Rob
General
Specific points can be found below. I’m partial to a lot of this, mainly because it looks rather familiar! I think you’re too combat oriented. I think this feels like a late 80s RPG, with random ability score generation and a simple skill set- I’m thinking mainly of some game who’s name I can’t recall, something simple like HERO or WIZARD, really stripped down dungeon crawling stuff. The central question is why would anyone bother using this instead of, say, 3E? Also, the system directly determines the kind of games that get played. By such a heavy emphasis on combat abilties, you’re telling potential players that this is a hack-n-slash system.
I’m not going to critique the combat system or spells or any of that stuff now. Just char gen.
ABILITIES
Good:
I like four stats, as that reflects the basic four class archetypes central to RPGing. I like the 1-20 scale.
Dodge is agility base. Elegant.
Serious flaws:
I prefer charisma to endurance. This shifts the emphasis away from combat and towards role-playing and character development. Also, mages need INT but priests need nothing? Seems weird. Priests need to be charismatic. Much better to spread out the non-direct-combat skills, so that you can things like leadership, bluff, haggling, etc. This is sort of a dealbreaker… why aren’t you having CHA? ‘The player should provide their own’ is not an answer, same could go for INT. Scrap endurance and make it all skill-based.
Random score generation. No, no, no. For the love of god no. Random score generation is so 1980s, and especially as skillpoints are based off your scores, you punish the weak. Look at 3E for ability score determination by points. It’s just fairer that way. Everyone starts on the same page: this is the way forward. I know you personally like random stats- but you don’t really, what you like is characters with low stats. Really, if you’re gonna go random, why not roll a random number of skillpoints each level and try to even out the random factor? Otherwise all the randomization is front-loaded into char gen, and never occurs again. At least DnD had you roll hp, so even if someone else had an 18/00 str, they could roll shitty for hp and normalize the char powers. Hallmark of a poor system is random char gen in my view. You can always have a set of variant rules, and random stat gen is a fine option, but it shouldn’t be the mainstay. This is a dealbreaker.
The term ‘echelon’ sounds awkward and gimmicky. Just use level, every fuckin’ game out there uses level, it’s fine and easily understood.
Health. Looks like you don’t really have much of it. This means that combats get deadlier and deadlier, a mechanic choice that works against the PCs: they’ll die a lot. More realistic but I think less fun. 3E does a great job of offering a bunch of optional combat rules, and explaining that those rules that increase combat randomness and lethality hurt PCs, and vice-versa.
Minor points:
Stat scores. For balance, I would not lump 1-2 together and have 20 by itself. Have 1 be separate also. I suggest lumping 11-13 together and 6-8. (Or just lump 8-11 together at +0).
Automatic literacy at 13 INT. Hmm, you should have auto skills for every stat then. I suggest getting rid of it, it’s a valid choice to be illiterate in a fantasy world.
Character death. One dumb thing about D&D is if you have 3 max hp or 100 max hp, you die at –10. It should be a fraction of your base hp, i.e., dynamically scaling with hps, something like 25-33%
SKILLS
Good:
Well I love the skill system on principle. However, I don’t have time to playtest it, so I’ll assume that you’ve already made minmaxed chars and seen how it works. If you haven’t, well, you have to.
Serious flaws:
Priest and mage spells cap out at 6th level. This means that wizards and priests can quickly get to their ultimate power levels. Interestingly, as you can only start with level 1 in a skill at ech 1 (good mechanic), it doesn’t matter what my INT is, I’ll still advance the same way: 2nd circle at 3rd ech, 3rd circle at 4th ech, 4th at 5th ech, 5th at 6th ech, and then finally things slow down a tad, and I can get 6th ech hermetic spells- wish grade- at 8th echelon. Priest magic is even faster, and you can get 6th circle priest spells at 7th echelon. And still have some skillpoints left over I think. Not good.
You need more. This is so bare bones in terms of skills and abilities right now. More, more, more. Steal from everywhere, 3E is a great source again. Think of every RPG archetype you can- how would you make that character? Bard, merchant, assassin, paladin, alchemist, karate champ, ranger, etc. Doesn’t matter if you personally think a class is stupid, someone else won’t.
Why only two forms of magic? Why not have more? Four would be a nice number, complementing the number of abilities. You could even have sub-genres, which would be interesting for priests and mages: artifice, nature, charm, necro, infernal, truenames, illusions, dreams, horology I like, astrology, and so on. I’d rather work on this than fuckin’ skeletons.
Combat could be the same way. Rather than 'parry', 'great strike', etc, have various combat forms- a skill tree, with some skills being pre-reqs to other skills. But not too involved, just again like four basic combat skill pre-req skills, and then a bunch of flavors.
Minor points:
Multiple attacks per round are the short road to powergaming/character effectiveness and doing lots of damage. Ambidex should still leave some penalty for two weapon fighting.
Unarmed combat does not deserve to be a separate skill; lump it into other weapon profs.
