Vulnerabilities increasing as power increases?

[Pauly]

I’m seeking feedback on a homebrew I’m working on. I’m using urban fantasy, but the issue I’m talking about could be applied to other genres.

As PCs progress and become more powerful their weaknesses also increase. For example a vampire’s vulnerability to sunlight might progress from sparkling to getting bad sunburn to getting severely burned to instant immolation.

I know a lot of systems that use drawbacks in character creation as a means of accessing more advantages. However I can’t recall a system, other than CoC’s sanity points, where the disadvantages scale up with the PC’s power.

In urban fantasy it can explain in universe why the supernaturals haven’t taken over the world as well as explaining many different depictions of supernaturals in different media.

I was wondering if people thought this was a concept that would gelp a game.

[warty goblin]

Sure is gonna turn high level combat into rocket tag. Contrived example that's consistent with your idea. A lesser fire elemental takes double damage from ice. An elder fire elemental takes quadruple damage from ice. If Bob shows up with an icicle spell, the elder elemental needs 4x the HP to last as long.

By the time you're fighting elder elementals, you're probably doing more damage per attack, have better gear, and so on than when dealing with lesser elementals though. So it's quite possible that the elder elemental dies in like half the time to the upgraded icicle spell unless you inflate HP even more to keep pace. But then you aren't really making the monster more vulnerable to ice, it's just super protected against everything that isn't ice via it's huge HP pool. And if somebody buffs the elemental to resist ice, you're just in for a slog because now you have to deal with that bloated mess of HP.

Another potential side effect is really up-powering low level enemies compared to big powerful ones. Their lower vulnerabilities mean they're generally harder to one-weird-trick out of existence, and you actually have to fight them.

[Biggus]

as well as explaining many different depictions of supernaturals in different media


I'm curious what media you mean, in most of the ones I can think of vulnerability either stays the same or lessens as you get more powerful. There are a few specific exceptions, such as creatures who've somehow far outlived their natural lifespan instantly crumbling to dust if attacked in the right way, or creatures which are long-steeped in evil being more vulnerable to holy weapons, but from what I can recall it's not generally the case.

Also, for the reasons warty goblin mentions I think it might be better in a game as something which is true of certain specific creatures, which rewards player knowledge and/or research, rather than a general property of most/all creatures.

[Vahnavoi]

@Pauly: sure, you can do this. But it means having to think harder about it than 90% of people who are going to respond to you in this thread. Case in point:


Sure is gonna turn high level combat into rocket tag.

Nothing sure about that. Rocket tag is not created just by damage multipliers, it also requires that both parties can attack for enough damage in one attack. It is dead easy to avert this.

Let's go to a back to vampire weakness to sunlight for contrasting example. What does sunlight ordinarily depend on? The time of the day. The operative unit of time is hours, not six second combat rounds. Additionally, this is general roleplaying game section, not D&D. We don't have to presume characters can cheat their way to sunlight in the middle of the night.

What the vulnerability actually does, then, is limit an elder vampire's agency during daytime, compared to humans and younger vampires; but nothing guarantees those humans and younger vampires have easy time exposing an elder vampire to sunlight during daytime either. Instead of rocket tag, you can get tower defense, hide and seek and various other forms of gameplay.

The generalized form of the lesson is: utilize vulnerabilities that operate on longer time frames than single actions and that are neither trivial to overcome nor to exploit. Additionally, look at vulnerabilities outside of simple damage multipliers. Again using vampires as an example, you also have:

- being repelled by garlic flowers or scent of wild roses: the better a vampire's sense of smell gets, the further they have to stay from these items or risk being nauseated

- inability to cross running water: a young vampire might be able to walk over a bridge or sail by boat; an elder vampire has to be carried in a coffin. Additionally or alternatively: a young vampire might still be able to swim to some extent or at least float; an elder vampire gets paralyzed and sinks to the bottom. (Running water here meaning brooks, rivers and channels under open sky; man-made enclosed waterways, such as pipelines or sewers, don't count.)

- inability to go into a dwelling without an invitation; a young vampire might be able to do it just fine and just be unable to use supernatural powers while breaking and entering; an older vampire might get in by a technicality such as "welcome" matt; eldest vampires have to be explicitly invited by a person currently inside the dwelling.

- inability to lie about your name: a young vampire might get by using a nickname; an older vampire is limited to using anagrams of their true name; eldest vampires can only use their true name to refer to themselves.

- amount of blood required to keep up appearences; a young vampire can go for a few months without feeding and still look human; an older vampire will start to look like a beast in a few weeks; eldest vampires default to looking like hideous monsters unless they've fed within that very day.

All of the above will significantly limit what an older vampire can do and when without making it increasingly easy to kill them in six seconds, especially when you consider they will gain additional power in other areas.

[Psyren]

I think the Taint mechanic from D&D 3.5 (OA / HoH) might count, particularly the Tainted Scholar prestige class - it gives scaling benefits tied to your taint score, but those are offset by the scaling drawbacks that come from taking on more taint.

D&D 3.5 also has the Wu Jen class (also from OA, but updated in CArc) - as you level, you gain more magical strength in the form of Spell Secrets (read: permanent metamagic on your favorite spells) but are forced to take on additional taboos as well. More taboos means increased restrictions on your behavior and higher chances of locking yourself out of your spellcasting that day.

PF1's Burn mechanic for the Kineticst also combines scaling benefits with scaling drawbacks.

[Anymage]

As a general rule for a world that makes sense and helps explain why normal (numerous, creative, unfettered) humans remain top dogs in a world with creatures who could crumple us like tin cans in a straight fight.

For PCs specifically, you're going to have the tricky situation where players feel like gaining weaknesses for spending their XP on cool powers is counterproductive. And if weaknesses allow you to gain extra points for powers, that's going to be tricky to manage and lead to minmaxing. This can include situations where only supernatural abilities bring tradeoffs but are more powerful than normal abilities, as well as cases where the supernatural drawback is roleplaying issue with little to no mechanical effect. Tradeoff stats like power vs. freedom can be done, but work best in a game with very abstract mechanics. Trying to apply those ideas to a concrete mechanic game means you'll have to put in bunches of homework to handle all the added complexity.

[DeTess]

How good an idea this is really depends on the core resolution and character creation and progression mechanics of your game.

For example, if your game looks like FATE, implementing this as a scaling effect on your supernatural aspect would be easy, where it can be invoked both by you and your opponents for a bigger bonus depending on power. For example, a normal vampire would get +2 for invoking its vampire aspect and others could invoke it for +2 by hitting its weaknesses while for an elder vamp this becomes +4.

However, if your game is a d20 variant managing this in a way that does not cause rocket tag would be a bigger issue.

[Vahnavoi]

In urban fantasy it can explain in universe why the supernaturals haven’t taken over the world as well as explaining many different depictions of supernaturals in different media.

Since I already covered vulnerabilities, I'll now give advice on these aspects, using how I run ghosts and evil spirits as an example.

So, the very basics:

- living creatures have a spiritual aspect that can survive death
- sometimes the spiritual aspect gets left behind on Earth
- weak spirits have a very hard time interacting with Earthly matter, often being reduced to mere observers
- the initial shape of a spirit is based on self-image of the person upon death
- the strength and shape of a spirit is based on emotions and changes in self-image, now unmoored from physical restrictions; there is a feedback loop there, so if, say, a spirit starts thinking of themselves as evil they will start to resemble (what they think is) something evil, which will cause them to think more evil thoughts, which will reinforce their evil nature... so on and so forth until the spirit is unrecognizable as the person they once were
- ability to affect the material world is a two way street: the stronger a spirit gets, the more they can exert force on Earthly things, but at the same time, Earthly things can exert more force on them - in terms, a weak spirit can't be punched in the face, but a strong spirit can be

Under these rules, you can get a variety of different evil spirits from people who all begin as fairly classic (intangible) ghosts.

Now for some more specific rules and what you can do with them:

- not every person leaves behind a spirit and not every spirit lingers on Earth, a fact that is apparent to any other spirit; the spiritual landscape of Earth is not filled to the brim with ghosts, and an individual ghost might've even seen other people die and confirmed that their fates are not the same
- why the above happens is where you have room to play around: does it depend on circumstance of death? Does someone frequently come and collect spirits of the dead? Where do the spirits who don't stick around go?
- a fresh new ghost might not remember their circumstance of death, either because they died suddenly or because their death was so traumatic they'd rather not; in both cases, learning exactly how they died is a potential source of strong emotions and warping of self-image
- on the opposite end, a very old spirit might have no objective recollection of their past, having long since replaced it with a subjective narrative and having changed shape to match it; this of course means that forcing them to face the truth can have great consequence
- abilities not related to simple (para)physical shape and mentality of a spirit stem from the circumstances of their death; for example, a fiery spirit would be a result of someone dying in a fire. This matters since people rarely have full control over how they die, and from a game desing perspectice, you don't have to grant players control over it either. Have them draw lots, roll on a table, etc. , though see a point on min-maxing at the end.

As for living people with powers, these come in two main varieties. The first is those touched by spirits;

- a powerful spirit interfered in their life and as a result they can now see and interact with even the weakest ghosts
- again, it's a two way street, so being able to punch a ghost also means the ghost can punch back
- being possessed by a ghost is also a risk
- any other supernatural powers of such a person are derived from powers of the spirit; you can think of a victim of a vampire being turned into a vampire as a specific case of this
- it's possibe to find and strike a deal with a spirit to get powers you want, but this requires doing the necessary homework and legwork

The second is powers of enlightement:

- these require longterm devotion to acquire, so only a minority of people ever do
- in addition, they require a specific mindset to acquire and maintain; which kind of mindset influences the context where you're going to meet these people
- put together, these mean acquiring powers requires sacrifice on a personal level - the wielder of the power isn't free to act any which way

Once you've chosen the explanation for why not all people become ghosts, why don't all ghosts stick around and what kind of a person you have to be to gain powers at all, it may become self-evident why neither ghosts nor enlightened people have taken over. For ghosts, maybe Grim Reaper comes and periodically purges Earth of all spirits of the dead, meaning all spirits are on a time limit; for enlightened people, it may literally be required of them to let go of pursuit of Earthly power and material wealth; or it might the most ancient and powerful spirits get reduced to a bestial or insane state by long years of suffering and no longer interact with society as people, instead being more like natural disasters. The idea of supernaturals "taking over the world" is based on the idea that this is something supernatural beings have agency and a motive to do, and neither has to be true. The player characters, if your players are so inclined, can be the sole or first exception to such rules and you can build your campaign around the question of whether their actions will destroy the urban status quo of contemporary Earth.

Now, as for min-maxing, I wouldn't worry about players attempting that. Trying to get the most out of a hand you're dealt is completely ordinary gameplay, and this isn't just a figure of speech, you can literally have your players draw cards to see which initial abilities they have. Min-maxing, and other optimization stragies, only lead to degenerate play when they're too easy and have outsized effect compared to effort. When min-maxing is sufficiently hard compared to skill level of your players, you can build the entire gameplay around their efforts to do just that, the challenge posed by it is one of the appeals of your game.

[Jaeda]

Chronicles of Darkness (I'm not sure about the old World of Darkness) has this where your supernatural weaknesses get worse with increasing power and decreasing integrity-substitute. For example, a fledgling vampire, who has Blood Potency 1 and Humanity 7 (the starting amount) can be in sunlight for (I think) 10s of minutes and only suffer bashing damage, whereas an elder would take aggravated damage every round. Increased Blood Potency makes them more powerful but restricts what they can eat; a fledgling can get Vitae from animals, average vampires have to go after humans, and elders can only get vitae from other vampires (or other supernaturals with the right merit). Reduced Humanity also causes them to pick up additional banes.

