (Blk), and Intelligence (Int) You set these base stats on your own when you make your character.

Your character gets training stats: Evasion and Accuracy (tied to agility), Damage and Vitality (tied to Bulk), and Cunning and Willpower (tied to Intelligence). You add your training stat to its related base stat to get (respectively) dodge, to-hit, physical damage, soak, and something else..? I’m really up in the air about stats right now.

Advancement
So I had a lot of stuff about "lots of levels!!! Woo!" involving me wanting to have lots of levels because players like leveling up... however, after much critcism, I've decided that I'm going to make my game go from level 1 to 15, and I will work out a way of giving it filler later (because THERE WILL BE FILLER! I WILL DO IT!)

1. 2 Rank 1 Abilities
2. Feat
3. 2 Rank 1 Abilities
4. 2 Rank 2 Abilities
5. Feat
6. 2 Rank 2 Abilities
7. 2 Rank 3 Abilities
8. Feat
9. 2 Rank 3 Abilities
etc...

Your training should provide for some stats that gain +3 per level, some that gain +2, and others that gain +1. Your base stats increase every third level.

Classes
So my desire for classes is that you have some basic levels, like 3 levels of [rogue, fighter, blaster, priest, alchemist] and then everything else is like a D&D Prestige Class. This is what I’d like to see…

1-3. A: Base classes
4-9. B: Prestige Classes (they will have a different name, I promise!)
10-12. C: Awesome PrC’s
13-15. D: Ascension to Godhood.

Roleplaying power levels….
A: At the beginning, you’re totally comfortable fighting off one of those wolves that keep killing the lambs outside of the village. By the end, you’re totally comfortable taking on that ice-breathing demon wolf which has been terrorizing some metropolitan area
B: At the beginning, you could easily take on the Barbarian chief who has been raiding the region (or you ARE the barbarian chief). By the end, you’ll be able to take the Staff of Thunder and Lightning from Elverr’in, Angelic Guardian of Storms.

C. At the beginning, you can defeat the monster which has dwelled beneath the surface of the earth for a million years. By the end, you can easily destroy any given planet, and you’re OK with that because you can also breath in space or limbo or whatever

D. At the beginning, you are allies with the Prince of Demons. By the end, you have dominion over the primordial plane of chaos

If you look at my first post (spoilered below), you’ll see that I’m hopping from idea to idea like a sparrow on acid, and this is just another concept that I’m throwing out there. Sooooo any advancement ideas? I’d love to hear ‘em.

(Posted on 9/1/2011)

Some Basics
Right now I want the RNG to be d20 or 2d10 (I like 2d10 more), and I want the levels to stretch from 1-100, with slowish advancement over each level. Level 1 would be the ninjas from the first few chapters of Naruto, and level 100 would be gods.

Concerning HPs... I'd like to do the abstract health system. In fact, I'd like to do 2 health systems. One would be Vitality, which is physical health, and the other would be Focus (mental health). Something super scary or disorienting will drain focus, and being lit on fire will drain vitality. Also, strong moves will use up a little bit of one or the other, so you need to watch your resources.

How does that sound?

Statistics would be something like Agility, Bulk, and Intelligence, which the players assign points do (I want 6 Agi, 6 Blk, and 3 Int). Then, as a class, you gain training statistics: Evasion and Accuracy, Power and Endurance, Willpower and Perception. You add Evasion to Agility to get your Dodge number, Power to Bulk for Damage, etc.

Niches
I've got 6 class ideas that I want to start implementing:

• Shadowcaster: Plays with shadows, uses illusions, super chilly
• Alchemist/Scholar: Workin' on the name. This guy makes potions and fix-its, cool toys and weapons, and studies stuff (like monster anatomies and tales of yore)
• Spark: Fire, lightning, and lazerbeams... this one needs some more fleshing out
• Dimensioner: Moving the wind, gravity manipulation, and some time travel
• Hunter: Beastial attunement (talk to wolves, turn into a wolf), loving nature
• Mentalist: Good at being focused, ignoring debuffs, using mind powurz

My desire for multiclassing is that around level 10-20, you add another of the classes to your list and you become that, gaining abilities are appropriate. So if you go Hunter/Mentalist, you become a lycanthrope, and can change at will into some number of animal forms. Then, around level 50-60, you get another multiclassing thing.

You can also choose the D&D equivalent of feats (not sure how many yet). They'll grant you mundane abilities like sneak attack, swordy abilities, hiding skill, etc.

