Game Designers: Balance These Stats

GMMichael · Jul 9, 2014

This question pertains to a modular game that requires concentration for long duration spells, uses bounded accuracy, gives characters three actions per round (move, main, and reaction?), has free core rules, gives advantage for roleplaying, has separated skill bonuses from feats, allows swapping between feats and ability points, assumes campaigns begin above first level, and uses ability checks as saving throws. And no, it's not fifth edition. :devil:

It's for my homebrew, and I fell asleep last night wondering this: is it fair for two characters of equal level to have vastly different ability scores?

I'll start with an example:
Character 1, Zaphod, level 5, ability scores Physical 12, Mental 8, Metaphysical 15
--Skills: profession-politician 1, persuade 3, defend-parry 1
--Perks: extra head, specialize (politician), stubborn (max mental dmg +3), lucky day, observant

Character 2, Ford, level 5, ability scores Physical 10, Mental 10, Metaphysical 20
--Skills: profession-journalist 2, persuade 3
--Perks: metaphysical point (x5)

So, these ability scores grant bonuses to skills similarly to The OGL, and persuade is a metaphysical skill. So, Zaphod gets +5 to his persuade contests (MP +2 and skill +3), and Ford gets +8 to his persuade contests. Ford used his perks to buy ability score points, one per level, which apply to all of the metaphysical skills (about 1/3 of the skill choices).

Other considerations:
- Each level, a character gains 1 ability point, 1 skill point, and a perk. Each character started with 10 metaphysical, and put each level-up into metaphysical.
- Ability scores act like hit points, meaning Ford has 5 more metaphysical HP than Zaphod, and Zaphod gains 3 from his stubborn perk, so he has one more mental HP than Ford.
- Skill points are capped at a character's level, so even if Ford had used his perks to buy skill points instead of ability score points, he couldn't have more than 5 in one skill.
- Zaphod's specialize perk gives him +3 to his profession-politician contests. He could have applied this to the persuade skill instead, which effectively lets him exceed the skill cap by a maximum of 3 points.

Is Ford unbalanced due to his high ability score, or does his lack of interesting perks mitigate this?

ashockney · Jul 9, 2014

To answer the question, it helps to understand another aspect of how your gameplay is developed.

What are the types of challenges these characters will face? (For example 5e has said it's three pillars are interaction, exploration, and combat)
What is an appropriate ratio among those challenges to each other? (For example 80% combat, 15% exploration, 5% interaction - or 33%/33%/33%)
How difficult are each type of challenge and how many resources will be used in each challenge? (For example, you should use 5% of resources per encounter vs 35%)
How will you reward PC's with experience or treasure based upon each challenge? (For example, a level 5 challenge is a roll on level 5 reward for any type of challenge vs only combat?)

Based upon how you answer the above you can then assess the "fairness" of having a distinct advantage in one pillar over another.

For example, you could argue that in 2e, wizards of 10th level are 4x as effective (or more) in exploration to fighters (thanks to their spells and abilities from INT). That said, it still feels very balanced in play because the amount of exploration, the expected resources used, and the type of reward you get for exploration encounters is really negligible. Exploration actually becomes a way for the DM to try to "reduce" the wizards combat effectiveness by getting them to use their valuable limited resources on teleports and alarm spells vs cone of colds and magic missiles.

GMMichael · Jul 10, 2014

Good questions, [MENTION=1363]ashockney[/MENTION]. Funny you should mention 5e's three pillars, since:
1) I started writing my game as a response to the announcement of 5e,
2) the number 3 is coming up a lot in my game: 3 abilities, 3 actions per round, 3 main character mechanics...
3) 5e shares yet another feature of my game: free core rules.

The questions you asked depend mainly on GM preference, but here's some info that might shed general light on the subject:

The game puts roleplaying first by saying, "you can do it if it's easy for your character." Even if something might not be easy, PCs can always take half of their d20s, meaning they can roll a 10 anytime they want. All the challenges in the game are based on this idea, and the difficulty table (based on the GM's idea of the difficulty to an average person):
Easy - 0
Challenging - 4
Difficult - 8
Arduous - 12
Impossible - 16
Divine - 20

So, given my example, Zaphod can easily persuade someone who would be challenging to persuade, while Ford can easily persuade someone who would be difficult to persuade. Both can take half to all-but-guarantee their results.

To your questions specifically:

Types of challenges: anything. Literally anything. From hitting doorsteps with newspapers, Paperboy-style, to deflecting dragonbreath with a sword, to convincing the super-villain to reveal his evil plot, to projecting one's self onto the astral plane while dodging sour-aura-dissipations.

