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Author Topic: Feedback request  (Read 1002 times)

Zakier

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Feedback request
« on: January 12, 2017, 01:02:31 AM »
While building my system I wanted to give players the ability to make whatever they want. My game has no classes at all.

After doing so I started writing in races to fill out the setting when it occurred to me, "why not let players make their own races?"

East enough time do in other games. Just slap together some appropriate bonuses. But not a lot of games offer it built in.

I think I've come up with a solution for my own system but I would really like some feedback. Maybe some suggestions. What to add and all.

As its referenced in the creation system,

Build Points are the points used to build your charavter at level 1. Currenttry I offer 200 but that's subject to change.

There are 54 skills.

9 magic schools 11 studies of magic (they go hand in hand. )

Fighting is in the skills.

9 attributes, Strength, Agility, Endurance, Intellect, Perception, wisdom, charm, Composure,  Wit.

Avg stat is 10.



Ok on to the race creation system.




Chosen bonuses are generics. Your descriptions and reasons why the race has the features listed is up to you and the GM.

Please critique. Feedback is welcome.

Adding a Race The Races we've provided here are not the whole of all races available to a player. It may arise that someone wishes to play a Race they find in a different setting or book. As such we have determined Guidelines for adding a Race to the system.

Size: tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge The Base factors for each size is as follows.

Size Hight/Grid

Tiny 2'-3'5"/1sq

Small 3'6"-4'5"/1sq

Medium 4'6"-6'5"/1sq

Large 6'6"-8'5"/2sq

Huge 8'6"-12'/3sq

Base Speed: A creatures size determines their base land speed. This is the number of ft they can move During a Single Standard Action.

Size Speed

Tiny 20 ft

Small 25 ft

Medium 30 ft

Large 35 ft

Huge 40 ft

Racial Bonuses Every race receives a number of bonuses.

Size Attribute + Attribute-

Tiny +3 Agi +1 choice -3 str -1 choice

Small +2 Agi +2 choice -2 Str -2 choice

Medium +4 choice can split bonus -4 choice can split

Large +2 Str +2 choice -2 Agi -2 choice

Huge +3 Str +1 Choice -3 Agi -1 Choice

Note* for every size catagory of Difference between you and your opponent, add a +/-2 accordingly.

Example: A medium size creature attacks a huge creature. Medium creature gains +4 to hit.

A medium creature attack a small creature. Recieves a -4 penalty to hit.

Movement Style: Players can adjust their character to gain different styles of movements. These provide benefits and Negatives.

Bipedal: Mortals and Creatures that walk on two legs with normal forward facing knee caps are considered Bipedal. As they gain no special movement type, add 20 to starting Build points.

Quadra pedal: Races with 4 legs, such as Centaurs, gain increased movement speed of plus half base speed for size. 4 legged races cannot climb. Cost 10 build points.

*Note: Quadra pedal Races automatically count as 1 size catagory larger but do not gain the benefits or negatives of this change.

Feral: Races that move on arms and legs like Apes do not suffer movement penalties on rough terrain. Gain increased movement speed of 10ft. However this increased speed requires the character to have both hands free. Feral movement also increases your climbing skill by +4. Cost 15 Build Points.

Slither:

Player can choose to have a snake like lower half. Cost 20 Build Points.

Appearance- Players can define their own colors and patterns.

Movement- Gain +10 base speed, no penalty for rough terrain, Normal movement speed in water rather than Half speed like normal.

Gain Coiled Strike- can coil your lower half and strike like a cobra lashing out 1 square further than normal. Threat radius is now 10ft.

Additionals- Automatically Gain Prehensile tile feature.

Cold blooded- Take -5 to all saves during cold weather and climates. Take additional 1d6 Damage from any cold effect.

Movement Additions:

Wings: Player characters can Build a Race with wings at the cost of 100 Build Points.

Wings Details- Wings allow a player to fly up to Twice their base land speed. Normal Adrenaline point cost apply per 5ft.

Hover-At the cost of 5 Adrenaline per round (during Combat) a player can hover at any height.

Dive bomb-A flying character can attempt to dive bomb. You can dive at a speed of twice your Flight speed. If dive bombing while attacking, add fall damage to your strike for 1d6 for every 10ft of Dive. Appearance- Players can choose their wings appearance. However the wings size will always be proportional to the characters size.

