Newwby
2014-03-07, 07:05 AM
The Intro
So (as I've mentioned in a handful of posts around the forum) I've been working on a sci-fi tabletop system for the better part of nine months now. It's currently on it's sixth revision since I started and I don't expect it'll ever see anything beyond getting posted on here for review or being a game for my friends and I to play. Like many things we do here, it's just a pet project that I do because I enjoy.
However I am deeply concerned with balance and making it a fair game - attempting to achieve the best possible balance between customisation of characters and limitation of game-breaking combinations. I realise that without a deeper look in to the system (it's not quite ready for that) most feedback I get on the subject is only going to be so helpful but what I'm mostly looking for are general thoughts and opinions, from people more versed in tabletop gaming, on the subject of action economies within gaming systems.
The Problem
The game uses a point-based action system. E.g. you have X amounts of action points per turn/round, if you don't use it all you don't save it until next round and you get the full X amount every round. No ability is going to allow a character to gain any amount of additional action nor affect the amount of action points another character has (although obviously they can impede what kinds of action they can take, by immobilising them in some fashion).
However, and I cannot remember my logic for it given it happened several revisions ago now*, characters do (VERY) slowly gain additional action points as they increase in experience. By maximum level they have roughly 50% more action points than a 1st level character.
My question is thus - HOW unbalancing do you find that? I have zero problem with a maximum level character kicking the ass of hordes of minimum level characters, and hopefully a tightly controlled attack/damage system will still make mid-level characters threatening, but what problems are there with systems that allow characters to take more actions that I may not have envisioned? Feel free to use any system you've played as an example, even homebrew. I'm always eager to read game systems.
Addendum
*It's probably written down somewhere but I'm not going through 600,000 words of notes (online word counter for folders) to find it.
*Edit* Found it, the logic is that more experienced characters are so used to doing things they do them slightly quicker, the net result of performing every action quicker meaning they can do more things in the same amount of time. So the players aren't getting more time, they're just doing things (things that used to take them longer) faster and fitting more in to a turn/round.
So (as I've mentioned in a handful of posts around the forum) I've been working on a sci-fi tabletop system for the better part of nine months now. It's currently on it's sixth revision since I started and I don't expect it'll ever see anything beyond getting posted on here for review or being a game for my friends and I to play. Like many things we do here, it's just a pet project that I do because I enjoy.
However I am deeply concerned with balance and making it a fair game - attempting to achieve the best possible balance between customisation of characters and limitation of game-breaking combinations. I realise that without a deeper look in to the system (it's not quite ready for that) most feedback I get on the subject is only going to be so helpful but what I'm mostly looking for are general thoughts and opinions, from people more versed in tabletop gaming, on the subject of action economies within gaming systems.
The Problem
The game uses a point-based action system. E.g. you have X amounts of action points per turn/round, if you don't use it all you don't save it until next round and you get the full X amount every round. No ability is going to allow a character to gain any amount of additional action nor affect the amount of action points another character has (although obviously they can impede what kinds of action they can take, by immobilising them in some fashion).
However, and I cannot remember my logic for it given it happened several revisions ago now*, characters do (VERY) slowly gain additional action points as they increase in experience. By maximum level they have roughly 50% more action points than a 1st level character.
My question is thus - HOW unbalancing do you find that? I have zero problem with a maximum level character kicking the ass of hordes of minimum level characters, and hopefully a tightly controlled attack/damage system will still make mid-level characters threatening, but what problems are there with systems that allow characters to take more actions that I may not have envisioned? Feel free to use any system you've played as an example, even homebrew. I'm always eager to read game systems.
Addendum
*It's probably written down somewhere but I'm not going through 600,000 words of notes (online word counter for folders) to find it.
*Edit* Found it, the logic is that more experienced characters are so used to doing things they do them slightly quicker, the net result of performing every action quicker meaning they can do more things in the same amount of time. So the players aren't getting more time, they're just doing things (things that used to take them longer) faster and fitting more in to a turn/round.