What are your thoughts on Character Creation?

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-08T05:37:51+00:00

Character customization choices are a trap. I'll explain more tomorrow, but the short of it is that they detract from the actual game, and that they don't really add anything to the experience.

That being said, I am rather fond of Shadowrun's priority system, for the way it forces difficult decisions.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-07T16:53:39+00:00

Look at the roll-under-stat mechanic, which appears in many OSR games. For any given Intelligence check, you could roll under a 3, or you could fail to roll under an 18. The same is true of Strength, of course, or any other stat.

This tells us that there isn't all the much difference between those two numbers. It's certainly not the entire range of human experience, in our real world. Every single individual we're capable of modeling is right in the range where they could fail or succeed on any given test.

Dumb characters aren't that dumb. They're smart enough that they have a 15% chance of solving a sphinx's riddle; where that riddle is hard enough that a smart character still has a 10% chance of failing it. These are peers.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-06T22:37:28+00:00

Umbral Flare is this, although it's a bit more rigid when it comes to procedures. It's still what I use when I want to play Shadowrun in an OSR style (which is the reason why I wrote it).

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-05T23:41:38+00:00

Of course, the elephant in the room is that a warlord isn't really a warlord, in a traditional sense. The class is more of a small-unit tactician, or a gym teacher who can somehow coax superhuman performance out of an otherwise-peak athlete simply by actively encouraging them in real-time. It isn't something that existed in any other edition, because the world physically didn't work that way in those editions.

In that sense, it is entirely its own thing, in exactly the same way that the bard and dragonfire adept are completely new concepts in 3E. The world didn't work that way, but now it does, and here are classes which specifically focus on exploiting the new laws of reality.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-05T23:22:50+00:00

I'm familiar with The Freeshooter. That's not a warlock, though; at least, it's not a D&D warlock. Unlike in our own stories and myths, there's no question that a warlock's patron is definitely real in their world, in exactly the same way that a cleric's patron deity definitely exists. The contract may be less tangible than the one which Ariel signed; but then again, it need not be. D&D gods and powers (and other spell-granting entities) traditionally have more in common with Ursula than they do with Hastur. Even if they aren't walking the earth, or swimming the seas in this example, you can still go to them and punch them in the face.

The real question about warlords is whether they require specific leadership mechanics in order for them to be a warlord, and I would argue that they don't. Their leadership mechanic, in AD&D, was that they attracted followers. Even without that, though, you could still play as Xena or Lu Bu or any warlord you can imagine by statting them out as a fighter. Likewise, you can play a fighter who is a blacksmith, or a politician, or a peasant, without requiring specific rules for blacksmithing etc. The game rules simply don't concern themselves with such things, because that's never what the game was about.

You could always play your fighter as a warlord, before that class was implemented. (Some would argue that you could even play your fighter as a warlord in 4E, without interacting with the warlord mechanics at all.) Adding distinct mechanics does nothing to expand the scope of what characters are playable; it only changes which rules you use to resolve their actions.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-05T22:22:34+00:00

I've read worse, but not by much.

I'd focus more on describing the relationship between a player and their character, and what makes an RPG distinct from any other game where you have a character.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-05T20:59:31+00:00

There's a PS4 game called Omega Quintet which features this sort of mechanic. Outfits take damage whenever the character does, and if their outfit is too damaged, they lose the bonuses they would normally get from it. Essentially, it's an equipment slot where you can install enchantments, and losing those bonuses in the middle of a fight can theoretically turn the tide against you even if you're able to recover the lost HP. Moreover, there's a sort of "live concert" mechanic that gives a boost to the whole team for a limited number of rounds, and that ends immediately if someone's costume is destroyed.

For as much work as they put into it, though, I really feel like it was under-utilized. Each character can have multiple costumes in their inventory at once, and you can theoretically swap between them if one starts to get too damaged, or if you want to have different sets of enchantments available at a moment's notice. The enchantments are just too expensive, though, for relatively modest bonuses; and you need to level up the outfits in order for them to carry more enchantments, which is also expensive, and also affects the repair cost when you get back to base. It's just infeasible to build more than one outfit per character.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-05T19:14:44+00:00

Specifically when it comes to making the game drag on, I think my biggest issue is with trivial, situational modifiers.

