DrSpunj's Class Balance Spreadsheet

[azmodean]

Here's just some random thoughts I have had on the subject of reverse-engineering a point system for the classes.
1. When attempting to balance the classes, I found that the fighter bonus feats seemed to be valued at twice the cost of specific feats granted at a level. Mind you, this was in 3.0, before they gave several of the other classes pairs of options for their bonus feats.
2. I finally was able to make the spells balance with everything else when I assigned a cost per spell slot. The level of the spell did not seem to matter, except that spells acquired at a given character level would be higher spell level than those acquired at a lower character level.
3. The divine vs arcane spells gave me fits untill I discovered that divine spell slots semmed to be valued at approximately 3/4 the cost of arcane spell slots.
4. Sorcerous vs wizardly casting seemed to be valued the same, I guess the assumption is that the number of spells known balanced the flexibility of chosing spells.

This was all based on 3.0 core rules, I'd have to start over to do it with 3.5, and I'm not particularly interested in UA or most of the non-core systems.

Hope this helps someone out.

 

[Archus]

Nice Class Creation System

On a quick review I like this. I'm going to try merging it with Elements of Magic Revised instead of using the Arcana Unearthed magic system. Looks like Half magic would be +1/2 and Full Magic would be +1. Most of the partial casters in EoMR do a progression like the Average BAB progression (but 1/2 levels count) and the Full spellcasters like the Good BAB progression. So they would take Half/Then Full to get their progression.

I might even make a stab at making prestige and racial classes with this.

I'll tinker a bit over my vacation.

 

[ouini]

Replies

Heart of my question is if I give my Core fighters an extra feat per level, how will that fare against the other classes...

I didn't always, but after looking at it for all this time I do now believe DrSpunj is correct when he says one feat per level for fighters is quite fair and balanced. Really fair and balanced, not FOX fair and balanced

...are there any specific things which you guys are disliking or finding off. DM'ing it, do you find it hard to find an appropriate challenge for a party that's halfway between, say, 2nd and 3rd level? Have any of the players aimed for 'exploits' you hadn't considered, and have had to arbitrate against?

Like I said, I've played in four sessions with DrSpunj, but I've also run two sessions using my own very similar system (based mostly off DrSpunj's). To specifically answer your questions:
- If I had to point right now to the thing I least like about DrSpunj's system, I'd say the existence of "gateway feats". These are feats which don't give the character any in-play benefit, but rather act only as a prerequisite to allow the character to buy other, more advanced feats. I understand their purpose: They're supposed to discourage players from buying a wide array of unrelated feats, and encourage them to buy feats in a single feat-tree for which they've already "paid their dues". But paying points for no tangible in-game benefit still bugs me. And truly, DrSpunj has taken a good look at these instances and eliminated them where he could, so kudos to him.
- I've DM'd only two sessions using the point-based system so far, and my company hasn't spent points to improve their characters, yet. They're not rule-monkeys like most of us on the board are, so though they're eager to advance, they are hesitant about dealing with these new and strange (to them) rules.
- Although no player has tried to exploit DrSpunj's rules (noticably anyway), there are some holes that *could* very well be exploited at this point. One major one is one my character and one other "enjoys", which is that the "Martial Artist" feat is essentially three feats in one. If you play an unarmored character, "Martial Artist" gives you Improved Unarmed Strike, Zen Defense, and the Flurry of Blows feats. I disassembled this feat (and a couple other "combo" feats) into its component parts for my campaign, and it seems to be working fine so far.

I made sure to invite the other players in DrSupnj's game to speak up in this thread, though none have, yet (I don't think any are regular Enworlders). If you'd really like to see the CB system in action, I can make sure to post .mp3s of the pre- and post- gaming "administrivia" that takes place where people ask DrSpunj questions and spend their Character Points. But so far, DrSpunj's and my system(s) (which have been in the making for well over a year) is doing well.

It's been quite a bit of work off & on...

Doubtless! I developed a deep respect for the amount of thought you've put into it by going down the path

I second that. DrSpunj has done by far the brunt of the leg-work on this system, and it's because he was determined to make a fairer system that it now exists and is being beta-tested.

...I imagine a 'build a spell' construction kit which gives a 'level' cost for the many game components of a spell (casting time, duration, damage, range, area, etc)

Well what do you know. DrSpunj and I actually did complete about 90% of such a system, based loosely on the Talislanta system, a couple years ago. It was keen, and we emphasized simplicity, but I think such a drastic shift from core would be very daunting to those used to the regular AD&D spell system.

I'm thinking of running a 'let's play with the system and make sure we can all buy into it' session...

If you do, please let us know how it turns out.

...fighter bonus feats seemed to be valued at twice the cost of specific feats

Yep. I found that to be true as well, and in my system (a mild variant of DrSpunj's) fighter feats cost 4, while others cost 2.