[Biggus]

@Pauly: sure, you can do this. But it means having to think harder about it than 90% of people who are going to respond to you in this thread. Case in point:


...and we're four posts in and already there's completely uncalled-for sneering at people. Just so you know, that makes you look far worse than merely being wrong.

[Willie the Duck]

I’m seeking feedback on a homebrew I’m working on. I’m using urban fantasy, but the issue I’m talking about could be applied to other genres.

As PCs progress and become more powerful their weaknesses also increase. For example a vampire’s vulnerability to sunlight might progress from sparkling to getting bad sunburn to getting severely burned to instant immolation.

I know a lot of systems that use drawbacks in character creation as a means of accessing more advantages. However I can’t recall a system, other than CoC’s sanity points, where the disadvantages scale up with the PC’s power.

In urban fantasy it can explain in universe why the supernaturals haven’t taken over the world as well as explaining many different depictions of supernaturals in different media.

I was wondering if people thought this was a concept that would gelp a game.

Other than the already mentioned WoD/CoD Vampires, I don't recall a direct PC-centric example. I think some of the other WoD/CoD games like Mage, Changeling and Werewolf had areas to which the normal PC options would be vulnerable, but the henchmen-esque characters (ghouls, acolytes, kinfolk, dreamers) would not be. More than a few systems have had higher-power enemies being more readily detectable, which is certainly a form of weakness (or at least limitation).

A thing to think about with weaknesses (particularly vulnerabilities) with PCs is that, after a certain point it simply becomes a 'don't/won't' situation. Much of the time, if a PC takes +50% or x2 damage from fire, that's something they will accept (particularly if there is an upside). If they take 1 pt of damage per half-hour in direct sun, and had to carefully plan a daytime action (or even plan to be the one who doesn't go on a leg of the mission), they will do so. On the other hand, if they take 1 damage per round from sunlight, or take +50%-x2 damage from all weapons or something like that, many-to-most will either 1) will pick a different entity (if that's an option), just plain not go on certain missions (any daytime endeavor), or bee-line for a 'ring of _____ immunity.' Oftentimes the lessor vulnerability ends up being the more-impactful one because the harsher one becomes a strict no-go.

Not to say this is impossible, nor that it couldn't add to a game. Just, think very hard about what you want to achieve with this, both in terms of world-building, and in terms of PC challenge and PC actions.


@Pauly: sure, you can do this. But it means having to think harder about it than 90% of people who are going to respond to you in this thread. Case in point:
Once again, why? It literally added nothing to the discussion that something along the lines of 'it can get significantly more complicated that that as well...' and then proceeding with the same functional point would have done. It certainly didn't make you look more insightful/competent/worthy-of-respect and the person you addressed look lessor. This behavior trend continues to gain you nothing.

[Vahnavoi]

@Biggus & Willie the Duck: Or, demonstrably, threads such as this on these forums have a tendency to fixate on examples given, to detriment of broader points. You'd be less confused over this point if my comment had been preceded by twenty more posts repeating warty goblin's observation. Could I have phrased my prediction better? Yes, which why I'm taking a few moments to clarify. Beyond that? Don't let it sidetrack you.

[gbaji]

Well... Mini drama aside, there is a valid observation that this can be something that seems easy when considering specific examples (like vampires), but can be trickier and more problematic when applied conceptually to an entire game system. Does this apply to all powers of all types? Or only certain innate or form based ones? Because it's easy to see how maybe the vulerabilities/restrictions of some supernatural beings may become more pronounced the older or more powerful they become, but it's harder to figure out how to apply this to more mundane things. Not every character in a game is going to be a werewolf, or vampire, or whatever. Does a normal human, who's just very very skilled suffer greater vulnerabilities in some way to balance this? Must every magic item in the game also have offsetting weaknesses to account for their relative power? How about non-magical ones? So if I pick up some super tech weapon that helps me wipe out bad guys, do I suddenly acquire a vulnerability to sonic attacks or something?


That's not to say that you can't do this sort of thing, but IMO it's only going to work well if similar effects are in place for all the different race/class/level/whatever categories you have going in the game, and work similarly and equivalently for all different progression paths. You can limit this to "just supernatural things", of course, but then have to take that into account when balancing againt non-supernatural things in the game. And, as a side point to what I said just above, this also may only work well if say the PCs are all "normals" and the supernatural things are the enemies they are fighting. If there's a mix and match of playable characters who may fall in or not fall in these catetgories, it'll be tricky to balance to your players' satisfaction. This is something you could manage via PC scoping (ie: PCs are just never in the "ancient vampire" category, so these issues just don't affect them).

So... doable. But tricky IMO. I do kinda think this works better as a "restrictions created to explain why all these super powerful NPCs aren't just running the entire world" kind of thing. I think that you can put something like this into the more normal progression range for characters, but I"m kinda of the position of "why bother?". PCs presumably expect to get more powerful and capable as they adventure, so the progression should be upward. So just make that progression "upward". Just set the slope at whatever you want it to be and call it a day. Putting too much of "you gain this power, but gain this vulnerability/restriction as well", can either become too much of a limitation during play, or be more or less meaningless. When running NPCs, the GM can manage these as part of the adventure(s) being run (players have to figure out how to take advantage of the vulnerabilities of powerful foes). Which can totally work (and work really well)


But when players are running, they will find ways to avoid their restrictions while maximizing their advantages, so this may turn into more of a dueling environmental issue. Which may or may not be as fun as one might think. It can also lead to arguments and hurt feelings if players feel like the GM is putting them into situations that cause the vulnerabilities to occur too often, but the GM may be counting on those coming up as a balance issue to the adventure itself. And yeah, it's problematic because it creates a really "wobbly" result. When the vulnerabilities aren't present, the characer will be overpowered for an otherwise tuned encounter, but with vulnerabilties in effect, be underpowered. And, by the nature of the game mechanic itself, these shifts will become more pronounced the more the character progresses. How well that's recieved is really dependent on the players. Some players will love this. Some will hate it.

[Maat Mons]

It can be tricky to create major weaknesses without creating a highly binary situation. For an example of a fully binary situation, Superman auto-wins if there's no kryptonite, and auto-loses if there is kryptonite. Neither auto-winning nor auto-losing makes for enjoyable gameplay. That's an extreme case, but it helps illustrate a point. Characters can't be allowed to perform too well in situations where their weaknesses don't apply, nor too poorly in situations where their weaknesses do apply. Otherwise one or the other of those cases will need to be avoided to keep things from becoming unfun. Sine you need things to be fun and balanced both when the weaknesses are in play and when they aren't, it seems to me like you're multiplying the amount of work you need to do in balancing the game. But yes, you could do it, if you want to.

[Pauly]

The concept I am working on is for PCs to start as humans who have recently been turned into a supernatural. To give the players agency and to accommodate a variety of different depictions is to give the PCs a build-a-bear approach to gaining powers. On the flip side the vulnerabilities will also be build-a-bear.

In Urban Fantasy vampires are probably the biggest concern as the list of possible powers and possible vulnerabilities are very long. Things like witches, werewolves, spirit summoners and so on tend to have more limited lists.

The only real way for a binary superman/kryptonite situation to come up is for a PC to hyper specialize. Although possible it isn’t something I think a vaguely sensible player would want to do. The danger I’m seeing at the moment is more PCs specializing to get great power in a narrow facet then taking a whole bunch of minor disadvantages to avoid paying a heavy price for it.

Part of the design philosophy is that as PCs advance in their supernatural class they start losing their humanity and thus get hit with being vulnerable to things that regular humans don’t suffer additional adverse affects from (eg sunlight for vampires, silver weapons for werewolves, cold iron for witches). Some of the disadvantages may relate more to social abilities (eg witches getting uglier, wartier and cracked voices as they get more powerful, werewolves starting to smell ‘animal’ which affects how people and dogs react to them).

I want to avoid a class system where classes have pre-set vulnerabilities.

[Vahnavoi]

@Pauly: Okay. Some pointers given the above:

- since all player characters are going to be supernatural, you can likely get away with not having progression rules for normal humans at all
- related, I wouldn't worry about balancing individual humans with individual supernaturals; the balance point you care about is urban human society versus supernaturals, which is a substantially different thing
- in line with my example of how I treat ghosts, to facilitate both free pick game design and to avoid the idea of preser supernatual classes, you're better off ditching the idea of there being distinct supernatural "species" such as vampires, witches or werewolves; instead, there's just evil spirits that can take a variety of forms
- as a corollary, legends of vampires, witches and werewolves are human interpretations of what some evil spirit did sometime in the past; they aren't an accurate depiction of how things work (plus it explains why every tradition's idea of, say, vampires, is a bit different; it's because "vampire" is not a distinct species to begin with)
- to avoid players paying for one big power with a number of small disadvantages, considering pairing each advantage and disadvantage, ideally in a way that makes logical sense; improved sense of smell making a character more vulnerable to scent of garlic flower and wild roses would be an example of that
- additionally, consider having all disadvantages scale to the most powerful ability of a character; this way, the appeal of a narrow powerset is also having a narrow set of weaknesses, but you can't hoard either minor advantages or disadvantages to support it
- overall, consider ditching the concept of a "minor disadvantage"; ideally, each disadvantage should present an interesting puzzle or change in gameplay on its own

To elaborate a bit on the last few: they're aimed at avoiding a common pitfall of how tabletop games treat flaws. Roughly, sais pitfall is caused by:

Premise: flawed characters are more interesting.
(Dubious) Observation: people are not playing flawed characters.
Solution: bribing people to pick flaws by awarding advantages in unrelated fields.

So, first if all, if flawed characters are interesting, you don't need to bribe people to play them - doing so is rewarding on its own. Let's use some vampire weaknesses as examples again:

Weakness to sunlight is interesting, because human society mostly works during time. Even in absence of any other special character traits, you can get an interesting challenge from figuring out how to live without ever stepping in the sun. For contrast, dying to having your head cut off and your heart pierced... changes nothing. Every ordinary human dies to those just as well, no new challenge is presented by this limitation.

Secondly, when benefit given by a flaw is not directly related to that flaw, this trade-off does not incentivize picking that flaw - instead, it's pinging on incentives to gain anything else on the other side of that equation. This is why you get min-maxers picking inconsequential flaws for the benefits they want. This kind of design does nothing to generate appeal or interesting gameplay for flawed characters.

So, it's worth it to look at what kinds of minor disadvantages are happily gobbled up by people to get the character traits they actually want. The type that stands out are small numerical penalties, especially those that get outscaled by numerical progression as a game advances or that only serve to create statistical differences that aren't very visible in play. For example: if a flaw reduces a character's success rate from 55% to 45%, that is practically meaningless. To a human observer who doesn't know the explicit odds, this is indistinquishable from a 50/50 chance, even if it's statistically and game theoretically significant over a very large number of games.

The splits that humans are reasonably good at recognizing are always/never, 90/10, 10/90, and 50/50 when moving to it from one of the others, so utilize those.

Now, a note about balance, since other posters invariably bring it up: build-a-bear systems cannot guarantee character parity, their ability to do so goes down the more agency you give to players during character creation.This doesn't mean you can't get balanced games out of them, but it requires cherry-picking a suitable set of character out of all those possible. On this point, I'd give faith and responsibility to my players: the flipside of having greater amount of choice is that if they want specific outcomes, it's on them to make the choices that lead there. In any case, your victory condition is that each player has interesting things to do in the game; achieving parity between their characters is not all that important.

[AceOfFools]

I don’t think this a very good system.

As a player, dying in 10 minutes of exposure to sunlight, stinging in 1 minute and dying in 1 round are all going to elicit very similar results. I would be locked out of any sunlight exposed activity.

This sort of restriction, where one player is simply locked from participating periodically tends to be frustrating and unfun.

