Alright, so I'm starting to see the Character Creation in our game begin to take shape, and I'm liking how it's going so far. But now we need to start looking at the thing that is almost more important in RPGs than the substance and form of how a character is made, and that's how the numbers are produced. This whole time I've been writing these posts without giving any heed to how the numbers would be made.
So now is where I'm going to start looking into that.
The first numbers we need to make are the Attribute scores, everything flows from these, literally everything. Even more so than standard D&D I think, because we aren't messing with the "ability modifiers" but rather the Attributes themselves. So how do we make them. I'm pretty sure Cabana's answer is going to be a point-buy system and in this instance I'd have to agree. Rolling is fun but ... frankly it's too damn random, you get people with mediocre stats at best and you get the guy who rolls 3 18's. Can't have that.
If we do do rolling, I think we should consider doing a solution I heard about through Reddit, and that's when people roll, everyone records the results down like so:
- John: 12, 12, 13, 8, 17, 6, 8
- Mark: 6, 7, 7, 8, 6, 8, 12, 6
- Cathy: 18, 18, 16, 13, 12 , 18, 6
And then when people are making characters they can take anyone's rolls. So since Mark got shafted by the dice, when he makes his character, he can use Cathy's rolls. Same with John. That way, there's the randomness of the dice, which can be fun and exciting, without the huge power gap between players. Personally I like that solution as well.
Maybe we could present both options?
But back to point buy, now we need to determine how many points we need, what's the maximum number able to be put into an Attribute, etc. Personally I think that we should try and limit the number to 10. So every stat can only have up to 10 points spent in it. (Including racial modifiers) Right now we're working with 6 Attributes, so the absolute average would be 30 points of point buy. Now, this is supremely average and even though we talked about players not being heroes, players don't want average. So I'll say give them 38 - 42 points to spend. Here's what an array of that would look like:
10, 8, 5, 5, 5, 5 or
8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 2 or
7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7 (which on second thought seems a bit much...)
Let's try 35.
6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5 or
10, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 or
8, 7, 6, 5, 5, 4 or
9, 8, 7, 5, 3, 1 (this seems to be working out fairly even, but with a decent amount of customization)
So 35 - 36 points for a six stat point buy. Sounds about right to me. A bit above average overall and the players get to play a little bit with the stats. Plus add racial modifiers on top of that (+1 and -1) and you can get some really solid characters with some nice stats and some weak stats, which will force them to work together. (Teamwork Whoo!)
Now how does this affect everything else you ask? Well, since we're using the full Attribute score instead of just the modifier (which is usually between -2 and +4) there's going to be a large spread in certain areas. They're only dealing with a 6 point spread, we're dealing with a 10 point spread potentially, most likely though it's going to be a bit closer, but we'll see. For one thing skills will be all over. For another, people's saves are going to be relatively high, as are ACs. How do we deal with this?
I'll make up a sample character and start working my way through it. This is going to get really technical really fast so bear with me.
Sample Character: Changeling
Determination: 6
Faith: 5 (-1 from Changeling Race) = 4
Passion: 5
Bravery: 4
Curiosity: 7 (+1 from Changeling Race) = 8
Guile: 8
He's a little bit tweaked to perform well in more rogue-like areas such as Curiosity and Guile and he's letting Faith and Bravery by the wayside, because he feels that rogues aren't brave and his character has no faith in gods or men, only in gold. So now let's look at his other scores.
HP: 20 -30 as mentioned earlier. No spread here, just whatever base HP we choose.
AC: Now's where it's getting odd. He's got high Guile and he's a rogue so he'll be wearing light armor. How much will light armor add to AC? Good question. Right now he's got 8 AC without even trying. To determine how much light armor should allow, we need to also determine what the average "to hit" roll will be.
(Man this is more complicated than expected) The average AC score (be it Guile or Bravery) is going to be 6, correct? The average attack roll is also going to be 6. I like using 10's so let's say that the attack dice is going to be a d10 instead of a d20. (Or we could say 2d6s and make it more averaged ... but let's not for now) So if I attack with my average fighter against an average opponent I'll probably roll an 11. (d10's expected value is 5.)
