PDA

View Full Version : Let's... Alternative ideas for implimenting races?



Belac93
2016-12-09, 11:04 PM
So, I'm making a fantasy heartbreaker, based shamelessly on D&D 5e (the same ability scores and terms for many things, as well as spell names). I'm handling classes similarly to Shadow of the Demon lord, but more restricted. You get a choice of class from 6 (barbarian, druid, mage, priest, rogue, warlock, and warrior), then a choice of a specialty that expands on your class (mage can be a necromancer, warrior can be a paladin), and then a master path based on your specialty (necromancer can be a lich). There are 10 levels, and it uses a dice system for spellcasting, with mishaps and a 'final fate' based on your specialty, which can eventually do something really nasty (necromancer ages and reanimates as a mindless monster, demon summoner becomes possessed).

However, I have no idea how I want to do races, or even if I want to. I'd be very interested in using it in a world I'm building, with the races from there, but I want to use a different method from what D&D uses. Especially as those races often exceed humans.

I'm considering making races as 'race levels,' like 3.5, where you start as a level 1 member of that race, with all your features, but only one from your class (such as spellcasting from a mage). This allows you to not spontaneously gain magic a few hours into the adventure, but still be from a powerful race.

Pauly
2016-12-09, 11:55 PM
Ask yourself these questions
What is the point of having different races at all?
seriously most of the differences in race in DnD are cosmetic. So why add complications unless there is a solid gameplay need for it?
How much extra work will adding different races entail. Could you not achieve a similar effect far more easily just by having different cultures of the same race?

Satinavian
2016-12-10, 07:32 AM
Never make rules to push your players to cetrain character options you prefer when dessigning a rule system.

Don't introduce races and then punish people for not using humans. Yes, early D&D did it and it was stupid. Try to make your races balanced. Try to make humans just one of many races, not extra special or the default option.

Theoboldi
2016-12-10, 08:25 AM
Maybe you could take the route some older RPGs took (early editions of D&D were among them, I think) and make the races into classes of their own?

Or maybe just specialities. So you could be a Mage (Elf) or a Rogue (Halfling) or a Warrior (Dwarf).

OldTrees1
2016-12-10, 09:40 AM
When designing a level by level based multiclassing system (like 5E's class levels & 3.5's Monster Classes) you should have some idea about how you want the generic character to scale in power and versatility as a function of level. Let's call this "F(L)".

If we have 2 classes A(L) and B(L) and 1 monster class Z(L) then you will want to design you classes such that A(L1+L2) = B(L1)+Z(L2). This requires either each level to add a constant amount of power/versatility per level or for sufficient synergy between classes.

This is a difficult design problem to tackle especially since 5E's classes and 3.5's Monster Classes show that even people in the field fall short of the ideal.


An alternative to Monster Classes would be to have every race have the same number of racial levels. Weaker races might advance in profession levels. However the idea would be that nobody has a higher leveled class than someone else.


Yet another idea is having stronger races come to their own through DM designed racial feats. Thus the difference between humans and yuan ti would be, in addition to the different race level 0 traits, humans have taken more general feats & training based ability score boosts vs the yuan ti's racial feats & maturation based ability score boosts.

Belac93
2016-12-10, 01:28 PM
Ask yourself these questions
What is the point of having different races at all?
seriously most of the differences in race in DnD are cosmetic. So why add complications unless there is a solid gameplay need for it?
How much extra work will adding different races entail. Could you not achieve a similar effect far more easily just by having different cultures of the same race?
I've already written way too much lore for many of the races to turn back now.


Never make rules to push your players to cetrain character options you prefer when dessigning a rule system.

Don't introduce races and then punish people for not using humans. Yes, early D&D did it and it was stupid. Try to make your races balanced. Try to make humans just one of many races, not extra special or the default option.
That is why I was considering making them class levels. The reason I'm not using the D&D system is that I specifically don't want you to have to list 'race abilities' on your character sheet. I want you to be able to do this if you want to play a certain type of character.


When designing a level by level based multiclassing system (like 5E's class levels & 3.5's Monster Classes) you should have some idea about how you want the generic character to scale in power and versatility as a function of level. Let's call this "F(L)".