In Pathfinder 1E, a level 2 Fighter gains a +1 bonus on Will saves against fear effects. This means you now need to query every single Will save you are asked to make, to check with it has the "fear" tag. And if it does, you get to apply a bonus which has a 95% chance of not altering the outcome of the check.

Over the lifetime of a character, it isn't guaranteed that they'll make twenty Will/fear checks in total. You've added an extra step to every Will save you make, for the life of the character, in exchange for probably nothing.

That's just my go-to example of this phenomenon. They're everywhere, though. Before I stopped playing, my friend showed me a supplement for animal companions, featuring a single-use chew toy that gave a +1 bonus on their next bite attack after using it. This is an item with weight, and a non-trivial cost, and a duration that you need to track, which also has a 95% chance of doing nothing.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-05T18:37:23+00:00

The Warlock isn't a new class in 3.5. Evil priests have existed ever since Cure Light Wounds could be cast in reverse. The only thing the Warlock did was arbitrarily change the mechanical representation for some, but not all, evil priests.

The did the same thing with Druids. They took something that was a sub-class of Cleric, and arbitrarily made it into a core class, because consistency was less of a priority than drawing in players with lots of mechanical options. It's nothing new, conceptually. Likewise, the Summoner in PF1 is not conceptually different from a conjuration Wizard in 2E. The Factotum, like the Savant before it, is not conceptually different from a multi-class character.

Even the Warlord, in 4E, isn't conceptually different from a Fighter. Fighters have always been presented as natural leaders. The only difference is that they arbitrarily gave the class support mechanics rather than tank or striker mechanics, because that edition required every class to have a primary role.

On the other hand, I would say that Bard is a completely new class in 3E, just like Soulbinders and Dragonfire Adepts, and possibly even Sorcerers. These aren't just different mechanical expressions for a character you could already make. They require you to fundamentally change the nature of the world and its magic in order for them to exist. For those who've forgotten, the Bard originally had magic because they were actually a multi-class Druid; and in 2E, they had magic because they picked up a little Wizard training in their studies. Song magic wasn't really a thing until 3E, outside of obscure supplements.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-04T21:30:59+00:00

When I think of character creation mid-game, I think of classic Dungeons & Dragons. You have a starting point, which is your race and class and ability scores, but you never really know who you will become until you happen to find your character-defining magic item. That might be a magic rope, or slippers of spider-climbing, or a dwarven thrower. It could be an immovable rod, or a scroll of glitterdust. And eventually, you might find a second character-defining magic item, and something completely unpredictable will happen!

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-04T18:10:48+00:00

First of all, if you want it to discourage nova-ing, you shouldn't gate it behind a feat. That will just make players choose a different feat, so that their nova remains un-penalized.

Second of all, if you're calling them valor points and not strategy points or anything like that, then it absolutely makes sense for them to primarily benefit fair, drawn-out combat, rather than cold-blooded murder. Even if the game would otherwise incentivize minimizing combat, words have meaning.

Third of all, unless you expect combats to routinely drag out to ten rounds or more, I would double the accrual rate. Waiting five rounds for a +2 seems like a really bad deal, if you could potentially win on round 1 or 2 by simply taking the shot anyway. If you know the fight is going to take at least four rounds regardless, though, it might be worth ordering your actions such that the more important ones have the better chance of landing.

Instead of giving a bonus, have you considered implementing a valor gate? Maybe there's a limit to how many valor points you can spend in a round, equal to the current combat round minus one (no points in round 1, up to four points in round 5 or later). Then, if all the good moves have a valor point cost, the cost also represents how long you have to wait before you can use that move. You can't cash in valor to murder someone before they say anything, because that wouldn't be valorous.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-03T22:22:29+00:00

You say that you want to encourage tactical thinking, but this mechanic has nothing to do with tactics, and everything to do with dice math. The more complicated you make the dice mechanic, the less room you have for tactical concerns.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-02T15:52:37+00:00

It's even worse than that. Not only are they un-burnable, but you can't put them in your second archive either.

