Merging gaming systems

[mdoverl]

I'm interested in merging Pathfinder with another system such as gurps to create a point buy system for abilities, skills, feats, and level improvements. I believed it's possible to do this, if this has already been discussed, then please point me in the right direction. What suggestions and ideas do you guys have?

[Eisenheim]

I'm not sure if merging is really the appropriate term for what you are talking about. If you're going to use Pathfinder classes and mechanics, then the only thing that is 'merged' is the concept of a point buy based system rather than a level based one. That is what you are looking for, right? A point based system for purchasing skills, feats, BAB, spells, etc., instead of just gaining them from leveling up.

The only point based d20 system I know is the very badly balanced ogl BESM book, wherein point buy was supposed to somehow exist alongside normal level based advancement; my memory is hazy, but it didn't work very well.

That said, you could certainly design a point based, a la carte menu for build and advancement in Pathfinder, but it would be a huge deal of work and take a lot of testing to get balanced. Perhaps you can find help in the homebrew forums. Good luck.

[elliott20]

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Seriously, don't do this.

d20 systems are fundamentally built on levels, which is the closest "point buy" you can have.

The only reason point buy is good for balance is because everything is keyed to one point being roughly equal in utility. most d20 systems like Pathfinder have too many extraneous conventions and subsystems to make balancing easy with a point buy.

Now, if you were to get a really popular homebrew going, and had a huge play-test players base, then fine. Go forth and be fruitful and take lots of notes. But it's still going to be a tremendous amount of work.

[Frozen_Feet]

Merging game systems only works well if they're reasonably close to another already. It's made easier when at least one of the systems is simple, or when there are few or no overlapping rules.

Pathfinder and GURPS are both hideously complex and have roughly ten million overlapping rules. Do not even try. Besides, GURPS and its supplements already have all the things you could hope to add to it from Pathfinder - and I really do mean all. So buy a GURPS fantasy supplement instead of starting a redundant and work-heavy homebrew project.

[LibraryOgre]

I did a somewhat similar project, many years ago. I wanted to create a point-buy, create-your-class system that would work with D&D, and so pored through a MASSIVE amount of material to create and generally rate abilities throughout the various books. I also had a rules chassis in mind to put it all on, but lost interest when Wizards announced its own 3rd edition... you can even see a bit of my naive hopefulness about 3e in the commentary on the front page.

http://www.editors-wastebasket.org/nexx/indep.html

There's a lot of dumb in there... some of my ideas were fair a mess, and I'd do them differently, these days. However, what I went with was allowing constructable classes (and races, though I made some choices there that I pretty well stand by), but keeping the ideas of levels and hit points. The rules base I was thinking of resembles what is now Hackmaster, but was based on a few other things I was reading at the time.

[weckar]

The only point based d20 system I know is the very badly balanced ogl BESM book.

There is always Mutants & Masterminds.

[Airk]

I'm going to back the prevailing opinion here and say this sounds like a LOT of work for very little reward. If you want to do it, go for it, but I think you're going to have a hard time A) Finishing and B) finding anyone who wants to play it when you're done. In fact, if you don't already have people committed to this idea to compensate for issue B, I suggest you drop the entire thing.

[LibraryOgre]

I'm going to go the other way. This will likely be a hard, thankless task that you'll never finish to your own satisfaction.

So do it. Fight it out, play with it when you have the time, write things down. You will wind up developing your own system along the way, and hopefully, get a better idea of how to develop your stuff. You might come up with something a lot of people enjoy, or you might simply reach some peace with the idea.

[Anxe]

Your idea is basically E6 isn't it? You just start without much of anything.

So a point system for buying feats, skills, ability increases, hit points, saves, BAB, class features, and caster levels.

The feat is probably the easiest place to start from. You can already steal some stuff from E6 to build off. And we've got some feats to use as metrics like Openminded and Toughness (Toughness less so. The feat is terrible)

So one feat is worth 5 skill points or around a d4 HD roll.

An ability increase comes along once every 4 levels as opposed to once every 3 levels like feats. Pretty simple conversion there too. 4 feats = 3 ability boosts = 20 skill points

A feat is worth +2 to a save (Lightning Reflexes, etc).

How much is BAB worth in feats? We can compare it to Weapon Focus which gives a less useful +1 (no iterative attacks) in only one weapon. BAB is worth more than one feat. Is it worth 2? 3? 1.5? I'm not sure. You'd have to playtest that.

