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[PrivateNomad]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=158857.0
i am confident about this stat system.

[AoshimaMichio]

Anyone want superpowers? Gimme 2-4 nouns and assign each with number between 1-50. An example from IRC: Rice 28, Cowardice 35, Asbestos 44, Albion 15.

People I know about are easier to make powers for, so if you don't think I know you well enough, describe your personality as well with few words. Or name some well known real or imaginary person. Or make it all up.

[Andres]

So I've thought up a game system that I'm pretty sure has been done before and I want to know how good the system was in practice. Basically, instead of numbers and tiers for a character's skills, HP, weapon damage, etc., it's all completely abstracted.

Instead of "D- vs C+" skill check in a sword fight, for instance, it's "went to a couple of sword-fighting classes vs militia training".

Dice rolls would still be used to give that essential element of randomness but it wouldn't be a hard DC kind of thing.

[AoshimaMichio]

So I've thought up a game system that I'm pretty sure has been done before and I want to know how good the system was in practice. Basically, instead of numbers and tiers for a character's skills, HP, weapon damage, etc., it's all completely abstracted.

Instead of "D- vs C+" skill check in a sword fight, for instance, it's "went to a couple of sword-fighting classes vs militia training".

Dice rolls would still be used to give that essential element of randomness but it wouldn't be a hard DC kind of thing.

All you are doing is giving skill levels longer names. Using your example, "D-" equals to "went to a couple of sword-fighting classes" and "C+" equals to "militia training". Nothing changes. And if something did change, it very quickly devolves back into numerical evaluation. One gotta be better and have advantage over another. Numbers are there to make evaluation easier. You can abstract the visible layer of the system for players, but beneath the hood it is all the same.

At least that's what I think when I see your small example.

[IronyOwl]

Semi-freeform/GM-fiat resolution systems run the gamut, but in general suffer from a few major issues.

The first is that they tend to be vague. Players, and more often than not GMs, usually don't actually know what "moderate formal training" means relative to "light long-term experience in the field." This makes it difficult for players to make decisions based on that information (eg what are my odds of making that jump?), and often requires the GM to scratch his head for each and every action because he doesn't know the answer to that either.

The second is that they tend to be an obfuscating proxy for a hard mechanical system anyway. If you rate skills from -3 (Terrible) to +3 (Masterful) and roll a d6 + Mods with each point above 3 or below 4 advancing the Success or Failure Track of that result, you have a hard mechanical system. If you just sort of roll a d6 for randomness and decide that this guy is a good enough swordsman that he has one higher than a 50/50 chance of succeeding... you still have a hard mechanical system, just poorly designed and poorly documented.

The third is that because of the former two issues, things tend to slip through the cracks. The difference between "lightly wounded" and "moderately wounded" frequently stops mattering, it's often convenient to carry a grappling hook everywhere because weight and cost aren't things until they're major things whereas "has a rope" vs "doesn't have a rope" might be crucial, armor doesn't do anything but doesn't cost or hinder anything either, and so on.

So, not surprisingly, this kind of thing tends to work best when the mechanical outcomes don't matter much but fluff is still of interest. It usually starts wobbling or worse when players start suffering consequences for edge case stuff, be that "how many times can I get shot before dying" or "would getting a better sword actually do anything?"

Ninja'd a bit.

[Andres]

Any actual examples where this system was used?

[IronyOwl]

Everywhere. Any time you translate anything into something that isn't numbers, that's more or less what you're proposing. Most games have some of this, though it shines through in different places and using different methods.

In terms of the whole system, I'm pretty sure some of the RotMG and related megathreads have attempted to use that or something like it at times. They're kind of a... unique case anyway, though, and navigating them is pretty much impossible. Probably even for their natives.

I forget which one, but at least one of lawas' games tried to track bleeding and such but didn't actually assign penalties to it, which resulted in players tending to never actually get anything fixed because it didn't matter. Getting wounded in the first place, as I recall, functioned on a similarly semi-arbitrary method.

ER tries to use realism for a lot of stuff, which is one reason it's undergone a few reworks and, at least previously, tended to gravitate towards "if you don't roll a [1] on Endurance you survive enough to be revivable." The current system is more formalized than what you're proposing, but still uses a die for randomness, described brackets for skill/attribute modifiers, and GM interpretation for making stuff happen, as there are no HP or numerical damage values or the like.

On that note, Perplexicon games tend to do this as well, though on a lesser scale because most actions are a given set of magical words manifesting through a given set of rolls.

The system is hidden so I don't actually know precisely how it works, but most of Weirdsound's non-Silly Rougelike games use dice to determine outcomes, but have such a heavy focus on politics and the like that there is by necessity a huge amount of interpretation going on. Redleaf Epic is still running in theory, though currently in a lull.

