'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

[nemedeus]

I'll come out in favour of removing/merging Social and Acumen here. It's something i have considered myself in the past.
In a way, the intelligence as in learning ability of a character expresses itself in a high Skill Priority Tier.

That said, i'm actually not too fond of attributes determining a skill's starting value.

Personally, i think i prefer 33's suggestion of a "check modifier" equal to [Attribute minus 2], as in, -1/0/+1/+2/+3.
It's a ugly, but it's the numbers i feel most comfortable with in the end (assuming Attribute Range 1 - 5 and Skill Range 1 - 7; for some reason, i'm not fond of 1 - 10, neither for attributes nor skills).

Another thing i had considered in the past was, a complete decoupling attributes and skills, as in, attributes describing general and combat performance only, while skills describing... professional performance, etc.

I guess it's been decided already at this point, so...

[Benedict]

It's clear I'm an advocate of the X+Y model for reasons EinBein already illustrated. I'm not saying that I won't try the new rules when they emerge, however this direction was both unforeseen and undesirable.

Thankfully I cornered some of my players and did some serious brainstorming.

This is our collective home-brew trying to tackle some of the beasts Agamemnon illustrated.

Skills being maxed at character creation
Skills getting trumped by high Attributes.
In retrospect I'd like to kill my earlier Expertise tweak suggestion. While on paper the idea has merit, after testing, I realized that it bogs things down considerably.

We added maximum ranks per Priority for Attributes and Skills like Proficiencies.

Priorities
Attribute
Tier 5: Max 6, 2 Favored
Tier 4: Max 5, 1 Favored
Tier 3: Max 4
Tier 2: Max 4
Tier 1: Max 3

Skill
Tier 5: Max 6, 4 starting Expertises, 4 Favored
Tier 4: Max 5, 3 starting Expertises, 2 Favored
Tier 3: Max 4, 2 starting Expertises, 1 Favored
Tier 2: Max 4, 1 starting Expertise
TIER 1: Max 3

Max = Maximum possible rank achieved at character creation. Cap through advancement is 5, and also see below "Favored".
Starting Expertises = These you get for free. Only Skills at Rank 3+ can have Expertise. Starting Expertises are free. Expertise doesn't give +1 Die, instead it gives Advantage.
Favored = only Favored Attributes/Skills can reach a Rank of 6.

We also changed the way Skill rolls are resolved.

Untrained
Untrained Skill vs Unopposed Objective: Roll relevant Attribute at Ob+2 and Disadvantage.
Untrained vs Trained Opposed Objective: Untrained is at Disadvantage. Trained gets 2 automatic successes*.
*2 extra successes might sound an overkill, its mainly there for keeping in line with +2Ob unopposed check. So far it works, but considering to change 2 auto to 1 auto.

Tools
If it needs a tool...
And you don't have one: -1 Die.
And you have one: No mechanical effect.
And you have high quality tool: +1 Die.

If it doesn't need a tool...
And you don't have one: No mechanical effect.
And you have a tool that applies: +1 Die.
And you have a high quality tool that applies: +2 Dice.

No die pool can be reduced below 1 die that way.

Dump Attributes
Acumen & Social
Social isn't used in any way apart from Skills and that sucks. Also Acumen is not that desirable.

The first thing was to kill the Manipulate skill and get three Social derived functions in its place:

Manipulation (SC+CU): Your ability to force others socialy (ie intimidate someone).
Empathy (SC+AC): Your ability to perceive social pitfalls (ie see through a lie).
Composure (SC+WP): Your ability to resist social forcing on you (ie someone interrogating you).

Some skills are altered a bit (ie Command is used to force yourself around, Intrigue is used for lying, etc) and maybe I might come up with new skills if needed for Social interaction. As Skills are written now, Command, Intrigue, Impersonate, Oration are the quintessential Social skills.

At the moment I'm in the process of writing Social combat (maneuvers and all), but its not a mandatory thing. Everything could be simply handled with Manipulation, Empathy, Composure, and applicable Skills.

This change brings real uses for Social and Acumen and it seems to be working so far.

