RE: Eskero: The pen and paper RPG system
03-17-2013, 01:47 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-17-2013, 02:53 AM by Not The Author.)
On Stats and their Potential Application to the Modification of Dice Pools:
One of the simpler ways to make classes play differently from one another would be to tie their base stats (hereon out referred to as Vitals because why the hell not) directly with the way dice and dice pools work.
Things modified could include: Maximum and minimum die value, dice pool size, number of dice usable at once, number of times actions involving the rolling of dice may be taken, die replenishment rate, die consumption rate, and situations to which any of the previous might apply differently.
My current conception is something like:
Power, as the Vital through which Aspects grow stronger, affects the value of the individual dice in their pool.
Mind, as the Vital through which Aspects focus their abilities, affects how many die they may roll at a time.
Soul, as the Vital through which Aspects become more connected, affects how large their dice pool may be.
Body, as the Vital through which Aspects maintain themselves, affects how quickly their dice pool replenishes.
Grace, as the Vital through which Aspects become more flexible, affects how many actions they make take in a given round.
As an example of how this might work, let's look at Alchemists. As Alchemists tend to be thoughtful and logical (the wizard-analogue class, natch), they would ostensibly start with a high Mind stat. Being able to expend a large number of dice at a single time would make their abilities significantly more powerful than any other class', making them a nuker-archetype. There are quite a few downsides to throwing all your dice away at once, though: you may find yourself so exhausted as to limit movement or your ability to defend yourself. You may take a while to recover, as well. And gods help you if you roll low! ...Though I suppose at that point they're specifically already not helping. whoops???
Point being, all those downsides can be mitigated by the other Vitals. Soul gives you more ammo, Body cuts down on recovery time, and Dexterity gives you the opportunity to gtfo if your nuke misses.
I'm not entirely happy with the way Power and Mind fill similar roles in the above, but they still act differently: Mind potentially increases single-shot damage by huge amounts, but has a much higher penalties for rolling low: namely, that you don't have nearly as many die to do other things with. Power is better for classes that want to deal more consistent damage in smaller-but-more-frequent quantities, and though it may not give as-large bonuses to maximum damage, it could give better minimum damage to less risky maneuvers.
My next post (to followshortly soon, hopefully) will talk more about hard numbers, what I imagine myself to be talking about when I say "dice pool," and how all that relates to Power as an average of values.
One of the simpler ways to make classes play differently from one another would be to tie their base stats (hereon out referred to as Vitals because why the hell not) directly with the way dice and dice pools work.
Things modified could include: Maximum and minimum die value, dice pool size, number of dice usable at once, number of times actions involving the rolling of dice may be taken, die replenishment rate, die consumption rate, and situations to which any of the previous might apply differently.
My current conception is something like:
Power, as the Vital through which Aspects grow stronger, affects the value of the individual dice in their pool.
Mind, as the Vital through which Aspects focus their abilities, affects how many die they may roll at a time.
Soul, as the Vital through which Aspects become more connected, affects how large their dice pool may be.
Body, as the Vital through which Aspects maintain themselves, affects how quickly their dice pool replenishes.
Grace, as the Vital through which Aspects become more flexible, affects how many actions they make take in a given round.
As an example of how this might work, let's look at Alchemists. As Alchemists tend to be thoughtful and logical (the wizard-analogue class, natch), they would ostensibly start with a high Mind stat. Being able to expend a large number of dice at a single time would make their abilities significantly more powerful than any other class', making them a nuker-archetype. There are quite a few downsides to throwing all your dice away at once, though: you may find yourself so exhausted as to limit movement or your ability to defend yourself. You may take a while to recover, as well. And gods help you if you roll low! ...Though I suppose at that point they're specifically already not helping. whoops???
Point being, all those downsides can be mitigated by the other Vitals. Soul gives you more ammo, Body cuts down on recovery time, and Dexterity gives you the opportunity to gtfo if your nuke misses.
I'm not entirely happy with the way Power and Mind fill similar roles in the above, but they still act differently: Mind potentially increases single-shot damage by huge amounts, but has a much higher penalties for rolling low: namely, that you don't have nearly as many die to do other things with. Power is better for classes that want to deal more consistent damage in smaller-but-more-frequent quantities, and though it may not give as-large bonuses to maximum damage, it could give better minimum damage to less risky maneuvers.
My next post (to follow