If we have 2 classes A(L) and B(L) and 1 monster class Z(L) then you will want to design you classes such that A(L1+L2) = B(L1)+Z(L2). This requires either each level to add a constant amount of power/versatility per level or for sufficient synergy between classes.

This is a difficult design problem to tackle especially since 5E's classes and 3.5's Monster Classes show that even people in the field fall short of the ideal.


An alternative to Monster Classes would be to have every race have the same number of racial levels. Weaker races might advance in profession levels. However the idea would be that nobody has a higher leveled class than someone else.


Yet another idea is having stronger races come to their own through DM designed racial feats. Thus the difference between humans and yuan ti would be, in addition to the different race level 0 traits, humans have taken more general feats & training based ability score boosts vs the yuan ti's racial feats & maturation based ability score boosts.
I like this idea, but I don't really use feats or anything in this game. All your features are based on your class (but there is a lot of variation within classes). Thanks for your advice on the other stuff though!

Satinavian
2016-12-10, 02:12 PM
That is why I was considering making them class levels. The reason I'm not using the D&D system is that I specifically don't want you to have to list 'race abilities' on your character sheet. I want you to be able to do this if you want to play a certain type of character.And how does that help ?

Instead of a human with 6 levels Mage, specialization Necromancer you have now a PC with 2 levels human and 4 levels Mage (Necromancer) only to make racial abilities into class abilities ? I don't think that is a useful idea. And making races with different numbers of levels doesn't help either. The PC with 1 level Goblin (or other weak race) and 5 levels Mage is only as strong as the human PC, if higher levels are not stronger than lower levels and all power scales linearly.

OldTrees1
2016-12-10, 02:32 PM
And how does that help ?

Instead of a human with 6 levels Mage, specialization Necromancer you have now a PC with 2 levels human and 4 levels Mage (Necromancer) only to make racial abilities into class abilities ? I don't think that is a useful idea. And making races with different numbers of levels doesn't help either. The PC with 1 level Goblin (or other weak race) and 5 levels Mage is only as strong as the human PC, if higher levels are not stronger than lower levels and all power scales linearly.

Power can still scale exponentially, it just has to have sufficient cross class synergy such that the marginal benefit of that goblin level on top of the 5 mage levels is comparable to the marginal benefit of the 6th mage level. Trivially oversimplified example would be if each level gave 1 feature that increased overall power by a multiple of x1.1 (1.1^6 = 1.1 * 1.1^5 = 1.1^2 * 1.1^4).

Belac93
2016-12-10, 02:40 PM
And how does that help ?

Instead of a human with 6 levels Mage, specialization Necromancer you have now a PC with 2 levels human and 4 levels Mage (Necromancer) only to make racial abilities into class abilities ? I don't think that is a useful idea. And making races with different numbers of levels doesn't help either. The PC with 1 level Goblin (or other weak race) and 5 levels Mage is only as strong as the human PC, if higher levels are not stronger than lower levels and all power scales linearly.

Well, I'm only giving each race 1 level of 'race.' High levels are more powerful than low levels, but I believe this should be offset by the fact that racial levels will have a lot of abilities, which will make up for the slight loss of power later on. At low levels, being a race is trading the great ability of spellcasting for a bunch of good abilities, which should end up being slightly better than being race-less. At higher levels, you notice this less and less, as the class powers drown out the low level abilities (racial and class).

The game is still in it's alpha stages, so none of this stuff is final, but a lot of it I am attached to.

Other than this, I don't really understand what you are trying to say (maybe blame it on the fact that I'm sick). The races will be just as good as if you were part of the same class, just a little different. I'm not trying to punish anyone for anything, just offer an alternative. I love all the races in the game, including the humans. If I wanted everyone to play a Kal, I would have made it the game about being a Kal, and everyone gains the Kal abilities, and I wouldn't be posting this.

