Now that I've started on character creation, I realized that I cannot determine numbers until I come up with what the different abilities are, what they do, etc. So once again I'm throwing ideas at a board and hoping one or two stick. Bear with me on this.
First of all the traditional way to break characters down that has been done in multiple different types of RPGs is thus: abilities, powers, spells, skills, and feats. Now then, that's pretty freaking complicated generally, as the abilities determine what powers and spells you can use, how powerful they are, etc. Skills can also play into how powers work, and feats can change literally anything besides Abilities. That's a lot of paperwork that has to be dealt with, so I figure we can try to consolidate those a little bit.
I say we keep Abilities. They work well for me and most players, you look at your character sheet and you automatically know exactly how smart your character is, how strong or fast they are, how likeable they are, etc. However, I say we remove the ability modifier, it's overly complicated. Why not just have the ability act as the ability modifier? Similar to the Fallout games. Also Intelligence and Wisdom and the differences between the two have been argued into the ground, let's consolidate them into one Mental based stat.
Also, the six ability system, made popular by D&D and the d20 systems is not the be all and end all of stat systems, there are many others that seem to work just as well. World of Darkness contains 5 major stats, and the d8 system (used for Big Eyes Small Mouths) uses just three Mind, Body, and Soul. My opinion is that we should use a number that people are familiar with, that they are comfortable with. Numbers people seem to like are 3, 5, 7, and 10. (Personally I think 3 is too small and 10 is too large, so potentially 7?) Also I want to take a look at the "abilities" that were typed earlier by Cabana (not sure what to call them, but we'll break them down here. (My notes will be italicized)
Magic (fairly standard one, Magic. Wizards, Sorcerers, Mystics, all use it)
Divine (also a fairly standard one, divine magic channeled through the gods and separate from magic)
Martial (Fighters rejoice! Another classic one)
Forms (Not sure what you were going with here Cabana... Sorry) [philosophy has a concept known as "theory of the forms"]
Science (I like it, a nice addition, usable for alchemists, artificers, etc.)
Ki (... I think that martial covers this) [Ki is a completely different tradition, having nothing to do with martial prowess]
Chakra (See above) [another tradition having nothing to do with martial prowess. We wouldn't fold all divine, nature, arcane, magic into one class named Magic.]
Steam (I think that this could easily be absorbed by science)[could be, but steam also has science fiction qualities specific to it's genre. Mad scientist and crazy tinkerers are very different folk. I do agree they would easily fold.]
Nature (Nature magic is another classic, usable by druids, rangers, and wildfolk)
Charisma (A decent rogue/charlatan's best friend)
Infernal (Hmmm ... I understand that dichotomy between this and divine, perhaps make all arcane based around Infernal magic?) [ social implications to that. Also I have a diagram, remind me next time to show you.]
Fury (I think this also falls under martial, maybe.) [Why not nature?
Telepathy (This is a type of magic, personally I'd drop it under regular magic) [no magic, is a natural phenomena]
Frequency (??? Elaboration would be nice)
Guile (Could be combined with Charisma)
Voodoo (I don't think this is separate enough from the other magics to be on its own, maybe a specialization school, but not it's own thing)
So after looking through all that, here's what my revision list would look like:
Infernal Magic - regular old magic, making pacts with devils and other nefarious magical creatures
Divine Magic - magical prayer magic, gods and dieties and deals, saving souls, healing
Natural Magic - earth magic, magic all living things possess, saving the forests
Martial - combative abilities, tanking, breaking down doors, the whole shebang
Science - intelligence is power and magic of sorts, bombs, interesting items, etc.
Guile - seduction, lies, compliments, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Now we have essentially six areas of expertise of six attribute areas. Personally I'd like either one more or one less, but six will certainly work for what we need here, however I have some issues with calling the attributes Infernal, Divine, Natural, and Science so I'll have to come up with a different name for those. For Divine, I'll go ahead and change it to Faith. As for Science, either Intelligence or Intellect or Curiosity. Now we still need one for Natural and Infernal. Natural we'll say Passion (which Fury can also be dumped into), and for Infernal we'll say, maybe Determination or Bravery (because they're willing to do what it takes to get power), and let's say Martial becomes Bravery.
(I remember Cabana mentioning that he wanted stats to be more inner than outer, so I'm going with more emotional set up.)
Now our set up for the stats looks something like this:
Determination - determines aptitude in Infernal magic
Faith - determines aptitude in divine magic
Passion - determines aptitude in nature magic, potentially "fury-esque" things
Bravery - determines fighting aptitude
Curiosity - determines aptitude in building, creating, researching
Guile - determines aptitude in talking, lying, convincing, etc.
Hmmm, overall I like the names, however there's some overlay with the determination, passion, and bravery because their definitions contain pieces of the others ... but we'll work with them for now. Potentially there's some better term for them, but the kinks should work out themselves.
So not only do we have a starting point (this can be changed and edited as we go by the way, just let me know) of 6 attributes, but we also have the starting instance of 6 basic classes. (Whoo!!)
Infernal magic user - Determination based - aka the Caster
Divine magic user - Faith based - aka the Support
Nature magic user - Passion based - aka the Summoner
Martial user - Bravery based - aka the Fighter
Science user - Curiosity based - aka the Buffer/Debuffer
Wit user - Guild based - aka the Party Face
Not only that, but much like Cabana's original idea, we can begin combining things to create new classes that use 2 main abilities and potentially 3 main abilities. Or we could have just the 6 basic classes and then have them break apart into specializations. (Similar to Star Wars RPG) Whooo!
Anyway, this was helpful to me, I now have a decent stepping stone to start really playing with the character creation. Like I said, any changes or help is most welcome at this point, because I'm going to spring board off this and dive right into mechanics.
/Shawn/
I started editing this, but I need way more time and to actually schedule this.
No comments:
Post a Comment