thoughts on check digit dampener

[Elberon]

I've been having a think on building in a dampener to the d666, it would mean small tweaks to char gen and small amount of math on a roll but I really do not want to port over to a new system and coming up with resonance hits for all NPCs for a choir group isn't fun, and it really should be thought about in advance.

so here it is:

character generation, the same except for attribute points to forces relationship

attribute has a minimum equal to the parent force
Player then gets an additional 2 attributes per force

dice rolls are
Force + attribute + skill + other mod (talismans, weapon mod etc)

How much you make the roll by determines the check digit, plan is to get players to say how much it was made by to begin with to keep maths away from them

made by CD
0 - 1 1
2 - 5 2
6 - 10 3
11 - 17 4
18 - 24 5
25+ 6

Pretty much everything else stays the same, I would use the alternative hit system from corp player guide else some would be unkillable....

(I tend to have a flat cost for roles / level and give them a ghost skill of that role equal to the level bought)

Any thoughts?

[Elberon]

Also had a flash to use a stress track. simple rule being two points of success = 1 stress track hit, odd points give a +1 to the next roll...

[tHEhERETIC]

Being too tired to do proper math just now, I'm going to address this on a conceptual level.

I was a WoD player for a long time, did that and IN for awhile and switched exclusively to In Nomine. The check digit took a long time to wrap my brain around, but now I wouldn't game without it, and here's why.

I played with minmaxxers, the mathematical variety of munchkins. In the WoD games--hell in most games--degree of success is determined by the surplus above the success itself, which is how I'm reading what you've written. This creates a very strong incentive to specialize a character, to gain a numerical advantage so that you succeed at your One Great Power every time, and succeed spectacularly.

Yuck. To me a character like that is barely a character at all, more like a Role with legs, and no fun to play around.

By rolling a check digit i.e. degree of success separately from whether one succeeds, you remove the incentive to minmax. You allow characters who are well rounded to succeed spectacularly once in awhile, and characters who are buffed up in one area to succeed with a whimper once in awhile. It keeps things interesting, IMNSHO, by making them a little less predictable.

YMMV.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Elberon

Any thoughts?

Why do all of that work when you could just throw away the CD altogether?

Because that's what you're doing - neutering a core game mechanic.

[Omegonthesane]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

I played with minmaxxers, the mathematical variety of munchkins. In the WoD games--hell in most games--degree of success is determined by the surplus above the success itself, which is how I'm reading what you've written. This creates a very strong incentive to specialize a character, to gain a numerical advantage so that you succeed at your One Great Power every time, and succeed spectacularly.

Yuck. To me a character like that is barely a character at all, more like a Role with legs, and no fun to play around.

By rolling a check digit i.e. degree of success separately from whether one succeeds, you remove the incentive to minmax. You allow characters who are well rounded to succeed spectacularly once in awhile, and characters who are buffed up in one area to succeed with a whimper once in awhile. It keeps things interesting, IMNSHO, by making them a little less predictable.

YMMV.

I've played IN for some years now. The incentive to minmax is still there, and it's easy - anyone statting any kind of combatant has no excuse to not have a +3 CD overflow bonus right out of the gate, and likewise I had little trouble getting a Mercurian's Lying, Fast-Talk, and Emote all to auto-pass at +1 when for OOC reasons I was more interested in avoiding arguments about which one I was rolling than I was in actually cranking the check digit high enough to count on the ability. It's got to the point where my group thinks Ofanim need to be rewritten because their roll-boosting resonance is only ever in practice used to make rolls pass at CD $TEXAS rather than in a way where they could possibly fail and get dissonant.

Even if you aren't literally determined to be TEH BESHT at your field of expertise, there is a strong incentive to get skill target numbers to at least 12 so that they never fail short of enemy action, and you almost always want a team of specialists over a team of generalists for maximum results.

[Elberon]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Why do all of that work when you could just throw away the CD altogether?

Because that's what you're doing - neutering a core game mechanic.

Mainly because if you ditch the check digit you have to visit every other rule in the book to remove the CD from determining song effects, damage, resonance rolls, etc etc etc and I am not looking to do a complete re-write - I would prefer to run games than re-write.

Having two children, one with a disability, hits my prep time and thinking up 24 levels of resonance hit for every NPC would just suck the fun out of GMing (I don't run a number of systems now compared to my younger days due to prep time issues).

Using the method above I 'only' need to come up with 8 resonance pings for each NPC and give a minutes thought on the scope for 3 -4 levels (bearing in mind the ramp up in detail and scope as you go up the Resonance CD results)

[alexondria]

what resonance results do you think you need to set up in advance?

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Omegonthesane

I've played IN for some years now. The incentive to minmax is still there, and it's easy - anyone statting any kind of combatant has no excuse to not have a +3 CD overflow bonus right out of the gate, and likewise I had little trouble getting a Mercurian's Lying, Fast-Talk, and Emote all to auto-pass at +1 when for OOC reasons I was more interested in avoiding arguments about which one I was rolling than I was in actually cranking the check digit high enough to count on the ability. It's got to the point where my group thinks Ofanim need to be rewritten because their roll-boosting resonance is only ever in practice used to make rolls pass at CD $TEXAS rather than in a way where they could possibly fail and get dissonant.

Even if you aren't literally determined to be TEH BESHT at your field of expertise, there is a strong incentive to get skill target numbers to at least 12 so that they never fail short of enemy action, and you almost always want a team of specialists over a team of generalists for maximum results.

Ah, overflow bonus? I've not even heard of it. Mind you, I avoid game mechanics at all when I can help it. That and when it's PC vs villain, I bend the rules so that success on either side is never a sure thing. I have my own definite ideas about how things work, and use the CD as a way to achieve them.

[Jason]

It's not clear to me what the aim is of the newly proposed check digit ranges. If it'd just to try to keep check digits lower on average and correlating more obviously with character ability, I feel like there must be an easier way. If it's to help players feel like they are getting their money's worth from every single stat bonus they could possibly add, well, it does that very effectively, but I feel like prep (and GMing!) would become even more time-consuming with a whole new table of roll results to consult for awhile, plus target numbers that take even more steps to calculate.

(And as for min/maxing: After years of play, my group is all about the CD overflow from target numbers above 12. Why have only a decent liar on your team when you could have an unerring deceiver who's practically Balseraph without the dissonance condition?)