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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 5540653" data-attributes="member: 43283">I have some experience in running a BESMd20-derived game; I've pimped the game before (Everstone) as a solid enough game, despite being a bit "rough" in some places.It really depends on what you're after though, as to how much if any help or suggestions I could give.To be perfectly honest, BESMd20 really didn't have any time in the sun. They put out a few products and had things like Slayers d20, but as far as the d20 gaming community in general was concerned? BESMd20 was either ignored/unknown or bashed.Part of the problem it had was criticising the balance of the d20 system to begin with. If you're going to cast stones like that, you kinda need to be above them being slung back at you.The other part of the problem is the nature of the point system itself.BESM comes from a philosophy of "if [some attribute] is more valuable in your campaign, the GM can/should increase its cost." Basically, BESM as a whole relies more on a "relative" value (how valuable an attribute is in comparison to other things) as opposed to an "absolute" value (a feat is worth .2 CR).People approach point-based systems with an expectation of absolute value; no value judgement is being made on this, it's just the way gamers tend to be. d20 itself is also concerned with "balance" of various elements, which means that the potential audience is already primed to be analyzing a system in terms of its balance.This makes for a couple of strong hits against BESMd20, with its more relative-based points system combining with an unclear math basis for d20 in general. BESMd20 further complicated things for themselves by switching things to skill-based combat; while it might be a selling point for some people, it's not leveraging the strengths of d20 as a system.Overall, I find the system to be a solid and workable base but default BESMd20 isn't a system I'd run. It's got a lot of the usual stuff I don't like about d20 with additional complications by changing things to be skill-based but using d20's skill-setup which is less than ideal in my opinion.I guess the ultimate expression of the weakness of BESMd20 is in looking at the BESMd20 Monstrous Manual. It basically takes a bunch of the SRD critters and then shows what they're like point-wise using BESMd20's system. That in and of itself isn't bad, it's actually pretty groovy.The problem is the logical and natural leap of "[x] number of points is equal to [y] CR."The CR system of d20 is already slightly contentuous, with many on the internet saying it's completely worthless and showing how they can break the system. The fact that the SRD critters that everyone relies on for their monster books aren' correct (see Cooper's Corrected Creatures for a product that actually tries to make them all correct), as well as the fact that there hasn't been an official CR system (other than Upper_Krust's attempt to codify it) makes for a somewhat shaky foundation to begin with. When you combine the slightly foggy CR system with the more relative nature of BESMd20's point system, you can easily wind up breaking things.It's not an insurmountable difficult, it's just something that needs to be explicitly recognised by a GM or designer looking to use the BESMd20 system and then addressed explicitly in some fashion.A somewhat related tangent: the BESMd20 bears a number of similiarities to M&M at least 1st Ed M&M. Steve Kenson is credited with working on SASd20, but really in his own words he worked on the bit in SASd20 that was talking about the age of comics. SASd20 initially had some positive looking bits, but M&M came out and blew it out of the water.BESMd20 is based in a large part off the SASd20 rules. The interesting thing is that M&M has never really caught the flack for "balance" that BESMd20 did. There's a number of potential reasons as to why that is, but it's simply worth keeping in the back of your mind when you hear criticism about BESMd20.As I see it, there's a few different ways of addressing the potential problems of BESMd20's point system. The simplest is to explicitly call out in the text what the "base assumptions" of the system is and explicitly acknowledge that A) a point-based system can be abused, and B) the purpose of the point-based system isn't to enforce "balance" but rather try to ensure that class/power choices are roughly aligned with each other.Afterall, lots of d20 proponents immediately jump on the "classes are balanced relative to each other" sort of bandwagon; it shouldn't be too hard to convey the fact that the point system used is an extension of that.Another potential solution is to simply rework the points cost themselves. BESMd20 kinda made their lifes more difficult by trying to limit the number of points etc when they did the point breakdown for classes. I think this particular blinder might have pulled them up short in trying to cost things, because they bought into the idea that classes were all roughly equal and it was only stuff like magic that was really unbalancing things.Hopefully something I've what I've said is of some use. I've spoken pretty broadly because BESMd20 in general suffers from the usual flaws of the d20 system; how you want to deal with _those_ is going to potentially have a fair impact on how BESMd20 in general works for you in the first place.And remember what I said about the similarities between it and M&M. M&M does have some tighter design I think; this means that you can take a look at some of the problems and solutions faced by M&M folks and back-port them to BESMd20. 1st Ed M&M is of the same era as BESMd20/SASd20, so problems/solutions are most likely going to be found there. Some of the design solutions for 2nd Ed M&M might be applicable, I don't know. 1st Ed M&M was criticised for being "too similar" to the original d20 system and that was something they explicitly moved to change. Frankly, I think that staying closer to "baseline" d20 and incorporating fixes/changes/additions from there is a better approach; you're better able to leverage player/GM system mastery, as well as being able to tap into more relevant advice regarding problems/solutions in the d20 system.</blockquote>

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