Help Me With A Math Problem

[bolen]

Heh... I got my degree in Physics at UC Irvine... so naturally, I work in the business insurance industry.

(Hey, it pays the bills and feeds my kids).

--The Sigil

we just had Greg Benford (I saw he was coming to a sci-fi convention so I got him to come here) come for a colloquium this year. He is my favorite author. Did you have him for anything? He seems like a great E&M teacher. UC Irvine seems like a good school.

I am doing the temporary position dance so I know why you left for industry.

 

[osarusan]

Okay, here's the conversion I've got. It's a little rough... but it more or less correllates. Thanks everyone for the help with that equation.

Spellcaster Level:
Use same rules as Buy the Numbers; directly convertable.

Lists:
List Number - Cost in XP
1 - 10
2 - 20
3 - 30
4 - 40
5 - 60
6 - 80
7 - 100
8 - 125
9 - 150
10 - 185
11 - 250
12 - 315
13 - 405
14 - 495
15 - 585
16 - 675
17 - 765
18 - 855
19 - 945
20 - 1060
21 - 1180
22 - 1310
23 - 1450
24 - 1600
25 - 1725
26 - 1875
27 - 2000
28 - 2175
29 - 2325
30 - 2550
31 - 2750
32 - 2900
33 - 3100
34 - 3300
35 - 3500
36 - 3725
37 - 3950
38 - 4150
39 - 4375
40 - 4600
41 - 4875
42 - 5125
43 - 5400
44 - 5700
45 - 6000

Mana Points:
Total # of MP - Cost of Each MP
5 - 8
10 - 16
15 - 24
25 - 32
35 - 40
45 - 48
60 - 56
75 - 64
90 - 72
110 - 80
130 - 88
150 - 96
176 - 104
200 - 112
225 - 120
255 - 128
285 - 136
310 - 144
345 - 152
380 - 160

There you go! Now you can use Buy the Numbers with Elements of Magic!

Note: after 2 nights of playtesting, I have to say it's pretty important to impose a few limits onto Buy The Numbers: Cap your characters' BABs, Caster Levels, and hit dice to match the amount of XP they've earned. This gives players all the flexibility they could want without causing encounters to get unbalanced.

So far my players are really enjoying this hybrid system.



Update:
After a few weeks of playtesting, here are some house rules I've added to keep game balance (otherwise the effective party level because very unbalanced and it gets hard to adjudicate encounter difficulties).

1. You can't purchase more hit dice than your effective character level (XP total compared to the standard D&D levels).
2. You can't purchase a higher base attack bonus than your effective level.
3. You can't purchase a higher caster level than your effective level.
4. You can't purchase more ranks in skill than your effective level +3.
--and relative to this system:--
5. You can't purchase more magic points than (number of lists known)*(spellcaster level).

 

[DonTadow]

I'm taking a reverse direction as you, I am going to use the buy the numbers system but I already use elements of magic.

I'm wondering how the system has so far worked for you?

There is another system posted on the wiki, but it is much earlier than your posts. what didn't you like about the other system? Which is more accurate ?

 

[Psionicist]

Problem is already solved, but the most exact solution Maple could find for the data in the first post is a 19:th-degree polynomial involving mostly rationals. Not something you want to use on a calculator.

 

[The Sigil]

we just had Greg Benford (I saw he was coming to a sci-fi convention so I got him to come here) come for a colloquium this year. He is my favorite author. Did you have him for anything? He seems like a great E&M teacher. UC Irvine seems like a good school.

I am doing the temporary position dance so I know why you left for industry.

IIRC (it's been a few years), I did have Benford - I think it was in my senior year and was High-Energy Plasma Physics (which has a pretty healthy dose of E&M in it).

Okay, here's the conversion I've got. It's a little rough... but it more or less correllates. Thanks everyone for the help with that equation.
(snip)
Note: after 2 nights of playtesting, I have to say it's pretty important to impose a few limits onto Buy The Numbers: Cap your characters' BABs, Caster Levels, and hit dice to match the amount of XP they've earned. This gives players all the flexibility they could want without causing encounters to get unbalanced.

I myself prefer to put the cap at about 3 more than you did (I like the idea of a 5th-level character who has devoted his entire life to swordsmanship and has awful saves but a +8 BAB - think Inigo Montoya - "all my life, I studied swordplay"). But yes, unless you have players you know aren't going to try to powergame, caps are important (I hope I stressed that enough in the book itself).

And yes, I have this thread bookmarked.
--The Sigil

 

[MarauderX]

In a slight tangent to this, has anyone put together a Buy the Numbers PC spreadsheet? It would be great to have the complexity of a regular excel PC sheet plus be able to follow XP expenditures on a per-session basis; anyone done this yet? Or should I start working on it?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You need to solve a calculus problem to help you convert one magic system to another? UGH!

CUT & PASTE something from one of the generic systems, like GURPS, HERO, or Mutants & Masterminds...it will be faster and your brain won't hurt!

 

[MPA]

That would be a very high degree function. I don't think any person could calculate it.

 

[DonTadow]

Problem is already solved, but the most exact solution Maple could find for the data in the first post is a 19:th-degree polynomial involving mostly rationals. Not something you want to use on a calculator.

LOL, I think my first post was misunderstood.

I just wanted to know which conversion on the wiki site I should use. I"m in no way a math guru, but I see two different conversions and want to know which one is more accurate and why the author of the second conversion made the second conversion. (What was wrong with the first).