And final, many weakness simply don’t fit into the paradigm you describe. How can werewolf be weak to silver bullets, without devolving into the rocket tag fail state.

All that said, this is interesting and different, so I expect it to appeal to some players. I just think it’s way too niche to gain popularity outside of the highly specific players it appeal to. As long as that’s not a deal breaker for you, have fun.

[Pauly]

Not sure why so many people are putting ‘rocket tag’ as a drawback. ‘Rocket tag’ is mostly a 5th ed D&D problem and mainly the result of combining long rests and Vancian magic, and is closely related to the 5 minute workday. Once you step out of D&D or D&D clones those problems rarely exist to any significant extant.
It may be a problem implementing scaling drawbacks with powers in a 5th ed D&D clone, but since rocket tag and 5 minute workdays already exist it’s just another wrinkle to manage in that system.

As for players not wanting to suffer the classic drawbacks of classic archetypes. Firstly players already take the drawbacks in genre staples such as VtM without complaint. Secondly at low levels the drawback is a minor hindrance and doesn’t lock you out of parts of the gameworld. As players get more powerful they get access to stuff that ameliorates the problem. In D&D regular humans are at a disadvantage in lowlight environments. They can counter this a number of ways such as other party members having dark vision, various potions, various magic items, mundane solutions such as torches and lanterns. In D&D by the time the PCs are powerful enough to take on the Fire Giants in the land of lava they will have access to all the gear and spells needed to safely navigate the area. Now if the PCs get their flight spell dispelled while they are flying over a lake of magma they’ll suffer, which is a good reason not to fly over lakes of magma unless there is no other option.

@Vahnovoi.
I like your idea of spirits. It creates a cohesive in game rationale for the way the world works. However I think it’s easier to sell a campaign based on “you’re a werewolf” than “you’re playing a spirit whose powers are the basis of werewolf legends”.

Re tying powers to disadvantages. I like the idea, the implementation of which power matches to which disadvantage is complex. A simpler alternative might be to say if you want to raise a power from tier 1 to tier 2 you must also raise a disadvantage from tier 1 to tier 2.

[Lord Raziere]

I suggest making the stuff you can lose be as incremental as possible.

weaknesses were you lose your life or everything if you get hit by them is rocket tag/binary gameplay.

But say if you make it so that the more powerful you get, the more you store parts of your power in say....a second body and that the more power you get, the more bodies you need to have to store certain things and you can't store everything in one place. for example say you have earth magic, water magic, fire magic and air magic, you might need four bodies for that, and they connect to each other to cast all four through the fact they're all the same person, but say you lose the earth magic body, then you just lose earth magic for all of them, it provides a consequence, a vulnerability and such without just killing them, it weakens them while still keeping them a plausible threat because its cutting off their flexibility rather than their raw power in some ways.

or say for another random example someone has to store magic in certain gems they wear on their body, and you break one gem to make sure they can't cast this or that spell.....things like that.

like basically, make power need infrastructure and places to store it, because that is what makes destroying something complicated to destroy in reality, the fact that it can lose this or that and still keep functioning but at less efficiency or with a few features gone can simultaneously make it harder and easier to destroy by turning it from killing a single thing to like having to destroy various things that on their own might not be that hard to destroy, but when work in tandem get more difficult and key to winning becomes destroying this step by step because when you get rid of this you can then get rid of that, this is why organizations, liches things like that make good reoccurring enemies, because the solution that anyone is likely to turn to for any enemy is just killing them ASAP as soon as its clear they can't be reasoned with and adding in a silver bullet is not going to last long in my experience, its too simple to use and basically boils down to what hoops your going to make the players jump through to get that silver bullet.

but incremental loss kind of stuff? makes you feel as if your accomplishing something without fully winning. its hard to do this for personal combat, but more strategical, wider scale it can work better.

[Crake]

As PCs progress and become more powerful their weaknesses also increase. For example a vampire’s vulnerability to sunlight might progress from sparkling to getting bad sunburn to getting severely burned to instant immolation.

I know a lot of systems that use drawbacks in character creation as a means of accessing more advantages. However I can’t recall a system, other than CoC’s sanity points, where the disadvantages scale up with the PC’s power.

Actually, funnily enough, your example of a vampire is exactly the case for the 3.5 vampire savage progression. As you gain more vampire powers, the vulnerabilities also scale up in almost the exact way you described

[AceOfFools]

Not sure why so many people are putting ‘rocket tag’ as a drawback. ‘Rocket tag’ is mostly a 5th ed D&D problem and mainly the result of combining long rests and Vancian magic, and is closely related to the 5 minute workday. Once you step out of D&D or D&D clones those problems rarely exist to any significant extant.
It may be a problem implementing scaling drawbacks with powers in a 5th ed D&D clone, but since rocket tag and 5 minute workdays already exist it’s just another wrinkle to manage in that system.

…


This is kinda hilariously wrong.

The phrase “Rocket tag” comes from FPS video games, where in certain older games (or maps or modes) massively powerful rocket launchers that kill in one hit of their massive AOE were plentiful, so the game became, “grab rocket, shoot first, win.”

DnD 5e is somewhat tame in regards to rocket tag compared to older editions, where save or die effects were more numerous and reliable. The main TTRPG game type with rocket tag issues are ones that attempt something resembling realism and have guns. Because the guy that shoots first tends to win in a gunfight. They tend not to be popular, since easily getting killed turns off a lot of players.

Which, as it turns out, is the exact problem the system you postulate has. Okay, sure, the vampire may not have to worry about his enemy in any given encounter pulling out a fatal pocket full of sunshine. But they have to forgoe any scenario where exposure to sunlight is likely because dying isn’t fun.

You can argue this isn’t rocket tag. Technically it probably isn’t. But it’s going to turn away many players for the same reason they tend not to enjoy rocket tag-y games, or shadowrun’s “wait for your class’s encounter type, passively watching the other characters have their turn being the only one who contributes”.

[gbaji]

Not sure why so many people are putting ‘rocket tag’ as a drawback. ‘Rocket tag’ is mostly a 5th ed D&D problem and mainly the result of combining long rests and Vancian magic, and is closely related to the 5 minute workday. Once you step out of D&D or D&D clones those problems rarely exist to any significant extant.
It may be a problem implementing scaling drawbacks with powers in a 5th ed D&D clone, but since rocket tag and 5 minute workdays already exist it’s just another wrinkle to manage in that system.

I think what some are refering to as "rocket tag" isn't one specific cause, but the concept of a binary "I'm overpowered" vs "I'm underpowered" condition that changes from one encounter to another. Vancian magic systems run into this via "how often can you take a rest and recover the spells" question. If it's often enough, then the limitation of the system doesn't actually impact the characters at all, so it's meaningless. But if it's "often", then the party will regularly find itself struggling to deal with opponents that it was blowing through effortlessless two encounters ago.

Any system that creates this sort of wobbly binary result has this problem, regardless of what we label it. If the character does not encounter whatever it's vulnerable to, it will be overpowered for the encounter(s). But when it does, it's underpowered. The conditions that cause this are different, but the effect is the same. Otherwise similarly difficult encounters may be dramatically more or less "actually difficult" based more or less on DM fiat or planning. In the same way a GM may intentionally construct a series of encounters to ensure that a D&D party has used their spell resources (with no ability to recover them) so as to make later encounters far more difficult than they would be otherwise, the GM may introduce elements into encounters to ensure that sufficient vulnerabilities are in play, so as to do the same.

I would suppose that the only real difference here is that it's actually *easier* to construct specific encounters to be in the "very difficult" category with a system like this, since the GM presuambly knows which characters are being played in the PC party, and knows their vulnerabilities, and thus could tailor encounters to those vulnerabilities if a specific outcome is desired. Which, as I pointed out previously, some players will love, and some players will hate.

The D&D/Vancian problem is harder for GMs to nail down accurately, precisely because the actual difficulty effect is based on player choice variables which are not nearly as easiliy calculatable for the GM ahead of time. Some players are much better at recognizing when the GM is putting them into a resource gauntlet situation, and will start being more efficient with their per-rest spells/feats/whatever well ahead of time, and thus miitigate things. But it's exactly this element of player choice that makes this less likely to be hated by players. They know that they could have used their resources more efficiently earlier on, but did not. But in a "the more powerful you are, the more powerful your vulnerabilities are" system, the player has no real choice but to take these vulnerabilities as a consequence of advancement, and has no real ability to avoid when the GM decides to construct an encounter to really make them take strong effect.


A really good GM could manage a system like this, by providing the PCs some ability to make choices to mitigate these things. But that's also a really really tricky balance. Make it too easy, and we're back to the negatives being meaningless. Make it too hard, and the players will feel like they are being punished for advancement with very little recourse.

[Pauly]

For me when I’ve heard ‘Rocket tag’ in the past it either refers to buffed -v- unbuffed fights or systems where the phasing player can alpha-strike their opponents into oblivion before they get a chance to respond. Which is thematically different to superman/kryptonite or Dracula/sunlight* situations

For me the difference in the type of situation I am talking about is
1. Players can only get to the binary state by choosing to min/max and hyperspecialize. Players are equally free to broaden their range of powers/vulnerabilities as to heighten their powers/vulnerabilities.
2. Since each build has several paths to choose from there is no automatic ‘since it is an [X] it must be vulnerable to [Y]’. [X] may be vulnerable to [W] or [Z] instead.

Balancing is always an issue. On one hand running pre-programmed opponents can always end up too easy/too hard depending on the party composition. On the other tailoring opponents specifically to the party can come across as GM -v- the Players behavior.

A lot of these issues also are mainly in the realms of combat centric games. Once you get into more diplomacy, heist, investigative or exploration type gameplay then those issues become a lot less important.
Which leads to a conclusion that scaling vulnerabilities with powers probably is a poor fit for combat centric campaigns or systems.


* and yes I am fully aware that in canon that Dracula is only mildly affected by sunlight or at least mildly compared to most vampires since him.

[Anymage]

For me when I’ve heard ‘Rocket tag’ in the past it either refers to buffed -v- unbuffed fights or systems where the phasing player can alpha-strike their opponents into oblivion before they get a chance to respond. Which is thematically different to superman/kryptonite or Dracula/sunlight* situations

Key components of rocket tag are when offensive power outstrips defensive power, and where landing a good hit is likely to disable your foe. This quickly leads to a strategy of the best defense being a good offense, because dead foes can't take actions. All the prebuffing and alpha strikes are to help ensure that you strike hard, strike fast, and strike first to minimize the chance of the enemy getting off an offensive action against you.


Balancing is always an issue. On one hand running pre-programmed opponents can always end up too easy/too hard depending on the party composition. On the other tailoring opponents specifically to the party can come across as GM -v- the Players behavior.

A lot of these issues also are mainly in the realms of combat centric games. Once you get into more diplomacy, heist, investigative or exploration type gameplay then those issues become a lot less important.
Which leads to a conclusion that scaling vulnerabilities with powers probably is a poor fit for combat centric campaigns or systems.

Flaws that can lead to a character not being present for important scenes can go one of two ways. In the first case, the whole party shifts such that the flaw becomes irrelevant in practice. (E.G: one vampire means the whole party adopts a nocturnal schedule.) In the second the character has to regularly sit out of important scenes, which creates awkward situations as someone is regularly told to shut up because they aren't there. The awkwardness very often leads to such characters either being given some macguffin to mitigate their flaw, or else having it straight up ignored.

If someone has a mental or social flaw, there are a lot of ways it can go wrong. The most common is for it to be outright ignored, with the GM having too much on his plate to remember and the player having little incentive to remind him. Other options include using the trait to spotlight hog, or else to outright justify bad behavior. ("It's what my character would do" is an infamous justification, and being able to point to an antisocial personality trait on the character sheet is a high risk of encouraging that.)

