Attribute Limits

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by kdtipa

I know a lot has been said already, and lot of really good stuff, but just as a point of simplicity from my experience, I'd skip the percentages and use static integer values. So instead of saying +/-30%, just say +/- 3. It won't make too much difference really, and the benefit is not having to deal with math... which a complaint I get from the people I run games for. No one wants to do math. And really, in the ranges you seem to be looking for, depending on how you round 30%, it'll come to about 3 anyway.

And I have to admit I've had players who go for the "one trick pony" path too. It's pretty frustrating as a GM when one player pours all their points into a combat skill and then just ALWAYS aims for the eye to get the brain shot and lots of extra damage. Then the other players catch on and do pretty much the same thing.

But then, I sent out a document with my character creation guide for a new campaign recently and got a really negative reaction from one of my players. I had trimmed out a bunch of advantages and disadvantages mostly because they didn't fit the campaign, and in some cases because I didn't want to deal with them as a GM. Klutz is the best example I disallowed. I tried running that disadvantage before and it's a huge friggin pain to have normal failures be counted as critical failures all the time. I either ignored it to keep the game rolling, or got bogged down in critical fail rolls and results. Anyway... not the point... the point is that I limited it figuring it would help the game along, and the player who had taken that disadvantage complained loudly that I was telling him how to spend his points and limiting him too much...

From that I take away that players want to be able to make characters that are way off the average in many ways... which I guess makes them more fun to play. So a strong part of me wants to keep those limits, but I can sort of see how players might rankle at them with good reason. It is supposed to be a game right? People are supposed to have fun doing things that are outside the norm.

I wonder if there's a happy medium.

I'd say you're certainly within your rights as a GM to say "I don't want to run a game with a PC that has this trait, it's not appropriate for the kind of story I'm trying to tell."

I've found Klutz tricky too, but personally I found the other part the hard bit, as I would always forget about it.

[bolondro2]

Originally Posted by The Benj

It's a bit of a vague term, in some ways. I use it to mean something vaguely similar to "realistic", but more in terms of brutality and harshness than ruling out the supernatural or fantastic.

Thanks. I'll see as a rule for avoiding near omniscience. The rule grow in a 3rd ed game, when a IQ 18 magician was created. Default 12 for hard skills, and we decided that, no matter how much IQ you have, you need something more formal training that seeing 'Dr House' in order to be a competent physician.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

It's best to control attributes, high skills and so on indirectly through CP total. If you say "you can only have up to skill 18" or "only up to IQ 14" you get endless arguments. If you say, "you have 100CP to spend, and can take up to 50CP in Disadvantages", most people don't argue. And the result is that almost nobody will have those really high attributes and skills anyway.

I suppose it's a function of the group. I've used hard and soft caps in past games I've run, and haven't had game-stopping problems with them. Their use allows you to channel point-spending in a way that point limits do not. Not necessarily desirable for all games, but it does work for some.

[Anthony]

A risk with attribute limits is that if you set them too low, you may find everyone at the limit. In a 100 point game, attribute limits of 13 won't bother people or even be much noticed. In a 500 point game, you'll see an awful lot of characters sitting at 13.

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

It's best to control attributes, high skills and so on indirectly through CP total. If you say "you can only have up to skill 18" or "only up to IQ 14" you get endless arguments. If you say, "you have 100CP to spend, and can take up to 50CP in Disadvantages", most people don't argue. And the result is that almost nobody will have those really high attributes and skills anyway.

In a 100 point game, sure. The problem is that there are times you want a fairly high point level game but don't want a lot of points in attributes (IQ is usually the major offender here).

[Kuroshima]

Limits make people push them. I've found that i you set a cap, people go for it. Also, be careful on how many points you give.For example, I was in a 3rd ed game a long time ago, where we had 150+40+5 points and were limited to racial+3.This means than a lot of humans were 13/13/13/13 since that was only 120 points,you were capped to age*2 in skills and unless you wanted wealth, or magery, you didn't have much t spend the points in.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kuroshima

Limits make people push them. I've found that i you set a cap, people go for it.

This is not always a bad thing; it can help with balancing, particularly if the cap is slightly more complex than 'max X'.