I'm thinking of an advancement chart as such:
1. 2 Rank 1 Abilities
2. +Training Stats
3. 1 Rank 1 Ability
4. +Base Stats
5. Feat
6. +Training Stats
7. 1 Rank 1 Ability
8. +Base Stats
9. Feat
10. +Training Stats
11. 2 Rank 2 abilities
. . . repeat ad nauseum. I'm only going to write up to level 100 (Rank 10 abilities)

[CatharzGodfoot]

It's not yet clear what the difference is between a Feat and an Ability, but it basically seems like characters gain 6 abilities every 10 levels. This makes for 60 abilities at level 100, which is really quite a lot. Do you plan on making low-rank abilities become useless over time? Are different ranks of abilities supposed to work in completely different domains (e.g. face stabbing vs. village destroying vs. army raising vs. fortress making vs. alternate reality visiting vs. world destroying)?

How does the multiclassing work? If you focus on being a Mentalist for your first 10 level, does that mean that you'll never get rank 2 mentalist abilities (because you need to multi into something else)?

Finally, try to keep in mind that you'll be writing about 40 abilities for each class (if all members of a class have exactly the same abilities), plus at least three feats for every feat slot that a character can get (to keep character from seeming to similar). This comes out to a minimum of 3*10 + 6 * 40 = 270 abilities. And that is a lot of work. Coming up with a system is easy. Putting the meat on the bones is the hard part. Good luck.

[Maxus]

Honestly, 50 may be a more workable number for levels.

[Psychic Robot]

I want the levels to stretch from 1-100

No.

[CCarter]

1-100 is a pretty big scale - larger than most systems use. The infamous World of Synnibarr RPG had a 1-50 scale (characters got a second class at 51st level when they become Immortals, and the level progression repeated for the second class...) - that sort of thing is one way to narrow down the number of abilities you have to write. It also used percentiles (characters often got +2% or so per level) to make level progression slow but continual.

On d20 vs. 2d10: d20 gives you a continuous +5% per point, while 2d10 is more...erratic.
If you want to roll a lot of dice in a hurry (e.g. several attack rolls for a multiple-target power) d20 is better since otherwise you need to roll dice 2 at a time to determine which pairs with the other. Something I did see once in a 2d10 system that was interesting (J. Arcanes' Drums of War), was reading the 2d10 as a percentage die for working out criticals i.e. 2d10 was 9,7 thats a total of 16 and also a roll of 97 for determining if you critical.

[tussock]

Note regarding dice.

4d10 has the same variance as 1d20. On XdY it's proportional to SQRT(X)*Y.

Variance is important in relation to your bonuses, and how large they need to be to matter. +2 on 2d10 is about the same effect as +3 on 1d20. You'll probably end up fudging in 6% automatic success and failure for 2d10, most games love that ~5% limit.

Your main tricks with 2d10 will be things like being able to reroll one die, or both, or like CCarter said with crits (or half-crits, and use a half-reroll to try for the full crit, or whatever). You can also add a 3rd d10, or take best 2 of 3, and so on, with special abilities. Easy to overcomplicate things.


Fun GURPS fact: half the variance of a d20, but with bigger bonuses for stats. Hah. It's like a d20 game where you have the "option" of buying +10 to everything forever at 1st level. DX 15? Check.


Oh, even 20 levels is a bit stupid, 100 is madness. A number like 7 makes more sense, then you multiclass at 2nd and 4th, can have +2 per level without shattering the RNG. Easier to design that way even if you do split it to 100 levels eventually.

[Dean]

I want the levels to stretch from 1-100, with slowish advancement over each level. Level 1 would be the ninjas from the first few chapters of Naruto, and level 100 would be gods.

What the fuck? Are you Autistic? Don't do that. Don't do that thing you're saying. Man I am on your side and a lot of this sounds good but that is literally the worst idea I've heard today and I heard someone today talk about voting -Republican-.

100 levels. No. 10 levels. Really. Everything you would get over 10 levels you get in one level. There is absolutely no need for a level 43 character to "level up" in a way they totally don't fucking care about and to erase shit on their now totally unusable character sheet thanks to 42 previous levels of editing to write in their brand spanking irrelevant level 44 shit.

10 levels. Write 10 levels. If I picked up a game that had a clearly delineated power curve across characters over a 10 level span I would read it. Chart the progress in what it means to be a level 2 as opposed to a level 4 character and tell me what that means in the world and then I will totally care. I will even be interested. I will want to think about how different a character could look across 4 levels of advancement across wholly different "Tiers" of power. But 100 levels turns your book into some sort of lovecraftian tome of insanity.

