[freeroleplay] Re: Character Generation
- From: Samuel Penn <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 22:29:33 +0100
On Tuesday 06 September 2005 22:40, Pitt Murmann wrote:
> On 06. Sep 2005, at 21:28, Edward Terry wrote:
> > [Everything is a skill.]
> >
> > There would only be a few things which could not be acquired through
> > play. In most systems, the ability to use spells (or psionics or
> > superpowers) is probably one of these.
>
> Do supernatural abilities necessarily have to be innate? What keeps a
> character from Awaken such powers, either during the game session or
> beyond?
What decides whether a power needs to be awakened? I've seen this in
some systems as a 'unknown ability' which a PC spends some points on
at character generation, leaving it up to the GM to determine what it
actually is and when it manifests (and when it does manifest, it is
more 'powerful' than the character could have purchased with those
points, in order to make up for their lack of choice and not being
able to use it immediately).
There's also things like 'Dark Secrets' - a disadvantage where neither
the player nor the character knows what it is, but there's something
terrible in the character's past which will come to light during the
game. This sort of thing tends to be common in horror campaigns.
If the system requires players to pay for advantages, then such powers
need to be bought at character generation if 'balance' is required. It
depends a lot on whether the ability springs forth fully developed, or
needs to be worked on to be useful.
B5 style telepaths who develop late are examples of the latter - they
suddenly (or gradually) find out they have telepathic ability, but
don't have the skills to control their ability (and being able to 'hear'
the thoughts of everyone around you in your head all at once is more
of a distraction than useful until you learn to selectively block them).
> This method implies, more or less, a common Level regarding the very
> being of characters. It will be difficult to put a shoggot, a space
> marine and a longbow man in the same Party (Temporarily Cooperative
> Group), regardless of how Generic the rules set might be.
Problems can occur if one character turns out to be much better than
another because of the way each player spent points - the one who
spent them badly (often through not understanding the system) will
feel hard done by when the difference becomes apparent. It's not so
much balancing the Space Marine against the Longbowman, but the
character with high attributes against the character with high skills.
Aiming for some common level helps mitigate this.
And anyway, the way Yags is currently heading, modern day and low
tech characters will not be balanced against each other - not even
on number of points (with good schooling, university educations and
access to the media, most modern (Western) characters will be much
better off compared to their low tech counter parts).
--
Be seeing you, http://www.glendale.org.uk
Sam.
IM: samuel.penn@xxxxxxxxxx or samuel.penn@xxxxxxxxx
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