Modifications… removed?!
Yes, I’ve been thinking of removing ALL modifications when creating a character. Races, Speciality, Age and Nation, yes all of them…
Nothing is decided but I like this idea. The base concept is I want more abilities, benefits, deficiencies and permanent modifications. So in essence when I remove the modifications you until now have gained when you buy a race or whatever, you will instead get some of those above mentioned stuff.
My suggestion is something like this
Race
- You must always buy your race, this is important. You cannot save points by neglecting this
- You get to choose one of three benefits, one of two abilities and one of two deficiencies connected to your race
- Optionally, you can take both deficiencies and chose one more benefit. I’m not sure of this yet but it’s a thought
- You get to chose a nation as normal
- You get your racial language (always for races with own language), and if you have WIT high enough you get RW, all for free
- You get the Racial Knowledge, and right now I think it will be the race itself but it might be something like Nature or whatever fits the race
Nation
- As with race you must always buy your nation except if you are a Panling or Orc
- Here I was thinking of reverting to the old system, that is that all nation has one knowledge, one language and one ability for free, RW is free if WIT is high enough
Speciality
- This though, you can neglect if you want to, and if you are a child you aren’t allowed to buy a Speciality
- They give you Special Abilities tied to their Speciality Skills, these should be sufficient enough for a Speciality
- As before you still have a Speciality Knowledge
- And chose four of eight to ten unique Favoured Skills
- And the only improvement to compensate for the MOD removal would be to offer an Excel Benefit which will define a little about your properties with a PM, this though I’m not sure of. I think it should suffice without
Age
- You must buy an Age Class
- Age is, as before, your age before your Speciality Training, so it determines your minimum age
- Every Age Class with the exception of Child will give at least one free Knowledge
- Every Age Class with the exception of Child will give you one free Ability – This though I’m not sure but I think it could work
- Old should also always be able to RW at least their Nation’s language
- And as a thought I’m thinking about having one unique Benefit and Deficiency for every Age Class
This is my thought for removing modifications. It will indeed change things and my vision is that you will have more abilities and benefits, which will make for more colorful characters.
When it comes to the stat related business the gap will be larger. With this I mean that when you put out your numbers you will have further to reach maximum PUT and thus you will be able to modify your characters more.
This though will also make it harder to reach higher values when you doesn’t have MOD to help you reach otherwise impossible values. And now your lowest allowed value on the formula is 2 you will have many points to spend.
I probably will not have a limit cap on how much bonus you’ll be able to buy, but instead raise the cost for Bonus and lower the cost for other stuff and let the limit of the character cost decide how your characters will look like. So PUT and maximum CP you can spend will actually decide your characters stats, plus how much you’ll focus on your skills.
Well, this is ONLY thoughts and suggestions. I want some thoughts on this, what do you think? And I’ll try to meet every comment and critique with understanding and not attack it as I know some of you see it. If you have your own suggestions I’ll be happy to hear about it.
Best regards,
Herid Fel
Just wanted to bring attention to this post since it’s one very interesting post.
At least I think so.
I think it sounds like a good idea. The benefits should not be any huge things, but I like the idea. Gives a better twist to the race.
I am not sure about removing the bonus-cap when creating characters. It may be a bit hard to balance and make character creation a lot harder, but I have my suspicion that was the plan… To jolt us out of our normal way of doing stuff.
Yes, I must have this in mind. But that is the general idea. Small stuff to make a difference but not too much. Just traits in general.
You guessed it. My primary thought is prioritize. In the beginning you don’t need to all have bought 40 Bonus Points, this will make it harder for you to prioritize but it will also give you more freedom in your creation. More flexibility in the outcome of your final character.
One thing though, it will be harder to spot eventual errors, but I think the errors should go down with my new tricks in excel…
I dont know.. it sounds cool and so.. and as you say it will make the characters more colorful, but if you remove all +/- from all these things and replace it with some small benefits/deficiencies to me it sounds like alot of ppl will be very alike, and isnt benefits and such things made to make you abit special so to speak?
For example if all humans have the same abilities/benefits/deficiencies to choose from it will make alot of ppl very hmm lookalike.
Btw racials would still be intact I suppose?
Anyway about the change in total, this would create some really “weak” but maybe more interesting characters, depending on what the things you could choose would be. I mean first you made PUT 10, then you remove race,nation,age,speciality bonuses. Now I dont really mind this since its just numbers and numbers can always be tweaked but from my experience it usually doesnt live up to this(what I mean by this last sentence is that usually if you dont have 11-12 atleast in your PRO, your rolls will mostly be coin toss rolls since you rarely get these “easy” rolls which give +5 or something).
Anyways.. I am actually positive for the change..mostly..I think it could make some interesting characters, but im abit reserved as how these abilities and ben/def would work. I mean as you said… small stuff to make a difference.. but how big difference will it be when you..say look at another human or another race for that matter?
When I look at this, I think nations should get abit more attention, since if you compare the same race it will probably be the nation that is the most defining of these changes.
Well as I said.. looks interesting and can probably be cool, question though. if these changes happen in the near future will it affect our current characters since it might be years(!!) until we play some new characters.