Specific points can be found below. I’m partial to a lot of this, mainly because it looks rather familiar! I think you’re too combat oriented. I think this feels like a late 80s RPG, with random ability score generation and a simple skill set- I’m thinking mainly of some game who’s name I can’t recall, something simple like HERO or WIZARD, really stripped down dungeon crawling stuff. The central question is why would anyone bother using this instead of, say, 3E? Also, the system directly determines the kind of games that get played. By such a heavy emphasis on combat abilties, you’re telling potential players that this is a hack-n-slash system.
I’m not going to critique the combat system or spells or any of that stuff now. Just char gen.
ABILITIES
Good:
I like four stats, as that reflects the basic four class archetypes central to RPGing. I like the 1-20 scale.
Dodge is agility base. Elegant.
Serious flaws:
I prefer charisma to endurance. This shifts the emphasis away from combat and towards role-playing and character development. Also, mages need INT but priests need nothing? Seems weird. Priests need to be charismatic. Much better to spread out the non-direct-combat skills, so that you can things like leadership, bluff, haggling, etc. This is sort of a dealbreaker… why aren’t you having CHA? ‘The player should provide their own’ is not an answer, same could go for INT. Scrap endurance and make it all skill-based.
Random score generation. No, no, no. For the love of god no. Random score generation is so 1980s, and especially as skillpoints are based off your scores, you punish the weak. Look at 3E for ability score determination by points. It’s just fairer that way. Everyone starts on the same page: this is the way forward. I know you personally like random stats- but you don’t really, what you like is characters with low stats. Really, if you’re gonna go random, why not roll a random number of skillpoints each level and try to even out the random factor? Otherwise all the randomization is front-loaded into char gen, and never occurs again. At least DnD had you roll hp, so even if someone else had an 18/00 str, they could roll shitty for hp and normalize the char powers. Hallmark of a poor system is random char gen in my view. You can always have a set of variant rules, and random stat gen is a fine option, but it shouldn’t be the mainstay. This is a dealbreaker.
The term ‘echelon’ sounds awkward and gimmicky. Just use level, every fuckin’ game out there uses level, it’s fine and easily understood.
Health. Looks like you don’t really have much of it. This means that combats get deadlier and deadlier, a mechanic choice that works against the PCs: they’ll die a lot. More realistic but I think less fun. 3E does a great job of offering a bunch of optional combat rules, and explaining that those rules that increase combat randomness and lethality hurt PCs, and vice-versa.
Minor points:
Stat scores. For balance, I would not lump 1-2 together and have 20 by itself. Have 1 be separate also. I suggest lumping 11-13 together and 6-8. (Or just lump 8-11 together at +0).
Automatic literacy at 13 INT. Hmm, you should have auto skills for every stat then. I suggest getting rid of it, it’s a valid choice to be illiterate in a fantasy world.
Character death. One dumb thing about D&D is if you have 3 max hp or 100 max hp, you die at –10. It should be a fraction of your base hp, i.e., dynamically scaling with hps, something like 25-33%
SKILLS
Good:
Well I love the skill system on principle. However, I don’t have time to playtest it, so I’ll assume that you’ve already made minmaxed chars and seen how it works. If you haven’t, well, you have to.
Serious flaws:
Priest and mage spells cap out at 6th level. This means that wizards and priests can quickly get to their ultimate power levels. Interestingly, as you can only start with level 1 in a skill at ech 1 (good mechanic), it doesn’t matter what my INT is, I’ll still advance the same way: 2nd circle at 3rd ech, 3rd circle at 4th ech, 4th at 5th ech, 5th at 6th ech, and then finally things slow down a tad, and I can get 6th ech hermetic spells- wish grade- at 8th echelon. Priest magic is even faster, and you can get 6th circle priest spells at 7th echelon. And still have some skillpoints left over I think. Not good.
You need more. This is so bare bones in terms of skills and abilities right now. More, more, more. Steal from everywhere, 3E is a great source again. Think of every RPG archetype you can- how would you make that character? Bard, merchant, assassin, paladin, alchemist, karate champ, ranger, etc. Doesn’t matter if you personally think a class is stupid, someone else won’t.
Why only two forms of magic? Why not have more? Four would be a nice number, complementing the number of abilities. You could even have sub-genres, which would be interesting for priests and mages: artifice, nature, charm, necro, infernal, truenames, illusions, dreams, horology I like, astrology, and so on. I’d rather work on this than fuckin’ skeletons.
Combat could be the same way. Rather than 'parry', 'great strike', etc, have various combat forms- a skill tree, with some skills being pre-reqs to other skills. But not too involved, just again like four basic combat skill pre-req skills, and then a bunch of flavors.
Minor points:
Multiple attacks per round are the short road to powergaming/character effectiveness and doing lots of damage. Ambidex should still leave some penalty for two weapon fighting.
Unarmed combat does not deserve to be a separate skill; lump it into other weapon profs.
posted by Rob @ 10:19 PM
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