Additional Features: Your Race may have a number of additional features.

Tail: Having a tail comes in various forms, from thick lizard like tails to skinny prehensile tails. These can be forked or devilish or even Animal like.

Prehensile- you can control your tail so exactly that you can use it as an additional hand, able to grab items by wrapping around them and lifting as strongly as you could normally. Cost 10 Build Points.

Tough/Unique Skin: Your Race has a unique surface layer. This can range from Scales to fur or simply being tougher than usual.

Scales- Like a dragon, you are covered in thick scales from head to toe. While you have no hair, your scales shine in a gem like example of whatever color you choose at creation and are much more durable than the fleshy scale less creatures. Like your draconian Ancestors you have a resistance to a similar elemental or metal type. Your resistance type decreases damage by half before adding damage reduction. Gain +5Dr/all to all areas. Choose one metal or element to be resistant to. Cost 40 build points.

Fur- Your Race has a thick coat of fur of which you are all very proud of. Its Color and description is chosen by the player. As you are covered in fur you gain a resistance to cold climates and take no negatives but take Double the usual negatives for Hot climates. You also gain a +3 Dr/Bludgeoning to all areas. Take 1d6 additional damage from Fire effects. Cost 10 Build Points.

Thick/Leathery Skin- Your Race has naturally thick or Leathery skin. This benefit has evolved over a millenia living in extreme climates. Choose either Hit or cold Climates and gain an immunity to the effects of that climate. Take normal negatives for the opposite. No bonus Dr

Metal- See Mechanical below

Senses: Many races gain additional senses or advanced senses.

Sight- (Pick one) Eagle vision: Able to see twice as far in all conditions. cost 10 Build points

Low-light Vision: Treat all light conditions as one step better. Cost 20 Build points

Darkvision: Treat all light Conditions as two steps better. Cost 30 Build points.

Blind-Sense: Able to accurately sense the location of any creature and objects within 30ft regardless of the conditions of your eyes. Cost 40 Build Points.

Scent: Able to track the scent of a target as well as any creature also able to smell the emotional condition of a nearby creature. Granting a bonuses of +5 to all sense motive checks.

Hearing: Your races ears are different than a normal humans. Player defined appearance.

Choose: +5 to listen check cost 10 build Points. -5 to listen checks grants 10 build Points.

Immunities/Specials: Your Race has an immunity to a certain kind of effect or a special feature create your own using the provided examples.

Sleepless- Your Race is immune to sleep effects, when resting you meditate rather than sleep. Cost 30 BP

Breathless- Your Race doesn't have to breathe. You are unable to smell scents at all due to your lack of breathing. Cost 20 BP

Aquatic: Your Race is able to breathe underwater. Take Double damage from Cloud Effects. Cost 15Bp

Machine: Your Race is Mechanical, Built by a mad genius or an inventor with too much time. You are immune to poisons and all Biogrica Spells, including healing. You must repair yourself to heal using an engineering check. Repairing takes half an hour per check. Alternatively you can be healed with a Chymerica Spell that repairs damage. Repairing requires Engineering tools and one bag of spare parts per check.

Mechanical races automatically gain metal skin of a chosen metal type. Different types have different cost and benefits.

Iron- Double normal weight for creature your size, Dr 2/All, Iron takes on the temperature of the Climate it is in. Spells and effects of the opposite type do double damage. Cost 40 build points

Steel- normal weight for creatures of your size. Dr5/all. Cost 60 Build Points

Adamantine- Normal weight for your size Catagory, Dr 10/All. Cost 80 Build Points

Mithril- Mithril is Magically conductive, mechanical races with Mithril bodies have a shard slot embedded in every armor point. These can take medium Sized Shards. Cost 100 Build Points.

Living Metal- Living metal can change its appearance at will. Changing appearance takes at least 1 full round. As with Mithril, Living Metal is Magically conductive. Living metal beings have 2 shard Slots at each armor point and can adjust it's size to accept any size Magic shard at any time. Cost 200 build points.

Mechanical races can modify themselves to add additional components as well as build armor directly onto themselves.

Living metal Races require Living Metal based Addon Components.

Repairs can use parts up to but not exceeding your metal type.

All mechanical races do not need to breathe, are immune to poisons, do not require sleep. Do not require crystals to continuing functioning.