[Ferret]

...


100 levels is so many that the changes from level to level will be essentially meaningless. You might as well go to a levelless advancement system at that point.

If you want to do levels, 20 is pretty traditional, 30 is pushing credibility. I'd personally go for something like 10 or 15.

[...You Lost Me]

No can do. 10 to 30 is far too little for the kind of play style I would like to cater to. I remember seeing somewhere on here advancement of ~.5 level, and someone bringing up the fact that you can't do that over 20 levels unless you want the power discrepancy to be tiny.

Well, I want advancement at about .5 level, and I thought 100 levels (on average 2.5x the RNG) would fit that rather nicely. It also stimulates the reptilian part of the brain that enjoys filling up an EXP bar... which is undeniably wonderful, since so many people I'd like to play with find endless enjoyment in going up levels.

So I really really really REALLY want lots of levels. And I know you guys don't like that concept, but I've got to go through with it. I'm willing to compromise to, say, level 45 with +2/3lvl advancement. But I don't want to go any farther below that.

1. 2 Rank X Abilities
2. +
3. +
4. Feat
5. +
6. +
7. 2 Rank X Abilities
8. +
9. +
Rinse and repeat. You'd gain a rank every 9 levels (which is awkward), but the advancement works out nicely.

Then advance 5 ranks before finishing? So at level 45, you'd have 4 Rank 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 abilities, and 5 feats (I'm also planning on lower-ranked abilities becoming less useful over time). Rank 1 abilities are like fireball, and Rank 5 Abilities are like DEATH VORTEX.

[Hieronymous Rex]

No can do. 10 to 30 is far too little for the kind of play style I would like to cater to.

If you're hellbent on having that many levels, I suggest dropping XP and just giving a level up per session.

Is this scheme an attempt to take 3e progression, then stretch it out by only giving a single benefit per level (as opposed to a feat, some skill points, BAB & Saves, and a class feature from a single level up)?

Spark

Is this an Alvin Maker reference?

[Juton]

No can do. 10 to 30 is far too little for the kind of play style I would like to cater to.

If you're hellbent on having that many levels, I suggest dropping XP and just giving a level up per session.

Is this scheme an attempt to take 3e progression, then stretch it out by only giving a single benefit per level (as opposed to a feat, some skill points, BAB & Saves, and a class feature from a single level up)?

Spark

Is this an Alvin Maker reference?

Most players want a little boost per session. Point buy systems like Shadowrun or M&M can get away by giving out 3-5 points a session, it gives players something to tinker with before the next session. The reason you don't want 100 levels in a game is, well think of how much work would be involved in making NPCs, unless of course most of the levels where filler, then what's the point?

If you wanted to be creative stick with 10-20 levels but let characters have more than one level (ie Fighting 8, Skills 4, Magic 6) or have a peripheral system where you can give them small sessional bonus without giving them levels.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Here's a set of mage abilities. More than enough to fill up 100 levels of abilities at 4 abilities/10 levels.

[ 1] chill touch
[ 2] infravision
[ 3] shield
[ 4] armor
[ 5] shocking grasp
[ 6] sleep
[ 7] fear
[ 8] monsum
[ 9] charm
[10] invisibility
[11] create darkness
[12] detect invisibility
[13] create light
[14] fly
[15] polymorph self
[16] frost cloud
[17] burning hands
[18] acid blast
[19] energy ward
[20] conjure elemental
[21] electrocute
[22] teleport
[23] energy drain
[24] enchant weapon
[25] minor track
[26] minor creation
[27] ice storm
[28] cold ward
[29] stone fist
[30] fire wind
[31] electric fire
[32] knock
[33] waterbreath
[34] stone skin
[35] dispel magic
[36] astral walk
[37] flamestrike
[38] chain electrocution
[39] electric ward
[40] clone
[41] fireshield
[42] major track
[43] knowledge
[44] fireball
[45] acid rain
[46] acid ward
[47] vampyric touch
[48] group fly
[49] group detect invisible
[50] group invisible
[51] group waterbreath
[52] lava storm
[53] fire ward

Here's a set of cleric abilities, again more than enough (don't ask me why they make sense for a cleric):