Appropriate challenge ratio: again, anything. But, the "combat" rules also stand to support any other type of conflict. So your "attack" could be a handle animal contest instead, and your "damage" could just be a weakening of the donkey's will. Point: any skill can become a challenge.

Resources used in challenges: only power usage, called "spellcasting" in a fantasy setting, uses resources in the default rules. Cast a spell, take d8+spell level metaphysical damage. Missile weapons, obviously, use resources. And characters can take, and face grave danger from, damage to any ability - physical, mental, or metaphysical. So it's not just physical damage that can suffer in conflict.

Rewards: up to the GM. As a general rule, PCs can get an ability point, skill point, or perk after each session, depending on which muscle got the most flexing.

Back to the example:
Ford has a distinct advantage over Zaphod when it comes to using powers and MP skills. But Zaphod's lucky day perk can help keep him in conflict when he's at the edge, the observant perk allows him to explore better, and the extra head is just plain fun. Very subjective.

Dethklok · Jul 12, 2014

DMMike said:
Is Ford unbalanced due to his high ability score, or does his lack of interesting perks mitigate this?

DMMike, for years people have been rolling up characters and accepting that some will be less powerful than others from the very beginning. And this imbalance isn't smoothed over with time; character experience often makes seasoned adventurers orders of magnitude more powerful than novices. As long as characters of similar experience have similar power levels, everyone in the adventuring group will be roughly comparable in their abilities - this rough equivalence is all that is needed to prevent petty jealousy and Narcissistic fights over the spotlight from ruining your game. Indeed, it's easy to argue that such imbalances are an asset, since powergamers feel gratified when they can discover and exploit loopholes in the rulebooks to increase their characters' strength.

ashockney · Jul 12, 2014

Ok, [MENTION=6685730]DMMike[/MENTION] it seems you're going for any challenge to be relatively of equal weight in resources, complexity, and reward. If that is the case, then these aren't so balanced. I'd defer you to a system like Numenera or FATE that plays very well in that space. The game you're describing strikes me as very, very similar to FATE, perhaps with some F20 familiarity.

DMMike said:
Good questions, [MENTION=1363]ashockney[/MENTION]. Funny you should mention 5e's three pillars, since:
1) I started writing my game as a response to the announcement of 5e,
2) the number 3 is coming up a lot in my game: 3 abilities, 3 actions per round, 3 main character mechanics...
3) 5e shares yet another feature of my game: free core rules.

The questions you asked depend mainly on GM preference, but here's some info that might shed general light on the subject:

The game puts roleplaying first by saying, "you can do it if it's easy for your character." Even if something might not be easy, PCs can always take half of their d20s, meaning they can roll a 10 anytime they want. All the challenges in the game are based on this idea, and the difficulty table (based on the GM's idea of the difficulty to an average person):
Easy - 0
Challenging - 4
Difficult - 8
Arduous - 12
Impossible - 16
Divine - 20

So, given my example, Zaphod can easily persuade someone who would be challenging to persuade, while Ford can easily persuade someone who would be difficult to persuade. Both can take half to all-but-guarantee their results.

To your questions specifically:

Types of challenges: anything. Literally anything. From hitting doorsteps with newspapers, Paperboy-style, to deflecting dragonbreath with a sword, to convincing the super-villain to reveal his evil plot, to projecting one's self onto the astral plane while dodging sour-aura-dissipations.

Appropriate challenge ratio: again, anything. But, the "combat" rules also stand to support any other type of conflict. So your "attack" could be a handle animal contest instead, and your "damage" could just be a weakening of the donkey's will. Point: any skill can become a challenge.

Resources used in challenges: only power usage, called "spellcasting" in a fantasy setting, uses resources in the default rules. Cast a spell, take d8+spell level metaphysical damage. Missile weapons, obviously, use resources. And characters can take, and face grave danger from, damage to any ability - physical, mental, or metaphysical. So it's not just physical damage that can suffer in conflict.

Rewards: up to the GM. As a general rule, PCs can get an ability point, skill point, or perk after each session, depending on which muscle got the most flexing.

Back to the example:
Ford has a distinct advantage over Zaphod when it comes to using powers and MP skills. But Zaphod's lucky day perk can help keep him in conflict when he's at the edge, the observant perk allows him to explore better, and the extra head is just plain fun. Very subjective.

