How is Homeland/Occupation/Cult skills calculated?

[French Desperate WindChild]

6 hours ago, Malin said:

Honestly, any attempt to balance things like this will be a moot point, because to me, it depends less on the exact % you get in skills and more on whether those skills are useful in your local adventuring.

that's true and it is one of my remark. However it is (I thinks I have already said that) a GM responsability too :

 

GM may say to their players, "listen, we will start a new campaign, and the focus is on blablabla". So players take the information and create characters for that, GM offering their help to background, rules point, or any good advice. Then the usefull skills choice is part of the player's thought during the creation

or

GM may say to their players, "listen, we will start a new campaign, so create what you want to play and I will create/adjust my plans for maximise our pleasure."So players create what they want, GM working with them to get hook and other ideas to build a surprising and good campaign (and of course proposing help on the background , rules etc...).

 

or

GM may say to their players, "listen, we will start a new campaign, i already have plan everything but I will not say anything, gnark gnark gnark. So create what you want, if it is not efficient, well too bad 😛 " of course it is not how I approach the (sometimes difficult) GM's role

 

 

so the real balance is for skill, or anything in fact, how the GM works, adapts published or at least prepared scenario/campaign.

If the warrior is always the star, imagine something where sword is not usefull at all (no fight, or fight against too powerful ennemies - don't care the published stats, add 50% if you need)..

If the dancer has not yet do anything remarkable for a long time, add a scenario where the only option (or the obvious one) is to build a show. For example the group is attacked and overpowered by trolls (hey warrior, you did not save us this time...), taken to their "cave", then they meet other ostages, a donandar troop may be, and they have to make a show but need a dancer... and what there is an issue with some spirits in this cave and the shaman pc may decide to helps  the trolls, a faction, the spirits. etc... opportunity to discover trolls society, make alliance with some group (troll faction, troll clan, artists...) or new ennemies

Same if one of the pc knows kralori... of course one day they will meet some kralori (or dragon ?) and take the first role (because they need to negociate, or the guy in front of them trust only the kralori speaker and will act only if (s)he says red or blue.

In all cases that's just opportunity, if our player (dancer, shaman, kralori speaker, ...) doesn't take the opportunity to lead temporary the session it is not so important, but at least the GM does the job ! that's the ultimate balance for me

 

[PhilHibbs]

On 11/5/2023 at 10:47 AM, soltakss said:

What annoys me most about Homeland skills is the huge numbers of weapon skill adds. I don't care about having a bonus to both Medium and Large Shields, for example. Just give me a bonus to weapon categories, for example Shields, Swords, Axes and so on, that makes things a lot simpler.

Yeah, that would be better, but it would make my character creation sheet a nightmare! Well, actually I could probably come up with some other way of doing those bonuses. Another column with a homeland lookup.

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

If the warrior is always the star, imagine something where sword is not usefull at all (no fight, or fight against too powerful ennemies - don't care the published stats, add 50% if you need)..

If the dancer has not yet do anything remarkable for a long time, add a scenario where the only option (or the obvious one) is to build a show.

Could seem contrived, but yes, a modern balanced RuneQuest campaign will probably have a variety of situations other than combat. I think the GM has to be open to creative ways of solving situations, gathering allies, gaining favours. And ultimately, if someone creates a non-combat niche character, they just have to resign themselves to sitting out of the actual fighting, or coming up with something that they can do to contribute.

When my group did their characters (tweaked versions of the pregens) they made sure that everyone had something they could do in a fight. Unless you are explicitly running a game where combat is not going to be a big thing, I think that makes sense.

Look at Gina Gravedancer in The White Bull Campaign. She isn't a fighter, and Claudia does her best to come up with ways to contribute in fights, but in the end she's okay with letting the warriors do their thing and taking a back seat. That's just an accepted part of the group dynamic for her. Jeff never seems to go out of his way to make "Gina Scenes", but it's a varied campaign that does have social situations. It seems natural, and that's the real trick.

[mfbrandi]

8 hours ago, Malin said:

Honestly, any attempt to balance things like this will be a moot point, because to me, it depends less on the exact % you get in skills and more on whether those skills are useful in your local adventuring.

Not an original idea: let beginning characters be relatively undefined — with skill points to spend in play to buy skills they “already know”?

