Classless/Point Buy d20?

[Angellis_ater]

I can tell you guys this much - with a calculator I made a 3rd level character in about 45 minutes. I noticed that what went slowly in the beginning, eases up after a little while and the pretty comprehensive list at the back of the book with class abilities, together with NLF's articles about non-OGL class abilities, made things a lot easier. And then I was making a Wilder/Psion/Thoughtsinger/Halo Knight character build that included a lot of varied stuff.

 

[Alzrius]

Before anything else, I want to say that I'm really enjoying Complete Control, and think it's the single best d20 book on the market for creating a character without worrying about classes and levels. NLF, congratulations on improving on Buy the Numbers!

That said, I recently realized that the book didn't offer me as much freedom as I'd hoped for when I was initially looking it over. Upon reflection, this isn't really the book's fault, because both issues are ones that are separate from the question of levels and classes. They're as follows:

1) I can't design a race the same way I'd design a class.

By breaking down classes into various components that can be purchased with XP over time (particularly in regards to constant abilities, since almost all racial abilities are constant), I'm suddenly cognizant of the fact that the same thing could be done for racial abilities and powers, but hasn't been. It seems like it'd be easy enough, since things like stat modifiers are already covered in CC, and level adjustments are discussed as well. The book talks about converting them into abilities, but doesn't actually do so.

Really, it seems like the only major problems here would be accurately pricing racial abilities in terms of XP costs, and coming up with a "holistic" list of what falls under racial abilities (e.g. are size and type also purchased for XP? And listing all of the racial abilities for creatures in the SRD that have PC racial information). I suppose there'd be some in-game oddities regarding how a character "learned" a new racial trick, but suddenly gaining darkvision or a powerful build doesn't seem that different from learning how to smite evil or wild shape.

2) CC doesn't reduce dependency on magic items.

Balancing XP expenditures works to keep CC characters in line with standard d20 characters, but only in regards to those characters without any items - GP values for PCs and NPCs isn't taken into account. While I've heard multiple accounts for how much gear factors into a character's level of playability (the best being Upper_Krust's postulation that gear is one-third of a PCs' strength in terms of calculating their effective level - e.g. a 12th-level fighter with no gear is basically an 8th-level character), there's no disagreement over the fact that characters without magic items are crippled.

Without a system that translates GP-per-level values into abilities that can be purchased - the way CC breaks down class abilities purchasable via their XP values - characters are going to still be shackled to the "Christmas Tree" paradigm for how their characters function. Admittedly, this'd be very hard to do because of many factors, not the least of which are the varied nature of magic items, and balance issues regarding how items can be stolen, dispelled, sundered, etc., but it'd be a major break in moving away from prescribed d20 tropes that (N)PCs are currently bound to.

Again, I can't really hold either of these against Complete Control, since racial abilities are slightly outside of its purview, and magic items are far outside it. That said, NLF, if you ever want to do an expansion for CC, please consider doing so in regards to one or both of these limitations!

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Wow! Thanks for the complement. I really appreciate the words.

As to your two points, you are absolutely right. Complete Control does not address racial building nor does it reduce magic dependency.

The reason for the magical dependency has a simple answer and a more complex answer. The simple answer is that the book was designed to function within the paraments of 3.x. Now, that's honestly a bit of a cop-out. But, it is also the truth. The majority of people looking to play with Complete Control are going to want to continue with their 3.x game and simply redesign how they build characters.

The complex answer is that I wanted to make sure the base product was as solid as possible. Changing how magic items function is a complex problem; however it would be an excellent supplement, though. Perhaps I'll chew it around for a little while.

[EDIT: As I reread your post, Alzrius, I was hit by a question I'd like to reflect back to you. I've heard many people talk about how to take a character and replace magic items with extra abilities, etc. However, what about this solution? What if the answer isn't found in boosting characters with no magic items but in scaling down the power of monsters? Personally, I think this is why 3.x has a sweet spot that typically ends at level 12 or 13. At higher levels, monsters become powerful enough that an encounter could go TPK with a few bad rolls. But by scaling back, you essentially take the higher levels and pull them back to where the sweet spot exists. Instead of having an arms race with PCs vs. Monsters you end up with an attempt to hold onto the power level of the sweet spot. Thoughts? END EDIT]

As for racial redesigning ... unfortunately that also comes out of a problem in how the game is built. Just as there are some differences as to how powerful abilities of certain levels are, there is an even greater range of power between what constitues a balanced race. There are LA +1 classes out there that shouldbe LA +0 and LA +2. I think that same comparison can be made for just about any LA +x. The divergence makes it difficult.

