Character Creation

Alright, character creation should be near-identical to Morrowind's with a few minor changes befitting a tabletop adaptation. First, all skills should start at 5. Second, races should not have pre-set ability scores. Instead, I you should start out with 20 points in all scores, plus racial modifiers, plus additional points set by the player. This means that, in order to have a good starting fighter, you don't HAVE to be a Redguard, Orc, or Nord, even though it would help somewhat. Third, you select your specialization: Magic, Stealth, or Combat. This will provide no initial statistical bonus, but will instead provide a point-cost reduction to further skill-increases. Third, you select 5 primary skills and 5 secondary skills: Primary skills will grant a +30 bonus and secondary skills will provide a +20 bonus. Then, you apply racial modifiers. Then, determine starting health by (Strength+Endurance/2) and starting Magicka by (Intelligence * Racial Modifier). I'm not sure whether or not Fatigue should be included, given how cumbersome it would be in a tabletop setting.

Is there anything I'm missing? Any ways we can improve this?

Right, Let's figure out how Creation works, I'll try to head this as much as I can.

What a character sheet needs:

-HP
-Magicka
-Fatigue
-Stats
-5 Primary Skills
-5 Secondary Skills
-Move distance
-Weapons
-Armor
-General Inventory

We'll refine this as we go along but that's how we should make the first test sheet. I created the first thread, and I had made 3 sheets but only posted one. I'll put them here and we can review them. For ease of starting, I copied the Combat Redguard/Stealth Khajiit and Magic Altmer's skill bonuses and starting stats from the Morrowind UESP. We can change as we go along.

Licks-His-Fur - Male Khajiit
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HP: 35
Magicka: 40
Fatigue: 150
Move: 4

30 WILL/END
40 STR/INT/SPED/PRSNL/LCK
50 AGI

Primary: Short Blade/Light Armor/Sneak/Security (35), Mercantile (30)
Secondary: Acrobatics (35), Athletics (25), Marksman/Restoration/Alchemy (20)

Willius Smithus - Male Redguard
------------------------------

HP: 50
Magicka: 30
Fatigue: 170
Move: 4

30 INT/WILL/PRSNL
40 AGI/SPD/LCK
50 STR/END

Primary: Long Blade (45), Heavy Armor/Blunt/Axe (35), Block (30)
Secondary: Medium Armor (25), Armorer/Spear/Acrobatics/Hand-to-Hand (20)

Eldrad - Male Altmer
-------------------

HP: 35
Magicka: 50 (75 if we count racial, but we're not for now)
Fatigue: 150
Move: 3

30 STR/SPD
40 WILL/AGI/END/PRSNL/LCK
50 INT

Primary: Destruction/Alchemy/Enchant (40), Illusion/Conjuration (35)
Secondary: Alteration (25), Unarmored/Short Blade/Mysticism/Blunt (20)

Question: Will there be birthsigns? I know there always is in Elder Scroll games and it is an important character part. Also, they are basically already done for us, so no harm in adding them in.

Also: Specializations. These are also a part, divided into Combat, Magic, and Stealth I believe. They were a good part of creation too. I wonder how we would express them in this system however. Just a bonus to the governed skills at start up? Slightly faster leveling in those skills as well?

And finally: The two favored stats. How will this work. Will it just give a plus 5 bonus in each of the two chosen skills at start, or will we add more than that?

Well, I want to keep it true to the games, but it's also important to remember that only really special people get birthsigns. Fated people, not average schmoes. However, we'll probably keep birthsigns in, and if we do we'll have to balance them a bit. Some are just obviously superior to others, particularly the ones that provide passive bonuses rather than once-a-day spells. With specializations, I was thinking slightly cheaper XP costs to raise those skills, and with favored attribute we might as well just give a +5 or +10 bonus like the games.

Aye, birthsigns I was thinking of changing them to fit in better in a pnp environment. Having the warrior give you a +10 to all rolls by virtue of.... existing is pretty imbalanced I think. And then things like the Tower Key sensing keys in feet radius would need to be twinked to be somewhat useful, say a small bonus to search checks as if you intuitively know where some things are kept.

Stat-wise, we still have to figure out advancement in general, so let's keep them as "bonus to stats" for now.

I had actually considered the whole "Fated" aspect about birthsigns before posting, but then decided to forget it. Will we include the extra birthsigns that games like daggerfall had, or just the basic ones, with the most overpowering ones toned down?

Also, how is luck going to be handled? If it levels as slowly as in game, it is somewhat overpowering to start with a +5 in luck. And perhaps it shouldn't level like in the game; +1 per level is painfully slow for a tabletop game you know.