The party is planning its first burglary and someone pipes up with, “Didn’t I mention the fact that my aunt was a top cracksman and showed me how to deal with Mostali safes when I was still in nappies? Oh, well, now you know.” [Shifts some points from free to appropriate burglar skills on character sheet.]

Generous GMs can add a few bonus skill points for a particularly entertaining bit of backstory to account for the skill — makes it more fun than someone has to spend some free skill points so we can open this safe.

Spend wisely, as once they are gone …

Surely, it would also work as buying break-outs to keywords.

[French Desperate WindChild]

6 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Could seem contrived, but yes, a modern balanced RuneQuest campaign will probably have a variety of situations other than combat. I think the GM has to be open to creative ways of solving situations, gathering allies, gaining favours. And ultimately, if someone creates a non-combat niche character, they just have to resign themselves to sitting out of the actual fighting, or coming up with something that they can do to contribute.

When my group did their characters (tweaked versions of the pregens) they made sure that everyone had something they could do in a fight. Unless you are explicitly running a game where combat is not going to be a big thing, I think that makes sense.

Look at Gina Gravedancer in The White Bull Campaign. She isn't a fighter, and Claudia does her best to come up with ways to contribute in fights, but in the end she's okay with letting the warriors do their thing and taking a back seat. That's just an accepted part of the group dynamic for her. Jeff never seems to go out of his way to make "Gina Scenes", but it's a varied campaign that does have social situations. It seems natural, and that's the real trick.

I totally agree. And what I mean is not to create any "artificial" scene but to follow the flow adding some "dedicated character" hooks

(by the way they were playing a "soon published" campaign I believed ? so of course no specific character scene)

 

When you have a player like Claudia, I think it is not useful to create specific scene. Because Claudia is "very present" (no offense) She takes the scene by herself. Some players are more introvert than Claudia, aren't they ?

spoiler for the video

Spoiler

Now for the fight, of course there are warriors, but who was the key actor against Jar eel ? Was the Humakti or the Orlanthi ? or maybe The Storm Buller ? for me none of them. The one who was able to "break" the harmony power and the self confidence of the semi goddess;

the one who did not use the written rules but was able to "create" some effect. And somewhere, Jeff did not make "Gina Scenes" but open the door in a different manner, reacting positively to an out of the box proposal.

That means two things :

- having a GM accepting to look at more than /break/adapt the written rules.

- having a player able to propose some weird approach to solve classical issues and able to take the microphone "even if it is not their time"

That's not all the tables, well not all the tables I have seen at least 🙂

 

this white bull campaign is really a master class

Edited November 8, 2023 by French Desperate WindChild

[Ian Absentia]

In my experience, "balance" at character creation is something people who aren't playing the game are worrying about.  Someone wake me up when the solution results in more than a 10% difference between a Lunar noble's Manage Household skill and a Sartar noble's.  Or if the difference doesn't disappear into insignificance after a half-dozen sessions in play.

Now, let me commence grousing about random Family History Events.  Why is anyone concerned about "balance" when these tables exist?

!i!

[g33k]

On 11/4/2023 at 7:12 AM, Akhôrahil said:

This does become a problem another profession is better at the actual profession’s job. For instance, if you want a better hunter, make a herder.

Yeah, this kind of glitch bugs me, too.

[Shiningbrow]

5 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Someone wake me up when the solution results in more than a 10% difference between a Lunar noble's Manage Household skill and a Sartar noble's.  Or if the difference doesn't disappear into insignificance after a half-dozen sessions in play.

I think I can already do that now.... High Lama Riders get - dagger, lance (2h weapon), Dagger Axe (2h weapon), pole lasso (2H weapon). No 1H weapon worth wielding in combat, and no shields!

Any solution we've come up with is going to have more tan 10% difference in something important! (should total between 20-30%) And it will be significant throughout their whole career.

[Shiningbrow]

14 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

If the dancer has not yet do anything remarkable for a long time

May not be 'remarkable', but dance is a skill that can be used as an augment in a lot of magical rites! And, I'd also suggest combat (Adrien Paul, who played Duncan McCleod in the Highlander series, was a trained dancer, not a martial artist... 'nuff said!) And it's not a bad social skill either (although, it would need the player to know and use this).

 

14 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Same if one of the pc knows kralori

Magical language for +20% to spell casting?

But, yeah, I do think there can certainly be some tweaking of the campaign to bring in some less used skills from time to time.