Skill Category Bonus Alternative

[Lloyd Dupont]

It's a bit annoying to recalculate all bonus every-time a characteristic change.

I was thinking of an alternative....
Where I give a +10% budget for category bonus. No bonus could be higher than +15% or lower than -5% and let the player chose their category bonus.

How about that?

 

Once decide it can never be changed.. too bad...

[el_octogono]

I used an easier option. Just don't recalculate the bonuses. After all, the impact is usually minimal.

[g33k]

20 minutes ago, el_octogono said:

I used an easier option. Just don't recalculate the bonuses. After all, the impact is usually minimal.

Agreed.

Once characters have begun skill-checking from exp, it's an overwhelming factor compared to the +/-5% of most characteristic changes.

The whole POINT of a skill-bonus is to give an edge to those with "native talent," but nobody expects the young thief to out-lockpick the master-thief, no matter how "natively talented" the youngster.

 

[Kloster]

What we did (with RQIII) was to write skill values with Category Modifiers excluded. This had 2 effects:

- EXP rolls are easier to calculate, becausewhen skill level is below 100, you just have to roll above written value.

- When a Char changes (usually POW), you just have to change one or 2 values, i.e. the categories affected by the modifier.

[Mugen]

POW is the problematic one in games with POW economy (such as RuneQuest). IMHO, Other characteristics don't change that often to really be a problem.

A Simple solution is to put POW outside of skill category modifiers.

Mine was to simply get rid of most characteristics except POW and CON, for Magic Points and Hit Points. Everything else is a skill.

[Lloyd Dupont]

I plan to have most characteristic change, not just POW. POW will be the "fastest" of course.. but every time someone survive death I might grant them CON roll.

For STR, DEX, INT I might *Occasionally* grant roll after like one year in training organisation or something else quite significant in the down time part of the game.

And I was planning to Use APPx5% more than Fast Talk / Persuade  (since APP is otherwise totally useless) (not much improvement to have for APP.. but maybe 1~3 temp bonus if good care, like clothes and cosmetic product)

And all those change would be annoying...

Edited August 9, 2019 by Lloyd Dupont
refinment

[Kloster]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

POW is the problematic one in games with POW economy (such as RuneQuest). IMHO, Other characteristics don't change that often to really be a problem.

True, but there are also Spells and Powers that are changing the CHARs, and that cause the same problems. Except in Superpowered games, Char training is quite slow, and they tend to be quite static, eliminating a great part of the problem.

[Kloster]

57 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I plan to have most characteristic change, not just POW. POW will be the "fastest" of course.. but every time someone survive death I might grant them CON roll.

Depending on the context, it can be a good idea, but being near death can also cause a loss of CON.

[Lloyd Dupont]

 

1 hour ago, Kloster said:

Depending on the context, it can be a good idea, but being near death can also cause a loss of CON.

checking Damage and Healing section page 207-209 I can't see any such effect... all I can see is major wound effect occasionally cause loss of various random characteristics ... (another source of change ^^)

[Kloster]

22 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

checking Damage and Healing section page 207-209 I can't see any such effect... all I can see is major wound effect occasionally cause loss of various random characteristics ... (another source of change ^^)

My BRP book is 200km away, so I have not checked. I was speaking of what I thought of your proposition, doing another one myself, not of an existing rule I didn't knew it existed. Sorry for the confusion caused.

[olskool]

On 8/9/2019 at 4:28 AM, Mugen said:

POW is the problematic one in games with POW economy (such as RuneQuest). IMHO, Other characteristics don't change that often to really be a problem.

A Simple solution is to put POW outside of skill category modifiers.

Mine was to simply get rid of most characteristics except POW and CON, for Magic Points and Hit Points. Everything else is a skill.

I substitute POW with WILL for mental strength.  POW then becomes a "derived value" (based on WILL) like HP.

[Atgxtg]

I did up a version where I calculated the Categories without the -10. For instance Mental would be INT plus half od POW and EDU. Then I used this value as the base score for all Mental skills. This streamlined skills since we didn't need to track what were usually minor differences (5-10%) between the default values. I also allwed a player to add +1/10th of this value to improvement rolls for those skills so that someone who is naturally good at something would improve faster.

[weasel fierce]

You could probably just assign a single attribute to each category and make the bonus equal to that.

I like the category bonuses, but in playing Stormbringer f.x. we never missed them.

[Mugen]

On 11/11/2019 at 2:40 AM, weasel fierce said:

You could probably just assign a single attribute to each category and make the bonus equal to that.

I like the category bonuses, but in playing Stormbringer f.x. we never missed them.

That would mean the maximum difference between 2 human characters is 18%, providing one has 3 and the other has 21 in the appropriate characteristic, which IMHO is not enough.

I prefer using either the sum of 2 characteristics, or one characteristic x2.

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

That would mean the maximum difference between 2 human characters is 18%, providing one has 3 and the other has 21 in the appropriate characteristic, which IMHO is not enough.