Speed
Speed is upgraded by using it in Positioning Rolls, Movement Rolls, and Contests of Speed. One can further increase their pool using CP on a 1:2 ratio (2CP = 1 Die).

Finally Balance is changed from AG+CU to AG+SP.

Encumbrance
Weapons and Shields are slowly getting CP penalties like armor has.

When your CP Penalty exceeds your ST score everything combat related (moving, attacking, defending) is at a Disadvantage.

Story Aspects
SAs and NPCs. In my eyes its unrealistic for SAs to apply only to PCs. I'll explain. For this reason we chose to classify NPCs in 3 categories:

Villains: The antithesis of the characters. These are Major players who are built exactly like PCs including SAs. If the player wants to run Robin Hood with a SA "Free Nottingham from the Sherrif" 4 then the Sheriff of Nottingham has a SA "Get rid of that bastard Robin" 4.
Henchmen: Slightly lower in rank than Villains. These are seconds-in-command that get built like characters without SAs.
Extras: These are your run of the mill folk that PCs encounter daily. City guards, pirate crews, guild thieves, merchants, and so on. At best they can claim one Tier 4 priority if required. Elite Kings-guards could be Atr3 Prof4.

Otherwise SAs stay as they are, but with two major tweaks.

Making it more concrete when SAs do fire and why. As thirty33 said it matters not what you win if you succeed, but what you lose if you fail.

When your SA is firing and you fail MoF is increased by one and you burn 1 SA from the SA firing. A Compromise becomes a Minor Complication, a Minor becomes a Major (if applicable), and a Major burns 2 SAs.

[Korbel]

I'm afraid I don't have any new interesting solutions... I'll just present what I'm leaning to, when it comes to gaming in the near future (until all of this is resolved). So, I'll probably stick to my own tinkering (Skills expanded to 0-10, derived Attributes in the form of 2A+B).

Masters in a given skill are much better than beginners (good granularity).

Flexibility of the X+Y system.

Obstacles will probably be from 3 to 15 (common rolls will be: Routine Ob3, Average Ob5 and Hard Ob7... Ob9 and Ob11 for something really exceptional, Ob13 and Ob15 for epic/impossible/legendary-stuff tasks).

When it comes to rolling buckets of dice, I don't care - on forums/roll20 it doesn't matter, in traditional gaming I like rolling dice from the bowl (I won't use the 10+ rule).

Strength becomes more important for lifting stuff (Feat of Strength) than Stamina, that's nice... I'm not expecting trouble when encountering new, exotic combinations of Attributes (if the group won't be able to decide, which Attribute is more important, then the group probably has other problems as well...).

For Combat Pools, melee will probably be Speed+Cunning+Prof, and Positioning and Preempting based only on the invested dice (because that's simple).

If we ever find out that really high scores in Attributes are too common, one can always make the fourth dot more expensive at character creation (2 points). And fifth dot could even cost 3 points.

(Higgins will pleased that I've saved DOTS, at least for Attributes...)

Overall, this is all simple, without divisions (just some multiplying) and exceptions. It doesn't require much rewriting of the current rules (Ob table, lifting rules, surgery...). Should work for now.


When it comes to optional stuff:
- the derived Attributes Benedict presented above are looking good;
- damage modifiers only available through Edges/Flaws, and SAs give Advantage, Advantages stackable (depending on the players).

[nemedeus]

Benedict, you and me think a lot alike, it seems. Just an hour earlier, i made some changes to my own priority table here and i have LITERALLY the same maximums as you have, as well as the rule for TN-1 with Expertise rather than +d.

Overall, i love particularly your Idea for Manipulation. Similar to Athletics with me, which i changed to a pool of [Strength + Speed].
The only problem i'm seeing is, if Manipulation is Social+Cunning, Cunning is again getting a huge boost.

What i would consider is if Social could be somewhat re(de)fined in semantics. To avoid the "useless stat", i had in my pre-Bastards game a stat called "Aptitude" which represented both your social capabilities as well as creativity and, well, it was the biggest factor in determining how much wealth your character started with, going by the assumption that a sociable person would have an easier time getting better deals etc.
Seeing as the coinage system will be replaced with an abstract wealth system, maybe Social could be tied into that, a bit...? We'll see, i guess.


