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View Full Version : Limiting Factors, also that mech-thing. [3.PF, Edit]



Hyde
2013-03-15, 08:08 PM
[Edit: The first part of this is the Original Post, the rest is more or less a discussion I had with myself working through it, I thought it might be valuable to someone, starts with "Limiting Factors"]

A friend of mine wants to play a gnome that rides in a steam-punkish robot. If you play League of Legends, I'm pretty sure he's thinking "Rumble". As simple as it would be to build a static-progression class based around the idea, I was thinking about adding an absurd level of customization, as one might expect when you're the one building your own mech.

I found Pathfinder's Summoner a not terrible jumping-off point for building part of a class based on a point-ier buy system. I've also been perusing Mutants and Masterminds for suggested stat weights for various attacks.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here had already attempted something like this, or if anyone had any advice on how to proceed. While I've been making my own items, spells, and feats forever, I can't say I've every tried building a class from scratch. or scratch-ish.

Right now, the class looks like it will be ridiculously open-ended, capable of pretty much anything (albeit not simultaneously- I'm looking at you, wizard) as only a point-buy thing can be.

But I'm uncertain that point buy is really the appropriate thing to go with, which brings me to another discussion I want to have:

Limiting Factors:
In DnD, your character has a certain amount of various resources- virtually everything in the game can be called a resource, from your character's literal wealth to the number of attacks he can make in a round. Some of these are limited directly- You can't have more feats than the rules explicitly allow, you can't put more skill ranks in a skill than appropriate for your level, and you can never, ever, learn more spells as a sorcerer. Yet others are limited indirectly- Character wealth is a good example. While in practice, you can always save your gold from your adventures, there is some arcane number of gold you will receive during the course of your career, and not a copper more, which will limit the number of options your character has, even if it never really looks like it. All of these things are Limiting Factors, which effect different classes differently.

First, let's Identify the limiting factors most characters have, in no particular order:

Wealth (gold and items)
Item Slots
Spell Slots
Spells Known/Spells Prepared (Separate, but related enough for our purposes)
Armor/Weapon Proficiency
Class Skills (Specifically "whether or not the class has "Use Magic Device", "Diplomacy", and Perception-related skills. History, Knowledges, and things like Acrobatics are going to be considered largely irrelevant)
Skill Points
Feats, Access
Feats, Slots
Spells, Access
Hit Points

Many things represent themselves as an opportunity cost, like the ability of taking something that isn't Dodge or Mobility for entry into the Shadowdancer Prestige Class. These are usually pretty direct, and not really what we need to worry about... at the moment. So we'll leave those kinds of things out.

So, We've got our list here, so lets apply it to everyone's favorite class and make obvious what everyone already knows- the Wizard is freaking broken.

Wealth- Money and Items owned.
Characters are limited by the Wealth by Level tables and good DM adherence (or at least fairness) to them, so pretty much everyone is equal on this footing, right? Well... no. Directly, Wizards care less about wealth than other classes because they can emulate most of what other classes use their wealth for- static buffs to various stats. Indirectly, depending on what feats your DM allows (for our discussion, we're going to assume everything Wizards has published in 3.5 is a thing, also Paizo). Wizards can start creating infinite wealth in pretty short order, so... yeah.

Big deal, right? you said they don't really need their gold for anything, and a lot of items they do need cap themselves, like those Manuals for Bodily Health?

Okay, let's assume our wizard is kind of a **** and doesn't use his money to upgrade everyone's gear to god-levels, and just keeps it for himself. These other things start happening.

Item Slots:

Alright, so it's hard to screw with item slots, right? At most you can pull stuff like wearing rings on an amulet, or something. Other than that, well, you're pretty much stuck wearing what everyone else has access to, because double (or triple, or octuple)-enchanting something gets pretty expensive pretty qui- oh right. Infinite Money, and since it's the Wizard making these things, hey great, half cost.

Conversationally, you ban overlapping enchants- well, he doesn't need a resist cloak, or a displacement cloak, or a ring of feather fall, energy resist... Okay he doesn't need any spell that you need to make the items, okay? Okay. okay. Mahogany.

