11-08-2018, 11:36 AM | #21 | |||
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cambridge, MA
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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If you and I want to build abstract characters for use in a combat situation, and you buy DX 14 and Broadsword-19 while I buy DX 10 and Broadsword-35, I will be able to use deceptive attacks and rapid strikes to make way more hits in the combat than you, AND I will live much longer due to my superior parry. Meanwhile, you will be good at any DX checks that come up. And sure, if you have a few more points you can spend them to buy some other mildly relevant skills like Brawling and Fast-Draw, and these may even be helpful to you from time to time. And of course your Dodge and Move will be better. So obviously the Broadsword-35 guy is not universally better. But I would argue he's definitely more powerful and more effective. As he should be, given that he's totally specialized in swordplay! But I think the extreme difference in skill levels here leads to an imbalance that's too much for me. I have sometimes toyed with the idea of resurrecting the old 3e 8/level cost for physical skills, but applying that only to the "most important" skills of the game: that would be weapon skills and spells for DF and other combat-heavy games, but perhaps it would be Observation, Stealth, or Fast-Talk in a spy game, or Strategy in a mass combat game, etc. |
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11-08-2018, 11:40 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
Yes, well, I'm proposing that it should happen more so, not less so. Not that I think it's especially "hidden." My proposal doesn't involve doing away with linear attribute costs; it involves changing skills from initial exponential and later linear to consistent exponential.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
11-08-2018, 11:41 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
It doesn't seem to me that Chemistry-12 is ever worth twenty points. I don't know that skill 12 is worth twenty points even for the most useful skills. Opportunity costs apply. You're giving up the ability to get something else that costs twenty points by making that purchase. I can't imagine a scenario where Chemistry-12 is the highest value purchase for twenty (or even more!) points.
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"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics My blog. |
11-08-2018, 11:42 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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11-08-2018, 11:47 AM | #25 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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11-08-2018, 11:47 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
How would increasing the cost of skills address the fact that they are too expensive currently?
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11-08-2018, 11:51 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
I don't see the similarity. The old 3/e scale that is referred to went 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, and so on; the wildcard scale goes 3, 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, and so on. And the 3/e scale applied to narrowly focused skills, whereas wildcards typically cover from six to twelve narrowly focused skills—and anything else where the GM thinks it's plausible (for example, in one of my campaigns, the avatar of the deified Errol Flynn used Sword! to seduce one of the other PCs by fencing with her flirtatiously).
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
11-08-2018, 11:52 AM | #28 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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You might like to go back and look at my examination of proposals for making stats and talents cost more relative to skills. . . .
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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11-08-2018, 12:17 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
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I understand character point costs to be about creating characters of similar usefulness, so that you don't have players with characters of vastly different power levels, and also to put a cap on maximum character power level. If you have a character point system that leads to one player getting a character with a 3 out of 10 in power, and another player getting a character with a power level of 7 out of 10, then the character point costs seem to have failed at achieving their purpose. And having a skill level of 12 cost twenty or more points is a way of creating characters with relatively low power levels. It's like what happens when someone runs a low-powered superheroes game and someone purchases Regrowth for their character. Their character is relatively much less powerful because they spent their points on an overpriced trait. Overpriced or underpriced traits are undesirable because they lead to characters of relatively different power levels in the same game together. It feels unfair when your character is much weaker than someone else's because you chose the character concept that the system happens to overcharge for.
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"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics My blog. |
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11-08-2018, 12:21 PM | #30 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Skills and Techniques are too expensive
Some consider it desirable for sensible character builds at the power level of "normal people" to have some resemblance to real people.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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