[ 1] armor
[ 2] sense aura
[ 3] cure light
[ 4] blindness
[ 5] cure blind
[ 6] harmful touch
[ 7] create darkness
[ 8] create light
[ 9] holy veil
[10] create water
[11] create food
[12] remove poison
[13] detect poison
[14] poison
[15] haste
[16] cure serious
[17] animate dead
[18] turn
[19] sense life
[20] bless
[21] curse
[22] remove curse
[23] wither
[24] paralyze
[25] remove paralysis
[26] word of recall
[27] weakness
[28] strength
[29] refresh
[30] cure critic
[31] slow
[32] resurrection
[33] true sight
[34] rupture
[35] regenerate
[36] succor
[37] heal
[38] possession
[39] implode
[40] Consecrate
[41] locate object
[42] heroes feast
[43] empathic heal
[44] sanctuary
[45] disintegrate
[45] group cure light
[47] group armor
[48] group sight
[49] group recall
[50] poison gas

[sabs]

Those are just spells.

WTH

Why would you get rid of spells, and spell choice, and instead make them powers of the class. That's just.. icky

[Maxus]

Spells -are- abilities.

Casters get new abilities, new uses of them every level, and they get a wider choice of things to do.

It's a reason they rock and why non-casters tend not to.

[fectin]

Is this a pen and paper or a CRPG? Because it sounds like you're designing for an MMO.
Also, the really cool games aren't the crunchy ones, they're the ones with a mechanic that matches the theme. Are you looking for light weight or in depth? Grimdark or Wacky? What's the sort of setting you're looking for (e.g. Space Opera, Old West, etc.)?
Design it like any other system, top down then bottom up.

[TheFlatline]

He said he's starting from Naurto ninjas and going to godhood.

So my question is this: where in your power flow from naruto ninja to godhood is, say, level 63? How is level 64 any different?

People love leveling up because they love *gaining* things. If they get a +1 in something very, very, very minor, or hell just tick their level counter up by one, that's not satisfying at all. I doubt you'd make it even past level 10 in such a situation, figuring 1 level every 2 sessions.

Next up is skills/stats. Namely, you're blowing those out of the water by adding 70 or so levels of stat/skill boosts. Unless again you intent to make those levels basically filler, which is insulting to players. If you do give *some* bonus, you're looking at either such microscopic "bonuses" every level that nobody gives a shit, or you're looking at stats and skills being in the stupidly high ranges and the herculean task of creating meaningful challenges past say level 20 that don't break the RNG, and then smoothly escalating these challenges over 80 more levels.

Here's the fundamental problem with your design goals (and you don't have a design or even a design concept, you have design goals right now): players, as you stated, love to level up. The axiom to take away from this is that players do not love stagnation of their character. There comes a point, perceptually, where you advance *so* slowly that it appears that your character has stagnated.

Without even reading a final product I can tell you with 100% certainty that gaining a tiny modicum of power every two sessions is not interesting, engaging, or fun. It's the worst kind of grind imaginable.

Here's the thing. If you're looking at getting a new ability every 5 levels, and you level every 2 sessions, that's 10 sessions per feat/ability. Given a once a week play schedule (which is about the norm for most folks), you're looking at 2.5 months of completely static gameplay. From level 1. And every 2.5 months, you get to do one new thing, which you may not/probably won't ever use (especially in later levels). Every 6 months or so you get a new ability.

If you play once a month, you're looking at getting something new for your character once or twice a year.

In other words, unless you have meaningful stat bonuses every level, your characters are unbelievably static. If you do have meaningful bonuses every level, things go insane fast.

This is a terribad concept. It might be fine for a class project, but it's an unplayable concept.

[Ganbare Gincun]

At what level would my power level be over 9000?

[TheWorid]

In the first few chapters of Naruto, people are already teleporting, cloning themselves, copying spells, breathing fire and throwing up perfect illusions. That's your starting point for a 100 level game?

Also, "gods" doesn't mean anything. At all. Varying interpretations of divinity are vastly different. You're going to have to be more specific.

[Psychic Robot]

Naruto sucks, and I think he may be trolling us.

[CCarter]

Rinse and repeat. You'd gain a rank every 9 levels (which is awkward), but the advancement works out nicely.

Well if you must....

Start your progression at level 0 and you can just gain a new "Rank" of abilities at every level divisible by 10. (2 0th-rank abilities at level 0, 2 1st rank abilities at level 10, 2 2nd rank abilities at level 20, and so on...up until 10th rank abilities at level 100 (instead of getting 11th at 101 which didn't actually exist, under the original advancement scheme...).

Characters might well advance more than one level at once, in which case the 1-100 is just a finer scale so you can have varying progressions for various functions of level (one thing might be +1/3 level, while another is +1/5th and a third is +1/7th...)