But he still needs to worry about his

Spell Slots

No, he doesn't.

Everyone I've met (In person, shook hands, all that jazz) who has played a sorcerer did so because gosh golly they didn't like that they couldn't cast as many spells in a day if they were a wizard.

Alright, so spell slots are basically crap. Wands, scrolls, and staves provide pretty handy ways of keeping more spells on hand than your arcane caster will possibly need to cast before he has time to replenish them. I mean, you have to craft and/or buy them, and that costs... money.

Welp.

Well, as much as we could continue, I'm not really talking about things people don't know- pretty much everything on the list can be ignored by a spell or reduced to a gold point value. Wizards are bad because every Limiting Factor they have really isn't one- for every rule in the game, there's a spell or a crafting loophole that reads "except wizards".


But my point isn't that Wizards suck, it's that it's important to think about Limiting Factors. Make sure what you're sticking on a class actually does what it's intended to do, and can't be (easily) circumvented.

The reason I was thinking about this is that while I was playing with my little Mechagnome, it came to me that there were about a dozen possible limiting factors I could impose to balance the class, and any or all of them would be realistic.

Straight-Up Point-Buy- The robot can do what the robot can do. It excludes everything else, but is easily the simplest way of managing things- Summoner Eidolons are what with would look like the most. Personally, I find it pretty darn boring.

A Generator- the robot needs power, and can only supply as much power to its systems as the generator can. It's basically flavored point-buy, but I think the flavor allows for some logical possibilities (this is called piggybacking) like a power-management mechanic.

Offhand, it would be something like- as a move action, you can divert power from one system to another, or allocate any spare power to an unpowered system.

That "or" is important.

Anyway, this would ask the question of "(how) can I get a bigger generator?" yes means it's really flavored point-buy after all, and you could potentially stop there. No means that it's probably an irrelevant mechanic, since you'd then have to balance various components on another gimmick I mean sub-system and too complicated on its own to warrant using.

Money! Kind of a no-no. Most everyone's class features don't cost money, short of the odd spell component (arrows, I guess. does anyone actually keep track of arrows?) or at least not a significant amount. I kind of like it, though, since it allows a reason to let the mech do some relatively crazy things, without the pilot being absurdly decked out in his own right (You can afford either the missile launcher or the staff of rods of wands of fireball). Potentially, this might end up just making Battletech 3.5 compliant.

Hardpoints Battletech (and most mech games) have these. Basically a physical limitation on how many things you can attach to different parts of your robot. Mechwarrior 4 had this awful system where most of them were labelled as a particular weapons group. Mechcommander ignored it entirely, though the sequel has a diablo-esque inventory that seemed a decent medium (not really an option here, but hopefully you get the idea). This concept is basically the exact same as item slots on an adventurer. Since those are static, this probably should be, too.

Weight limit
Inherent to the system and pretty static- either the components will have weight or they wont. wouldn't be an awful way to keep heavy weaponry to a minimum.

There are others to consider, but hopefully this is enough to see where I'm going (or not) with this.

What's too complicated? What's a decent way to keep progression pretty simple? Is Battletech 3.5 the way to go, or should I keep it eidolon-simple?

Hyde
2013-03-15, 10:14 PM
I've changed this pretty extensively, so I'mma bump it. a lot of it is just me typing out stuff to make sense of things, but if you want to comment, I'd really appreciate it. It's a big project to tackle.

Garryl
2013-03-16, 12:01 AM
I'm interested in seeing where you're going with this. I've been working on my own subsystem for mechas and their pilots, and a lot of what you're saying is close to what I've been considering.

Hyde
2013-03-16, 12:20 AM
The hardest thing has been making them not immediately better than everything. Why play a fighter when you can play a fighter encased in a nigh-invulnerable shield of destruction! etc. I'll post something once I've worked out some kinks, I think I'm making some pretty good headway.

miniviewer
2013-03-16, 04:45 AM
Perhaps the Iron Man class by ErrantX?
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=258113

Hyde
2013-03-16, 05:11 AM
Interesting-ish.