...divine spell slots semmed to be valued at approximately 3/4 the cost of arcane spell slots...

With the AU magic system, there are no more arcane/divine spells, which is nice. There are instead simple, complex (which essentially cost more), and exotic (cost even more) spells. But all your points are well-taken and seem accurate.

...I'm going to try merging it with Elements of Magic Revised instead of using the Arcana Unearthed magic system. Looks like Half magic would be +1/2 and Full Magic would be +1...I might even make a stab at making prestige and racial classes with this.

That sounds interesting. This just demonstrates that the spreadsheets DrSpunj worked up are really useful tools, even for those who are sticking with a class-based system instead of taking the plunge into classless gaming. But as demonstrated in our system(s), we do like the idea of spellcasters choosing/getting essentially +1/2 or +1 spellcaster level each level.

 

[Amaroq]

Thanks for the observations, ouini.

The 'gestalt' I took from your post is that it sounds like one of the 'balancing acts' involved is the cost of feats and powers. Your complaint about "gateway" feats costing too much, coupled with "Martial Artist" being worth too much for the price, and the question of the price of fighter feats w.r.t. other feats; it really sounds like a fertile ground to explore is a 'point cost per feat' - I think its pretty clear from this discussion (and from the min-max discussions elsewhere) that all feats are not created equal; perhaps each could have a different price? Not that I want to be the one to go through the whole published world assigning point-values to each feat!

At the moment I'm leaning towards running something with a DM-moderated (of course) version of DrSpunj's system, plus EoM(r) for my campaign.

Thanks again, first for taking the time to work this up, second for publishing it for us all, and third for taking the time to answer questions and give your observations about how it plays!

 

[DrSpunj]

Detailed! I appreciate it! I'm looking forward to hearing more from your players, as well.

One posted in our group forum that he'd try this weekend. Another I know should now be finished with finals but hopefully will be able to post soon. Another is on vacation through this weekend. Just a busy time for everyone, I guess. I know I'M glad the week is over.

I'd love to stumble over somebody having done similar work for spell powers; I imagine a 'build a spell' construction kit which gives a 'level' cost for the many game components of a spell (casting time, duration, damage, range, area, etc)...

As ouini said, we did work on something like this working off of the Talislanta system. With that said, I have to agree with your later comments that Elements of Magic is probably a much easier fit. I *did* buy the original version and thought it was pretty slick, but I never got around to buying the revised version largely because of Monte's AU system. Every magic system is going to have its quirks, but I'm currently content taking AU out for a spin right now. I'm fairly certain those playing casters in my group (those with Basic or Advanced Magic, or both!) are also enjoying it based upon their comments to date.

Do you mind posting a link - I'd like to lurk through some of those discussions, if you don't mind; if you're leery of posting it for fear of traffic or loss of signal-to-noise ratio, no worries.

Sorry, but its a private group that we use more for the campaign story, to set up our next session, and somewhat to keep things moving a bit in between sessions since we only meet about once every 4 weeks. There are only a few of us that are real "rules heads", and mostly it comes down to ouini and I countering each other's points with an odd comment from Videssian periodically. The others either don't care about such trivial points or are intimidated by our dialogue!

I was quite happy to see your TrueCore.zip, since I'm not using AU; that makes your body of work feel more relevant. I'd been trying to duplicate it myself (including d4 and 2 skill points) but as you pointed out its a ton of work! (Actual CP's wasn't bad, since I could drop the '10' option, so the calculations were still all correct.

I'm glad I could help. At the very beginning of this thread I tried to be up front about the fact that I was designing this originally for my new campaign, so I didn't come at it from the viewpoint of "let's start with just Core" since I already had certain things in mind I was changing (namely lowest HD is d6 and lowest SPs is 4/lvl). In hindsight, given what it's become and how potentially useful I think it could be for many of the things you and others have already mentioned, I wish I had taken the time to make a larger number of value columns at the top for a wider variety of options. If I ever redo it I certainly will, but by then I hope I know how to put in "cell menus" in Excel so you can just use pulldowns rather than making sure you've typed the text into a cell exactly as is it up above in the value boxes so the lookup functions work properly. Unfortunately I'm no Excel wizard. If you know how to do that I'd LOVE to have a sample spreadsheet with a simple little cell menu and a little explanation to go with it teaching me how to do it.

I'd also been thinking through the weighting for the 'specials', because I'm not sure, for example, that 'Weapon Focus' and 'Weapon Specialization' balance out the same as other 'Combat' feats and class abilities. For example, Focus gives +1 to hit in (nearly) every combat, while a Ranger's +1 from 'Favored Enemy' is only appropriate in some situations. Likewise, 'per day' combat abilities, such as a Paladin's Smite or a Barbarian's Rage don't have the immense re-usability value that the fighter's feats do. So I was thinking about expanding that section beyond none/general/combat to something more like none/once/general/semi/combat/free; the assumption that the fighter is a full feat-every-two-levels underbalanced sounded a bit strong to me.