[Psychic Robot]

Stop enabling him.

[TheFlatline]

Yeah after posting that I started figuring this was a troll.

[tussock]

Meh, he wants +50 on the d20 checks for the gods, but only +1/2 level mods like 4e uses. It's a bad idea, but people genuinely have bad ideas. Look at 4e.

Don't compromise a bad idea with a good one, dude. +2 per level on a 2d10 RNG over a 15 level game has much the same effect as what you're doing. Multiclass at 4th and 7th. Each 3 levels you get 1 feat, and 2x 2 tier-appropriate abilities. Something interesting every level.

[...You Lost Me]

@fectin: I want the depth of GURPS with a moldeable fantasy setting (I want to say that it's like Eberron from D&D, but that was a very poorly-made campaign setting that I don't wish to model my own game after).

And yes, it's a pen and paper game. What would make it seem more like a pen and paper game?

@TheFlatline: Let me explain my opinions a little better. Level 1 in Tome should be level 1 or 0 in this game. Level 18 in Tome should be the max level in this game. I want a game with the same range of power, but there will be plenty of leveling if I make my player's go up one per session. Huge jumps in power with every level (like D&D does) are not what I'm looking for. I believe this is a viable design goal.

I was figuring +1 every level to some stats, +1 every 2 levels to some stats, and +1 every three levels to some stats, depending on what class you take. There will also be levels where you get to choose what to increase.

Check out the revised thingimajigger I posted (I'll change it to the OP) in my response to some of the comments from before. It gave a cool ability every 3 levels, and I'm actually figuring 1-2 levels per session (Once per session, plus 1 per boss fight, and boss fights happen every 4 sessions: 1.25). If we play once a week, that's something new every two to three weeks and... hm, I see your point. Well, do you have a recomendation for making lots of levels without using LOTS of different powers and stuff?

@TheWorld: Read my first response to "TheFlatline". I changed my statement.

@Psychic Robot: Psychic Robot, please don't post if you're only here to incite a flame war. I would really like to be respected. Thank You.

@tussock: I don't want +2/level. I want lots of levels, with small bonuses between each. Sure, everything can be condensed, but I'd like it over a larger series of levels.

[Dean]

The statements being made about why ass-tons of levels giving small plusses is a shit idea have been covered. Moving on from that to engage with this idea regardless

Allright as far as I can see it you have two options. And try and take either this, or the things said above seriously. Either or really.

So here's what can make this feasible: Ability spread or Optional levelling rules.

Your two solutions are to #1 have lots and lots and lots of levelling with little power gain. And how do you do that AND have people give a shit that they've levelled at all? Horizontal power gain. Which means ability gain. So if you want people to level up 10 times and care each time they need to gain an ability probably each time. So get writing abilities friend. Because this means your Wizard over the course of 10 level ups needs to gain 5-7 new spells. Not 2. Allow me to explain why this works. Since you're gaining new features and abiities that are level appropriate you don't gain any real vertical power increase. A mage with Lightning Bolt AND Fireball isn't any more powerful in most situations than a Mage with one or the other. The answer no matter which one you have is "Blow it up with an explosion" but having both DOES increase his versatility in situations where one or the other is useless. So allowing people to have more level appropriate powers by making them gain them at a very high rate would mean people would always have new powers coming to them and would care about levelling up BUT also wouldn't really get any more powerful until that magical 10th tick that bumps them up a tier.

The 2nd way is to simply provide the 100 level scheme as an optional "Unearthed Arcana" style rule for people who want more organic levelling in their games. In this way you make your -game- a 10 level up game. And then everyone here pats you on the back and tells you you've made a good decision and also people who buy your book don't hate you. BUT you take your 10 level game and you include optional rules for how to level gradually and organically. Making each original "level" 10 new levels each one giving you some piece (a tenth) of what you'll finally have when you fully level up. So you place the ability bonus at some level, the ability gain at some level, the skill bonus at some level and voila you have a 100 level game that people can play if they desire to if they have lizard brains but that people DONT have to if they hate it and please believe me they will.

There is also in fairness a secret option 3 which is say "it's my game I'll do what I want" and just do what you want to do anyway. It won't be a good idea and it will make things harder but in fairness to you and the gaming industry there have been games with -worse- ideas that have done well. And it's not because those ideas aren't bad or harmful to the product at large but because their are enough factors involved that can bypass horribly designed mechanics in people's minds.