The World System: my roleplaying game

[Gnomemaster]

So I began work on the World System and hopefully this will organize my thoughts a little better.

First of all, character generation will come down to a point buy system.
rather than spending points to buy Ability scores, you are spending points to buy powers.

For a general idea, these powers will look like this

Improved Strength
General Power
Cost: 2 points
Type: Passive

From years of honing your body, you are stronger than average. You have a +2 natural bonus to Strength.

Bonuses vary, they come in all types, but two of the same type don't stack. So if you take another power that gives you a +3 natural bonus you get +3, not +5 (but if you got a +3 enchantment bonus it would stack).

So after making up your standard out look of your character (at first level you get the most points to spend on spells, proficiencies, and professions).

There will be three main professions:

Alchemist
-Makes Potions, Elixirs, and other one shot magical drinks.
Tailor
-Makes Cloth armor, Leather Armor, and other clothes (such as Hats, Capes, Robes, and such)
Armor smith
-Makes Mail, Plate, and metal shields.
Weapon smith
-Makes Swords, Axes, Maces, Bullets, Arrows, Pole-Arms, and other metal weapons.
Wood Carver
-Makes Staves, Bows, Wands, Wooden Shields, and cute little carvings.

When choosing Powers, there are four general schools of power:
General (Anyone can pick these, they do not cost anyone extra to choose).
Spellcaster (Anyone can pick these, but it will cost non-spellcasters more to choose these powers)
Warrior (Anyone can pick these, but it will cost non-warriors more to choose these powers)
Thieves (Anyone can pick these, but it will cost non-thieves more to choose these powers)

So you have an attack of 12, he has a defense of 10; you swing your sword and hit dealing 25 damage. if he has a defense of 14 then you need to cast a spell or use a power that will raise your attack.

A few thoughts, one was that you use a die to figure out your roll. So it would be like this: you're using a [Lumberjack Axe] that has the following stats:

[Lumberjack Axe]
Two-handed Axe
Range: Melee (This is the range of the weapon. Ranged weapons have feet)
35 damage
+3 to Attack (so your score of 12 is now 15 as long as you wield this weapon)
+1d6 to attack and damage (so when attacking, you roll the 6 sided die. if you roll a 5 you get +5 to that attack. Then when you roll the damage you roll a 1. That gives you +1 to damage making it 36.)

This Axe is a simple wood cutter's ax that is used to chop down trees or trolls.

Actually, you know what. Thats the plan. You will need a 1d4,6,8,10,12, and 20 to play this game. Because damage will be decided this way. Low leveled weapons will have 1d4. or 2d4. While really high leveled epic weapons will have 5d20. Better bring a calculator.

Spells will be much the same way.

[Burning Ray]
Spell
Cost: 2 points (This costs 2 points to learn)
Range: 20 feet
Mana: 15 (
25 fire damage +1d6 fire damage every round. (some things may be immune to fire damage or resistant to it)

You launch a searing ray of fire at your enemy that burns them slowly over time.

So theres the layout of the game, Monsters will really be nothing more than uglier Player characters. This lets the GM create monsters easily (he just creates a character named "Skittering Gnoll")

So Bam. that's my game in a nutshell.

Please give me some feedback

[the_taken]

Not easy, coming up with game mechanics, is it?

A suggestion: If you're going for a truly "anything concept is OK" system, do not penalize characters for cross-classing. Instead, come up with styles that set up synergies.

From this thread: http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewthread?forum=1&thread=1155
[blockquote=FrankTrollman]Honestly, if you could pick from any abilities you wanted in D&D right now, how many would it have to be before you actually selected "Rage" or "Weapon Focus?" Heck, how many before you selected any fighter abilities at all?

The ability to cherry pick from the whole list will indeed make people be encouraged to select abilities which are good and to select abilities which are synergistic. But it doesn't by any means suggest that every character will be the same, nor does it suggest that every character will be similar. It doesn't even imply that characters will be cross archetypical.

If your game orld defines archetypes in such a way as to take advantage of whatever synergies your system actually has, then min/maxxers will actually avoid genre violations most of the time.

To pull an example right out of my ass: imagine that you have limited time stop which allows you to auto-hit with melee attacks. You might expect people to combine that with low accuracy, high damage melee attacks like giant hammer haymakers. So if your setting has Krono Knights who run around with ridiculously oversized weapons - there's no genre violation when the players natural notice the available chocolate andd peanut butter.

-Frank [/blockquote]

[Lmns Crn]

+1d6 to attack and damage (so when attacking, you roll the 6 sided die. if you roll a 5 you get +5 to that attack. Then when you roll the damage you roll a 1. That gives you +1 to damage making it 36.)

Okay, I have some suspicions about the numbers you've chosen. This "basic" axe does damage that's measured as 35+1d6. I really have two concerns about this.

First of all, the variable portion of the damage (1d6) is a tiny percentage of the total damage. The total range is 36-41, which means the fickle roll of the die accounts for less than one eighth of the damage range. Rolling a low roll is boring because it's still almost the maximum. Rolling a high roll is boring because it's still almost the minimum. If you want it to have a consistent amount of damage, why not just round it off to the nearest big number? If you simplify it to: "this axe does 40 damage when it hits," you'll save yourself a die roll in every single attack. Take a second and think about how many die rolls that adds up to in a typical game session, and how much more streamlined combat could become.

Second of all, why are you using such big numbers for damage and whatnot? If an axe does 40 damage (give or take), what does 1 damage represent? 2.5% of the destructive potential of an average axe blow? Are you planning to use that unit of measurement for anything?

If you find that most of your damage and health numbers are multiples of five or ten (give or take a few d6s), it might be in your best interest to divide all those numbers by five or ten, and work with the smaller, more manageable numbers. There's really little difference between a system where St. George's sword does 1 damage and the dragon has 10 health, and a system where George's sword does 100,000 damage and the dragon has a million health, except that the smaller-number system is easier to count on your fingers.

Edit: Also, I want to say that "Trollman" is a really awesome last name for somebody who writes about fantasy gaming.

[the_taken]

He's not doing as much anymore, but he is becoming a doctor. So in a few years, he'll show up as Dr.Trollman and his friends will crack jokes about him being a superhero. He was also one of the authors for some parts of Shadowrun.

[Gnomemaster]

Ok. I'm catching what you're throwing. I'm definitely liking the verisimilitude idea of no penalties, and I'm thinking about making that the norm. As for the numbers, all those came from my ass. they have no basis in fact what so ever, and everyone knows that a [Lumberjack Axe] is not a basic axe, that's why it deals 36 damage. It must obviously be an epic weapon. Because Lumberjacks rock.

All kidding aside, I am still hammering out the numbers. Smaller numbers seem nice. Kinda. I will definitely remove the required damage roll.

[the_taken]

Somewhere on this forumn: The 8 stat-system

Perfect mathematical balance. I started working on skills, but due to a lack of interest from other people, I got bored.