However, I'll put out an interesting offer. If there is a thread out there with any definitive means of valuing racial abilities, I'd be happy to look it over and come up with a system for racial builds as well {Even if that means one gets started if one doesn't exist}. It's just not a task that I feel qualified to do without input from a broad spectrum of games as to what each racial ability is worth.

Again, though, thank you very much for your words. I appreciate the praise and the honest appraisal of where supplements to the work could be useful.

 

[Angellis_ater]

Isn't a race design book, with a tie in chapter to Complete Control, really interesting? Imagine being able to play a 1st lvl Mind Flayer in the group? Sure, they'd not have all the standard abilities of the illithid, but he could acquire them via a CC-style xp expenditure. It would be like Savage Species - only really useful!

My immediate suggestion for relying on magic items is to hand out 20% of the gold in experience instead. It translates pretty well (1xp=5gp is used in the DMG) in the game AND a quick overview tells me that it should mean some pretty nice abilities beind added to a character (or someone just raising their abilities higher, permanently).

 

[Alzrius]

Wow! Thanks for the complement. I really appreciate the words.

Well, it really is a great book.

As to your two points, you are absolutely right. Complete Control does not address racial building nor does it reduce magic dependency.

Yeah, I see those as being the two big restrictions that are still in place, now that classes/levels are freed up.

The reason for the magical dependency has a simple answer and a more complex answer. The simple answer is that the book was designed to function within the paraments of 3.x. Now, that's honestly a bit of a cop-out. But, it is also the truth. The majority of people looking to play with Complete Control are going to want to continue with their 3.x game and simply redesign how they build characters.

Ideally, a point-buy system to replace the necessity of magic items would allow characters to continue to function in a 3.5 game. The idea isn't to remove the things that require magic items in the first place - that'd require overhauling the entire d20 system, to some degree - but to make it so that magic item effects can be point-bought the same way that class abilities are, thus making it less about what character have than about what they can do. The need for magic items from a game mechanics remains, in that instance, but it's filled a different way, as magic items are functionally replaced.

The complex answer is that I wanted to make sure the base product was as solid as possible. Changing how magic items function is a complex problem; however it would be an excellent supplement, though. Perhaps I'll chew it around for a little while.

Again, it's not about changing the function of items. Rather, what's the XP expenditure for getting a +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage, and overcoming DR X/magic? How much more does it cost to upgrade that to a +2 enhancement bonus? That's the idea, here. I'm glad you'll look it over, though. I think that'd be a major expansion of CC's theme.

EDIT: One of the major strengths of the d20 System is that everything is interconnected; that unlike AD&D 1E and 2E, it's not a group of collective sub-systems that operate independently from each other. However, that's exactly how magic items work, in terms of their necessity for character viability. We measure how many gold pieces-worth of magic items a character should have by level, but this is divorced utterly from the XP tables that measure level in the first place. Hence, an overhaul to one doesn't affect the other, and a character still needs to be at the median for both measurements in order to be balanced and playable. This is, I think, one of the major weaknesses of the d20 System.

[EDIT: As I reread your post, Alzrius, I was hit by a question I'd like to reflect back to you. I've heard many people talk about how to take a character and replace magic items with extra abilities, etc. However, what about this solution? What if the answer isn't found in boosting characters with no magic items but in scaling down the power of monsters? Personally, I think this is why 3.x has a sweet spot that typically ends at level 12 or 13. At higher levels, monsters become powerful enough that an encounter could go TPK with a few bad rolls. But by scaling back, you essentially take the higher levels and pull them back to where the sweet spot exists. Instead of having an arms race with PCs vs. Monsters you end up with an attempt to hold onto the power level of the sweet spot. Thoughts? END EDIT]

This sounds like a good idea in theory, but I think in practice it'd be almost impossible to make work. While ideally there'd be generalized guidelines for how to power down a monster, in reality you'd almost certainly need to tailor each monster individually to make this work. I can't even imagine how you'd alter the CR of the monster, since CR is already more of an art than a science. And I doubt anyone would be able to agree on how much "powering-down" is needed to bring them back to the proverbial "sweet spot" of the game, since there's no major consensus on where exactly that is.

