[freeroleplay] Attribute Advancement (was [Fringe] New Mechanic)

[Ricardo Gladwell]

On Tue, 2006-07-04 at 08:28 -0700, Troy Truchon wrote:
> On 7/4/06, Ricardo Gladwell <president at freeroleplay.org> wrote:
> > I would argue that these skills exist anyway, they just aren't made
> > explicit by many systems. By creating them its just making them
> > explicit. Putting actual caps would also unbalance the system.
> 
> I don't think it would any more than the current idea. Basically its
> just a really complicated cap.

It is a cap only in the sense that the it limits the "dice pool"
available at the point after character creation. Prior to character
creation players are free to create characters as they wish without
limit. Obviously, for heroic characters GMs should recommend at least
one attribute starts at 5. Perhaps it could even be a requirement during
CC.

I'm not sure how it is more complicated? For me it seems fairly simple:
the limit is enforced without any effort or thought on the part of the
players. You still simply add attribute to skill as per normal.

>  Essential the attribute/skill hybrid
> means that your limited by your original attribute skill.

This is true regardless of the system, just more so here. There is
always a heavy levy on raising attributes in most attribute + skill
systems (we need a better name for these).

>  The
> basically model the same thing, a strait out limit would just make it
> less complex I would imagine.

How would that work?

> Could you give an example of how your
> concept would balance something that limits would unbalance?

It depends on how you think limits could work. Simply placing a dice
pool limit based on attributes would add an extra layer of complication
to dice rolls (an extra step figuring out what limits apply and then
removing the dice) and I suppose could distort the value ranges wrt
difficulties.

> > The Godlike system does something very similar.
> 
> I've never heard of it. Time for a little google...

Well worth checking out. The system itself is available for free as
Nemesis[1]. If you're going to buy the game I recommend waiting until
Wild Talents[2] (the contemporary edition of the game) is published in
the near future.	

[1] http://www.detwillerdesign.com/page9/page11/page11.html

[2] http://arcdream.com/wildtalents/

Kind regards...

-- 
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free RPG Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
president at freeroleplay.org