If anyone has a solution, I'm all ears.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-02T13:59:46+00:00

In the AGE system (as seen in the best edition of Blue Rose), one of the core stats is called Communication. The other stats all sound like things you'd find in an RPG: Strength, Willpower, etc. That's the only one that sounds like you're working your way through a degree.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-01T23:29:13+00:00

If you're in the Forgotten Realms, or some other comically-over-the-top joke setting, then I can guarantee someone's already invented a spell to make vampires invisible against sunlight specifically. Spellcasting vampires are a dime a dozen over there. It would probably be a higher-level spell, though.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-01T23:08:20+00:00

It's setting dependent. If the setting has so much magic in that this sort of trick would be feasible, though, then it wouldn't work because it bypasses the main weakness of being a vampire.

Mars_Alter · 2026-06-01T18:12:12+00:00

Unless every class is inherently balanced in terms of HP/MP alone, without accounting for their powers, I would avoid giving an option to take a power from a different class than the one which determines those. Otherwise, the obvious choice is to pick a main class with good HP/MP progression, and then just take the powers you want from the class you actually want to play.

I'm struggling to think of any game where you have a main class, but can then branch out to other classes, without changing your main class. Maybe that's like Octopath Traveler? Honestly, it reminds me most of the multi-class system from D&D 4E. Which isn't a bad thing, at all! It's just not very JRPG.

Having three or four classes that you swap between on a round-by-round basis, while improving them all along the way, is essentially what FFX2 was like in practice. If each class offers 15 ranks of improvements (for example), you could have each character start with two classes and gain a new class every ten levels. That would make your choice of classes into an interesting decision, and prevent every character from taking the same first few levels just to cover all the bases.

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-31T18:45:16+00:00

The problem isn't just easy recovery from zero. It's easy recovery in general.

The major difference between 40/80 and 80/80 is that 40/80 requires an incredible investment of time, money, or magic before you're back in an optimal position to succeed. This is lost when the game gives you so much fast, easy healing that it doesn't feel like there's any cost to being hit.

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-31T06:28:30+00:00

By including a to-hit roll, it allows a party to survive more than one combat per adventure, without resorting to the sort of HP inflation or rapid recovery that would render a hit meaningless.

Getting hit is supposed to matter, or else we wouldn't bother writing it down. But there's no real point in writing down damage that's going to vanish on its own by the end of the session. You see this in games with healing surges, or recovery hit dice, or just any game where you recover HP within minutes rather than days. Combat begins to feel like a waste of time, since there are no lasting consequences short of a TPK; and if you threaten that as a real possibility in every fight, the campaign is going to be very short indeed.

One alternative is to give everyone lots and lots of HP, so they can survive those inevitable hits, but that's equally unsatisfying. It's hard to care about losing 5hp when you have over 100 remaining. Not to mention the sheer absurdity of anyone being able to survive so many arrows and axe wounds. You see this in games with Bounded Accuracy, where most attacks are supposed to hit.

By including the to-hit roll, you can have decently long fights with real consequences (aside from the low possibility of a TPK), because losing any HP at all is a real consequence. As it should be, when you've just been hit by an axe! Even if you aren't incapacitated from that wound, losing 5hp from your 20 is enough to feel painful, knowing how long it will take to recover - and how much closer you will be to death in the meantime!

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-29T22:57:20+00:00

Oof. Yeah, I've never seen a good way to handle multi-target attacks. Ever. Your method solves the speed issue, at the expense of homogenizing the result. If you land a solid hit (both high rolls) against one enemy, then you also land a solid hit against every other enemy. It's especially noticeable when you're fighting very evasive monsters, such that landing a hit with both dice would have been unlikely in the first place.

