Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Morrus" data-source="post: 6475256" data-attributes="member: 1">Optimization isn't a bad thing per se.&nbsp; If that's how your players enjoy playing, that's how they enjoy playing.&nbsp; Any non-class based system can be heavily optimized absent system-enforced limits to stop you doing it.&nbsp; Actually, there's an interesting thread on these boards about that very concept.The main pushback to optimization like that isn't so much system based - though the system can help - but adventure based. Players will tend to design towards what they think is useful in the game.&nbsp; What might be useful is a sample adventure where a broader range of abilities is clearly shown to be &quot;optimal&quot; and over-specialization is shown to be less so.In part swinginess mitigates this in systems, in that despite the difference in dice pool sizes, there's always a chance of a bad roll or a good roll overwhelming it.I think the massive amounts of XP are probably skewing your playtesting, unfortunately, which makes it hard to evaluate - after all, if you give D&amp;D characters 10,000 XP every session, they're going to be rocketing up, too.&nbsp; I know you've already started your campaign, but if you do get chance to try it as written, that would be cool.&nbsp; One major issue is that the XP system and advancement is the least playtested aspect of the game, especially when folks houserule it out rather than testing it. The XP numbers are likely some way off - if I got 'em right first time, I'd be amazed! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Some of this stuff is easily tweakable without altering the system; there are a number of tweakable factors built-in.&nbsp; For example, the starting number of career grades is arbitrary and - currently - produced fully-formed heroes rather than beginning adventurers.&nbsp; That was deliberate because I wanted the playtesting to occur for now in that mid-range, but the final game will have a choice of campaign models; this is the &quot;heroic&quot; model.&nbsp; Some models have characters starting with just one career, and as you can imagine, they are far less competent.A d6 is worth 3.5 points; it's a less granular scale than D&amp;D, for sure, and deliberately more swingy and unpredictable.&nbsp; Things can be dangerous even when you're experienced.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Morrus, post: 6475256, member: 1"] Optimization isn't a bad thing per se. If that's how your players enjoy playing, that's how they enjoy playing. Any non-class based system can be heavily optimized absent system-enforced limits to stop you doing it. Actually, there's an interesting thread on these boards about that very concept. The main pushback to optimization like that isn't so much system based - though the system can help - but adventure based. Players will tend to design towards what they think is useful in the game. What might be useful is a sample adventure where a broader range of abilities is clearly shown to be "optimal" and over-specialization is shown to be less so. In part swinginess mitigates this in systems, in that despite the difference in dice pool sizes, there's always a chance of a bad roll or a good roll overwhelming it. I think the massive amounts of XP are probably skewing your playtesting, unfortunately, which makes it hard to evaluate - after all, if you give D&D characters 10,000 XP every session, they're going to be rocketing up, too. I know you've already started your campaign, but if you do get chance to try it as written, that would be cool. One major issue is that the XP system and advancement is the least playtested aspect of the game, especially when folks houserule it out rather than testing it. The XP numbers are likely some way off - if I got 'em right first time, I'd be amazed! :) Some of this stuff is easily tweakable without altering the system; there are a number of tweakable factors built-in. For example, the starting number of career grades is arbitrary and - currently - produced fully-formed heroes rather than beginning adventurers. That was deliberate because I wanted the playtesting to occur for now in that mid-range, but the final game will have a choice of campaign models; this is the "heroic" model. Some models have characters starting with just one career, and as you can imagine, they are far less competent. A d6 is worth 3.5 points; it's a less granular scale than D&D, for sure, and deliberately more swingy and unpredictable. Things can be dangerous even when you're experienced. [/QUOTE]

Verification