If the flaw only kicks in at some point far enough down the line that the campaign will likely be over with by then, it might as well not exist.

I get where you're getting the idea for such flaws from. And there's a reason they were a common idea in 90s era game design. There's also a reason that style of flaw has fallen strongly out of favor, and why options that give combat power for roleplaying penalties* are widely understood to be a bad idea. Just like how games that often bill themselves as deep RP, combat eschewing experiences can often wind up as asskicking superheroes, as is evidenced by how White Wolf games often billed themselves vs. how they were most often played. You're welcome to try the same ideas again, I'll just encourage you to know how they've worked out historically.

*(Or more generally, any concrete power balanced by a fuzzy drawback. If you gain the ability to unlock any door at a touch at the "drawback" of not liking to lie and only doing it if it's really important, you've left yourself wide open for justifications and have basically given away a free power.)

[Vahnavoi]

@AceOfFools: you are correct the term "rocket tag" comes from first person shooters, specifically, DOOM, which codified and popularized it. But rocket tag is not degenerate play in a first person shooter and the way tabletop gamera use the term misses everything about it.

To wit: in DOOM, player weapons have two major categories: hitscan and projectile. Hitscan weapons, such as the shotgun, simply check if there is an enemy sprite on a player's screen. No projectiles are actually fired, whether the attack hits and how much damage it does is a pseudorandom variable, akin to a die roll. By contrast, projectiles, such as rockets, are actual in-game objects with their own collision detection, movement vector and speed. This means that the rocket launcher, unlike the shotgun, has to be aimed and can be dodged. Given highly mobile player characters of DOOM, this serves to create fast reflex-based gameplay, similar to paintball, dodgeball or airsoft. Great fun in multiplayer, with a high ceiling for player skill. That's what rocket tag is, in its original context.

The degenerate tabletop version has none of that. It isn't just about one shot being enough to off a character, it's that everything that could make getting that shot an interesting challenge has been abstracted away. In D&D, that would be roll initiative, roll to hit and roll damage - reduce combat to that, and it has the exact same depth as Snakes & Ladders. Or even less, if character optimization allows someone to ensure they always win initiative or always hit or always do enough damage. Then combat has exact depth of a coin flip, the combat minigame is trivialized by the character building minigame.

That's a problem... but isn't and doesn't have to be a problem with scaling vulnerabilities, because vulnerabilities are not limited to things that allow a character to be killed in one shot. The example of sunlight weakness, as already discussed, doesn't even have that trait. We can very well presume each vampire player character that would be killed by sunlight will stay out if it, that doesn't negate the vulnerability, because the actual challenge is how to live a life without participating in daytime society. That challenge remains even if nobody ever tries to kill the vampire in combat using sunlight. So it'd be far more fruitful to talk of how to make an interesting game out of that challenge, rather than whine about rocket tag.

[Gnoman]

Not sure why so many people are putting ‘rocket tag’ as a drawback. ‘Rocket tag’ is mostly a 5th ed D&D problem and mainly the result of combining long rests and Vancian magic, and is closely related to the 5 minute workday. Once you step out of D&D or D&D clones those problems rarely exist to any significant extant.

No, this is wrong. It is a thing in almost any system. "Rocket Tag" is a term for any situation where an encounter can be settled with a single stroke - GURPS 4E combat has a tendency to devolve into this if the GM isn't very careful to avoid it, for example. Escalating vulnerabilities genuinely do run the risk of just this problem, because anything that multiplies damage or disabling chance can very aggressively cross that threshold.

Note that "Rocket Tag" isn't just something players can do - if you the GM forget that a PC has super low Dill Resistance and give a monster a Pickle Death Attack, that's a rocket tag situation.

If, for example, lower-power vampires find the smell of garlic annoying, mid-power vamps can't stand to be within a hundred feet of it, and high-power vamps crumble to dust if they ever smell it, then anybody fighting an elder vampire can create a rocket tag situation by spending $2 at the grocery store.

If young werewolves just don't resist silver bullets, mid-power ones take double damage from them, and high-end ones take quad damage, that's a rocket tag situation unless you quadruple their health because the same weapon fired by the same guy does four times as much damage.

Neither of these require specialization. Just having a specific tool.

What you're trying to do can work, but it will be a truly gargantuan task to homebrew it. I'd suggest looking at one of the various extant point-buy systems and working off of that - this would be trivial to handle in GURPS, for example - so that you have a system that's had a lot of eyes on it and lots of people you can go to for advice.

[warty goblin]

Perhaps more critical than whether this is or is not rocket tag is how increasing vulnerabity warps the action space. Put simply, the higher the reward for certain actions, the less viable all other actions become by contrast. If it's something the attacker can control - e.g. using silver bullets - then it doesn't take that much vulnerability before silver .00 buckshot is the only way anybody ever fights a werewolf, and none of their other resistances or powers really matter. They are exactly as tough as their ability to absorb silver bullets.

Conversely, if it's something the defender can control - like say a vampire in daylight - it never comes up because no elder vampire is stupid enough to ever fight in daylight. That means all their resistances and abilities do matter, so they can easily end up extremely strong, while also encouraging really gimmicky efforts to exploit that vulnerability like dragging around giant mirrors to reflect sunlight into their lairs or whatever.

And either case really limits what the players can do. Specialize in fire magic? Too bad, it's an elder werewolf and has insane health and fire resistance. Grab that revolver and get shooting.

Basically I think one should be careful with very big vulnerities because it tends towards situations where an enemy is either trivial (elder werewolf but I have a semi auto shotgun with silver buckshot) or extremely difficult (didn't get paid last month so I'm all out of silver ammo*) and now that elder werewolf is basically an untouchable death god. If you want the challenge to be engineering the fight to always exploit the vulnerability, it's cool. If you want the challenge to be the actual fight, less so.

*silver, particularly pure silver, is not cheap**. You also need a pretty good kiln to melt it, you ain't getting it to 1000C in a pot on your stove top.

** if you want to cause real pain, make a monster that's only vulnerable to pure gold. I just got done casting my fiancé's engagement ring, which has gold components, and pure gold is just shockingly expensive, I finally found a source for $70/gram, and a gram is not very much gold. 1 round of .22LR in gold runs you about $150 - $200, not counting losses for polishing and the extra you need to get a good cast.

[BRC]

Perhaps more critical than whether this is or is not rocket tag is how increasing vulnerabity warps the action space. Put simply, the higher the reward for certain actions, the less viable all other actions become by contrast. If it's something the attacker can control - e.g. using silver bullets - then it doesn't take that much vulnerability before silver .00 buckshot is the only way anybody ever fights a werewolf, and none of their other resistances or powers really matter. They are exactly as tough as their ability to absorb silver bullets.

Conversely, if it's something the defender can control - like say a vampire in daylight - it never comes up because no elder vampire is stupid enough to ever fight in daylight. That means all their resistances and abilities do matter, so they can easily end up extremely strong, while also encouraging really gimmicky efforts to exploit that vulnerability like dragging around giant mirrors to reflect sunlight into their lairs or whatever.

And either case really limits what the players can do. Specialize in fire magic? Too bad, it's an elder werewolf and has insane health and fire resistance. Grab that revolver and get shooting.

Basically I think one should be careful with very big vulnerities because it tends towards situations where an enemy is either trivial (elder werewolf but I have a semi auto shotgun with silver buckshot) or extremely difficult (didn't get paid last month so I'm all out of silver ammo*) and now that elder werewolf is basically an untouchable death god. If you want the challenge to be engineering the fight to always exploit the vulnerability, it's cool. If you want the challenge to be the actual fight, less so.

*silver, particularly pure silver, is not cheap**. You also need a pretty good kiln to melt it, you ain't getting it to 1000C in a pot on your stove top.

** if you want to cause real pain, make a monster that's only vulnerable to pure gold. I just got done casting my fiancé's engagement ring, which has gold components, and pure gold is just shockingly expensive, I finally found a source for $70/gram, and a gram is not very much gold. 1 round of .22LR in gold runs you about $150 - $200, not counting losses for polishing and the extra you need to get a good cast.


I've always found the best approach is to build vulnerabilities in to specific abilities or weaknesses that, when stripped away, STILL leave the fight in place, but makes research and preparation meaningful. Silver doesn't insta-kill the werewolf, but it does shut off it's regeneration.

The fight I'm proudest of was a D&D fight against a "Primordial Vampire" (in my Lore, a Fiend responsible for starting a new Vampiric lineage), that had a bunch of twists on the Vampire weaknesses and powerset. My PC's did a bunch of research (Got a bunch of books) and learned various things like

1) In order to kill it, they had to Stake it's heart with Sunlight (That is, expose it's heart directly to sunlight or, as they learned, immersing the heart in running water would also work)

2) It was a shapeshifter, and would move it's heart around, but if they hit it with a specially prepared weapon, they could lock it into it's true form where it's heart was easier to find. The same weapon (A club made of fresh saplings, wrapped in a prayer-inscribed cloth and soaked in holy water) could also be used to break it's hypnotic gaze.

3) It had a hypnoic gaze ability, but despised garlic flowers, and if you wore a garland of garlic, it couldn't bear to lock eyes with you to hypnotize you (If you were Garlick'ed up, it's first attack would be to tear away your garlic rather than to deal damage, and so long as you were openly wearing the garlic it couldn't hypnotize you.

4) It wasn't a spellcaster, but unless distracted, it was really good at dispelling or twisting any non-instantaneous magic back against the caster.

5) A caster could charge their blood with magic and intentionally spill it (spend a 1st level spell slot and deal yourself some damage) To send the thing into a Blood Frenzy, where it would ignore all other threats for a round and rush the caster.

6) It has incrediable regeneration, boosted if it ever got any blood, but that regeneration would be blocked if they lodged silver in it's flesh or exposed it to sunlight, running water, or Holy water.

The PC's learned all of this by reading various books, and were able to strategically deploy the various weaknesses against the Primordial Vampire...but in the end it was still a superstrong nigh-unkillable shapeshifter that they had to fight.

For the Elder Werewolf, I would go less "Silver makes it fall over super dead", and more "You NEED to bring the full anti-werewolf arsenal against this thing. Silver bullets to stop the regeneration, stink bombs to overwhelm it's nose, Wolfsbane, Fire, everything".

With building any Vulnerabilities system, you want to avoid two scenarios

1) Rock-paper-scissors where things just turn into "Did you bring the right stuff? If so, you win, if not, you lose"

And
2) what Warty is talking about up there around Action Space. You want to avoid a situation where the best move is just "Push the Weakness Button". Pushing the button once or twice is good, but it shouldn't completely replace your normal attack routines, since those are going to be better integrated into the game. If you're fighting a big scary demon that gets damaged when you shout prayers at it, then the fight can turn into everybody just saying "I spend my turn shouting prayers at the demon". Nobody gets to play their characters, they just push the button over and over again.


That's why I prefer weakness exploitation to be either preparation based (Silver weapons, garlic flowers), which still integrates into the system's normal mechanics, Tactics based (Don't use long-term magic unless it's distracted. Stay close to the Paladin so you're immune to it's Fear effect), or one-time things (Kill it by exposing it's heart to sunlight, bonk it with the holy water club to get it to stop shapeshifting it's heart around). You want to augment the Game's fight mechanics, not replace them.

[Vahnavoi]

With building any Vulnerabilities system, you want to avoid two scenarios

1) Rock-paper-scissors where things just turn into "Did you bring the right stuff? If so, you win, if not, you lose"

This is bad advice to the degree that it's the opposite of what Pauly ought to be doing. Rock-Paper-Scissors is significant in game design precisely because there is no dominant strategy to it: whichever pick a player makes, their opponent could make the countering choice, and vice versa, leading to there being no pick that a player would always be better off choosing over all others.