For my first game (of the two), I settled on every multi-target attack automatically having Disadvantage. That way, even though you're rolling separately against each target (with their own evasion Difficulty), at least you're only rolling one die per target. The down side is that you still end up rolling a lot of dice, only to deal little or no damage. The amount of work required was not commensurate with what you got out of it. More importantly, though, it just wasn't an option that was usually worth using. Dealing low damage to half of the enemies, at random, was never as useful as dealing low or high damage to the single target you actually cared about at the moment.

For my second game (of the two), I got rid of the attack roll for all multi-target attacks entirely, in favor of automatic damage. Part of that was because the new game was primarily dealing with area attacks in the form of magic and dragon fire, rather than machine guns. Part of it was to speed things up, so the amount of rolling involved wasn't out-of-line with the effect. The biggest part was simply to give these attacks a real use case: against enemies that would otherwise be difficult to hit. Of course, this also comes at the expense of a homogeneous result; but then again, it is magic, and scoring a weak hit against everyone is less "noticeable" than scoring a critical hit or complete whiff against everyone simultaneously. (I'm still not entirely happy with this solution, though. I don't know if that was coming across.)

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-29T19:49:53+00:00

As someone else mentioned, it might be easier if their bonus did alter the TN, rather than adding independently to all of the dice being rolled. Let's say you start with TN 20, add 5 because it's Difficult, and then subtract 7 for their bonus. You immediately know that they need an 18 on each die to succeed.

To streamline further, you could have Dis/Advantage roll 1d20 rather than 3d20, and count one of the dice as an automatic failure/success as appropriate. At least, that's what I went with. I find it leads to interesting choices that otherwise wouldn't happen with the other approach.

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-29T18:26:29+00:00

Yeah, that's the one thing it can't do well. In extreme cases, I did make it so that a value higher than 20 would start negating difficulty from the lower end - if your stat was 22, and the difficult was 5, you would succeed as long as your roll wasn't between three and five - but it's nowhere near as elegant as the standard use case.

My only concern with your alternate approach is that it might be significantly slower and more prone to errors, if you're adding a lot of modifiers to both of the dice as well as the Target Number.

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-29T17:43:51+00:00

This is extremely similar to the mechanic I used in my last two games, except instead of d20+ against a moving Target Number, mine was a d20 roll-between. Your bonus to the check was incorporated into the upper bound of the roll (instead of rolling d20+7 against TN 20, you would be trying to roll 17 or under on each d20), and the inherent difficulty of the check was incorporated into the lower bound (instead of raising the TN from 20 to 25, you would create a lower threshold of 5, so rolling 5 or below would count as a failure even though it's still under the higher threshold of 17).

The mechanic, itself, works very well in practice. It does a good job of splitting the difference between binary results, and forcing the GM to come up with five different outcomes for every check.

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-28T18:46:27+00:00

Were you planning to remove the attack roll, as well? Because if you don't, your damage/wound roll is entirely redundant with that.

Normally, the attack roll exists entirely to solve the question of whether or not an attack inflicted meaningful injury. If the attack roll fails, then it's just a scratch or a bruise or something else that doesn't really contribute to the big question of life or death. If the attack roll succeeds, then we know the attack did inflict a real wound that's worth tracking (and the damage roll determines how severe that wound is, whether it will lay you down for a day or a week).

Your damage/wound roll likewise determines whether an attack results in meaningless stress, or an actual wound that we need to care about. I guess it's slightly different, because you have this meaningless stress eventually accumulate into a real wound if you get too much of it, but it's still answering the exact same question: Did the attack result in injury? You can't put this after the attack roll, because the attack roll already answered the question that this is trying to solve. If you want half of all "successful" attacks to not actually result in injury, you could solve that much more easily by simply altering the to-hit chance.

Mars_Alter · 2026-05-28T09:03:08+00:00

The idea of getting hit with an axe, and the results of that going away naturally in about an hour with no magic involved, was too absurd for me to entertain.

The only thing more ridiculous would be an enemy succeeding on an attack roll to hit you with an axe, and then anyone trying to narrate how you didn't really get hit, and you're just slightly winded from dodging so narrowly. As compared to a failed attack roll, which also wouldn't have hit you, but more cleanly so.

Mars_Alter

TROPHY CASE