Maxymiuk
2007-04-10, 07:06 PM
Alright, first some background.
For the past half a year or so I've been slowly developing an idea for an atypical campaign, involving eight people, while still being limited to a 4-character party.
Namely, there would be four bodies, but each one would be inhabited by two "souls" - for each of those people it would've been this way since the day they were born. At a given point in time only one of those souls would have conscious control of the body, while the other would remain dormant. At seemingly random intervals (determined by where a game session would end) there would be a switch... and the other soul would take over, with no knowledge of what happened in the interval - basically, I'd run interchangeably for one group, then the other.
Obviously there's a lot more to this idea, along with an entire mountain of problems to resolve. However I'm slowly beating them all back. Except one: the distribution of attributes between each soul in a body. Here is what I have so far:
1) I decided to go with a point buy rather than rolling for stats. I'm too proud of my game concept to leave so much up to luck. However, this would be the simplest solution.
2) Since this is a single body, I decided that physical stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution) will be the same for each pair sharing the body. Mental stats (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma) will differ. Secondary and derivative stats (feats, base saves, BAB, skill ranks, etc.) will still depend on the class adopted by the individual soul.
3) With point buy this immediately presents a problem of how to ensure fair distribution, while at once preventing the possibility of twinkage. Physical stats would obviously make a better deal for a melee type, while any wizard worth his salt would sink 16 points into getting that 18 Intelligence (originally I thought about letting the players have 16 "private" points for mental stats and 16 "mutual" for physical, then did the math and realized how bad of an idea that is).
4) I have considered the idea of letting each of the two players buy an entire stat array as if making a typical character and then averaging either just the physical scores or the entire array. I sort of like this, since it would accurately represent the diffusion of learning and development two souls living in a single body on what amounts to a timeshare would experience. The downside I see there is the possibility that one of the players decides to play a wizard and another a fighter, they both stat out appropriately, and end up gimping one another once I average them out. Suddenly not being able to qualify for certain feats could also be an issue.
5) Yet another idea would be to simply present them with a pre-generated stat array that they would have to share, with at least two good scores to keep everyone happy (for example 16, 16, 14, 13, 12, 10 - first both players mutually decide what goes into the physical stats, say Str 13, Dex 16, Con 14, and then they're each left with 16, 12, 10 to distribute among their own mental stats). The problems are foresee here is arguments over who gets what, conspiracy to twink, and a lot of characters with virtually the same stats.
At this point I ran out of ideas, so I turn to my fellow Playgrounders for help.
Thank you in advance.
For the past half a year or so I've been slowly developing an idea for an atypical campaign, involving eight people, while still being limited to a 4-character party.
Namely, there would be four bodies, but each one would be inhabited by two "souls" - for each of those people it would've been this way since the day they were born. At a given point in time only one of those souls would have conscious control of the body, while the other would remain dormant. At seemingly random intervals (determined by where a game session would end) there would be a switch... and the other soul would take over, with no knowledge of what happened in the interval - basically, I'd run interchangeably for one group, then the other.
Obviously there's a lot more to this idea, along with an entire mountain of problems to resolve. However I'm slowly beating them all back. Except one: the distribution of attributes between each soul in a body. Here is what I have so far:
1) I decided to go with a point buy rather than rolling for stats. I'm too proud of my game concept to leave so much up to luck. However, this would be the simplest solution.
2) Since this is a single body, I decided that physical stats (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution) will be the same for each pair sharing the body. Mental stats (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma) will differ. Secondary and derivative stats (feats, base saves, BAB, skill ranks, etc.) will still depend on the class adopted by the individual soul.
3) With point buy this immediately presents a problem of how to ensure fair distribution, while at once preventing the possibility of twinkage. Physical stats would obviously make a better deal for a melee type, while any wizard worth his salt would sink 16 points into getting that 18 Intelligence (originally I thought about letting the players have 16 "private" points for mental stats and 16 "mutual" for physical, then did the math and realized how bad of an idea that is).
4) I have considered the idea of letting each of the two players buy an entire stat array as if making a typical character and then averaging either just the physical scores or the entire array. I sort of like this, since it would accurately represent the diffusion of learning and development two souls living in a single body on what amounts to a timeshare would experience. The downside I see there is the possibility that one of the players decides to play a wizard and another a fighter, they both stat out appropriately, and end up gimping one another once I average them out. Suddenly not being able to qualify for certain feats could also be an issue.
5) Yet another idea would be to simply present them with a pre-generated stat array that they would have to share, with at least two good scores to keep everyone happy (for example 16, 16, 14, 13, 12, 10 - first both players mutually decide what goes into the physical stats, say Str 13, Dex 16, Con 14, and then they're each left with 16, 12, 10 to distribute among their own mental stats). The problems are foresee here is arguments over who gets what, conspiracy to twink, and a lot of characters with virtually the same stats.
At this point I ran out of ideas, so I turn to my fellow Playgrounders for help.
Thank you in advance.