Or to put it another way, RPS is the opposite of having one supreme strategy that renders all others unviable in comparison.

This is why major complex games incorporate RPS dynamics in them, from turn-based games such as Pokemon to real time strategy games such as Age of Empires. If you want to give players choices and a reason to not always choose the same thing, this kind of dynamic is required.


2) what Warty is talking about up there around Action Space. You want to avoid a situation where the best move is just "Push the Weakness Button". Pushing the button once or twice is good, but it shouldn't completely replace your normal attack routines, since those are going to be better integrated into the game. If you're fighting a big scary demon that gets damaged when you shout prayers at it, then the fight can turn into everybody just saying "I spend my turn shouting prayers at the demon". Nobody gets to play their characters, they just push the button over and over again..

There is a convoluted assumption here that "pushing the weakness button" is different from enacting "normal attack routine", nevermind cases where breaking the "normal attack routine" is the entire point: a game where a player can just do their "normal attack routine" over and over has the exact same problem as one where they can "push the weakness button" over and over as far as strategic depth goes.

Consider Pokemon, again: how you "push the weakness button" is that you choose a Pokemon and a move from that Pokemon, just like when making any other move. Or, if hunting werewolves with silver buckshot as in warty goblin's example, that still requires getting a gun, putting yourself in range, aiming it, firing it and all the other components of shooting at a target that'd you'd go through when hunting anything else with normal buckshot. "I spend my turn shouting prayers at a demon" is what a lot of game would call "casting a spell" and the option to do so is part of core gameplay. So on and so forth.

[warty goblin]

You can do RPS in an RPG just fine, but because each character only controls a single unit and that unit is generally within a single play session fairly immutable, the RPS has to be at the level of individual actions or stances or something else chosen frequently, not characters. The fail state there is that if Bob builds a Rock character, Scissor Castle is a probably a pushover, but Alice's Scissor character is gonna need to hard carry him through Paper Palace.

[GeoffWatson]

Rather than weaknesses becoming worse, how about getting more weaknesses/limitations?

In 1e OA, Wu Jen gained more taboos they had to abide by as they gained levels.

[Vahnavoi]

You can do RPS in an RPG just fine, but because each character only controls a single unit and that unit is generally within a single play session fairly immutable, the RPS has to be at the level of individual actions or stances or something else chosen frequently, not characters. The fail state there is that if Bob builds a Rock character, Scissor Castle is a probably a pushover, but Alice's Scissor character is gonna need to hard carry him through Paper Palace.

Depends on turn-over rate of characters and whether those characters are meant to act separately or as a group. If player characters are meant to act as individuals against other individuals, then each character is analogous to one RPS player, and ought to have full set of moves to tackle other comparable characters. The corollary is that every character has to reconsider their moves turn-by-turn lest they become predictable.

If player characters are meant to act as a team against other teams, then each character is analogous to one RPS strategy. The corollary is that every character has to reconsider their opponents turn-by-turn lest they become predictable.

These apply symmetrically to what the game master, in their role as an opponent player, does. The fail state is not that Bob plays Rock character, it's that there is a Paper Castle: the game master is failing at RPS by picking paper over and over again.

But the turn referred to is not six second combat round - it's the time it takes from players taking their picks to their picks being revealed and the contest being resolved. That also sets the acceptable turnover rate for characters. There isn't a problem with Bob playing Rock for a whole session if the contest lasts for the whole session.

These are active design points. If Pauly wants to grant players agency to make their characters individually, going with the version where each character has a full move set is likely the best option. If the players are meant to operate as a team, however, then the version where each character is one move is up for consideration, but the corollary to that is that players ought to make their characters as a team also, leaving less individual agency per player.

It's possible to nest the individual version within the team version - Pokemon can be used to illustrate that - typically a faster-paced individual version going on between slower-paced turns of the team version. But it isn't necessary to have both.

[Anymage]

Depends on turn-over rate of characters and whether those characters are meant to act separately or as a group. If player characters are meant to act as individuals against other individuals, then each character is analogous to one RPS player, and ought to have full set of moves to tackle other comparable characters. The corollary is that every character has to reconsider their moves turn-by-turn lest they become predictable.

Yes. That's why it's a problem if the optimal move every round when you're facing a werewolf is to shoot it with a silver bullet.

[Pauly]

Yes. That's why it's a problem if the optimal move every round when you're facing a werewolf is to shoot it with a silver bullet.

That assumes all werewolves are equally vulnerable to silver. In the system I am talking about some werewolves may be vulnerable to silver, some may be vulnerable to wolfsbane and others may not be vulnerable to either because they have chosen to have a lot of different powers than a few strong powers.
It also assumes the power discrepancy between the players and the NPC is such that they will need silver bullets. For a normal human this may be the case, but in the case where the PCs are themselves supernatural too it does not automatically follow. For example
- The time and resources spent on obtaining silver bullets may be more fruitfully spent on other preparations,
- there may be silver vulnerable werewolf in the party the carrying of silver ammunition may be seen as too risky,
- the party may well have no one with firearms proficiency in it.
- the party may discover that werewolf, not being a moron, wears a kevlar vest that protects against silver bullets.

So if the party discovers that the opposing werewolf is vulnerable to silver and if they have someone proficient in the use of firearms and if they can find suitable amounts of suitable ammunition then using silver ammunition is the optimal solution. But if the system is designed properly it isn’t the optimal solution for every werewolf faced by every party.

[Vahnavoi]

Yes. That's why it's a problem if the optimal move every round when you're facing a werewolf is to shoot it with a silver bullet.

Sure... but that doesn't follow simply from werewolves being vulnerable to silver. Because a werewolf being vulnerable to silver does not mean you are in position to shoot it.

That's a flaw in warty goblin's earlier analysis too. The overall point was correct - a sufficiently dominant strategy will render others moot - but without detailing a werewolf's full powerset, the idea that shooting werewolf with silver is an actual dominant strategy cannot be established with confidence. Warty goblin even gave one reason why that might not be the case on their own: silver is expensive. This means there's an opportunity cost to buying silver bullets - which means that a werewolf who opts to hide rather than fight at the last moment just made you spend a lot of money on nothing. Hence, even if the only limitation on silver bullets is cost, the conclusion that everyone will always use silver bullets is hastily drawn.

Pauly added other reasons why such conclusion would be hasty, which is highly relevant given Pauly is the one thinking up the system. There isn't any before-the-fact reason to presume scaling vulnerabilities will trivialize strategy in a game when the game's designer is aware of the issue and working to counteract it.

[warty goblin]

I mean silver is expensive, but not like insanely expensive. Currently it's just under $23 an ounce, which, conveniently enough, is about the weight of a 12ga shotgun slug. That puts a not unaffordable upper limit* on popping werewolves. You probably don't want to dump hundreds of rounds into a werewolf hideout hoping for a lucky hit, but taking even a few dozen shots isn't going to bankrupt any moderately well off character. The equipment to cast it can be had for under $1000 total - I know because that's what I spent on my rig, and I think you can get that way down because you probably don't need a burnout oven for casting bullets. A graphite mold and a blowtorch will work just fine.

Gold by contrast will be running you, at current prices, about $2,000 a slug for pure, or if you're fighting a cut-rate monster willing to die to cheaper alternatives, just under $1,200 for 14k slugs. So, uh, hope you hit.


*shotgun slugs are generally lead, which is about 10% denser than silver, so if you match weight it's ~$23 a shot, if you match volume it's slightly closer to $21 a shot.

[Anymage]

The overall point was correct - a sufficiently dominant strategy will render others moot - but without detailing a werewolf's full powerset, the idea that shooting werewolf with silver is an actual dominant strategy cannot be established with confidence.

This is in the context of RPS design in a TTRPG space. If it's supposed to be a round-by-round consideration, both sides need very wide movesets. That's a lot of design overhead.

If it's supposed to be per character, the characters can generally bring the winning tools if they have any prep time. The enemies could also bring winning tools if they were the ones initiating, but since that's just a step short of fiat-killing the PCs it's understandable that most DMs don't do that. So it's an edge that generally goes to the PCs.


Pauly added other reasons why such conclusion would be hasty, which is highly relevant given Pauly is the one thinking up the system. There isn't any before-the-fact reason to presume scaling vulnerabilities will trivialize strategy in a game when the game's designer is aware of the issue and working to counteract it.

Monster design != PC design. Pauly is free to try having both run on the same system, I'll just wish him luck then.

More over, monsters having a RPS design where bringing their bane is a massive force multiplier is a different thing from PC flaws. Pauly is again free to try working whatever system he likes. I'll just look forward to hearing how the playtests go as he tries applying his ideas in practice.

[gbaji]

You can do RPS in an RPG just fine, but because each character only controls a single unit and that unit is generally within a single play session fairly immutable, the RPS has to be at the level of individual actions or stances or something else chosen frequently, not characters. The fail state there is that if Bob builds a Rock character, Scissor Castle is a probably a pushover, but Alice's Scissor character is gonna need to hard carry him through Paper Palace.

Yeah. That can be a problem in cases (usually the case with character design/advancement choices) where these are permanent and immutable aspects of the character itself. They can't get around or change their vulnerabilities, so if they come up, they're pretty well hosed. But, presuambly, the benefits and powers gained, are available all the time. Which can make things quite wobbly.


That assumes all werewolves are equally vulnerable to silver. In the system I am talking about some werewolves may be vulnerable to silver, some may be vulnerable to wolfsbane and others may not be vulnerable to either because they have chosen to have a lot of different powers than a few strong powers.
It also assumes the power discrepancy between the players and the NPC is such that they will need silver bullets. For a normal human this may be the case, but in the case where the PCs are themselves supernatural too it does not automatically follow. For example
- The time and resources spent on obtaining silver bullets may be more fruitfully spent on other preparations,
- there may be silver vulnerable werewolf in the party the carrying of silver ammunition may be seen as too risky,
- the party may well have no one with firearms proficiency in it.
- the party may discover that werewolf, not being a moron, wears a kevlar vest that protects against silver bullets.

So if the party discovers that the opposing werewolf is vulnerable to silver and if they have someone proficient in the use of firearms and if they can find suitable amounts of suitable ammunition then using silver ammunition is the optimal solution. But if the system is designed properly it isn’t the optimal solution for every werewolf faced by every party.


Eh. That can work. I'm not sure how much of a fan I am of the "figure out the bad guy's weaknesses in the middle of a fight" methodology though. On paper, it sounds like it'll work great. In practice, I've found that it often results in either a lot of frustration and/or randomness (or players running through a rote list of "weaknesses to try") *or* if the players know the weakness beforehand, it may trivialize the fight. I have done things like this in the past, and when it works, it works great. But it's tricky to get the balance just right to where the PCs have a reasonable chance of figuring out the right thing to do (and surviving long enough to do it) and making it a tough fight but not a "OMG we got slaughtered" one.

If the party has to discover the exact weakness in the fight, then you have to make the NPCs attacks at the party weak enough that they can reasonably survive long enough to figure it out in some estimated number of combat rounds. Which often results in "not much of a threat initially", and turns into "not a threat at all", once the weakness is found. It's actually a lot easier to balance bbeg fights, since you can just assume that if the party hasn't figured out the weakness, they will get slaughtered (and presumably the objective is to figure this out *before* confronting that bbeg in the first place). So you just balance things based on how long it'll take them to defeat the bbeg using its weakness against it.

It's just all the stuff below that which is really trickly to manage. I think that it can be done, but has to be managed very carefully. But hey. If you can pull it off, more power to you.

[Vahnavoi]

This is in the context of RPS design in a TTRPG space. If it's supposed to be a round-by-round consideration, both sides need very wide movesets. That's a lot of design overhead.