11 = average attack roll. 6 = average defense score, no armor. So I'm going to say right now that if the player is armored, chances are he's going to take damage less than half the time. So let's make the average light armored player be equal to 11. So Light Armor adds an automatic +5 to your AC, slightly more or less depending on armor type, but on average it's +5. (Remember light armor you add Bravery [maybe Determination instead? I feel like we're using Bravery too much] or Guile, Heavy you add nothing)
Now, let's look at Heavy Armor. It's going to be more expensive than Light, you can't use magic in Heavy Armor. It will slow you down. Due to this, it ought to protect the player more than light armor. I think that Heavy Armor should give an automatic +11 or more to the player (depending on its type). My guess is average Heavy Armor should be +12. Shields add +1 or +2 and you lose a hand (prevents certain skills, no magic) This should balance out well enough.
Anyway, got off topic.
Changeling's AC: 13
Attack: d10 + Bravery or Guile = d10 + 8
Saves: For these we'll roll a d10 as well because that will equal out to the same stats as the armor. 11 is average to hit.
BODY: 5 + d10
MIND: 8 + d10
SOUL: 6 + d10
Now we move onto Skills, I haven't messed with the Skill system as of yet so I'll just bullshit a little here. On average, most people will have at least a 6 in a skill, if they "have" that skill. (+ at least 1 from their upbringing or class) If they didn't get it from their class or their upbringing, they can't use it. (More of a reason to work together. In 3.5 there's almost too much skill overlap) Their upbringing adds +1, their class adds +3.
So a skill selection would look like so:
- Guile based class skill: 8 + 3 = 11
- Bravery based class skill: 4 + 3 = 7
Now then, we have the players roll a d10 to add some randomness to it and the average they'll end up pulling off is a roll of 12. That makes a DC 12 be the average skill check. DC 14 is a Hard one, DC 16 is Challenging, DC 18 is Extremely Hard, and DC 20 is Nigh Impossible for all but the most trained adventurers. DC 24 is the cap (d10's highest is 10 + 1 from Upbringing, +3 from Class, +10 from max Attribute) and will only happen 1/10th of the time with the world's best trained skill monkey. This gives us a nice range to work with.
Now, Cards will skew our system a little bit by adding +1 all over the place, but it won't skew it terribly bad. Just like magic will also skew the system, but essentially what we're seeing is about 11 or 12 is the average result for any given roll.
Here's the range we're looking at:
The lowest possible roll anyone can have is a 2 for anything but skills (1 + d10 result of 1)
The highest possible roll anyone can have is a 20 for anything but skills (10 + d10 result of 10)
That's an 18 point spread with approximately 50% of the rolls being 11 or lower, 50% being higher.
As for skills the lowest possible roll anyone can have is 3 (1 + 1 Upbringing + d10 result of 1)
The highest possible skill roll anyone can have is 24 (10 + 1 Upbringing + 3 Class + d10 result of 10)
That's a 21 point spread with approximately 50% of the rolls being 13 or lower, 50% being higher.
If an enemy has an AC of 11 the party will hit 50% of the time (on average)
If a skill has a DC of 12, the party will make it 50% of the time (on average)
If the save requires the player to make an 11 for a roll, 50% of the time it will be made (on average)
However, chances are, players will have slightly higher than average points for whatever they're doing. This is fine. Fighters should hit more often than 50% of the time. Rogues should steal more often than 50% of the time. Wizard's spells should be effective more than 50% of the time too.
Anyway, right now, putting it all together and bringing it back:
6 Attributes - 36 points in point buy
Race - +1 modifier, -1 modifier
Average Attribute Score: 6
Average AC: 11-12
Average Save: 6
Average Attack: 6
Average Class Skill: 9
Average Upbringing Skill: 7
Now then let's take a look at that with rolls:
Average Roll (on d10): 5
Average Save: 11
Average Attack: 11
Average Class Skill: 14
Average Upbringing Skill: 12
Average Skill DC should be: 12
There you go, there's all that data. I am going to sleep now, but I feel pretty good about this, the math is working and the statistics are sound. d10s are nice because everyone understands a 1 in 10 chance, and we could also use a deck of cards (faces removed) and get the exact same average. This allows us to play with how the luck mechanic works a little bit.
I'm going to bed now. That was more statistics than I was expecting.
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