Well, I understand your point but I don’t think this is really the case. Think of them as “perks” that races usually have. It is something the race have with a small variation. It will make them more unlike each other than they are now. At least I think so.
Yes, I forgot to mention this. But the Racial Abilities will still be Supecial Abilities.
The point is that it should be small traits or characteristics. They should matter, but not be as large a difference as they were in ADS. Some of them will mean PM (negative and positive) and some of them will just be increased stuff or solely rule things. But the point is to make them distinguish the racial traits more.
In this, I do not agree. I’ve found that the pure concept that only because you were born in one country you have this and that… I think that’s a weak reason for it. A nation is where you live, which prejudices you have grown up to and ways of doing things. Some nations might have impressive stuff, like Taraien or Icea or Lantor and Exile. But all in all, a country is just a country and everyone can live in a country.
Dunno, we’ll take that when we come to it, okay?
Hmmm, reading through this I don’t have any big concerns, spontaneously it sounds interesting.
I assume that your intention is for this to have no actual impact on comparable racial power. Any comments on that? I mean things like, will orcs still be expected to be stronger than everyone else?
Yes, that is my intention. So it won’t really affect it, hopefully it will be more visible though.
I just had some more thoughts/concerns about this.
First off, wont this make all characters really really weak? I mean with no bonuses from anywhere you will at best have 10 in a property(if you play 2500 chars that is) with maybe a PM+ if you have an ability/benefits that gives this.
Now if you completely disregard the rest of the system I guess it sounds totally ok, right? But this means that the best you will have in your skills will be 2, right? since to have 3 in a skill you need atleast 12 in a PRO.
Then you have things like weapon requirments/armor etc, atleast me personally thinks some of these requirements already is steep, but with this system you would have to be an epic character to even consider wielding something heavier than leather or wield a
two-handed weapon.
Then you have things like cc,sc,mc etc, without the bonuses you will have pretty low values in these aswell, and you get pretty drained already in these things. For example, for a mage with 10 in MCH and 10 in WIL he would have 15 MC and maybe +4-8 from his school, which would give him a total of 19-23 MC.. which isnt very much not with the current costs of things atleast.
Then you have some properties which is basically impossible to increase unless you are lucky or under special circumstances, APT,SPI,MCH. This means that most people will probably always have 8-10 in APT since below that you are a bimbo =) and most will probably never ever have higher in combat arts(which I see is a necessity for anyone using alot of SC nowadays) than 2.
Of course this is just numbers and such, but you cant disregard the fact that they play a big part when playing games that includes rolling dice.
Not saying that these changes wouldnt work, but it feels to me that some stuff needs to be looked over, and having 10 in a PRO in the future(with these changes) should be considered to be great. A 10 in the current system is pretty mediocre.
The correct answer with your assumptions and facts is 12, but otherwise that’s correct.
I’ve thought about this and I agree. With the current set of rules with creating a character this would be the case, yes. So I’ve been thinking about alternative ways to solve this problem.
My conclusion is that I simply need to raise Put. Most likely I will raise it back to 12. But more specific it’s something along these lines;
1000 CP – Child Character, Put: 10p
1500 CP – Normal Person (Non Heroic), Put: 11p
2000 CP – Beginner Hero, Put: 12p (This up to 3000p)
3000 CP – Normal Hero, Put: 13p
And so on… (or at least something like that)
Note also that this is when you create a character. It’s hard to make a accurate person with this. But you understand. And note that a “Hero” is mostly a character that stands out. I.E. a normal person in your eyes that isn’t a farmer Joe. A “Hero” Hero is most likely around 4-5k CP.
And as you state, PMs will greatly modify your character, giving them the practical value of say 16 even though they doesn’t posses the level cap value of 16 and such. You understand? My vision is that everyone will have at least a couple of PMs so this should, hopefully even out the numbers at least. But all in all, it will give you a lower start value.
The requirements are broken I must admit. I need to make a list and be more consequential. And you should not shy from pointing out when you think it is too high or too low. I often have a thought behind it, but in general I doesn’t have a good grip on it. I started on a list with “The Eye”-group but that list is not complete and I haven’t been using it since the Triquerta campaign started again. I need to rearrange my papers, but I haven’t taken the time to do it yet.
Even so I will do something about this. I will make weapons in a wide range of variety under the REQ of 12.
Just wanted to comment on this. I do not think that for a beginner Mage 19-23 is a low value. I understand why you think so, but I wouldn’t think that as a low value anyway. It’s pretty “normal”. Anyhow, most of your points in that paragraph is about the stats and the stats will, as mentioned above change. I only need to find a balance I’m satisfied with.
This is true. And as long as Nianze is a value and roll based RPG you shouldn’t ever disregard the gravity of values. Even though you should try to have a good time without them as much as possible. But a high value stands for SOMETHING in all cases. So I understand your concerns.
All changes need to be looked over. I can’t just change without considering the consequences of a change. I need to watch the cascades and how things work. Well, well, I think I got an idea and I will probably use you (PB) and some one else to help me make these.
And yes, 10 is mediocre.
How fitting that this post comes up now, just before we’ll start a new group.
I shall read through this thoroughly and see how much is still valid.