Satinavian
2016-12-12, 11:01 AM
What i meant is twofold :

- I was not sure what you want to gain by simulation a race by class levels

- I still think it is not a good idea to have races that cost different amount of levels as that introduces lots of balancing problems. Like you say : some races will be very powerful at early levels, some races will be very powerful at higher levels.
You would think that balance itself out. But it doesn't. Most campains only cover some levels. And many players really don't like playing characters which they know will become obsolete later, while more seem to be happy to see early levels as some kind of origin story when they can rule the game later on.
And you will only have a small window of levels where the characters are of equal power.

Well, it is certainly not the worst way to handle it, but i don't think it is a particularly good one. I think it would be better to balance races with perks (traits, benefits, drawbacks, whatever) which don't mess with the level scaling of the classes. It makes classes easier to design, if you know that PCs get certain powers when the group is at the level the class provides the power at.

TheCountAlucard
2016-12-13, 12:27 AM
Ask yourself these questions
What is the point of having different races at all?
seriously most of the differences in race in DnD are cosmetic. So why add complications unless there is a solid gameplay need for it?
How much extra work will adding different races entail. Could you not achieve a similar effect far more easily just by having different cultures of the same race?At least for the Exalted setting, humans are humans, and various offshoots, such as Wyld mutants, Beastfolk, God-Blooded, and so on, can build themselves out of the starting points one is allowed; beings sufficiently inhuman as to not just be "Rubber Forehead Aliens" actually play by different rules from the typical player characters (and not always to their advantage, either).

So if you wanted to play an Ork-ish kind of character, you'd represent the robustness by buying high Strength and Stamina and purchasing the Fangs and Giant Merits.

Knaight
2016-12-13, 01:24 AM
More details are needed here - we have only the barest overview of the mechanics in use, we don't know what's going on with the races, so on and so forth. With that said, here are some possibilities:

Priority System - Essentially a character is broken up into a number of different categories. You've got attributes, class, and race. Depending on the setting it would probably be pretty easy to add social class to that, if you're using skills you could also add that. You then rank these from highest to lowest, and in each category you get certain options. The higher the category the stronger the options are. As an example for a more generic fantasy, using an A-E scale:


Priority
Race
Class
Attributes
Social Class
Skill Proficiencies


A
Elf
Mage
48 points (e.g. 15,15,15,14,14,14)
Noble
10 skills/tools


B
Dwarf
Priest/Shaman
36 points (e.g. 14,14,14,13,13,13)
Minor Noble/Rich Merchant
8 skills/tools


C
Half Elf
Rogue/Warrior
27 points (e.g. 13,13,13,12,12,12)
Merchant/Artisan
6 skills/tools


D
Human
Adventurer
21 points (eg 12,12,12,11,11,11)
Peasant
4 skills/tools


E
Halfling
Commoner
15 points (eg 11,11,11,10,10,10)
Outcast/Slave
2 skills/tools



Obviously the specific numbers are examples, and the races and classes presented aren't going to be the ones in your game. What's key are a few things.

Some of the races are just better than others. All else being equal in this example an elf of a given class, social class, talent among elves, etc. is way better than a human.
The classes are not all equal. Mages are just more powerful than warriors as a whole.
Not all members of society are equal. A noble title, holdings, wealth, all these things give power.
To mitigate this, PCs (and only PCs) who have a disadvantage in those categories get to be exceptional members of those categories.

So, lets look at the list again. There are 6 sets of race/class/social class* A/B/C mixes. You've got your elven priests from the middle class, your elven warriors from the lower noble class (knights), your dwarven mages from the middle class, your dwarven warriors from the lower nobility, your half elven mages from the lower nobility, and your half elven priests from the real nobility. These are positions with serious clout representing races that are stronger than humans, they don't need to have a bunch of attribute points and skill points on top of that making them good by the standards of their race/class/social class.

Meanwhile that outcast human warrior? They're not well positioned, and so they get to be incredibly talented with high attributes across the board and a lot of skills. The same thing applies to a halfling peasant rogue. This system does have the disadvantage of restricting concepts a bit - there are ways to bump up the flexibility (instead of demanding a set of A,B,C,D,E you could have a set of E,E,E,E,E with 10 points to freely boost any of them up 1 level per point), but there tend to be restrictions. It opens some doors and closes others, and is really worth considering when you already explicitly have races that are better than each other.

*Generally the games that use this don't have a class system and just call this class.