GMMichael · Jul 13, 2014

Dethklok said:
As long as characters of similar experience have similar power levels, everyone in the adventuring group will be roughly comparable in their abilities - this rough equivalence is all that is needed to prevent petty jealousy and Narcissistic fights over the spotlight from ruining your game. Indeed, it's easy to argue that such imbalances are an asset, since powergamers feel gratified when they can discover and exploit loopholes in the rulebooks to increase their characters' strength.

True dat. Interesting that appeal-to-powergamers can be an asset. But I like it.

I might be able to boil the comparison to this. Each player gets a choice of what to do with his perk-up:

1) Use as perk. Perks can grant more damage, prevent damage, grant random bonuses, increase max damage by 3, or become other cool things, like extra heads (which would not have a game-mechanic benefit beyond that of another perk). Perks cannot improve contests (skill rolls), unless it's the Specialize perk, and this can be taken only once for a given skill.

2) Convert to ability point/skill point. The skill point use is pretty straightforward, but this is also where the cap applies (that might be applicable to ability points as well): skill points can't exceed level. The ability point has three benefits: grant 1/2 an ability bonus, increase max damage of one ability by one, and slightly increase 1/3 of the character's presence in the world (the ability).

The similarity of the power levels is the subjective part.

ashockney said:
it seems you're going for any challenge to be relatively of equal weight in resources, complexity, and reward. If that is the case, then these aren't so balanced. I'd defer you to a system like Numenera or FATE that plays very well in that space. The game you're describing strikes me as very, very similar to FATE, perhaps with some F20 familiarity.

Roger. I actually appreciate Numenera for attempting to take a new approach to die contests. If you're up to speed on these systems, would you mind providing details? (To save me and any other thread viewers from reading bulky rulebooks.)

What I remember from Numenera: rolling comes last. When a dispute/contest comes up, the player says, "I have this and this advantage." If that's enough to bring the 1-10 difficulty down to zero, there's no need to roll. If difficulty remains, multiply it by 3 and the player rolls.

I'm not up to speed on the character building. On FATE, that's the part I remember: your character has Aspects that apply to his efforts. Pretty cool concept, and I seem to remember them being pretty flexible. Oh yeah, and the dice: plusses, minuses, and blanks. As long as you're still positive after throwing those dice, you'll be successful. And...the aspects give you a plus as well?

ashockney · Jul 16, 2014

[MENTION=6685730]DMMike[/MENTION] I'm not sure I'll encapsulate an entire rule system in a thread post, however, I can attempt to unpack the connection I made between what you're doing and FATE.

In Fate, your character gets an aspect, similar to how you describe your Perk in the prior post. Aspects are related to one of six character attributes. All challenges and contests are a series (model) of attribute checks. You can leverage your aspect to give you a distinct advantage on a related attribute check.

Because a challenge can come in the form of a series of attribute checks, regardless of your pillar (such as combat, exploration, or interaction). You set a goal, if it is challenging, or there is a consequence of failure, your GM facilitates a challenge using attribute checks. You leverage your aspects to give yourself advantages on those checks to determine consequences, success, failure, and rewards.

This BROAD system applied universally across any type of encounter or challenge allows you greater flexibility to worry less about "balance". At the end of the day, however, using a system like FATE, most aspects pretty much universally grant a +2 to any check, regardless of the type of challenge.

So, back to your question does using points to increase ability scores directly outweigh the value of using the same points to buy perks? Given how you've described the system, it sounds like the answer is yes, this is unbalanced because like FATE the ability checks will come in to play far more often (commonly) than the perks when it relates to providing an "in game" advantage. Doesn't make it cooler, but it makes it more effective statistically.

Relating back to FATE, depending upon the system you use, you must use a base 'array' of ability scores, and spend points on perks (or aspects) as you have earned them. Some of the FATE systems, create a few model "templates" of different 'array' choices, with corresponding PERK point values so that all the "balancing" is done by the game system (and GM) ahead of time, and allowing for a little more variation between characters.

GMMichael · Jul 23, 2014

I actually really like the use of aspects to gain points on rolls in FATE. I think that it makes you keep your character in mind every time you make a roll.

In Modos RPG, perks are a -little- more concrete. They usually grant a direct in-game bonus, and leave the roleplaying bonuses up to their rule-sisters, the hero points.

So you're right - ability scores are very important if they affect every roll made in the game. Mine, by the way, only affect skill checks. There's no interaction between abilities and damage, protection, hero points, nor casting damage. Conversely, -perks- have more affect on the above-stated rolls. So maybe they do balance out...

For my personal record-keeping :uhoh:

, I've updated the list of similarities between Modos RPG and 5e at the beginning of the thread. It's getting a little uncanny. WotC had better list me in their Special Thanks sections.

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