Well, I was thinking of doing away with leveling entirely, and instead making power solely dependent upon skills. The whole leveling aspect seemed incredibly arbitrary, anyways, but I'm not so against it that I would point-blank refuse it. It just seems like another thing to keep track of.

Admin wrote:Well, I was thinking of doing away with leveling entirely, and instead making power solely dependent upon skills. The whole leveling aspect seemed incredibly arbitrary, anyways, but I'm not so against it that I would point-blank refuse it. It just seems like another thing to keep track of.

And how would Stats be tracked and raised? Health? Magicka? Being stuck at 35 health for the entire game sounds somehow rather dangerous.

Rainbay wrote:

Admin wrote:Well, I was thinking of doing away with leveling entirely, and instead making power solely dependent upon skills. The whole leveling aspect seemed incredibly arbitrary, anyways, but I'm not so against it that I would point-blank refuse it. It just seems like another thing to keep track of.

And how would Stats be tracked and raised? Health? Magicka? Being stuck at 35 health for the entire game sounds somehow rather dangerous.

The HP/Magicka/Fatigue calculations at character creation are as follows:

HP = STR + END /2
Magicka = INT x1
Fatigue = STR + WILL + AGI + END

After creation, HP raises at 10% of your END per level. Perhaps we could tone down the damage charts etc so that your HP is always at STR+END /2. That way max HP would be 100. It would keep the damage numbers at a respectable level to track.

You may be right, although a lot of those problems could be bypassed. Magicka isn't leveled at all; it is instead a product of Intelligence alone. Stats would be raised via XP as well, much like skills will be.

I agree with eliminating levels. Directly raising stats with XP, like the skills, just seems much more intuitive.

How would the raising of stats be done? If you use a skill governed by that stat, would you gain xp towards raising that stat then? I liked how in morrowind Skills that you used governed how your stats increased. If you had been doing nothing but swinging your sword, you couldn't really level up intelligence much.

Someone mentioned that in Call of Cthulhu, every time you used a skill you put a tick-mark by it and you could only increase skills that you had tick-marks by at the end of the gaming session. I really like that idea and plan on appropriating it. For stats, I propose that leveling up a stat once costs XP points like raising a skill, but you can only raise stats a certain number of times per session equal to the total number of tick-marks by the sub-skills divided by two. I know that it sounds cumbersome explaining it, but it would actually be really simple in play and would be fairly true to the games.

You can only raise a skill that you've used in the last session, and you can only raise stats connected to skills you've raised recently. Bam.

I didn't see what Admin wrote when I posted. Let's go with that.

Something I'm not clear on, and please tell me if this has been established and I just missed it somehow, is what do stats actually do? Other than determining secondary stats (HP, FP, MP), do they actually have an effect on anything so far?

Outlander wrote:Something I'm not clear on, and please tell me if this has been established and I just missed it somehow, is what do stats actually do? Other than determining secondary stats (HP, FP, MP), do they actually have an effect on anything so far?

No clue! I suppose they would determine actual damge to an effect when you hit something? Or something? And who knows with things like personality and luck...

Well, it seems like the stats themselves wouldn't actually do anything. Instead, they're used to derive other, more critical abilities like health, magicka, fatigue, and skills. For example a mixture of Speed and Athletics would determine how much you can move in a combat round, or it could also be used to determine how many actions you can take in any given round. Strength determines carrying capacity and bonus damage, Endurance influences both fatigue and health, Luck may/may not determine the number of Luck re-rolls you can get per adventure, Intelligence determines Magicka, Agility determines dodge, and Willpower determines both bonus spell-power and Fatigue.

At least, those are some ideas, but this should really go into it's own thread, probably aptly titled "What the hell do stats actually do?"

Admin wrote:Someone mentioned that in Call of Cthulhu, every time you used a skill you put a tick-mark by it and you could only increase skills that you had tick-marks by at the end of the gaming session. I really like that idea and plan on appropriating it. For stats, I propose that leveling up a stat once costs XP points like raising a skill, but you can only raise stats a certain number of times per session equal to the total number of tick-marks by the sub-skills divided by two. I know that it sounds cumbersome explaining it, but it would actually be really simple in play and would be fairly true to the games.

Why do we need XP at all? Fatigue, hit points and magicka can be directly related to ability scores. Ability scores can be directly increased by increasing skills that are tied to them, and these skills can be increased by using them. Hit something two hundred times with a spear, for example, your spear skill improves by 6, which increases your endurance score by 2, which gives you 1 more hit point. Will need further thought put into it, obviously, but to me it seems simple, fast and elegant. Just leave an empty space under each skill on the character sheet so that the play can put a tick-mark every time he uses the skill.