On a sidenote, it's kinda hilarious that we are all already hacking merrily away at the game before it is even out yet.

[Benedict]

Overall, i love particularly your Idea for Manipulation. Similar to Athletics with me, which i changed to a pool of [Strength + Speed].
The only problem i'm seeing is, if Manipulation is Social+Cunning, Cunning is again getting a huge boost.

For Athletics we used a different approach. Feat of Strength is renamed to Brawn and stays ST+SM. For physical tests we use Brawn, Balance, and Reflexes. All these three can be boosted by Athletics, as that skill has a huge coverage, from lifting a portcullis with your bare hands to pulling off parkour-shite along rooftops as angry guild thieves shoot crossbow bolts at you.
The reason that Balance uses SP instead of CU is two-fold. To upgrade and expand the applications of SP and to moderate the effects of CU since it is also used in Manipulation.

On a sidenote, it's kinda hilarious that we are all already hacking merrily away at the game before it is even out yet.

So true. But feedback requires brainstorming, testing, and hacking. Otherwise its just plain words.

PS I will be back with more substantial points regarding SAs soon. The previous post was just a peek, as we try to slay that particular beast atm.

[nemedeus]

For Athletics we used a different approach. Feat of Strength is renamed to Brawn and stays ST+SM. For physical tests we use Brawn, Balance, and Reflexes. All these three can be boosted by Athletics, as that skill has a huge coverage, from lifting a portcullis with your bare hands to pulling off parkour-shite along rooftops as angry guild thieves shoot crossbow bolts at you.

Fair enough. I guess i just liked the idea, I replaced the Athletics SKILL with "Climbing" for example.

The reason that Balance uses SP instead of CU is two-fold. To upgrade and expand the applications of SP and to moderate the effects of CU since it is also used in Manipulation.

I do believe that was one of the first things i suggested (not here, but SOMEWHERE).

So true. But feedback requires brainstorming, testing, and hacking. Otherwise its just plain words.

Well that said, i have a tendency of over-designing my games...

PS I will be back with more substantial points regarding SAs soon. The previous post was just a peek, as we try to slay that particular beast atm.

Well in the meantime, here is what i have in my doc currently:

--SA Scale: 1 – 3, but you get an extra point storage (with a capacity of no more than 3; I'm considering tying this to Willpower cause that's similar to what I did before Bastards) that can't be burned for narrative effects but only used in improvements. I just realized that this is a terrible idea so instead: that can only be burned for narrative effect.
--Maximum Number of SA: 6
--SA Firing: Exploding Dice and SA value as bonus.

[Marras]

The only problem i'm seeing is, if Manipulation is Social+Cunning, Cunning is again getting a huge boost.

Realistically intelligence-like attributes should be very important but for game design perspective it creates sort of god stat syndrome.

[Benedict]

PS I will be back with more substantial points regarding SAs soon. The previous post was just a peek, as we try to slay that particular beast atm.

Here I am again.

Story Aspects

So far I've seen three meaningful solutions to SAs, I apologize in advance if I've missed another.

Well that's exactly what I did in my game: all SA points in one pool, Advantages stack.

Any SAs earn't all go into 1 pool, to a max of 25
You can spend 1 SA to boost your effectiveness for the rest of the conflict.
This mode can only be used in conflicts where you have an SA directly related to that conflict.
You get +2 dice to any non-combat pool (ie, skills, attributes or derived rolls like KO resistance) and you get +4 to any combat pools.

While i'm not with Korbel on the "SA give TN decrease" (i said numerous times, i like "SA give exploding dice", although i'm also planning to use d6 instead of d10), i'm not sure that you should automatically assume that, just because that's how TRoS did it, you need to do it too.

I'll use two examples.

