Trying to balance a gimmick I'm adding.

[qazzquimby]

First I'll summarize the background of the gimmick. As part of the next campaign I'm making, the players find a book full of complicated numerical information. Its clear that the book is magical. As they adventure they gradually find out more about how the book works. They find that the book is a sort of programming for reality and keeps everything the way it is and that the only way to change it is to extract and insert words from the world, to make slight numerical changes to the book. As an unimaginative example, a character could use the word strength on their page of the book to make a small, permanent, percent wise change to that characters strength. Obviously there is much more room to move with this. Players could find interesting things to do with words like density and opacity. One could change the opacity of the air to decrease maximum sight range. If people are interested I could explain the gimmick more later, but now I just want to get to the problem.

If it's not already obvious, players can easily use the words to overpower themselves. My current plan is too start the characters off with three quarters their normal ability scores and speed, since those are the scores that will be easy to change. I will closely monitor their abilities to make sure they are approximately balanced with their level. The first problem with this is that I want to have a wide variation over the kinds of words that they find to keep things interesting, but the many benefits they could find from such a variation will be hard to keep track of and balance. The second is that I would actually rather not devote my life to balancing the players.

If anyone has an idea to help me, especially if they have done anything similar in the past, your help will be greatly appreciated.

[erikun]

Well, the first question that comes to mind is what if they sell it? Burn it? Cast Dispel Magic? Erase (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/erase.htm)? Leomund's Secret Page? Scribble explosive runes all over the pages and have someone read it? Drop it down a well? Hand it to the BBEG?

The second question is what if they never understand it? After all, it is in a language none of them understand. Comprehend Languages doesn't work, and all Decipher Script rolls fail. Perhaps they may think it's just a MacGuffin that the BBEG wants, and need to keep it away for plot reasons? Or perhaps they just stick it in the wizard's library and never give it another thought.

On the note about the characters overpowering themselves, reducing their starting stats won't help any. When I'm boosting my stats by 800%, then it won't matter that much if I start with 10 or 18. The main difference is that the characters would be pretty nerfed before running into the book, and would stay that way if they don't figure it out. Probably a better idea would be to limit the book's effects to inherit bonuses (capped at +5 anyways).

A larger problem would be the characters granting themselves new feats, new abilities, or turning themselves into (double-, triple-, quadruple-) gestalts.

[AmberVael]

Well, here's a suggestion for you, which could both keep control on the concept and also give you some great quest hooks.

You can't just write in the book with any substance. This isn't your normal book, it is a book that designates the mechanics of reality- it requires a very special ink, and very precise writing.

This means the players are limited in what they can write. They can't just write every thing they think of, they have to consider carefully how they want to use their allotted resources. You might make a mechanic through which they can recover ink already used, but at the cost of undoing the changes they made (if you do this though, make it a timely process so they can't just change everything as needed).

Obviously, this helps with balance- but it can also be used to give them great incentive too. With this kind of device, a character is going to be think up all kinds of fascinating uses, and the desire to implement more of them will be pretty high, particularly if their supply is small at first... so what if they learn that they can get more ink, perhaps by slaying some monster? Bam, instant plot hook, and you know they'll seize on that.

As an additional note, you can also help balance things by making more powerful effects take longer to describe and write in your language- therefore using more ink.

[qazzquimby]

@Erikun
First of all, as some of the book's magical properties it is indestructible, can't be affected by magic and can only be added to with the addition of the words I previously mentioned. Also, while using the book is complicated it is slowly explained by means of a knowledgeable, plot important npc who has background with the book. Also the players won't be able to 800% their stats, because I am limiting the strength of the words they can find. So they might be able to get a 5% or 10% at early levels which could change a base stat of 8 to 9 (rounding up). Also the affects don't stack so a 5% and a 10% make a 10% not a 15%. This will also encourage the players to share the words between themselves instead of focusing all of one type of bonus on one player.

