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Semi-simple RPG design

   
Semi-simple RPG design

I've been working on and off for a while on making my own RPG, and wanted to get a little feedback from the community on how I'm doing so far. The fundamental unique mechanic (or at least different from what I've played before) is that instead of having an 'attack' roll and a 'damage' roll, each attack, spell, or applicable skill has a precision and a power component. So the six primary attributes are Str, Dex, Con, Int, Will, and Spirit. Power is based on Str or Int, precision on Dex or Will, and the character's health and defense comes from Con and Spirit. There are three class options, essentially no magic, all magic, and hybrid choices, and three race options (though I am playing with the idea of having variations of each race, possibly as options within an advanced set of rules). There are three elements that make up spells and other forms of magic: Spirit, Matter, and Death. Any spellcaster will have a certain number of espers of each of these elements which are used to power spells and magical effects. (The exact nature of espers to be determined).

Coming back to the attributes. What a character can do is almost exclusively determined by his or her attributes, with the classes, races, and feats providing starting points and customizing tweaks. Whenever a character levels up, he or she gets to increase one stat and get one feat connected with that stat. So the individual feats give smaller bonuses (such as +1 when rolling for a sprint), but are acquired often. My hope is that this method will allow players a good level of customization without having complex class features or the equally complicated nature of build-your-own ability style games. (I'm thinking of GURPS here, though I personally love the complexity of it xD )

So what I'm mainly wondering is what kind of traits or characteristics might be good to give the races so that they are distinct and unique without being excessively complicated or just "this is the race you use for this class." Also, what do you guys think of the way I'm thinking of doing feats? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Give races their own racial powers or skills that are useful all throughout the game, no matter what level you are. This is what elder scrolls does, and I think it works pretty well.

If you don't want the races to lean towards specific roles or classes or future abilities, don't give them stat bonuses. Instead you can mostly define races by cultures or mentalities or what have you, which can be conveyed through unique racial abilities.

Ie. Dwarves might have stone cunning, but this won't give them an inherent benefit towards leaning in any particular build direction. Orcs might have rage, but this won't cause them to lean towards anything particular. Even though rage would help a warrior, it might also make a good panic button for a wizard.
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Your idea about abilities only associating with stats is something that appeared in my brain at one point, but I never wrote anything about it. I'd like to see how you follow through with it.

I think some abilities should follow a certain path though. Ie. Maybe a wizard needs to study necromancy if he wants to learn better necromantic spells.

The idea of ability trees can be pretty cool if you treat them like ability webs (branching paths, some of which twist around in a circle or present longer or shorter paths to other abilities), which could create a lot of customization. This was done by Path of Exile, but it would probably take a lot of work.

Path of Exile still has classes, but you could take each web as a seperate thing branching off from the stats you listed.

This may not be help per se, but it may get you inspired. I started working on a variant of D&D v3.5 where there are no classes. Instead you choose an ability at every level and that ability grants you the bonuses associated with a level up of one particular class or some combination of skill points. For example, taking Power Attack would also give you +1 base attack and +1 Fortitude. Sneak Attack would give you +1 Reflex and +3 Hide & Move Silently. There were no restrictions on what ability you could take, except for a level requirement for higher levels of magic. Never finished it though.

I don't have a lot of comments on your system, because frankly I think the idea isn't fully represented within the confines of a single post, but if you had a comprehensive rule set posted I'd be interested in giving it a look over.

For racial abilities I'd focus on giving them something useful, not necessarily combat competitive (although I like the idea of the orc wizard running out of magic missiles and then going into a rage). My guess is that your three races are probably going to be elf, human and Canadian, unless you'd rather have a dwarf or something. If it were my game I'd give the elf the ability to move, jump and climb like they had a natural 20 on move silently. Give the dwarf darkvision. Give the human something as yet to be determined...

Bonus feats are fine for humans, because it doesn't force them in any particular direction. Yeah, something like darkvision or shadowmeld or move silent auto-sucess for a brief period once per day - all of those don't necessarily force you in a given build direction (except, arguably, shadowmeld).

Going Back: Making abilities dependent on stats is actually still somewhat restrictive for me. If I were doing it, I'd give people only physical stats - the physical stats would only matter for certain things like encumbrance, and their use in combat. So basically, that'd be toughness, dexterity and strength or something. Abilities could enhance physical stats, or you could probably upgrade the physicals at character creation, because plenty of people like to start strong.

All of the mental stuff could be covered by what skills you have, which frees you up to roleplay whatever you want - the idiot savant, the dumb brute, the jack of all trades with a little in every skill, the tony stark, etc.

Skills would be the prerequisite for abilities rather than stats themselves, which makes more sense to me. Ie. One handed weapons give you sword abilities, rather than sword abilities relying purely on dexterity. Master swordsmen can still be poor at acrobatics.

Some abilities or skills would give you resource pools, such as spirit or vancian magic slots. Other abilities are passive, and if you want to get crazy, you can have them cheapen further abilities or skills.

Customizing a game would not so much be about deciding which books to ban or which classes to nerf, but (a little more simply) which skills to allow.

Just 20 skills could lead to up to 300 abilities, and since each ability could be tied to its skill without any confusing cross-over (aside from the abilities that cheapen abilities and skills - which could be tracked seperately as 'cheapeners'), it's much easier to write it into a reference.

Quote:
For racial abilities I'd focus on giving them something useful, not necessarily combat competitive (although I like the idea of the orc wizard running out of magic missiles and then going into a rage).
Creating new races could just be a matter of customizing what racial abilities can do (our orcs are different). Sure, maybe you could take a stab at more advanced races that fly and climb and swim and have breath weapons, but...





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