I prefer using either the sum of 2 characteristics, or one characteristic x2.

That's what I did. I think I had Knowledge skills start off as INTx2%. Agility skills were something like DEXx2+STR-SIZ or some such. I usually tied to use two or more characteristics for each category to both approximate the categories in RQ, and to discourage players from focusing on one attribute, such as DEX or STR based on what skills they wanted to be good at.The idea was that the average starting skill was still in the 20-30% range for most characters, but could vary by about  15% either way. 

From experience, I'll also point out that adding the category modifier to improvment rolls in RQ3 was far more signficant that the actual skill% bonus, as that allowed characters to improve more quickly. But since the modfier was lower in RQ3 that it would be with this method you might want to use only part of it, such as 1/2 or 1/5th or even 1/10th. 

 

[Mugen]

19 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That's what I did. I think I had Knowledge skills start off as INTx2%. Agility skills were something like DEXx2+STR-SIZ or some such. I usually tied to use two or more characteristics for each category to both approximate the categories in RQ, and to discourage players from focusing on one attribute, such as DEX or STR based on what skills they wanted to be good at.The idea was that the average starting skill was still in the 20-30% range for most characters, but could vary by about  15% either way. 

From experience, I'll also point out that adding the category modifier to improvment rolls in RQ3 was far more signficant that the actual skill% bonus, as that allowed characters to improve more quickly. But since the modfier was lower in RQ3 that it would be with this method you might want to use only part of it, such as 1/2 or 1/5th or even 1/10th.

It seems to me your skill basis are going to be roughly similar to 20+2*(RQ3 bonus).

As a result, you could use (Base-20)/2 as a bonus to experience rolls, or require a roll under (90+(Skill Basis)/2-Skill).

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

It seems to me your skill basis are going to be roughly similar to 20+2*(RQ3 bonus).

They should be closer to 20+RQ Bonus, if based on adding two RQ stats together, with possibly a little help from a secondary stat. The goal was to give approximately the same base chances as the normal method. The benefit was in recording and speed of play. Rather than track am Agility bonus of 1% half dozen agility skills such as Climb 36%, Run 26%, Swim 11%, Boating 6% and so on, it could just be rolled in Agility 26% and individual skills raised from there. It should also be quicker and easier to calculate the bonus as you don't have to "Zero out" the bonuses at 10.

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

As a result, you could use (Base-20)/2 as a bonus to experience rolls, or require a roll under (90+(Skill Basis)/2-Skill).

Yes, I was just trying to keep things simple. This will change the amount added a little from RQ3 but be easier to implement. Adding the full base, would be better, athough that would really up the chances of improvement and make the math slightly harder when rolling. It's not ideal.

[Mugen]

19 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

They should be closer to 20+RQ Bonus, if based on adding two RQ stats together, with possibly a little help from a secondary stat. The goal was to give approximately the same base chances as the normal method. The benefit was in recording and speed of play. Rather than track am Agility bonus of 1% half dozen agility skills such as Climb 36%, Run 26%, Swim 11%, Boating 6% and so on, it could just be rolled in Agility 26% and individual skills raised from there. It should also be quicker and easier to calculate the bonus as you don't have to "Zero out" the bonuses at 10.

That's been my favourite solution for 20 years. I think I first saw it in Nephilim french second edition.

Prior to this game, ElfQuest also had skill based on a combination of characteristics, but there was no skill categories, and bases were not restricted to the sum of 2 characteristics.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

That's been my favourite solution for 20 years. I think I first saw it in Nephilim french second edition.

What? The sum of two stats and/or stat x2?

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

Prior to this game, ElfQuest also had skill based on a combination of characteristics, but there was no skill categories, and bases were not restricted to the sum of 2 characteristics.

Yes, but it was complicated in that each skill had it's own formula, and I believe the starting bases also reflected previous experience. The idea with the categories is that we don't have to calculate and track values for the 60 or so skills on the sheet that will probably never  be improved during a character's life time. So a character with Knowledge 25% wouldn't need to track something like Mineral Lore unless they were going to be a miner or jeweler or some such. I think in a typical BRP based game players only significantly improve less than half of the skills on thier sheet. Even less in versions that award improvement rolls instead of skill checks.

What I am thinking of was inspired by FGU's Year of the Phoenix. It broke down each of the skills into skill spheres, and calculated a base percentage for each skill within a given sphere. The add two stats method would work fine for that, if the skills were kept into categories instead of each skill having it's own formula required that they be calculated and tracked.

 

[Mugen]

22 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

What? The sum of two stats and/or stat x2?

Nephilim 2 had skill categories, and all skills in a given category had the same base value, which was either the sum of 2 stats or 2x stat.

 

 

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

Nephilim 2 had skill categories, and all skills in a given category had the same base value, which was either the sum of 2 stats or 2x stat.

Ah. Come to think of it, Ringworld had root skills, which were somewhat similar.