As for racial redesigning ... unfortunately that also comes out of a problem in how the game is built. Just as there are some differences as to how powerful abilities of certain levels are, there is an even greater range of power between what constitues a balanced race. There are LA +1 classes out there that shouldbe LA +0 and LA +2. I think that same comparison can be made for just about any LA +x. The divergence makes it difficult.

That does make it trickier, but surely that same problem was there for classes when working with CC? I've heard plenty of people say that class X was more powerful than other classes of the same level.

As it stands, CC already seems to lay down the groundwork for about half of making racial abilities into point-buy features. I think a supplement that gave that the full treatment would be a great follow-up product. That said, you would have to work out what exactly was and wasn't bought (do you purchase creature type and size, for example?), and determine the XP costs of various racial powers, which is difficult since there isn't a clear baseline on them now, but I think it'd be a worthwhile enterprise.

However, I'll put out an interesting offer. If there is a thread out there with any definitive means of valuing racial abilities, I'd be happy to look it over and come up with a system for racial builds as well {Even if that means one gets started if one doesn't exist}. It's just not a task that I feel qualified to do without input from a broad spectrum of games as to what each racial ability is worth.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any such thread about that. I know there are a few sourcebooks that try to make racial abilities purchasable (such as, I think, the Race Creation Cookbook) but I'm pretty sure they don't use XP as a guideline.

Again, though, thank you very much for your words. I appreciate the praise and the honest appraisal of where supplements to the work could be useful.

I wanted to make a joke about how, thus far, it's just Incomplete Control, but I couldn't figure out a good delivery.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

I haven't picked this up yet, although it's something I'm quite interested in.

However, I'll put out an interesting offer. If there is a thread out there with any definitive means of valuing racial abilities, I'd be happy to look it over and come up with a system for racial builds as well {Even if that means one gets started if one doesn't exist}. It's just not a task that I feel qualified to do without input from a broad spectrum of games as to what each racial ability is worth.

Well, I don't know if it'll quite work for you, but I'd suggest taking a look at the work that Upper_Krust did for working out CR challenges. Post #42 here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-3rd-edition-rules/132991-thoughts-challenge-rating-system-3.html

My gut instinct? There's going to be inconsistencies. It's kind of like going, "Well an orange is kinda like a tennis ball and a tennis ball is kinda like a basketball, but smaller. So that means a basketball is kinda like an orange..."

What I mean by such a...questionable... comparison is that in the process of figuring out some sort of numbers for something, there's going to be a bit of fuzziness. It'll start out being "yeah, ok...I can see the reason for that..." to begin with. But at some point, someone is going to pop up and go, "Hey, wait a minute! You're basically saying that A is worth the same number of points as B, but as you can see from the following example, B is completely out of whack because..."

So what'll happen (I think) is that whatever system is developed will be useable. But people are going to immediately start poking at it to see where it falls apart and it _will_ fall apart in some fashion. Something that's already "official" will be more expensive or conflict, or _something_ along those lines. Because it seems pretty clear that there's a degree of "feel" to how things were designed in 3.x; meaning that it didn't play or feel right for whatever reason, and therefore was modified to better fit with the design goal.

Nice for playability, but it makes attempts to present some sort of coherent or unified system rather... irksome... at times.

I've got no idea if it'll be of any use to you, but Guardians of Order did try to do something sort of like this with BESMd20. It relies on "Character Points" though and while they do offer up a "conversion" of X CP = Y XP, it's a pretty "coarse" conversion. BESMd20 explicitly (and implicitly) has a degree of "softness" (player and or GM interpretation) in terms of how "valuable" something is; this doesn't set well with a large chunk of the gamer population.

Especially when looking at something like point costs for things.