Mechanical creatures take Double damage from rust styled effects and Take damage for 1d6 points per round when hip deep or more submerged in water.

Natural Attacks: Your Race has one or more Natural weapons it can use in Combat.

Horns: Point out: Gain Gore attack for 1d6 peircing

Curved horns (Ram Like): Gain 1d6 bludgeon headbut

Bite: Either by having an animalistic head or simply having fangs your bite is especially potent. Deal 1d6 Peirce damage when biting. Cost 10 Build Points.

Poison: Req Bite, Poison is 1d6 damage for 1d4 rounds. Cost 10 Build Points extra.

Claws: Your Race has natural Claws or talons or both. Deal 1d6 Slash Damage with either. Cost 10 Build Points.

Adding It up Total up the cost and grants from the various features you have chosen to build your race. Subtract this amount from the Your total available Build Points.

Build Points Currently All Characters begins with 200 Build Points to spend. When you created your Race you added up a total cost for creating the race. subtract this amount from your build points. The remaining points is what you have to spend towards raising skills and Magical Ranks. Negative Build Points: Just because your subtracted amount causes you to go into the negative with your build Points does not mean you cannot purchase more. You can go up to 75 points into the negative before you cannot spend any more. To get out of the negative you must pay 25 times that amount in experience later before you begin earning experience normally.

Example: your created races and spent points towards raising the various skills and character ranks has caused you to go 38 points in the negative. To get out of the negative and begin earning normal experience you will have to pay 950 experience

rway218

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Feedback request
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2017, 02:36:07 AM »
Reminds me of Champions and the extensive powers/drawback lists.  

I will not say you must do any of this, just my opinion

The race creation looks too busy.  I'd just make races for play, and if you still want that as a purchase; make the race cost build points.  This extensive list of race traits would work in a GM section for making new races, or refit to a chart for random race generation.  Palladium's TMNT was thick with BioE, and skill building with bonuses - it took SO long to make a character some didn't like that.  This seems like it would be cumbersome during creation.  It may not be, but it looks that way.

two cents added...

Zakier

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« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2017, 03:14:49 AM »
I do plan on finishing bonuses for a group of base races for the game. This system is going to be used to determine the bonuses those Races get and how much they cost in BP to play.

The point of the Build Points is:

Character Creation offers a number of points to build the starting stats from attributes to skill bonuses.

The reason races should cost points is the inherent bonuses given by the race.

The more bonuses a random e gets, the fewer points you'll have to spend during 1st level building.

May be right about putting it in the GM section though.

Make it an additional options. The GM can offer players and they can help them build a race. Then easily tell them how many points remaining to build rather than trying to home brew and balance something.

Tod13

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« Reply #3 on: January 12, 2017, 09:26:32 AM »
Quote from: rway218;940109

The race creation looks too busy.


Quote from: Zakier;940111

Make it an additional options. The GM can offer players and they can help them build a race. Then easily tell them how many points remaining to build rather than trying to home brew and balance something.


Like rway said, you don't have to do it this way, but this is what I did:

It really boils down to how complex you _want_ character/race creation and game play. I started down the lots of math to balance everything path, and after a couple of iterations, went insane in a true Cthulhic fashion. If your system works for you and for your targeted players (look at some of the supers games or GURPS or EABA, there are players that embrace complexity and math), then you are doing fine.

I decided, I wanted less math and fewer rules, without throwing everything on the GM. I was trying to design to prevent system abuse and decided, to just say "no" to playing with people who abuse the system or to say "make sure everyone is abusing the system equally" or at least happy with some abuse and some not-abuse. For rules, for example, I also simplified my system to two sizes for mechanics "normal" and "really big" with the note that if you need larger or smaller for a setting, just apply the same rules up or down a size. This simplifies the rules. I just didn't want to constantly figure "how big are you" and "how big is your opponent".

For races, I simplified everything and said: each species gets its own special "Effect" (like a bonus or special skill). As long as the GM and the players are happy with the Effects selected, even if unbalanced, then everything is good.

One thing you might take from this, is instead of listing all the options, just list the effects and have the players describe for their species why that option is there.

For example, a lot of options boil down to: species is tougher to hurt. It doesn't really matter whether it is fur, thick skin, amorphous structure, or the being exists mostly in another dimension. That's all fluff, the mechanics portion is all the same and the cost for the same level of "tough" is the same.