Well, I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but you can get a pretty good feel for some of that just by looking at everything else...IF you like the values you're working with. By that I mean if we use my original values, then it's pretty easy to compare the 1st level of Fighter & Ranger and see how those feats (assuming Fighter gets Weapon Focus with his Bonus Feat) compare.

A Fighter gets a d10 (2 CPs), +1 BAB (4 CPs), 2 SPs/lvl (0 CPs), +2 Fort (+1 Free, +1 for 1 CP) and a Bonus Feat. Both Fighters and Rangers get all Martial Weapons so we don't have to worry about that, but Fighters also get proficiency with Medium and Heavy Armors over Rangers, so that's another 2 CPs. So that's a total of 9 CPs plus a Bonus Feat for the Fighter.

A Ranger gets a d8 (1 CP), +1 BAB (4 CPs), 6 SPs/lvl (2 CPs), +2 Fort & +2 Refl (+1 Free, +3 for 3 CPs), Favored Enemy, Track & Wild Empathy. So that's 10 CPs plus Favored Enemy, Track & Wild Empathy for the Ranger.

So feel good that the Core Designers felt a Bonus Feat that you get to choose from the Fighter Bonus Feat list is equal to 1 CP plus Favored Enemy, Track & Wild Empathy. In that respect you could certainly conclude that something like Weapon Focus (or most any other feat on the Fighter's list) should be valued higher than many of the other class abilities. I think, however, most of the value difference inherent in the Bonus Feat is more related to the fact that you get to choose which feat you want rather than the power of the relative feats.

And there are certainly an infinite number of ways to divide the feats up, so go with whatever makes sense to you and those players in your group. ouini's using something similar but distinctly different and it seems to be working well for him (btw, ouini, how the hell did you makes Monks & Martial Arts work, anyway?). And don't go reinventing the wheel unless you really feel like it; if you haven't seen it yet check out what Sean K. Reynold's did here. He went through and "rated" all of the Core feats on a 10 point value scale. I personally think you don't need that much granularity, and I didn't agree with many of his values, but he's essentially doing what we've been doing here in another way.

I did change 'average points' to not include first-level points, thus getting a different score for average per level, which I found a little more instructive.

Ooo! That's good! I've added that to my list of improvements if I ever go back and redo/revise the whole spreadsheet.

I'm thinking of running a 'let's play with the system and make sure we can all buy into it' session...Gives the players a chance to learn the system and make mistakes without being committed to them for the campaign, and gives me a chance to see what it looks like without being committed to a new system.

Please post any feedback you or your players have if you think it will help us address any problems with the system.

Do you use the point costs straight off the DrSpunj's Balance sheet for charging characters as they build?

I honestly don't remember if I included this in the big zipped System download or not, but I created this CP Worksheet so that each player could print it out and use it to design their PCs. I'm currently requiring them to update an "official" copy and upload it to our Yahoo group so that I know what abilities they're purchasing. With the dynamic leveling they're getting a few CPs each session so I pretty much had to require them to keep me somehow updated on what their PCs are truly capable of doing as there is ALWAYS something new for each PC. There was just no way for me to stay on top of it all without asking for their help.

I've attached the CP Worksheet here.

Thanks.

DrSpunj

 

[DrSpunj]

On a quick review I like this. I'm going to try merging it with Elements of Magic Revised instead of using the Arcana Unearthed magic system. I'll tinker a bit over my vacation.

Glad it's worth some of your time, and please share your thoughts if you get a chance to really tinker with it.

Now that Amaroq and you have both mentioned EoMr I probably should purchase and take a look at the revised version and see what they've done with it. I certainly wouldn't do anything with it for my current campaign as we're just really starting to feel comfortable with AU magic, but there are a lot of similarities between building your PC's abilities with this system and building the specifics of your spell with the EoM system. Hmmm....

And azmodean, I do appreciate your comments. We came to many of the same conclusions when ouini and I were working on our Talislanta-like magic system a couple years back, and during our time working on this system more recently.

Thanks.

DrSpunj

 

[Archus]

Glad it's worth some of your time, and please share your thoughts if you get a chance to really tinker with it.

Here is the beginning of my tinkering:
http://www.arcanearcade.com/wiki/index.php/D20ClassConstruction/D20ClassConstruction

All in an effort to avoid studying for a graduate level finance exam tomorrow

I was trying to rework things so you got 10 or 20 points per level so you could divide up the xp given per level cleanly. I still need to tinker with base race creation and racial level ability costs but so far I'm liking what I see.