@Vael
That's very similar to one of the approaches I took before. My gimmick has gone though many phases at this point. The main problem with the approach is it gives the players too much freedom over what words they use and no restriction on how powerful the word is. Also if they can reuse ink and erase changes they could take all their words, use them negatively against a single target until that target is completely pathetic, then kill it and reuse the words on the next target. Plus not having the ability to remove words adds an element of risk to writing in the book. They have to imagine all the repercussions.




Feel free not to read all the scary text below. I'm just explaining how the book works some more.

Since the discussion seems to be going more towards the functions of the book I'll explain the rest of it. I'll skip the lengthy back story and just lay out the mechanics. The book randomly switches between auditors every few days or so. Anyone who opens the book becomes an auditor and the book will begin to appear for them. During the campaign there are about 20 auditors but the number fluctuates as people are introduced and killed. This way the book usually sticks to the same characters, but can spread to new characters if someone gets it before the intended recipient or it appears somewhere they can't get it (like the other side of a wall).

Evil auditors want to keep the book to themselves so they attempt to track down and kill other auditors. Many auditors are killed before they know whats happening. Most of the good auditors band together and try to take powerful words from the word before they can be used, the more lawful try to negate changes that are made while the more chaotic try to make their own changes for good.

Also, since the book changes reality, it changes it from the moment of creation. So if the sky is orange, the sky has always been orange. Only auditors remember their own past when changes are made. They don't however remember changes made before they became auditors. History also tries to snap back to as close as it was before. So everything is about the same in the present no matter what color the sky is. All of this fits very nicely in the back story.

As for keeping and acquiring words, when one becomes an auditor a strange looking quill appears in their hand. Each word they find is kept in the quill and if the quill is broken, every change that person made is undone. "Loose" words are found in creatures or items in the world. Each of the creatures or items has some sort of non-magical, extraordinary property which is caused by the word inside them, so someone might be unnaturally heavy for their size and appearance or an item could float despite being non magical. Normally these are very hard to find and are often dismissed. When one is holding the book however, they can mentally see each word around them. The close and the more powerful a word, the clearer it will appear. The word can be taken by countering or normalizing the change. For instance if something is unnaturally large you can shrink them and you take possession of the word. You can sometimes kill/destroy the creature/item, but that is risky and doesn't always net the word.


If anyone has a better name than auditor, please speak up.

[Pechvarry]

This may make your gimmick more of a "handwave" than a "mechanic", but you could just say "everything in the book requires balanced equations". Figuring out how to re-write someone's strength to be a bit higher requires a lot of research and probably INT or knowledge (mathematics) checks (though I wouldn't penalize failures). Eventually, they're finding just how much room their character is allowed for personal growth without upsetting the universe - at least, until other variables change - and can thus only increase their stats so much. This hard caps just how much extra stuff they get out of the book to however much you think they're entitled to -- a fighter might choose +2 str and con, while a rogue might choose Improved Feint.

[navar100]

Check out Word Magic in Pathfinder's Ultimate Magic. You can start the party as a level 1 Book User, meaning they can use the book as if they were a level 1 wizard using Word Magic. As the party gains experience they gain levels in Book User, which is not necessarily equal to their character level. Their level in Book User is at your pace to what you are comfortable with them having as the campaign needs. By the time you reach the Ultimate Climax of the campaign, where they face the Final Ultimate BBEG, their level in Book User equals their character level, maybe even one or two higher if the characters aren't 20th level.

[CaeruliusVentus]

One means of balance is to enforce equivalent exchange, already integrated into your idea. If an auditor is editing the text for a particular part of reality, it is reasonable to assume they must remove some text to make room for the change. If that removal is produces a change that is of equal significance and must apply to the same target. An auditor that increases their own strength must overwrite the portion describing one of their other stats and thus reducing it. Making the air more opaque requires may require making the air less dense and so it is easier to become fatigued. The beauty is you can enforce that the cost is equal to the benefit but make your players choose the penalty.

If they are really creative, it can shift the entire nature of a challenge. If they are sloppy, you can show them the unintended consequences.