Feats to class features can use the fighter as an example. First we have to account for the fighter's skill points, HD, BAB, and proficiencies.

Its doable, but I think you'll have to make some arbitrary decisions for how much certain things are worth. Different class features will be worth different amounts for example. Caster levels might need to be weighted higher than Uncanny Dodge for example. I think you should start with skill points or feats as your base currency though and work from there.

[veti]

Point buy systems are notoriously complex. The only one I know that's even more so than GURPS is the Hero system (which I love because I've known it from its relatively-approachable beginnings, but most people dread and understandably so).

There's also Rolemaster - that combines classes and levels with point-buy. You might want to take a look at that, if you don't know it already. It's... also hideously complex.

If, having looked at the major published systems, you still think you can create a worthwhile improvement on all of them - go for it. It'll be a labour of love, long and tedious and pretty thankless, but you'll get a lot out of it. Even if it's just an appreciation of why game systems end up the messes they do...

[mdoverl]

The reason I want to merge different gaming systems is because I find myself liking small pieces from all of the games I play. I like pathfinder the most. I enjoy the enormous amount of material in pathfder, but very much hate character creation and combat mechanics. I absolutely love the way combat is performed in hackmaster, I just like how everyone on the board can move and attack at the same time. Call of Cthulhu is another, just the sanity aspect though. 2E players option: combat and tactics left a hugh impression on me in my youth, mainly the part of the book where the 6 basic abilities were broken down into 12 total abilities. Now I have already worked these mechanics into pathfinder. The only thing I have left is to work in character creation into my homebrew.

At the end of the day, I enjoy insanely complex character creation, smooth and realistic gameplay/ combat (smooth and realistic may be somewhat hard to achieve)

[mdoverl]

I've read role master, never took the time to understand it though. Would love to get my hands on the books again though.

[Airk]

At the end of the day, I enjoy insanely complex character creation, smooth and realistic gameplay/ combat (smooth and realistic may be somewhat hard to achieve)

Yeah, I was going to say, these sound like 3 mutally exclusive goals to me. ;)

Good luck, you're gonna need it.

[LibraryOgre]

If you've got a favorite system that you just want to tweak, a frequently good option is to graft and sand... take a system wholesale from another game, and attach it to your game, then sand it so they look like a cohesive piece. In a lot of ways, that's how old systems evolved.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Point buy systems are notoriously complex. The only one I know that's even more so than GURPS is the Hero system (which I love because I've known it from its relatively-approachable beginnings, but most people dread and understandably so).

You did manage to pick the two most complex point buy systems there are. The ones that try to be both simulationist and generic.

FUDGE and FATE are much simpler. The Cortex system has good chargen, but I hear the combat is very complex (never did read the combat rules...).

[Frozen_Feet]

If you've got a favorite system that you just want to tweak, a frequently good option is to graft and sand... take a system wholesale from another game, and attach it to your game, then sand it so they look like a cohesive piece. In a lot of ways, that's how old systems evolved.

True, but the method you speak of was much, much easier with old games, because they didn't try to be everything and as such didn't have as many overlapping rules.

The specific pair of PF and GURPS both already try to be everything, and as a result have a huge load of overlapping rules that would be redundant or conflicting in any attempt to merge the systems.

[Doorhandle]

I'm interested in merging Pathfinder with another system such as gurps to create a point buy system for abilities, skills, feats, and level improvements. I believed it's possible to do this, if this has already been discussed, then please point me in the right direction. What suggestions and ideas do you guys have?

Eclipse: The Codex Persona already made pointbuy in 3.X. Check it out first: converting it to Pathfinder would just be a matter of switching how skills work and building duplicates for new feats/spells.

Basically, each level gives you 24 points to spend which you use to buy hit die, B.A.B, skill ranks, caster levels and class features, while also affecting the maximum caps for those things. Every time you would get a feat, you instead get an extra 6 points to spend, and most feats are equivalent to a 6-point abilities.

Furthermore, you can corrupt or specialise abilities, either to make them cheaper or more powerful in return for giving them another drawback.

[illyahr]

Or you could play one of the World of Darkness games as they are all technically point-buy. You gain experience and then spend this experience to boost your stats and skills or to purchase merits (feats). They are very role-play heavy and the experience is given out depending on how well you play your character. Even better, everything is done with d10's so you don't need to keep track of all the different kind of dice you need. I'm partial to Mage: the Awakening and Werewolf: the Apocalypse.