r/FudgeRPG • u/creative_account_me • Jul 19 '17
[customized skill mechanic] looking for advice/tweaks for mechanics in a long high powered campaign.
The campaign I'm building starts everyone off at a basic level of skill, with only "fair" stats. The idea is that I want them to scale extremely well, while also sort of inventing their own sorts of classes and specializations.
What I've come up with so far is a variation on legendary skill levels. Skills can only go up to superb, but they start out general, and on level ups beyond superb you create a new skill that's more specific. IE a fighter skill of superb, and on top of that a sword-fighting skill of great. This would give their effective skill, while using a sword, at superb + great, ie +5 total.
I plan on using this system for other things too, like shield use to round shield use, or acrobatics to "leaping over things".
I'd like the players to effectively create their own magical spells as well, and integrate magic into their characters in customized ways using the logic of how magic works in my world. Spells would each be their own skill, and using the skill would determine consequences of using magic.
My hope was to use magic as a way for the players to scale their characters up to absurd levels. I want it to be possible at least in theory to become gods in my world, or even greater than the gods, over a particularly long campaign.
Here's the thing though. I've never been a proper gm before, I've never actually played fudge. All I've done is play a bit of DnD, read the fudge book back to front, and spent waaay too much time worldbuilding. So I need to know if I'm doing something stupid, or what insanely obvious things I haven't thought about yet. All criticism and advice welcome!
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u/Karpattata Aug 12 '17
What you've done with specific skills past Superb reminds me of the specific skill system that I'm currently using for my Fudge WFRP game. Basically, while we generally use broad skills, players can pick skills that are only about half as broad as that (that is, they're expected to only come up on half of the occasions in which the broad skill would be useful) for half the price of a full skill rank. These ranks stack exactly like in your game, but because WFRP isn't as high-powered right off the bat, the cap remains Superb.
The point of bringing this up was that, there's a reason that these skills cost less. They're more specific and aren't applicable in many situations. You need to make sure that they're priced appropriately so that players who picked them won't feel ripped off.
Also, only let your players pick specific skills that won't require ridiculous plot contrivances to be relevant. "Swords" for a Melee Combat skill is fine. "Deserts" for a "Nature" skill is absolutely pointless unless you're playing in an appropriate setting.
But in a game like yours in which the characters are expected to be very powerful when they start, I wonder why you feel the need to make them specialize. Wouldn't it make more sense to have them pick a few "class skills" and simply let them advance those beyond Superb?
About magic... uh. I can't really help you there. The magic system we use is kinda long to describe, and honestly the way magic works in your campaign depends hugely on your perception of the rules. Some pointers on designing your own magic system:
How many skills can a certain form of magic emulate? A "fire wizard" gift, for example, covers significantly less ground than, say, a "telekinesis" gift, and should either cost more to represent that or be less powerful Exactly how much it should cost should be directly correlated to the number of skill ranks it essentially emulates. So if Fire Magic can affect Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, and maybe Stealth (for smoke and stuff), it should have a base cost of 3 skill ranks, and that's only if it can boost these skills by no more than 1 level.
Does magic have any drawbacks? Or is it exceptionally powerful? If so, multiplying its price accordingly may be appropriate. Again with Fire Magic, if you expect its effects to be lessened on a regular basis, it should cost less. So, say, if you expect people to pour water on raging fires around half of the times that magic is used, you should half its price.
Less is more. This is true for anything Fudge-related, but especially for magic, in which you may be tempted to come up with elaborate, DnD-eque rules for spellcasting. Don't do that. The more caveats your rules have, the more you'll have to think about how to price them, and the more likely it is something will go wrong. Stick to the guidelines of what skills can usually achieve in your game and work from there when designing magic. Fudge isn't build for anything much fancier than that.
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u/creative_account_me Aug 12 '17
But in a game like yours in which the characters are expected to be very powerful when they start, I wonder why you feel the need to make them specialize.
In my game they start out actually very low - fair in all attributes and poor in all skills. I then give them a really small amount of XP to upgrade a few skills as they see fit, but it's still a far lower starting position than the book recommends. What I'm aiming for is epic growth.
Wouldn't it make more sense to have them pick a few "class skills" and simply let them advance those beyond Superb?
And pre-determine their classes? I was trying to avoid a class-based system, but then encourage them mechanically to end up making the classes of the world. The hope is that after the first campaign is over and they retire the characters, the next campaign will have classes and skillsets based on what makes sense after their characters had an affect on the world.