Still, the Anime SRD might be worth looking at as well. I think UK's CR sheet is going to be better in terms of reflecting actual "value", but even there you're going to have to make some assumptions.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any such thread about that. I know there are a few sourcebooks that try to make racial abilities purchasable (such as, I think, the Race Creation Cookbook) but I'm pretty sure they don't use XP as a guideline.

I happen to have a version of the book and to be honest I was unimpressed by it.

As I recall, they don't use XP. Instead they have a sort of "point system" that's kind of coarse. I remember thinking at the time that it had some resemblances to the BESMd20 approach.

Taking UK's system and chopping up his CRs (and fractional CRs) into some sort of a basic XP cost is probably going to be "easiest". If you go the easy route, you just say that each X bit of CR is worth Y XP and do some straight up basic calculations.

After that, you tweak the cost: either to bring the new XP cost into alignment with other already existing bits of the system (for internal consistency/compatability with the Complete Control system) or based on some other criteria like "it just doesn't feel right".

Doing this though, I can almost guarantee that you'll have some sort of "what's wrong?!?!? It's not adding up right!!!" sort of thing happen at some point. In theory monsters are built to use the same rules as PC, but in the process of messing around with this sort of thing (say as an alternative to LA), you're going to probably bump up against a point cost that varies depending on how you build the character.

Plus, I seem to recall that not all the races are really "worth" the same. Warforge and dwarves for example.

I'm not raining on the idea. On the contrary, I've thought about doing this myself. I'm just pointing out that if you happen to have the impulse for everything to match up and add up neatly for _everything_, you're going to drive yourself batty.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I haven't picked this up yet, although it's something I'm quite interested in.

I hope you enjoy it when you do pick it up. And, come back and let me know what you think!

Well, I don't know if it'll quite work for you, but I'd suggest taking a look at the work that Upper_Krust did for working out CR challenges.

I appreciate the link. I'll check it out and see what it offers.

My gut instinct? There's going to be inconsistencies. It's kind of like going, "Well an orange is kinda like a tennis ball and a tennis ball is kinda like a basketball, but smaller. So that means a basketball is kinda like an orange..."

Absolutely. That is also true with CC. At some point I had to draw the line and say to myself "It replicates 3.x very well, but not prefectly." And there are places in CC that peope can work to manipulate or come up with ways to beat the system. Any game system will have those flaws.

I'm not raining on the idea. On the contrary, I've thought about doing this myself. I'm just pointing out that if you happen to have the impulse for everything to match up and add up neatly for _everything_, you're going to drive yourself batty.

Didn't think you were. I take all ideas meant for constructive criticism as such. I appreciate the input - and I know that not everything will fit 100%. Heck, it doesn't even fit 100% in the game for which it was designed! [Toughness and Improved Toughness both being the same cost as a feat choice, for example!]

Ideally, a point-buy system to replace the necessity of magic items would allow characters to continue to function in a 3.5 game. <...snipped for length...> thus making it less about what character have than about what they can do.

That can be acheived fairly quickly and easily for things like weapons and armor - and you don't need to use XP to do it. You can base it on overall character level. It's a little harder with items like potions, wands, tattoos, etc. But, I have an idea from the above comment you made. Instead of having items that are powerful because of how much money a character invests, their items are powerful based on how much of their "life force" they devote to each item. You could even have a mechanics that allows a character to alter their "life force allocation" with a simple 1 hour of meditation per item -or- 8 hours for a complete overhaul. Hmmm. This is worth doing, and I don't think it is that hard.

Just to be fair ... what I think I hear you saying is that the "treasure aspect" of the game bothers you. If characters could know that at any given character level they would have automatically have "X item influence/ability points" that they could allocate into their inventory of items - the game would be better for you. Is that a fair summary, or am I interpreting your words totally incorrectly?

That does make it trickier, but surely that same problem was there for classes when working with CC? I've heard plenty of people say that class X was more powerful than other classes of the same level.

Yes, it was. And it is a fuzzy set of lines that define power at each level. With racial abilities those fuzzy lines are more like thick smudges. But it could be done. As you say, CC does lay down those lines fairly well in terms of ability pricing and ability score improvements.

 

[Alzrius]

I happen to have a version of the book and to be honest I was unimpressed by it.