[Andres]

So lets say 1 point of armour nullifies 1 point of damage. A hammer ignores 1 point of armour and an axe does 1 extra point of damage. Is there any reason to take the hammer instead of the axe? If not, what can be done to make the hammer a viable option?

[GiglameshDespair]

So lets say 1 point of armour nullifies 1 point of damage. A hammer ignores 1 point of armour and an axe does 1 extra point of damage. Is there any reason to take the hammer instead of the axe? If not, what can be done to make the hammer a viable option?

Assuming they had the same base damage otherwise, no, the axe is superior as it does the +1 dam even against unarmoured opponents, and the only reason to take the hammer would be style.


As to fix it...  that depends on how weapon damage is rolled. If it's something like an axe is 1d8 damage: could have it that the hammer inflicts that one point of damage through armour, I suppose, and that fits with the role of warhammers anyway. Thus, axes would be more effective against most opponents, but when a heavily armoured opponent appeared the hammer would reliably be able to inflict damage, even small amounts, which could be useful depending on the amount of HP foes have.

Alternatively just make it ignore more armour, which works however damage is calculated.

[TheBiggerFish]

Anyone want superpowers? Gimme 2-4 nouns and assign each with number between 1-50. An example from IRC: Rice 28, Cowardice 35, Asbestos 44, Albion 15.

People I know about are easier to make powers for, so if you don't think I know you well enough, describe your personality as well with few words. Or name some well known real or imaginary person. Or make it all up.

Sure!  How?  PM?  Is this for a game can I join it?
Here, anyway.
Blink 7, Gears 30, Warp 9, Answer 42.

[IronyOwl]

So lets say 1 point of armour nullifies 1 point of damage. A hammer ignores 1 point of armour and an axe does 1 extra point of damage. Is there any reason to take the hammer instead of the axe? If not, what can be done to make the hammer a viable option?

Granularity helps here. If hammers can ignore 2 points of armor, they're always better than axes against enemies with 2+ armor, break even at 1 armor, and fall off at 0 armor. But that requires being able to keep most enemies at 0, 1, or 2 armor, +1 or +2 damage being reasonable values for the combat system, and so on.

Your other options similarly depend on exactly how the combat system and game in general work. You could have different effects on crits/kills, abstract out damage and defense types rather or in addition to using literal armor reduction values, move into accuracy modifiers, empower or allow certain skills by weapon, and so on.

When in doubt, try going back to the purpose of wielding a given weapon in the first place. Often this will just be variety/archetypes, which is fine, but reminding yourself just what a given wielder should stereotypically do is often helpful.

[Rolepgeek]

I mean, I just go with bell curves. Bell curves are nice.

Also, keeping most info mostly hidden from the players, but having it balanced internally, or having much bigger differences or esoteric changes so that players have to rely on intuition instead of number-crunching. With excessive number-crunching comes story death.

[Kadzar]

Would it work to have something like old D&D, but with damage reduction instead of reducing hit chance, so that, for example (very rough numbers only meant for demonstration purposes), plate armor would reduce 3 points of damage from bludgeoning, 5 from slashing, 4 from piercing? Though I guess if you have basic leather armor that's 0 vs bludgeon, 1 vs slashing, and whatever vs piercing, it seems like the problem isn't really solved that way.

What if you just applied a note to the axe that it does 1 less damage (or just doesn't get the bonus to damage) against targets that are armored?

[AoshimaMichio]

Anyone want superpowers? Gimme 2-4 nouns and assign each with number between 1-50. An example from IRC: Rice 28, Cowardice 35, Asbestos 44, Albion 15.

People I know about are easier to make powers for, so if you don't think I know you well enough, describe your personality as well with few words. Or name some well known real or imaginary person. Or make it all up.

Sure!  How?  PM?  Is this for a game can I join it?
Here, anyway.
Blink 7, Gears 30, Warp 9, Answer 42.

Yeah, it's a test for a game in far uncertain future. One of the twenty I want to run but probably never have time for.

So, your superpower is this: Whenever someone is observing you, your power automatically manifests itself as set of weird tools that can make them stop watching for a short period of time. You have no control over this power, it acts on its own and makes weird items for you, but it leaves you the option to not use the tools it makes. The power works through recordings and all kinds of remote viewing. If a security camera records you and there's a chance someone in future watches the record, your power will activate. If you are alone and your power activates, you can be certain that someone somewhere sometime is observing you somehow. This means your power is on most of the time and you are carrying something weird enough to gather even more attention.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

Anyone want superpowers? Gimme 2-4 nouns and assign each with number between 1-50. An example from IRC: Rice 28, Cowardice 35, Asbestos 44, Albion 15.

People I know about are easier to make powers for, so if you don't think I know you well enough, describe your personality as well with few words. Or name some well known real or imaginary person. Or make it all up.

Assuming this is still a thing...

Knife 45, Game 18, Fear 2, Box 25.