Untrue. RPS itself obvious only takes three moves and can be played iteratively just fine. Having a lot of moves for players to select from is a separate consideration. The amount of work is what Pauly wants it to be.

It's worth noting that even in a game without dominant strategy, not every strategy needs to be equal. The context for the thread is supernatural flaws gained as trade-offs for supernatural powers; things not in that category don't have to be part of the dynamic and can be worse. (F.ex., see the earlier point on how individual non-supernaturals don't need to be balancef against supernaturals.)


If it's supposed to be per character, the characters can generally bring the winning tools if they have any prep time. The enemies could also bring winning tools if they were the ones initiating, but since that's just a step short of fiat-killing the PCs it's understandable that most DMs don't do that. So it's an edge that generally goes to the PCs.

Untrue. This goes back to the very beginning and my point about operative units of time. You are still acting on the idea that a round of decision making is a six second combat round and that what you call "preptime" is handwaved - when in truth "preptime" can come come from the player's budget of operative time and is part of the RPS dynamic, not outside of it. For example, when you go shopping for silver bullets, a werewolf can go shopping for bulletproof armor, and you won't know it before the actual confrontation; if you knew the werewolf was shopping for armor, maybe you'd change your strategy, but then, if the werewolf knew that, they could ditch the armor and do something else... and on and on it goes, because neither party necessarily has an edge in information or capacity to predict the other. Just like in RPS, if you knew the other guy will pick scissors, you'd win by choosing rock, but you don't.

Saying the edge generally goes to the player characters is hasty because a game can be actively designed to not do that. Fiat-killing has nothing to do with it, outside the fact that everything in a GM-made game happens by their fiat; instead, a game master can simply play in a way that leaves them without full information. One of the simplest way to do that is to include an actual game of rock-paper-scissors in a game's design.


Monster design != PC design. Pauly is free to try having both run on the same system, I'll just wish him luck then.

More over, monsters having a RPS design where bringing their bane is a massive force multiplier is a different thing from PC flaws. Pauly is again free to try working whatever system he likes. I'll just look forward to hearing how the playtests go as he tries applying his ideas in practice.

Pauly's starting point is that player characters are the monsters. If opponent monsters are made symmetric, that literally means that monster design and player character design are one and the same. The appeal of doing that using individual-focus RPS dynamics is that then you have the option of having the players play against each other and it works just as well. Pauly isn't the first person to try this, this is common in both tabletop and computer game design. Again, look at Pokemon.

[gbaji]

Untrue. This goes back to the very beginning and my point about operative units of time. You are still acting on the idea that a round of decision making is a six second combat round and that what you call "preptime" is handwaved - when in truth "preptime" can come come from the player's budget of operative time and is part of the RPS dynamic, not outside of it. For example, when you go shopping for silver bullets, a werewolf can go shopping for bulletproof armor, and you won't know it before the actual confrontation; if you knew the werewolf was shopping for armor, maybe you'd change your strategy, but then, if the werewolf knew that, they could ditch the armor and do something else... and on and on it goes, because neither party necessarily has an edge in information or capacity to predict the other. Just like in RPS, if you knew the other guy will pick scissors, you'd win by choosing rock, but you don't.

Right. The problem is that we all know what the typical player group will do. They will always have silver bullets available to load in their weapons. And wooden stakes. And aerosolized wolvesbane. And UV bombs. And garlic in a can. And salt. And <insert other magical herbs/spices here>. And... and... and...

If the game at all has any sort of standardized vulnerabilities that come with specific sets of powers or age categories of supernatural beings, then it just becomes a matter of knowing what different things are vulnerable to, and making sure you have those things on hand. All you need is an Impala with a big trunk to store it all in.

[BRC]

From the perspective of increasing player vulnerabilities, you just kind of hit the same, or a similar problem from the opposite direction.

If your Level 18 Werewolf is super powerful BUT super vulnerable to silver, then much of their play decisions become increasingly focused on avoiding that weakness. "You win, UNLESS they hit you with silver, in which case you lose".


Now, I can see this working pretty well actually, if the campaign involves a mix of fighting other, similarly powerful monsters that will engage you with Strength vs Strength, and fighting mortal "hunters" that seek to level the playing field by exploiting your weaknesses. The occasional round of Rocket Tag isn't too bad if you can keep it fresh.

[Vahnavoi]

Right. The problem is that we all know what the typical player group will do. They will always have silver bullets available to load in their weapons. And wooden stakes. And aerosolized wolvesbane. And UV bombs. And garlic in a can. And salt. And <insert other magical herbs/spices here>. And... and... and...

If the game at all has any sort of standardized vulnerabilities that come with specific sets of powers or age categories of supernatural beings, then it just becomes a matter of knowing what different things are vulnerable to, and making sure you have those things on hand. All you need is an Impala with a big trunk to store it all in.

Sure, just like a skilled Pokemon player would try to have coverage for every element... but no skilled Pokemon player would presume that is enough to win a match, because every equal player is doing the same thing. They still have to predict their opponent and make the right move when the time comes.

Similarly, a player in RPS knows every move their opponent can make and has a counter to each one. RPS still doesn't have dominant strategy. Knowing which weaknesses are in play does not actually guarantee victory, because a player can't do everything at once. There still comes a point where they actually have to make a pick and commit to a strategy. If they pick wrong, they lose.

In short? What you call a problem is not a problem. It is a facet of normal gameplay.

[Vorpal Glaive]

I’m seeking feedback on a homebrew I’m working on. I’m using urban fantasy, but the issue I’m talking about could be applied to other genres.

As PCs progress and become more powerful their weaknesses also increase. For example a vampire’s vulnerability to sunlight might progress from sparkling to getting bad sunburn to getting severely burned to instant immolation.

I know a lot of systems that use drawbacks in character creation as a means of accessing more advantages. However I can’t recall a system, other than CoC’s sanity points, where the disadvantages scale up with the PC’s power.

In urban fantasy it can explain in universe why the supernaturals haven’t taken over the world as well as explaining many different depictions of supernaturals in different media.

I was wondering if people thought this was a concept that would gelp a game.
This is a great idea IMO. It's like as Superman got more and more powerful the writers introduced weaknesses (magic and Kryptonite) to make him more acceptable to readers. Powerful characters are way more engaging IMO when they have potent weaknesses and flaws that limit them. I hope you develop your idea into something for sale because it can be useful especially if it's system-agnostic advice.

[Maat Mons]

I know you said you don’t want to associate specific weaknesses with specific powersets, but maybe you should.

For example, it would make perfect sense if shadow magic were difficult to use in broad daylight. Having difficulty using shadow magic is also a much more workable drawback than, for example, burning to death when exposed to sunlight. Having your shadow magic hindered just encourages you to utilize your other capabilities if circumstances dictate you need to operate in sunlight. Burning to death in sunlight can easily just result in the player refusing to engage with any plot point that would necessitate going outside in the daytime. Or it could result in the player wearing protective clothing that negates the vulnerability, and essentially not having a drawback at all. It depends on the particulars of how it’s implemented.

Bear in mind, making light levels affect shadow magic wouldn’t have to be a binary thing. You could design it such that low-level shadow magic works as long as there’s a shadow nearby, which there always will be unless supernaturals in your world don’t cast shadows. Each higher level of shadow magic could have more stringent requirements, up until the highest level, which just doesn’t work in the daytime, even if you’re in a cave underground. This would mean higher-level shadow magic users would need to worry more about light levels than low-level ones. But it would also mean high-level shadow magic users are never at a disadvantage relative to low-level shadow magic users. The penalty high-level shadow magic users suffer from high light levels is that they act as if they were lower-level shadow magic users. Specifically, they act as if they were whichever is the highest level of shadow magic user that wouldn’t have a problem with the current light levels.

Alternately, you could construct a system where high-level supernaturals can power through things that would stop low-level supernaturals, the opposite of above. Some people have already suggested that silver could specifically counter regeneration. That seems much more workable than, for example, supernaturals taking multiplied damage from silver. If you wanted to let high-level regenerists tough out a bit of silver, while still having a single silver bullet be sufficient to fully stop the lower-level ones, you could give a -1 penalty to effective regeneration per silver bullet currently lodged in the regenerist’s flesh. This would actually allow one silver-bullet-firing character to help out the whole group, rather than needing each character to pack silver weaponry.

In both cases I’ve described, the maximum penalty a supernatural can suffer from having all their weaknesses fully exploited is that they essentially become a mortal, since all their abilities are shut off. If weaknesses don’t tie directly into abilities, all I can think of is to make Generic Bad Things happen. Stacking high amounts of Generic Bad Things feels like it could easily either straight-up kill someone or render them completely helpless. On the other hand, there’s no amount of “your special power goes away” that could ever render you worse than a baseline human. That, to me, makes it seem much easier to balance.

[Pauly]

Eh. That can work. I'm not sure how much of a fan I am of the "figure out the bad guy's weaknesses in the middle of a fight" methodology though. On paper, it sounds like it'll work great. In practice, I've found that it often results in either a lot of frustration and/or randomness (or players running through a rote list of "weaknesses to try") *or* if the players know the weakness beforehand, it may trivialize the fight. I have done things like this in the past, and when it works, it works great. But it's tricky to get the balance just right to where the PCs have a reasonable chance of figuring out the right thing to do (and surviving long enough to do it) and making it a tough fight but not a "OMG we got slaughtered" one.


To respond to this point specifically.
1) It assumes a combat intensive campaign. Which I am happy to agree is probably not the most suited to scaling powers with vulnerabilities as a general principal.
2) it assumes a degree of regular random combat encounters which I would say the proposed system is completely unsuited for.
3) It fails to address the main issue I’m exploring which is the player character’s weaknesses that increase as their powers increase. Having NPC’s weaknesses scale with increases in power is a very old and well established gaming trope.
4) it assums that the best way to deal with a werewolf is to buy a gun and load it with silver bullets. Which is true for a mundane human. But that isn’t automatically true if the PC is an elder vampire, or a poweful witch, or a shaman capable of calling forth earth spirits, or even another werewolf. A low power attack multiplied by a benefit is not always better than a strong attack.

[Anymage]

Sure, just like a skilled Pokemon player would try to have coverage for every element... but no skilled Pokemon player would presume that is enough to win a match, because every equal player is doing the same thing. They still have to predict their opponent and make the right move when the time comes.

PvP games develop a meta where players try to figure out what the most popular strategies and comps are, so they can expect to have counters ready. Very few D&D games have a heavy focus on PvP. Plus, it's a little off to talk about games where by definition you face a series of battles against different people, when OP keeps saying that he's talking about the holistic experience of a game with little combat.


1) It assumes a combat intensive campaign. Which I am happy to agree is probably not the most suited to scaling powers with vulnerabilities as a general principal.
2) it assumes a degree of regular random combat encounters which I would say the proposed system is completely unsuited for.
3) It fails to address the main issue I’m exploring which is the player character’s weaknesses that increase as their powers increase. Having NPC’s weaknesses scale with increases in power is a very old and well established gaming trope.
4) it assums that the best way to deal with a werewolf is to buy a gun and load it with silver bullets. Which is true for a mundane human. But that isn’t automatically true if the PC is an elder vampire, or a poweful witch, or a shaman capable of calling forth earth spirits, or even another werewolf. A low power attack multiplied by a benefit is not always better than a strong attack.

I'll note here how many games bill themselves as "low combat", while being quite different in practice. Player behaviors at the table are often very different from high concept design goals.

What's more relevant is that player reactions to flaw systems are fairly well known by now. You're free to try reinventing the wheel. Just don't be surprised if your experiences in real play wind up being the same.

[warty goblin]

So I think if the major question is what happens for players if they gain vulnerability as their power increases, things are a bit different.