Atr3 Skill3 SA3 vs Ob5 TN6.
Game as it is
SA not firing: 6d10! vs Ob5 TN6 10% MoS1
SA firing: 9d10! vs Ob5 TN6 50% MoS1

nemedeus Suggestion
SA not firing: 6d10 vs Ob5 TN6 1,56% MoS1
SA firing: 6d10! vs Ob5 TN6 10% MoS1

Korbel Suggestion
SA not foring: 6d10! vs Ob5 TN6 10% MoS1
SA firing: 6d10! vs Ob5 TN5 23% MoS1

thirty33 suggestion
SA not firing: 6d10! vs Ob5 TN6 10% MoS1
SA firing: 7d10! vs Ob5 TN6 22% MoS1

Atr5 Skill5 SA5 vs Ob8 TN6.
Game as it is
SA not firing: 10d10! vs Ob8 TN6 5% MoS1
SA firing: 10d10! + 5 successes vs Ob8 TN6 94% MoS1

nemedeus suggestion
SA not firing: 10d10 vs Ob8 TN6 1% MoS1
SA firing: 10d10! vs Ob8 TN6 5% MoS1

Korbel suggestion
SA not firing: 10d10! vs Ob8 TN6 5% MoS1
SA firing: 10d10! vs Ob8 TN5 16% MoS1

thirty33 suggestion
SA not firing: 10d10! vs Ob8 TN6 5% MoS1
SA firing: 10d10! + 1 success vs Ob8 TN6 17% MoS1

Now, bearing in mind Agamemnon's concerns.

From a more mechanical perspective, individual SAs having their own 1-5 trackers

• Directly connects player-involvement in a specific SA to their benefits from it, incentivizing players to stick with their SAs from some time to get benefits from them rather than using them as quest markers and switching them whenever a new plot thread opens up.
• Makes it obvious when an SA is not getting any attention or might need to be replaced because it's not something you're following.
• Helps combat player resource-hoarding tendencies, as you will hit your 5 cap within a couple sessions if you aren't spending them.

I've already playtested Korbel's suggestion and it works. Also thirty33's numbers are on par with Korbel's suggestion. I'll be using TN shift for the following paragraphs, but it could also be +1die/+2CP. However, here are some tweaks I tried at home.

SAs not only get a rating of 1-5, they also get permanent and temporary scores. When your SA applies to the scene and task at hand and you want to fire it up (I'll explain later why you shouldn't) you mark off one temporary point and you lower TNs by One. If your temporary SA score is zero you cannot activate this particular SA. There is also a pool of untied or Orphan SA points.

At character creation you get 5 Dedicated SA points to assign to your SAs (mandatory) plus your SC rank in Orphan SA Points. WP would be more correct in a sense (mental fortitude and self-discipline as opposed to charisma, bearing, personal appeal and social intelligence) but this is an intentional compromise to give another use to SC.

Every time you gain a SA point you can either restore a lost temporary Dedicated SA, increase your SA Permanent rating by 1 provided its Temporary Points are all there, or hoard it in the Orphan Pool. Orphan Points can be burned for Effects like the ones listed in the Rules, Character advancement, and refreshing spent temporary Dedicated points. All points spent in any way count towards Karma.

With korbel's suggestion in mind this means a TN5 when your SA fires up, a TN4 when the SA fires up and you are Advantaged. Tied to my earlier suggestions you can achieve TN4 only when using Skills with Expertise (Experise gives Advantage) or when you beat your opponent on a Positioning Roll at MoS3+. TN4 ahould be the absolute minimum here, I cannot stress it strongly enough.

A final thing that none seems to address is multiple SAs firing at the same time. A simple solution. When you have 2 SAs applying to the scene you can opt to spend 2 temporary points. The first grants TN shift, the second adds +1die/+2CP. That's the main reason I used Korbel's suggestion as a base and not the one made thirty33.

Now, why you shouldn't be using your SAs? I suggested earlier that:

Villains: The antithesis of the characters. These are Major players who are built exactly like PCs including SAs. If the player wants to run Robin Hood with a SA "Free Nottingham from the Sherrif" 4 then the Sheriff of Nottingham has a SA "Get rid of that bastard Robin" 4.

This statement by itself kills the sandbox element of the game, and that is a big NO in my mind. However I believe these NPC classifications I suggested earlier should exist, and Villains should have access to SAs, with one requirement.

