|
I, for one, have always bated the Int/Wis separation as well as Str/Con. My ideal system would measure fitness, intellect, and charm as the only three defining stats, leaving the player to interpret their Fitness as either strong/tough or fast. Like seriously, can you really imagine a super strong guy who is not also tough? Or vice versa? I feel like only superpowers make that distinction.
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2012 22:26
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:47 |
|
|
Doc Hawkins posted:A survey of All Fiction Ever will reveal a million super-tough guys who are not unusually strong. There's countless cases where the distinction would matter, but the only case you need to consider is your particular game: the people, struggles and situations that you want it to be about. If you think of toughness as just survival, maybe so. As far as my experience with fiction goes, the good guys often get tired and sick and slog through it. I think having separate HP mechanics emulates that well: the heroes survive but that's not a measure of their hardiness from a CON stat point of view. Someone who works out regularly is gonna be tough and strong, I don't see how you get one without the other but maybe that's just me. I mean, yeah, there's different types of workout routine but I don't need that granularity. Scrape fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Aug 23, 2012 |
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2012 01:33
|
|
|
My biggest design question right now is how to implement Skills. I hate d20-style static bonuses with a large randomizer. I used to really love L5R's roll&keep system (dice pool, add your Stat plus your Skill, but only keep dice equal to your Stat, try to hit a target number), but nowadays I like simpler mechanics. L5R has too many Stats for me, I think. I've been playing a lot of Dungeon World and Apocalypse World, which work amazingly without skills at all, but to be honest I miss the satisfaction of Improving My Sword Skill every couple sessions. What are some good skill systems that are elegant, rather than realistic?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2012 01:57
|
|
|
PublicOpinion posted:I'm thinking of someone like John McClane from Die Hard, who is presumably a bit above average in strength but endures an insane amount of punishment. So your tough-but-not-strong hero would be the grizzled vet who yanks a quiver's worth of arrows out of their own personal torso without batting an eye but wouldn't be capable of suplexing an ogre. Yeah, I understand that but I think hit points often fill that role. In a lot of games, two characters with the same "Con" score will have different HP totals. So which one actually measures "toughness?"
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2012 02:00
|
|
|
I don't think anyone in this thread is confused by the difference between Int and Wis. I think the discussion is whether it's worth adding a whole Stat to your game in order to differentiate. Like you said, most "smart" people have both. It's more elegant to have one Stat and let a player roleplay a humbling professor type if they want. Also thanks PublicOpinion, Savage Worlds is a system I have never tried but that sounds interesting and more fictionally tied together. I will check that out!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2012 03:32
|
|
|
I kinda like keeping it d4 to d12, with capped +/-3 bonuses. Can you make that work for you?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2012 19:06
|
|
|
Scrape posted:I kinda like keeping it d4 to d12, with capped +/-3 bonuses. Can you make that work for you? I was just thinking: what if you introduced an exploding die mechanic, like you could Push a roll, exposing yourself to additional risk but in exchange, if you roll Max on a die you'd reroll and add to the result? An idea.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2012 20:44
|
|
|
Error 404 posted:That's what the d2 is for. That's neat. I was thinking more, like, "instead of increasing die size, your die explodes" in some way.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2012 21:40
|
|
|
Lately I've been thinking about why we have a Perception skill at all. I understand the concept, that a perceptive character will get more clues than one who isn't, but it seems like totally Makes Sense design. In practice, it leads to withholding information from the PCs, and there's nothing fun about that for anyone. I had a particularly strict DM that required Perception rolls every time we tried to discern the details of anything and it slowed the game down and led to a lot of unsatisfying moments. So I'm thinking that details should just be given, and if a player is curious enough to be asking detailed questions, then the character is perceptive enough to be getting that information. Instead, the rolling should be for information that can't just be gleaned from normal interaction, stuff that's the province of experience and specialization. Perception certainly shouldn't be a Skill, not when we can have Tracking and Sense Motive and Trapfinding and stuff that covers the specific applications of it already. I want the stat to be Intuition, and to be used for like hunches and secret info like Apocalypse World-style questions, does that make sense?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2012 22:29
|
|
|
It's not that I think they're "babies" who can't handle failure, it's that not discovering things isn't fun, you may as well have not prepared it, y'know? My specialty is horror games and I never use perception checks, 'cause it's always more frightening and more fun to hear the bump in the night. Builds more in-game tension, as you said. I dunno, maybe it's just our style, but like where is the fun in not discovering something cool? As a player, too, I find it frustrating to listen at a door and have to roll for it, it feels so arbitrary.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2012 03:51
|
|
|
Re: perception skill, those are some real valid points about the function of the skill being different depending on the game. I guess my group just doesn't play games where it's anything but a total cockblock skill, so that's where I'm coming from. I'll keep mulling it over. @DocHawkins, I'd call it a meme, except we've blown out the term. Something to do with an interchangeable unit of information. Packet? You want a noun for the piece of info, right? Not a verb for borrowing the piece? Is the word just used internally for coding or is it also presented as parlance to the user?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2012 16:50
|
|
|
But these are mechanics you're swapping around, right? Not setting elements? Or is it both? Why not just call it a Mechanic? Now I'm thinking of technical terms like Assembly, but that's not it...
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2012 18:08
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:One thing I've learned about GMing is that it's very tempting to use penalties to rig the PC's odds of success to what you want it to be or what you think it "should" be. Oh, you meant for the PCs to be blocked by a stone door and have to find a way around, and they're trying to go through it? Well, uh, this is an extra super difficult magic lock on a door made of magically superdense stone, so your penalty is -100. It's too bad if the PC in this situation has spent a lot of character options on being the guy who is really loving good at getting through doors; the GM has mentally divided all doors into standard challenges and impossible challenges, so being better than the standard is a waste of options. I agree, this is one of my issues with DC-based systems with modifiers. Things can end up scaling into a plateau (like when the DC goes up by tier or level) or remaining essentially arbitrary (when the DM "adjusts" as described here).
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2012 21:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:47 |
|
|
It's kinda been said, but there's no reason the PCs can't just keep adventuring. If you want a game that says "awesome fights rule, resting is boring and for sissies," then go ahead and make that game. If your only concern is realism or tradition, forget about it. Adventuriing without pause is no less realistic than taking a nap and becoming fully healed. Go for it!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2012 20:24
|
|