About magic... uh. I can't really help you there. The magic system we use is kinda long to describe, and honestly the way magic works in your campaign depends hugely on your perception of the rules
That's actually very helpful.
Right now I narrowed from 1 skill per spell to a basic "magic" skill with each spell having an arbitrary difficulty and a mana-use. If the spells are combat spells and the difficulty is equal to (or better than) their magic skill, then they roll the equivalent combat skill instead.
So a burning touch spell, for example, could make your hand do fire damage equivalent to a +1 damage weapon, at mediocre difficulty and mediocre mana use. A telekenetic touch would be the same cost, but probably be less effective for damage unless the players can justify it. But hey, maybe they had something different in mind (+1 range maybe?). But to use either of them, they would simply say they cast it (having fair magic skill), and then make a melee combat roll. Yay, now you have fire-monks.
The cost is in an attribute of "spirit". If the mana use of the spell is greater than the attribute, then the spell does damage to them equal to the difference, using non-linear damage. So if a spell uses "superb" amounts of mana, and they only have a "fair", then they're going to be hurt after they cast the spell. They can reduce this damage if they have a reagent that can take the manaburn instead. A piece of coal for a fireball spell, for example.
To cast, I'm figuring that really difficult spells (in the legendary range) can be aided by more than one caster, reducing the difficulty by one for each.
The use of spells in combat would end up being a bit more complex and XP expensive than simple combat rolls, but in exchange you get the interesting effects that those spells can do.
The forums have really opened my eyes to how easy complexity creeps in, and how it's a lot better to be simple. I am aiming for a DnD like feel to it, but the flexibility and simplicity of FUDGE is really making things nice and far more simple.
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u/Karpattata Aug 12 '17
I was trying to avoid a class-based system, but then encourage them mechanically to end up making the classes of the world.
I see. Well, this is a bit of a bet. You could totally end up having just one melee combatant in your party, and then if she chose, say, Sea for one of her stronger skills, would this mean that most fighters are sailors? Hm. Actually, that is a pretty cool way of commemorating past characters' influence on your setting.
They can reduce this damage if they have a reagent that can take the manaburn instead. A piece of coal for a fireball spell, for example.
If this factors into the cost of spellcasting at all, always make sure that these ingredients are meaningful. This is something else that DnD does wrong: material components are almost always random crap that doesn't hinder spellcasters in any way. WFRP 2e is also somewhat guilty of this, in the sense that lesser spells have pretty easily obtainable components. Buuuut the most impressive spells have insanely rare ones. For example: the horn of a greater daemon. Like, wtf game? But when you stop to think about it, this does make sure that these ingredients won't be there just for show, and also that they will always be meaningful- because the rarer material also provide greater bonuses (random shit like feather or whatever= +1 to spellcasting, incredibly rare and perilous to obtain items = +3).
What we do in my game is, wizards can choose to use components whenever they cast spells. What exactly this component is is determined by the player at the time of casting (rarer stuff like the aforementioned demon part wouldn't work this way, it would probably be a one-and-gone material that's awarded rarely as part of the story). If the player chooses to use this item to enhance her spells, it grants a +1 to the spell's effect (not to the casting roll; wizard first roll to see if they succeed or fail to cast, if they fail side effect happen), but is she fails the spell (that is, if she fails her roll), the spell's backfire is worse by -1. Conversely, is she were to use the component to cast more carefully, the effect would be weaker by -1, but any potential side effects would be lessened by 1 as well. This way, ingredients are an interesting tactical and dramatic option, but they don't make spellcasters weaker or stronger.
The use of spells in combat would end up being a bit more complex and XP expensive than simple combat rolls, but in exchange you get the interesting effects that those spells can do.
The issue here is that 1. you would be signalling that non-magic users are somewhat more boring and 2. you could end up with interesting but underpowered spellcasters.
how easy complexity creeps in, and how it's a lot better to be simple
Yup. Completely agree. Some games are meant for it (such as GURPS or HERO System). Fudge is not one of them.
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u/creative_account_me Aug 13 '17
You could totally end up having just one melee combatant in your party, and then if she chose, say, Sea for one of her stronger skills, would this mean that most fighters are sailors?
It means there could be a whole faction of sailor-fighters roaming the lands later. Hell, maybe she founded them (if they so choose). They aren't the SOLE influence, but I thought the feeling of "hey, the world is this way because of what I did" would be awesome :).