Whenever a player fires his SA to directly oppose, or even worse, thawrt a major NPC that NPC will develop an appropriate SA of his own aimed at the PC. Dunno if there should be a rule made for that or to be left to context and story consistency, but in my mind this tweak makes SAs an even greater story driving factor.

Not only that, it also stays true to Newton's Third Law.

EDIT There's some serious errors with the numbers, but on the run and can't fix it now. Will edit later. If the math gurus don't beat me to it.

[nemedeus]

Well I believe I didn't state it clear enough that I like the SA firing -> Explode dice thing mainly because/in combination with my preference for d6, and in that sentiment, I agree that with d10 the effect would be just too small.

[EinBein]

I have apparently a very different set of players at my table than you, Agamemnon...

Anyways, I explained my trouble and it hasn't changed since my last post, so I'll still try to find solutions around the separation of X and Y and halving (or worse: 1/3ing) of attributes (even though not many new ideas will follow this time):

and Body (1/3 Brawn)

I'm still on the barricades against this and really hope we find another way. I can understand that huge differences in Brawn break the damage system. But as combat is such an important element of TRoS successor games and damage / damage resistance is an important part of combat, Body-maxxing will get a lot attention by players (maybe not by yours, Agamemnon, but there are others in fact). The only reason breaking this could be a REALLY important encumberance system, but I don't see any significant way how this could avoid A LOT of Brawn 6 (or 9, if possible) characters. It just feels wrong to me.

One could argue that there is no good reason for a mechanically-minded player not to max out their attributes in hope of the best benefit spread now.

Aye, but currently, the rules leave no good spot to focus upon. There are too many important factors and too few resources to spend. I've not faced it a lot in our earlier TRoS-homebrew-adaption with player-made characters.

Skills and attributes are rolled independently.

Still hoping to avoid this. Just due to the huge difference we experienced after two days of Shadowrun and one day of BoB in direct succession. For the narrative with naturally lazy players at my table, the X+Y was a gamechanger.

Attributes and skills work on a 1-8 scale, with 9-10 being T5 territory like the 6th dot is now.

The scale, again, using Brawn as an illustration:
1. Small animals.
2. Children, the disabled.
3. Sedentary office workers
4. Average, active people. Farmers, laborers
5-6. Professional athletes.
7-8 Professional Strongman types. The height of what normal people can actually achieve.
9-10. Genetic freaks. Tier 5 material. Andrey the Giant. Hafthor Bjornson.

Why is Hafthor Bjornson a "genetic freak"? Why not just "the height of what normal people can actually achieve"? Isn't that special enough? In the end: You're talking about a real human there. No fantasy involved (apart from steroids...). Personally, I would at least think about skipping "superhuman" levels without some additional layer of required resources (edges for example). If you get these ratings by "just" chosing priority 5 in attributes, it's again inflationary.

Three derived attributes: Trauma (the average of brawn and will), Reflex (the average of agility and cunning), [...]

I don't know the details of your concept, but as far as I understood, you want to reduce average ratings overall, right? So pool sizes even with X+Y would normally not exceed 10 or 11 (some 6 + some 5 for example) without SA's firing, correct?
I would just increase the allowed pool size to 15 and stick with the X+Y system instead of averaging and halving. Averaging isn't as bad as halving, but still not elegant. And if you intend to switch to a d6-system I can not understand any fear of pool sizes larger than 10. In Shadowrun, you easily get damage resistance tests with >30 dice. This is messy. But up to 20 is in fact pretty manageable without dice cups (I'm playing a mage with 14 to 16 dice in his primary spell pools, which works fine for me).
Still, you need more qualitative value for the skills, in order to increase their weight compared to attributes:

Proposal for solution of 1) and 3) Increase the qualitative value of the skill rating
[quote="Added to "untrained" paragraph on p.34 (one could even replace the paragraph in question with this rule)"]If the Ob of the task is higher than the skill rating in use, the best achievable result is a mitigated success, regardless of the MoS.