I also don't use negative options to try to balance positive options (which it appears you don't really do either). I do provide space on the character sheet for negative aspects of a character that are left up to the player and GM to select.

Bloody Stupid Johnson

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Feedback request
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2017, 07:42:18 AM »
I think you could simplify it significantly if you split the options into separate major steps then just balance these against each other instead of having different costs. In some cases you could just fiddle with what's included (Quadrupeds getting arms). I guess I'd split it clearly into something like:
*size
*movement style (pick one)
*creature type (living,  mechanical...maybe undead)
*integument (fur, scales, thick skin)
*senses (maybe give out one by default)

Then allow a base number of extra feature picks - wings, extra arms (including prehensile tail), natural weapons, etc., maybe 3 or 4, perhaps disadvantages could be picked then letting you choose a couple more.

Some of the features like extra hearing, could probably be generalized into a 'skill +x' racial feature, although I guess if Fighting is a skill that could be a problem.

Zakier

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« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2017, 12:49:37 PM »
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;940384
I think you could simplify it significantly if you split the options into separate major steps then just balance these against each other instead of having different costs. In some cases you could just fiddle with what's included (Quadrupeds getting arms). I guess I'd split it clearly into something like:
*size
*movement style (pick one)
*creature type (living,  mechanical...maybe undead)
*integument (fur, scales, thick skin)
*senses (maybe give out one by default)

Then allow a base number of extra feature picks - wings, extra arms (including prehensile tail), natural weapons, etc., maybe 3 or 4, perhaps disadvantages could be picked then letting you choose a couple more.

Some of the features like extra hearing, could probably be generalized into a 'skill +x' racial feature, although I guess if Fighting is a skill that could be a problem.


That's actually a good idea.

What I'm wanting is that people should be able to Build there own race. The more benefits they get from their choices, the more it cost.

The reason it should cost is because of the charavter building.

People get a number of points to spend. These points are spent on almost everything,

Skills, Magic Practices, Magic Studies.

Saves are added each level, 3 at even levels, 2 at odd levels.

Health is a Dice Purchase, Spent to purchase both the number of Dice and the number of sides the dice has. There's an increasing factor of half dice cost for multiple dice.

3d6 would be 6+9+12=27, Roll for health.

So I'm wanting the race creation to have cost because the more benefits you get from your race the less points you have to build your charavter. Like a level adjustment.

Zakier

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« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2017, 12:51:09 PM »
And I think people should be able to go a certain number into the negative, but have to pay off that negative amount in xp.

Or I can change build points to be a build xp and make the creation run off the levelling Chart I've got.

Bloody Stupid Johnson

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« Reply #7 on: January 14, 2017, 04:08:53 AM »
I think silo-ing off the racial component might simplify things, psychologically, even if the costs actually work out the same.
For instance, you can reduce build points to 150, then have a default racial package be worth 50 points; that could actually include say 5 option picks of a racial "Extra Build Points [10]" racial ability x5 if they wanted to just make a 200-points-in-skills character. Then you could also note that you could also spend 10 points for an extra racial ability if you wanted.
The main effect is that you get to work with smaller numbers /a smaller budget (divided by 10), which makes calculations more manageable to players.

A couple of those ideas could also work to give you random race creation if you wanted, which can also speed up chargen or be an interesting GM tool.
e.g. you can roll between even-value options (in each subcategory), and could also roll to find racial abilities or instead end up with more build points.

Zakier

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« Reply #8 on: January 14, 2017, 09:10:49 PM »
That's actually sounds like a good idea, I had been wondering about things like monster creation for gms and Random roll charts.

My first game here and while I think I've made decent headway on getting some of the general play of the game done, I'm far from finished.

How would you suggest splitting things up?

Bloody Stupid Johnson

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« Reply #9 on: January 15, 2017, 08:00:40 PM »
Pretty much as post above:
*size
*movement style
*creature type
*integument
*senses
+extra abilities (roll several times, rerolling duplicates).

Players should be able to roll fairly between things as long as they're the same cost, which could imply adjusting cost of some options.
I think the key is to make sure rolls cover all the essential things, e.g. they need legs (or something), and some sort of skin. Though you can also just have default options set if they don't roll anything weird (e.g. if you want legs to be most common, you can just make that the default and then put extra movement options in 'extra abilities', for instance).