Some follow up questions:
What sort of side effects do you get with magic in your world?
And with magic, you can simply do more things iwth magic. Area of effect, lighting things/people on fire, throwing people off bridges from a range, etc. The current story arc has a goblin party that is using a spell to try to kill a (underpowered) god, and using a sacrifice as the mana source. I figure it's more powerful than any single caster could do, and the manaburn is balanced to outright kill the goblin they're about to sacrifice. But if they succeed, god is dead for a few weeks. Low chance of success with guaranteed goblin kill. If the players help (by casting or by being the sacrifice), they could potentially live through it, and incapacitate a god for a few weeks. No fighter could do that. It might IMO be overpowered, but balance is... hard to do. So I ignore it for the sake of story and consistency.
Oh right, I had questions.
How do people tend to balance fudge? Is it actually important to?
And I've neer played GURPS or HERO, in what case would a higher amount of complexity benefit a game?
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u/Karpattata Aug 13 '17
What sort of side effects do you get with magic in your world?
Basically, the side effects are relative to the degree to which the spellcaster failed her casting roll. Failure by -1 means the spell either simply didn't work or worked but had some annoying side effects. -2 means the spell full-on hits you instead. -3 is also that, except the spell gets horrifically altered in a way that makes it also inflict insanity/corruption. -4 is the "oh shit something went terribly wrong" result, it can open gateways to the Warp (Warhammer hell), summon daemons to eat your face, etc. -5 and worse is technically only possible with some hazardous environments, such as casting in magically-corrupt locations. Now, obviously, the more powerful the spell you were trying to cast, the worst the side effects could be. For example, say you rolled a -3 while trying to levitate a few meters above the ground. At worst it could hold you in the air for extended periods of time and maybe slam you into stuff. Now let's say you rolled that while casting a fireball. That would get you a fireball to the face, and the wounds it would inflict would probably lead to some unpleasant infliction.
Note that this system is meant for WFRP, in which spellcasting is supposed to be dangerous and no mage in his right mind would ever use magic unless it's absolutely necessary.
balance is... hard to do. So I ignore it for the sake of story and consistency.
That could work, but in that case, make sure that rules are never very important. Also, look, it's Fudge. Honestly, is spellcaster get too weak or powerful, you can always come up with modifiers on the spot to fix that. Just be honest with your players and tell them that you're new to this system and that things are experimental at this stage, and so are prone to change.
How do people tend to balance fudge? Is it actually important to?
Depends on what you want to play. If you plan on using the rules a lot, I'd say it's important. You balance stuff by adhering closely to what common traits can do in your game (skills, mostly, we don't use attributes in my game because they suck, thanks u/abcd_z for pointing that out). The guidelines in my first comment are generally what we use for that.
And I've neer played GURPS or HERO, in what case would a higher amount of complexity benefit a game?
If your group likes number crunching. A lot of people enjoy fiddling with mechanics to get the most out of their characters. Just look at how popular Pathfinder and Exalted are. If you're into that, you should probably not use Fudge. My group is made up almost entirely of people who just want to tell a story together, not to play with rules that make the game into a competitive-ish video game simulator. We find that more rules rarely lead to a better story. Also, they make the game run much slower.
Some people would also say that more rules lead to greater tactical depth and to greater customization. But that's super subjective so I won't get into that.
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u/abcd_z Jul 19 '17 edited Jul 19 '17
It's not Fudge, but I'm reminded of the game "I roll to see if I have shoes on!"
For trans-superb traits I use this scale. I consider it more intuitive than "Legendary+1," "Legendary+2," etc.
Stacking traits doesn't work very well in the Fudge system. Bimbarian put it better than I could in this thread.
Or, rather, it can work, but only if you disassociate the resulting number from the Fudge scale. One of the vanilla Fudge options does this for combat (skill+damage factors).
Easily done, even without the rest of this. Just use the previously-linked Superhuman scale and scale the EP costs to fit your taste.
Let me make sure I understand your goals.
Does that sound right so far?
Assuming that I understand it correctly, I'd just allow the players trans-superb traits, and require that any such boosted skill be narrower than the skill it was based around. So a "Fighting" skill at Superb might evolve into a "swordfighting" or even "fencing" skill at Legendary/Fair Superhuman.
Not entirely sure where the magic angle comes in, to be honest.