Hrm. That's a possibility. My only immediate concerns are:
1. We flatten the potential curve of outcomes significantly. I feel like that would result in most rolls being mitigated results. Skills are 1/3 of the total die pool you can get for a skill check (Which, in my opinion, is the core of the problem here). Most PCs will have skills of 3s and 4s (if they invested anything in skills at all).. which will mean any test that they make will either be:
A) Low enough ob that it was relatively easy without SAs firing.
B) A mitigated success.
The majority of A is often not worth rolling. I've seen a lot of ob4s and 5s at my table, occasionally 6+ as well when they were trying to do something exceptionally heroic -- which is what SAs are for, really. The only time this won't be true is if your skills are high enough and your attributes low enough that the skill makes up 50% or higher of the total pool. [/quote]
I haven't experienced any overwhelmingly easy tests, nor the opposite in our playtest. Even though the characters were all very specialized, they failed in their primary field of trade once or twice and succeeded other times, when odds were against them. And we stayed mostly in the range of Ob 3 to 5 at most, which is the exact range, where the proposed rule would weigh the most.

With the extended attribute and skill ratings (1-8 or 1-10), skills have a much higher weight in comparison to SA's. And if you want to really succeed (i.e. have more than a mitigated success) in skill checks, you are anyways advised to have high skill ratings. Allocation of skill points will change if you add incentives like the proposed one. Maybe I fail to fully understand your reasoning, though...

2. We substantially increase the frequency of which I as a GM have to improvise a way to complicate things which is sometimes a good deal of work on the spot -- to the point where I'm thinking about fiddling with the complications rules to make it easier to GM.

Aye, I can understand your concern. I would at least draw upon the crowd creativity of my players here and let everyone come up with ideas. And in the end: Even though it is sometimes hard to come up with appropriate comprimises, it is worth it, because one can always challenge character elements, that make the player think twice. In the end, I remember at least two times during our day when they decided not to pay the price.

3. The primary issue I had was not player vs. ob, but player vs. player. As Korbel points out the initial issue was when a someone with one dot can beat someone with 5 because their SAs are firing. SAs should help the underdog.. but when the minimum possible rank can beat the maximum possible rank, we need more room between the two.

But how often will player vs. player be a problem?? Are we again searching for solutions that come up once a year? And as I said: Maybe the minimum rank can "beat" the maximum. But at a price.

In the end: I don't want to push this proposal of mine into existence, but continue the discussion about alternatives, because separation of X and Y as well as divided derived attributes are not my cup of tea.

[higgins]

Skills and attributes are rolled independently.

Still hoping to avoid this. Just due to the huge difference we experienced after two days of Shadowrun and one day of BoB in direct succession. For the narrative with naturally lazy players at my table, the X+Y was a gamechanger.

Can you elaborate on this?

[Marras]

I would hazard a guess that because each skill in Shadowrun is fixed with a specific attribute, IIRC it dampens the creativity.

I think EinBein thinks that having an attribute that adds to the starting value of a skill is the same thing as in Shadowrun. It's not actually so, if I have understood it correctly. That link is used only at character creation or when you buy a new skill later in the game, right? You are better off severing the link between the skill and linked attribute after getting the dots as it sort of doesn't exist anymore. If the attribute is raised or lowered at the game, it doesn't affect the skill level any way, right?

[dysjunct]

A more radical change would be to reduce to two attributes: Body and Mind. Use edges or flaws to differentiate between them.

[nemedeus]

A more radical change would be to reduce to two attributes: Body and Mind. Use edges or flaws to differentiate between them.

I literally can't see how that would be easier to handle, I'm fact I believe it would be much more of a hassle. Five to seven stats is perfectly manageable anyway.

[nemedeus]

I bought a new game called Cthulhu Abides, which has some interesting mechanics. One of them is the way they do teamwork. I won't get into the details here but it gave me an idea:

What if the Social Attribute influences a character's ability to work as a team?

I propose the following new teamwork rule:
1. One leader taking point, rolls at base TN.
2. Everyone else rolls at an an increased TN: TN10* minus Social, limited by leader's Social (no less than base TN).

Oh, and adapted for d6: replace all Social with Social-2.



*or alternatively a virtual TN11 to compensate for the automatic 1 point in the stat