The first, obvious point is that players will naturally try to take completely irrelevant weaknesses whenever possible. Keeping the list of things to be weak against full of things that are roughly equally hard to avoid/universally available should mitigate against this. Silver weaponry is available easily enough, sunlight is a thing, vulnerability to most plants isn't hard to exploit, and so on. If you can make yourself only vulnerable to the extract of a deep sea angler fish though, that's probably a bit busted.

As a corollary, I can see a fair number of players getting kinda cheesed off by the concept. The point of leveling up is to get better, not get worse. Not all players, but it could be a sticking point.

The second point is that one should think about how severe penalty stacking is. If level 1 of daylight vulnerability is you take like 1 damage per hour of daylight, and level 3 is instant immolation, nobody is ever going to take level 3. If a power is only available with level 3, it probably functionally doesn't exist, or exists only insofar as some other power/item mitigates the weakness.

Third point: are specific powers tied to specific weaknesses? As in if I'm going from basic vampire to boss vampire and I want to advance my mental control powers, do I need to get Daylight Vulnerability 2, or can I take Garlic Vulnerability 1 instead? Or are powers tied to specific levels of vulnerability, i.e. a second level power requires a second level vulnerability, but it can be any vulnerability, possibly from a list of suitable picks for whatever supernatural creature you are. I'd expect in general it's better to have more, less impactful vulnerabilities than few, very dominant ones, simply because it lets the player avoid getting absolutely bodied by particular things.

Fourth point: I suspect (particularly for some players) it may be hard to convince them that the GM is playing fair. This rather relates to corollary 1, if I'm already not loving getting more vulnerable leveling up, I'm also going to be worried that if I now take lots of damage from silver, suddenly every bad dude I fight just loaded his .44 with melted down jewelry, plated some silver onto his best knife, and the vampires have discovered the fun and joy of silver tooth fillings. If you're going to make the players targetable in very specific, impactful ways, because of the inherent imbalance of information in an TTRPG, you also need some method to convince them that this won't be used unfairly against them. I don't think this really runs the other way, if the players are able to exploit a vulnerability, it's because they learned about it in game, a monster can exploit a player's vulnerability because the GM decided it could, and there's not really the same burden to show the homework.

[gbaji]

Similarly, a player in RPS knows every move their opponent can make and has a counter to each one. RPS still doesn't have dominant strategy. Knowing which weaknesses are in play does not actually guarantee victory, because a player can't do everything at once. There still comes a point where they actually have to make a pick and commit to a strategy. If they pick wrong, they lose.

In short? What you call a problem is not a problem. It is a facet of normal gameplay.

It is a problem for game balance though. In a straight RPS game, the odds are even every single time. Players aren't going to play a game where their odds off losing are always 50%, and it's more or less "guess right" as to whether they succeed. So the game has to stack the balance in favor of the PCs in other ways to make it at all fun for the players. So there has to be more than just "guess your opponents weakness before they guess yours" for this to actually work.




3) It fails to address the main issue I’m exploring which is the player character’s weaknesses that increase as their powers increase. Having NPC’s weaknesses scale with increases in power is a very old and well established gaming trope.

Right. Powerful NPCs pretty much require some special weakness or special weapon/item/whatever for the (usually quite a bit less powerful) heroes to defeat them. That is a standard trope.

The reason this works for NPCs is because typically the bbeg is a known quantity (to the PCs at least). He's a bad guy. He's got powers. He's got minions. The PCs have to figure out how to beat him, but can't do it in a straight up fight (or they have to find some way to get to him, bypass his defenses, get into his impenetrable fortress, etc). The PCs normally can accomplish this because at some point in the adventure they learn who the bbeg is, but the bbeg doesn't know (yet) who they are (or doesn't consider them a threat). Otherwise, he'd just curb stomp them directly. So they have time to learn what they must do to defeat him. Then they spend the time/effort to do just that.

That same balance effect doesn't work as well in the other direction though. Unless the PCs are actually running super powerful leaders of the underworld, or leaders of some kind, no one's going to be spending that kind of effort to discover their weaknesses, let alone go to some effort to exploit them. In the same way you don't bother to learn that minion#4 has an alergy to fish. You just shoot him and move on. So these vulnerabilities aren't likely to come up as an actual narrative thing.

Which leaves us with this:


Fourth point: I suspect (particularly for some players) it may be hard to convince them that the GM is playing fair. This rather relates to corollary 1, if I'm already not loving getting more vulnerable leveling up, I'm also going to be worried that if I now take lots of damage from silver, suddenly every bad dude I fight just loaded his .44 with melted down jewelry, plated some silver onto his best knife, and the vampires have discovered the fun and joy of silver tooth fillings. If you're going to make the players targetable in very specific, impactful ways, because of the inherent imbalance of information in an TTRPG, you also need some method to convince them that this won't be used unfairly against them. I don't think this really runs the other way, if the players are able to exploit a vulnerability, it's because they learned about it in game, a monster can exploit a player's vulnerability because the GM decided it could, and there's not really the same burden to show the homework.

That's a problem. If the PCs are otherwise in a range of power assumed for most adventure games (dunno, maybe this concept is something different though), either their vulnerabilities will never come up (because the folks they run into maybe don't live long enough for them to learn them) *or* they will be things that random NPC opponents may just randomlly happen to have on them for some reason. Which puts whether some NPC will be a problem or a nothing nusaince into the "random chance" category.

Which will always make the players suspect that "this NPC, who just happens to have what I'm vulnerable to" was less "random" and more "GM intentionally gave the NPC that weapon/item/whatever so as to balance things out in some way". It's a tricky thing IMO. And even the most honest and straight shooting GM will have a difficult time *not* taking the PC weaknesses into account when crafting adventures and encounters (just as you might with PC level, class, abilities, special items, etc). But in this case, the difference between "weaknesses in effect" versus "weaknesses not in effect" is significant and becomes moreso as the PC power level grows.

It's ironic because there's another thread going on right now about crafting a game revolving around removal or destruction of magic items. I have kind of the same issue here as I do there. Players tend to not like it when you give things to them, and then take them away selectively. Giving PCs super powers and abilities but then hitting them with things that will remove or weaken them as a balance mechanism falls into that category. Most players would just much rather you give them the correctly balanced set of powers and abilities in the first place. It makes them feel like they are in control of theiir characters, and not just subject to GM whim.

Don't get me wrong. You *can* do this. And some players may love it. But yeah. A good number will not. Because, at the end of the day, to make the game balance work the GM will absolutely have to have those weaknesses come up during game play. Otherwise, why bother having them? And that's always going to give the players a "Lucy with the football" feeling.

[Vahnavoi]

PvP games develop a meta where players try to figure out what the most popular strategies and comps are, so they can expect to have counters ready. Very few D&D games have a heavy focus on PvP. Plus, it's a little off to talk about games where by definition you face a series of battles against different people, when OP keeps saying that he's talking about the holistic experience of a game with little combat.

The principles by which Pokemon works, work just fine in a game where the amount of combat is greatly reduced (to one per session, for example) - and the principles of RPS works just fine in a game where there is no combat at all, because the dynamic can exist between actions that aren't about combat.

I already pointed this out multiple times in context of analyzing sunlight vulnerability. A vampire doesn't ovecome their sunlight vulnerability by never taking actions where sun can reach - the actual vulnerability is never taking actions where the sun can reach. Rather than rendering the vulnerability irrelevant, it's relevant every time other people can go about their daily business safe from that vampire.

Your point about D&D is completely wasted. First of all, as, already noted, if Pauly opts for individual level RPS dynamics, they can ditch D&D's assumptions of party-based play entirely and give players the option to play against one another. Second, even if Pauly picks the team level version of RPS, players can still be playing against opponents working on identical principles. Thirdly, even most versions of D&D allow for symmetric NPCs. A party facing their mirror match is an old D&D trope. PvP and PvE meta can be one and the same, there isn't a reason to presume before-the-fact that they will be different for a new game.

---


It is a problem for game balance though. In a straight RPS game, the odds are even every single time. Players aren't going to play a game where their odds off losing are always 50%, and it's more or less "guess right" as to whether they succeed. So the game has to stack the balance in favor of the PCs in other ways to make it at all fun for the players. So there has to be more than just "guess your opponents weakness before they guess yours" for this to actually work.

You are wrong in every respect.

Firstly, the odds are even in RPS only if you posit both players make idealized random picks. But actual humans aren't idealized random number generators, making it possible to deviate significantly from the theoretical 33% win, 33% draw, 33% lose outcome by being better at predicting your opponent than they are at predicting you. This is why there can be, and are, competitive RPS tournaments.

Secondly, "guessing right" is the basis of a genre of games called, unsurprisingly, guessing games. Guessing games are one of the oldest and most popular genre of tabletop games. So, no. There doesn't have to be more to it than "guess your opponents weakness before they guess yours". The idea is evidently sufficient to carry a myriad different games across the years and there's no reason to presume it suddenly becomes unfun when included as a subgame in a roleplaying game.

Thirdly, even basic RPS can be played iteratively - such as in the aforementioned tournaments, where the winner of a match-up is typically best out of three or best out of five. In combination with the first point, this means the need to have the game be biased towards any single player is unestablished. Players don't need to win every round to get ahead. They can lose some and draw some and still get ahead. Additionally, a player can change the difficulty of the task for their opponent by altering how they themselves are playing: I can play an unusually predictable series to give you an increases chance of victory, such as always playing rock. So, a game doesn't have to be theoretically unbalanced in the way you claim to get the end result you want.

The above point becomes even more obvious when you remember that, again, not every vulnerability is about lethal damage and not every action risks character death or end of player participation.

Also, lastly, gambling is also one of the oldest and most popular genre of tabletop games... and gambling games typically involve a player losing significantly more often than 50% of the time. So the idea that players even need to have fair odds is underestablished. Call of Cthulhu already stands as an example of a popular game where players observe their characters follow a downward spiral to increasingly likely insanity and death. There are even existing games where, in the end, the characters always die.

[gbaji]

You are wrong in every respect.

Firstly, the odds are even in RPS only if you posit both players make idealized random picks.

Which is exactly what I meant by talking about a "straight RPS". I'm starting with "if it's really just totally random", and examining that, then moving to "what do we do to not make it random?" and examining that.

The entire rest of your response was about the intricacies of a "guessing game", which was exactly what I was getting at (so you were basically agreeing with me). The ability to "win" at a guessing game relies on collection and analysis of information. That's what makes it not just a random/even chance. This is normally accomplished in most RPGs by allowing the players opportunities to collect information about their opponents, so that they can make better guesses, and thus increase their odds of success.

The problem is that in an RPG, with a GM running things, such guessing games work very well when it's the players trying to figure things out about the NPCs. It works less well when it's the GM running the NPCs, trying to figure things out about the PCs, for the simple fact that the GM already knows everything about the PCs. It's not really a guessing game for the GM. It's a "how much information do I allow my NPCs to have or guess correctly about the PCs?". It becomes 100% about the GM deciding at any given time and in any given encounter/scene how easy or tough he wants this to be.

And yes. We can argue that this is present in all GM run games. But this seems to amplify that effect significantly (and really amplifies the perception of it to the players). It's one thing to have encounter balance that may be logically based on the resources of the opponents (how many mooks can he hire? How skilled and powerful could/should they be really? Are there ways we can bypass his main defenses and sneak in through the back?). But when the encounter balance is "did the mooks think/guess to have <whatever your vulnerability is> on them?", it's a lot harder to rationalize this from the player perspective as anything other than the GM just deciding how the encounter goes.