That's kind of how I though we were going to do it Slotha. IT's more true to the game as well. And every 10 skill increases in major or minor skills gives you a "level" increase. This might not be required, but if we do +endurance/10 hp per level to make sure people who never raise endurance much still gain a little hp beyond what they start with, we do need some way of expressing "overall" level.

P.S.: +6 spear would give +3 endurance, not 2. I hope. Since people need all the endurance they can get.

EDIT: This could also give players a reason to level up lower level skills, even though they are harder to use. Lower level skills level up faster, and thus could be used to raise their stats, or even hp if it happens to be a major or minor skill. Why a major or minor skill would be that low is beyond me of course.

If levels exist only to raise HP, it makes them feel rather tacked on, especially with the amount of book keeping required to count how many times each skill has been raised since your last level.

people need all the endurance they can get.

Hm, yes, endurance would be tricky. Especially if we don't use levels for characters and tie stats directly to abilities.

How about this... skills are tied to more than one ability? Heavy armor is tied to both strength and endurance, for example. As even the most specialized casters (save for alterationists, the poor sods) will make use of athletics and acrobatics during more physical adventures, they can get their strength, endurance and speed boosts come from there.

On the other hand, if you expect to get hit, you'll invest into armor, so this issue is kind of moot... maybe we should just tone down damage until endurance=hit points stops being an issue.

Also, I'm still not okay with minor and major skills thing and skill cap. In the game, without abuse of trainers, getting a skill to 100 is something only likely to happen to your exclusively used weapon skill, and only near the end of the main quest. It would really have to be a long campaign for characters to level enough skills for the caps to come into play, and then they'd just serve as an arbitrary obstacle to playing the character. Minor and major skill selection would be better off just being a choice of 10 skills among which to distribute 40 and 20 point bonuses at chargen.

But having caps could allow for better party focus. You might pick a battlemage character that is strong with magical skills such as alteration, destruction and conjuration and defencive skills like heavy armor and blocking, but crummy when it comes to upkeep skills such as armorer and alchemy, as well as social skills like etiquette and streetwise. So other characters would pick up the slack a little, with a more cunning rogue being better at the silver tongue stats and sneaking, a more traditional mage focusing more on mysticism, alchemy, enchant, illusion and restoration and a powerful warrior to distract enemies with his poweful slashes and take care of party equiptment with his armorer.

Rainbay wrote:But having caps could allow for better party focus. You might pick a battlemage character that is strong with magical skills such as alteration, destruction and conjuration and defencive skills like heavy armor and blocking, but crummy when it comes to upkeep skills such as armorer and alchemy, as well as social skills like etiquette and streetwise. So other characters would pick up the slack a little, with a more cunning rogue being better at the silver tongue stats and sneaking, a more traditional mage focusing more on mysticism, alchemy, enchant, illusion and restoration and a powerful warrior to distract enemies with his poweful slashes and take care of party equiptment with his armorer.

That still doesn't justify an arbitrary hardcap. Misc skills should cost more exp to raise, but they should not be limited to 50, it's against the spirit of the game. Besides nobody is going to spend a boatload on a misc skill if anyone else has it as so much as a minor.

Rainbay wrote:But having caps could allow for better party focus.

Every character is already focused, by selecting major and minor skills and using them. By what rules we have laid down at the moment, a jack of all trades would require dedicated grinding and training to come into being, and very few people would play a PnP game that way. Someone who majored long blades, block and heavy armor will be at the front, someone who majored restoration and illusion in the middle, and the shifty rogue with good crossbow skill will cover the back. Using a rule to enforce something that is self-enforcing achieves little, apart from annoying people who actually bother to make their characters capable of being self-reliant.

True, true. Starting someone out with extra in the main and minor skills, and making them easier to raise is what the game did. That is more than enough reason for people to focus on those skills, while still giving them freedom to choose to raise others if they want. How would the lesser costs of raising be shown?

I recall someone mentioning costs would be by "rank" (novice, apprentice, journeyman, etc.) with novice costing 1, apprentice being 2, raising a journeyman skill 3, and an expert skill 4. If you have a birthsign or racial bonus or something that would let you get over 100 in a skill somehow, every point over master would cost 5.

Since major skills start at least at apprentice level, perhaps we would tone it down so for major it is 1 at apprentice, 2 at journeyman and so on? That still doesn't explain how minor skills would work.

This is a pretty simple system currently, but I don't know. Any thoughts? It seems like it could use improvement.