I decided to boil the BAB, Magic Level, etc progressions down to just a number that you total and round appropriately. Hopefully it makes sense, I really should study or sleep.

EoMR is great and fits with this system perfectly. I liked AU magic as well until I read EoMR. AU is nice, but a spell creation system is better IMHO.

--Archus

 

[Zoatebix]

Let me throw out another recommendation for EoM(r). I do love the magic from AU, but the spell-point/spell creation system Ryan Nock put together is exactly what I need for my home-brew sci-fantasy crazy game.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Hi there! I just discovered this system, and already I'm planning to inflict it upon my players next time we start a campaign. For now, I have two questions:

1. I notice that the druid ability, A Thousand Faces, is listed as an expansion feat in the Cheat Sheet, but is listed as a general feat in the spreadsheet, which seems to throw off the numbers for building the DrSpunj druid. Which should I read in error, or am I missing something?

2. In the CP Worksheet, the free bonus feats at every 3rd level are the ones that every character normally gets, and aren't part of the builder system, right? I don't see any reference to them anywhere else, so I assume that's the case.

 

[DrSpunj]

Hi there! I just discovered this system, and already I'm planning to inflict it upon my players next time we start a campaign.

Glad to have you aboard, Doctor.

Please come back with any feedback you (and your players) have that might help us improve things!

1. I notice that the druid ability, A Thousand Faces, is listed as an expansion feat in the Cheat Sheet, but is listed as a general feat in the spreadsheet, which seems to throw off the numbers for building the DrSpunj druid. Which should I read in error, or am I missing something?

Nope, you're not missing a thing; totally my error. Thanks for pointing it out. I remember having trouble with how to classify A Thousand Faces when I was putting just the spreadsheet together, and labeled it a General feat at the time because it has no real direct combat benefits (unless you change size or something). True, since it references the spell Alter Self you can use it to give yourself a new movement capability, but at level 13 I feel this is far more a convenience than anything else. YMMV.

Regardless, once I realized I could consoildate that ability into the Wild Shape - Type feat (along with Plants, Vermin, etc.) it became an Expansion feat and should therefore cost 4 CPs. By changing that at level 13, you do end up at -1 CP at Level 15. The only way I could see to fix that relatively easily was to do the following:

At Level 12 change the "Free" for +1 Fort save to "None", and change the "One" for +1 Will save to "Free". This keeps the Balance thereafter at >= 0 but leaves you with 1 less Fort save, so buy that back at Level 16 by changing "None" for Fort save to "One".

Now, this does fix the CPs correctly, but throws off the Save calculations at the far left. The formula in Cell D191 should be changed from "+6" at the end to "+5" (since there's now one less Free Fort save to account for), while the formula in Cell D195 should be changed from "+8" at the end to "+9" (since there's now one more Free Will save to account for).

Hope that makes sense. I'll include errors like this in my next update which hopefully I'll be able to do over the holidays here at some point (though it won't be a major revision by any means).

And also realize that the Drspunj's Core is simply my own worksheet I used to come up with the values I think work well while trying to stick as close to Core as I wanted to be. It's NOT meant to be the only way to build a Core-like Druid using the system, but it is certainly an example of one way. If you or your player would rather rearrange things here and there, taking some abilities early and pushing others off until later, well, that's the whole point!

2. In the CP Worksheet, the free bonus feats at every 3rd level are the ones that every character normally gets, and aren't part of the builder system, right? I don't see any reference to them anywhere else, so I assume that's the case.

Absolutely. I didn't change anything about the free feats at 1st, 3rd, 6th, etc. nor did I change anything about Ability Score increases at every 4th level. I honestly *did* think about including both of those things at one time or another, but it made things a bit too flexible for me. By that I mean at 6th level you already get a free +1 BAB (worth effectively 4 CPs) and a free +1 Defense (worth effectively 2 CPs), so you have a lot of CPs at that level to save or spend on other things. If I gave you another 5 CPs to reflect the Bonus Feat that every character is supposed to get at 6th level, well, it just seemed a bit too much.

Now, I also looked at adding up all of those extra feats and spreading things out, which looked a bit better. You get 7 Bonus Feats total (1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th & 18th) which would be 35 CPs extra. You could round that up to 40 CPs and hand them out 2 CPs extra per level, or leave the total at 35 and give out 2 at most levels, but only 1 extra every 4 levels (when you got your Ability Bonus, which evens things out a bit kind of nicely, IMO). Or whatever.

I didn't end up doing anything like that because I was changing a lot as it was already and, to be quite frank, this is meant to be a Feat driven system to me and I liked keeping them as extra feats.

Again, YMMV.

Thanks.

DrSpunj