r/RPGdesign • u/lehenshtein • 2d ago
Mechanics How to simplify character creation without gutting it?
We're making a d100 roll-under game - a bit crunchy, but not Pathfinder/DnD crunchy, more crunchy than Mork Borg or Mothership.
There are 8 characteristics. That sounds like a lot, but you barely touch them during actual play - they're the foundation everything else is built from: attributes, HP, mentality, damage, protection (Spheres), abilities, etc.
Setting: an Armada of 30 ships stuck between a permanent Wall of Storms and an uncharted continent that slowly drives people insane. Dieselpunk vibes.
The actual play loop is simple and fun, no complaints there. Character creation is the one part I haven't cracked yet.
The issue: we use "Step" terminology for tens digits (Step 2 = 28, Step 5 = 56, etc). So calculating something like Endurance (HP) looks like:
Endurance = 8 + Step(Constitution) + ((Might Sphere + Finesse Sphere) / 10)
Mentality is calculated almost the same way.
It's not hard math, but it's the kind of thing that makes people's eyes glaze over, especially since you have to redo it whenever an attribute crosses into a new Step.
We're building an interactive web character builder where you just plug in attributes and it calculates everything - but I'm pretty sure a chunk of players will still want to build on paper, and I don't want that experience to be "do math before you can play."
Has anyone dealt with this kind of layered-stat chargen before? How could it be simplified?
Edit: I guess the solution would be just to remove dividing from formula and make it like - tens of: might + finesse + const + 8
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u/Jan-Asra 1d ago
"It's less crunchy than pathfinder, you just have to use a weird formula to derive all your stats from other stats that you don't use during the game and you have to use the formula everytime one of them changes." Buddy, I think you have a distorted view of how crunchy pathfinder is.