That matches what I'd heard; I just wanted to note that there was a book that did that.

That can be acheived fairly quickly and easily for things like weapons and armor - and you don't need to use XP to do it. You can base it on overall character level.

I figured it'd have to be something like that - the XP table doesn't take into account GP values, which are still necessary to function at complete efficiency. You could try to figure out a ratio to turn GP values per level into XP, and merge them with the XP values laid down in CC, but that'd throw off what's listed in CC already.

Basically, I was sort of hoping there was some way to not only create point-buy values for (a functional equivalent to) magic items (and racial abilities), but also to merge it with CC's point-buy system for class abilities. That'd make the entire thing completely open in what sort of character you can make.

It's a little harder with items like potions, wands, tattoos, etc. But, I have an idea from the above comment you made. Instead of having items that are powerful because of how much money a character invests, their items are powerful based on how much of their "life force" they devote to each item. You could even have a mechanics that allows a character to alter their "life force allocation" with a simple 1 hour of meditation per item -or- 8 hours for a complete overhaul. Hmmm. This is worth doing, and I don't think it is that hard.

That sounds like it might be the best way to go about it, though there are obviously still some specifics to work out, like how that interacts with actual magic items if they're left in the game.

Just to be fair ... what I think I hear you saying is that the "treasure aspect" of the game bothers you. If characters could know that at any given character level they would have automatically have "X item influence/ability points" that they could allocate into their inventory of items - the game would be better for you. Is that a fair summary, or am I interpreting your words totally incorrectly?

It's the necessity of gear - specifically magic items - that bothers me. As it stands now, you can make any kind of character with CC, but they're still going to need X amount of magic items, or they're not going to be able to function optimally. If they had some kind of "item influence/ability points" that probably would solve most of the problem I had, simply because magic items wouldn't be so necessary just to function anymore.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Well, to be fair ... even a system of "item influence/ability points" would still mean that items would be necessary to boost the characters to the expected norms for 3.x at any given level. However, what I could do is essentially make the power for those items come out of the character instead of being in the item. Thus, you wouldn't have the "Magic-mart" aspect of 3.x.

Here's an example. Brock, serious fighter from the desolate northern lands, has learned through his experience how to infuse a weapon he uses with frozen power and accuracy. [Mechanically, let's say it is game equivalent to Brock having a +2 frost weapon] He loves using his Masterwork Greatsword, and every time he goes into battle his sword is treated like a +2 Frost Greatsword. However, the last battle he had was with a tribe of powerful ogres and his blade was snapped. Among the ogre village remains Brock finds a Bastard Sword that he can use until he gets a different weapon. Brock sits down and meditates with the weapon for an hour, and now every time Brock uses the weapon it is considered a +2 Frost Bastard Sword.

Functionally, the game runs smooth and there is no mechanical difference. From a GM perspective, there is no more treasure issue. Players use their character level to determine how much equipment their characters can infuse and treat as "magical gear." However, when the items are no longer in the hands of the players they are treated as mundane (or even masterwork) items. Thus, the game always is in "balance" in terms of gear. And yes, balance is a term that is used fairly loosely there.

And ... I can make it work with existing magic weapons no problem. So DMs could choose the variant to which I speak, or normal D&D, or both systems simultaneously if they want. And, I think that it can be such a simple change. I'm assuming if I wrote this up (Brainstorming here ... Complete Gear? Completely Equipped?) and convinced the good folks at DSP to produce it as a Complete Control Expansion that you would buy it? [Especially if it can be done as simply as I think and it therefore would likely cost less than Complete Control]

DISCLAIMER: I am not an official representative of DSP and cannot vouch for neither production nor pricing. My statements above should not in any way be taken as a promise or anything other than simple brainstorming. In that respect, I am interested in sensing interest so that when suggesting a work to the good folks at DSP I can relay a sense of interest inspiring the work.

 

[Angellis_ater]

If NLF would be interested in such a venture, Dreamscarred Press would be very much interested in continuing our co-operation and expand the Complete series with a Complete Gear release (and in the future, a Complete Race(?) release too, should NLF want to). Our pricing of the product would depend on size (ie pages), art used and time it needed in editing/layout with us.