[Vahnavoi]

@gbaji: you miss the very obvious solution to "but the game master knows everything!" : the game master deliberately setting up a game so they don't know everything, with one of the simplest measure possible being incorporating actual rounds of rock-paper-scissors in a game. Position of a game master doesn't actually make a person better at predicting simultaneous picks. More complex versions can be based on shuffled decks of cards, Battleship-style screens, written notes, etc.. Though even theoretical perfect information isn't necessarily enough for a game master to predict what players will do, when players have more than one option - that is, after all, how games like Chess and Go work.

So, lots of ways to make sure the game master is guessing too. And of course, again, the problem can be bypassed by letting players play against each other. Pretty hard to argue the game master is deciding everything when it's observably someone else picking which move is being used against you.

[Thane of Fife]

I know a lot of systems that use drawbacks in character creation as a means of accessing more advantages. However I can’t recall a system, other than CoC’s sanity points, where the disadvantages scale up with the PC’s power.

In some ways, I think you could say that lots of games work like this. For example, in most forms of D&D, a 1st level wizard is not great in melee but also not terrible, whereas a 10th level wizard is (relatively speaking) much worse off in melee against level-appropriate challenges. The wizard's weakness (melee) has gotten more severe as he's leveled up.

Or, in a modern game, a detective who puts lots of skill points in gunfighting and none in diplomacy sees her skill gap become increasingly wider as she gains experience, such that at "high level," she's probably at a relatively larger disadvantage in a talky situation than she was when she started.

[gbaji]

@gbaji: you miss the very obvious solution to "but the game master knows everything!" : the game master deliberately setting up a game so they don't know everything, with one of the simplest measure possible being incorporating actual rounds of rock-paper-scissors in a game. Position of a game master doesn't actually make a person better at predicting simultaneous picks. More complex versions can be based on shuffled decks of cards, Battleship-style screens, written notes, etc.. Though even theoretical perfect information isn't necessarily enough for a game master to predict what players will do, when players have more than one option - that is, after all, how games like Chess and Go work.

You're veering very far from what I would consider a roleplaying game though. If we're actually generating, not just outcomes, but decisions (like which offense/defense is being used), via a random process, then it's just random outcome generation, which I don't find very satisfying. If there is skill involved about predicting what the other person will play and making your own choice accordingly then it's not really about playing your character (role or otherwise), but playing the other player.

I've played a lot of Diplomacy. A heck of a lot of it is about figuring out what the other guy is going to do and planning your own moves accordingly. But it's not an RPG. I also played VGA planets a lot back in the day. I got to be wickedly good at setting the order of my ships in battle, predicting what the other player might do and maximizing my outcomes as a result. But again, that's not an RPG (I also learned that I'm insanely good at logistical planning though).

And yes. I get that if an RPG has any sort of choice/outcome determination rules at all, then there must be some mechanism involved to derive those outcomes from those choices. And I do get that "choose your action/power/whatever" game mechanisms can work here (seen a number of games use them). But again, the more "wobbly" the outcomes are based on those choices versus some other level/power/ability determination, then the less the game is really about the character, and the more it is about how good the *player* is at guessing games. Which is really fun for some players, and not really at all for everyone else.

I'm a big fan of the idea that the player is playing the character, and we should try to maximize the character's abilities within the game system and setting to determine outcomes, and really minimize the player's themselves. Systems like this either become really random results *or* become weighted by the player playing and not the character being played.


So, lots of ways to make sure the game master is guessing too. And of course, again, the problem can be bypassed by letting players play against each other. Pretty hard to argue the game master is deciding everything when it's observably someone else picking which move is being used against you.

Sure. Again though, this kinda sidesteps the issue I was talking about. If we assume that these weaknessses are significant enough to matter at all, then it becomes about when they do take effect. Whether that's PvP, or GM running things, you're still sitting in the same potential problem. When those random rolls/RPS/whatever are minor variations in a statistical outcome based on skills/powers/abilities/choices, then things work out fine. But the more we make them the primary determinant of outcomes, the less meaningful all of the other stuff written on the character sheet becomes. If "I win" is based on arranging things such that my vulnerabilities are not in play, but other people's are, then that's pretty much the whole game being played.

I just don't find that to be a very interesting or exciting game. I mean, if we are playing cards, or go, or chess, sure. But I'm kinda left wondering why I bothered creating a personality and whatnot for the character I'm playing if it's really all just a strategy game wrapped up in an RPG disguise. I enjoy playing poker, and chess, and go (and other such games). But that's a very different enjoyment and objective than what I'm looking for when I play an RPG.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The Dresden Files RPG--a Fate-based game--actually had some interesting ideas along these lines. (It actually has a lot of good ideas; it's surprisingly solid, if a bit pre-Core fiddly)

Fate systems, if you're not familiar, revolve around Fate Points and Aspects. The former are your standard "spend these to improve a roll" bennies, albeit more powerful than many systems; the latter are short phrases that describe your character, like "Wizard Private Eye," "Slow to Anger, Slower to Forgive," "Face Trouble Head-On," and so on. You start each session with a certain number of Fate Points, and you spend them to get bonuses on your rolls when acting in accordance with one of your Aspects, or influence the narrative directly somehow. And at any point in the game, the GM can Compel one of your aspects and, essentially, offer you a Fate Point in exchange for doing something that's in-character but disadvantageous (such as the previously described character being unable to forgive an enemy they need to negotiate with, or giving up on stealth at the first sign of trouble). You can say no, of course, but doing so costs you a Fate Point.

As I mentioned, characters in Fate start each session with a certain amount of Fate Points. They can take additional abilities called Stunts that give them powerful situational bonuses (think D&D feats), but each on you pick reduces the number of Fate Points you start with. The Dresden Files RPG also lets you take supernatural abilities that are noticeably more powerful than Stunts...but also cost you more starting Fate Points. Conversely, if you choose to stay a "pure mortal" and avoid all magic powers, you get to start with bonus Fate Points.

In a way, Fate Points represent free will. Having more Fate Points means that you have more freedom to say "no" when the GM tries to cause trouble by Compelling you, letting you overcome your character flaws and resist your worst instincts. On the other hand, if you're short on Fate Points--perhaps because you took a bunch of cool vampire powers and now start each session with 1/4 as many points as your pure human buddy--you're more vulnerable to Compels. Heck, you want to be Compelled, sometimes; it's the only way you have of getting more Fate Points and continuing to operate at maximum efficiency.

[gatorized]

You are vulnerable to one type of attack, effect, or weapon. Describe it in detail when you select this Flaw. Your active and passive defense ranks are halved against this attack, effect, or weapon. This Flaw is a Condition that grants you 1 extra point of Resolve at the start of every issue.

The more defense ranks you have, the more you lose, so the stronger you are, the more significant your weakness is; in other words, it scales with your power.

You get a benefit for taking the flaw, so there's a real reason for a player to want to choose it, but the benefit doesn't trivialize the drawback, and doesn't give you extra character creation resources, so it can't be used to break the game.

The player gets to choose what he's weak to, so agency is preserved.

[Pauly]

You are vulnerable to one type of attack, effect, or weapon. Describe it in detail when you select this Flaw. Your active and passive defense ranks are halved against this attack, effect, or weapon. This Flaw is a Condition that grants you 1 extra point of Resolve at the start of every issue.

The more defense ranks you have, the more you lose, so the stronger you are, the more significant your weakness is; in other words, it scales with your power.

You get a benefit for taking the flaw, so there's a real reason for a player to want to choose it, but the benefit doesn't trivialize the drawback, and doesn't give you extra character creation resources, so it can't be used to break the game.

The player gets to choose what he's weak to, so agency is preserved.

That's more or less the model I'm working with, even if my verbiage is different.
The caveat is that not everything is combat, so some powers/advantages will be more social in nature so they will affect non-combat situations. For example one possible drawback of choosing a witch is that they get uglier as they get more powerful (think the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz - green skin, big nose, warts, cracked voice) which makes it harder for her to use social influence to achieve her ends.
Another concept I'm tinkering with is something like frenzy for werewolves. It becomes progressively more difficult for the werewolf to keep things together and not go bezerk attacking the nearest target if they have frenzy as a weakness.

Another party I'm exploring is splitting powers and weaknesses into major/minor groups. For example a Vampire's vulnerability to sunlight can be dialled up to 11 to gain a very strong ability. However inability to cross running water can't be made as extreme, so it can only be used to power up lesser powers.

[Prime32]

The Dresden Files RPG--a Fate-based game--actually had some interesting ideas along these lines. (It actually has a lot of good ideas; it's surprisingly solid, if a bit pre-Core fiddly)

Fate systems, if you're not familiar, revolve around Fate Points and Aspects. The former are your standard "spend these to improve a roll" bennies, albeit more powerful than many systems; the latter are short phrases that describe your character, like "Wizard Private Eye," "Slow to Anger, Slower to Forgive," "Face Trouble Head-On," and so on. You start each session with a certain number of Fate Points, and you spend them to get bonuses on your rolls when acting in accordance with one of your Aspects, or influence the narrative directly somehow. And at any point in the game, the GM can Compel one of your aspects and, essentially, offer you a Fate Point in exchange for doing something that's in-character but disadvantageous (such as the previously described character being unable to forgive an enemy they need to negotiate with, or giving up on stealth at the first sign of trouble). You can say no, of course, but doing so costs you a Fate Point.

As I mentioned, characters in Fate start each session with a certain amount of Fate Points. They can take additional abilities called Stunts that give them powerful situational bonuses (think D&D feats), but each on you pick reduces the number of Fate Points you start with. The Dresden Files RPG also lets you take supernatural abilities that are noticeably more powerful than Stunts...but also cost you more starting Fate Points. Conversely, if you choose to stay a "pure mortal" and avoid all magic powers, you get to start with bonus Fate Points.

In a way, Fate Points represent free will. Having more Fate Points means that you have more freedom to say "no" when the GM tries to cause trouble by Compelling you, letting you overcome your character flaws and resist your worst instincts. On the other hand, if you're short on Fate Points--perhaps because you took a bunch of cool vampire powers and now start each session with 1/4 as many points as your pure human buddy--you're more vulnerable to Compels. Heck, you want to be Compelled, sometimes; it's the only way you have of getting more Fate Points and continuing to operate at maximum efficiency.

Was going to bring this up. There's also a rule that if you gain so many abilities that the maximum size of your Fate Point pool becomes 0 or lower, you become an NPC. And breaking one of the Laws of Magic, like using magic to kill or mind-control humans (which in the novels gives you an addictive power rush that compels you to do it again and again) causes you to automatically gain the "Lawbreaker" stunt, which can push you into this territory. The same goes for becoming a vampire, accepting a fey mantle, etc., which the novels show as potentially influencing/subsuming your personality. It's a well-designed book in general, especially if you're already a Dresden Files fan.

Tenra Bansho Zero has a similar mechanic where you gain Karma whenever you use your personal goals/connections to gain strength (similar to "invoking an Aspect" in Fate terms), and lose Karma whenever you sever your attachment to one (which is not the same as losing it; you can double down on an attachment by altering some aspect of it, like an enemy becoming a rival becoming a friend becoming a dead person you're trying to avenge). Hitting either 0 or 108 Karma causes you to become an NPC (the former an empty shell, the latter an obsessive who lacks empathy for others).

Karma is also the resource used for building characters. So you can start with a higher than recommended amount of Karma, at the cost of needing to be more conservative about all the over-the-top cool stunts that everyone else is doing. You can also start with lower than the recommended amount of Karma, though there's less reason to do so.

[Grod_The_Giant]

It's a well-designed book in general, especially if you're already a Dresden Files fan.
Agreed. I also really like the margin notes that are supposedly from Will (designing the game), Harry (trying to understand the game), and Bob (generally being a smartass); it's a neat way to add extra clarification wherever it's needed without disrupting the normal flow of text.