The System - Point Buy vs. Character Levels

After my previous post I've been playing around with the system of allocating Skill dice to characters. Initially I had favoured the 'Point Buy' system as detailed below, however upon further consideration I've altered this in favour of the more abstract system of 'levels' as favoured by Dungeons & Dragons and the like, allow me to explain why.

The 'Point Buy' system is mechanically more fluid than using levels to simply allocate dice, points can be gained instead of experience and 'spent' for training in skills whenever the character has enough points (and depending upon the preferences of the Games Master; access to the materials and instruction) to advance. This makes more sense realistically than waiting for an arbitrary marker before being able to improve oneself.

On the flip side of the coin levels are useful mechanically for gauging the strength of an opponant and what items are appropriate for characters of a certain level. Furthermore if constructing a class based system it becomes easier to define the roles of characters with classes. Some classes, such as the Paladin for example, traditional possess the abilities of another class but only later in their careers. Under a point buy system it is much more difficult to regulate this without making some abilities prohibitivly expensive, and artificially inflating this price for some characters is almost as much a concession to gameplay over realism as levels themselves.

Levels are by no means a perfect system, their artificial nature offends those players who want a more fluid system in which they can freely gain skills and are not limited by some arbitrary measure. However as my own group consists of people who have grown up on a diet of Dungeons & Dragons and Final Fantasy the level seems like a natural component of any game system.

The System - Basic Principals

I needed a basic mechanic when devising my system, and in deference to my D&D roots I was initially compelled to make this a 'dice + stat > difficulty' system, a method that has worked well for me in the past. It was my initial plan to use four stats to define characters and a series of classes to define them and give them unique suites of skills. This was an entirely acceptable system and I'd done alot of work on it, including an interesting magic mechanic. However it still felt clumsy, the attributes were too broad and the classes largely similar to one another.

In response I cast my net out wide and looked for inspiration, something simple, quick but comprehensive. I was also determined to only use d6 since the more exotic types of dice are at a premium in our group and I didn't want to burden us with the need to buy more. Considering all this I began work on a system using the time honoured method of defining the difficulty of a task by a number of successes gained by rolling a certain amount on a number of dice, in a similar manner to 1st Edition Exhalted.

This in itself is not the most original of systems, but for my purposes it could be easily adapted for our setting, is fairly comprehensive and modified by our relativly inexperienced GM to sort all kinds of situations.

The system (as yet lacking the poncy moniker I usually give my game systems) works as thus; characters are principally composed of a series of skills, lacking any definable attributes such strength, in favour of a focus upon having the necissary training. In terms of assigning 'dice' characters have character points (Cp) which are used to buy dice for skills and also dice for their Hit Points, raising their Hp by an additional d6 at each level.

The basic cost is thus:

Number of Dice / Cp Cost
1 /1
2 /2
3 /4
4 /8
5 /16
etc

Skills will be capped at a maximum of 5 dice to avoid mass rolling, though Hit Points can continue to be raised past this point.

Actions

Actions are a simple test where a difficulty is given (a number 1-5) and the character must roll a number of dice equal to their relevent skill, say a character has Climb 3D then they would roll 3 dice when attempting to climb something. Sometimes this can be an opposed roll (such as a guard searching a room and a character trying to hide from them) in which case both characters would roll their relevent skill dice and the one who scores more successes would be successful.

In combat this system remains the same, with characters needing to score a number of successes equal to the targets Def (which is initially 1 + their armour bonus, to be discussed later). This is not an opposed roll, as might be logical, as this leads to too much dice rolling and would necessitate the presence of an 'Evade' skill which has in the past proven itself to be so powerful as to be necissary in opposed combat rolls.

Factors affecting action rolls and some examples will be included in the next post, but that's all for now.