[PnP] noob questions part IV - Bride of Noob Questions

[Burton Choinski]

Tobie brings up another point.  Nobody likes to be the "caddie" of  
the group.  I have seen to many other games where one player rolled a  
really powerful character, while everyone else was fairly average.   
It became difficult to balance because what would challenge the big  
guy would likely wipe out the lessers.

I think at one point I tried a "karma" system where I allowed a few  
re-rolls for each rolling point (optional).  Each reroll was a point  
of "bad karma" that was used against the character durring game  
play.  Anytime they made a 2d10 or d100 roll and rolled doubles I had  
the option of forcing them to reroll, at the expense of paying off  
one karma.  GM control allowed me to dictate that karma not be burned  
on frivolous rolls, and only one karma could be recovered in any  
single event roll.  Once paid, they no longer had to worry about  
this.  They could also optionally take a reroll on their own if they  
roll doubles and the result is a success, giving them positive  
karma.  Later on they could expend a good karma to make a single  
reroll if they failed on something.

On Sep 20, 2007, at 5:52 PM, Tobie Bonahoom wrote:

>
>
> > Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:37:48 -0400
> > From: scottee.mac at gmail.com
> > To: pnp at abroere.xs4all.nl
> > Subject: [PnP] noob questions part IV - Bride of Noob Questions
> >
> > ok, starting to wrap it up here I think, but a few other questions:
> >
> > 1) Do any of you use variations of character generation? I love the
> > complete randomness of it and I like that everybody usually gets
> > something about their character they don't like but have to role  
> play
> > around. Yet occasionally, someone wants to make some kind of magic
> > user and gets a 3, 4, 5 in Intelligence, Will, and Empathy
> > respectively. Have you guys had a lot of problems with over powered
> > characters if, for example, you allowed your players to swap one  
> score
> > with any other score? Or allowed two sets of rolls and allowed  
> them to
> > choose the better?
> >
> Back in the day I was GMing (and playing a char in another game a  
> friend GMed) we would have 14 rolls and the select the 12 we liked.  
> We also put them in what ever places we wanted. This could give a  
> power hungry char. though the GM would be extremely nasty to the  
> party too and the others that weren't that powerful would usually  
> be hurt a lot or die easier. So, most the players would balance it  
> out themselves, realize how the game play would be affected. This  
> gave diversity to the characters though and let people play  
> something they would enjoy, rather then going to see if they can  
> die fast, faster or the fastest of them all, just to roll something  
> up they wanted. Again, the randomization is a general rule, so that  
> any new player could just roll one up and go, however once they  
> have played some, it is easy to tweak a couple of the pieces and  
> use their imagination to see how a roll will work in a different  
> area for the char to have depth, instead of a hack and slash or a  
> blast the hell out of everything type of char.
>
> The other way we would roll at times too was 12 in a row and took  
> them, except we would be allowed to reroll anything that was 5 or  
> less. We were supposed to be powerful characters, and a 5 is a  
> typical/ordinary/average char.  And we had to place them in the  
> order we rolled.
>
> >
> > 2) When creating magic users, as they buy their initial spells, do
> > they buy that at the "instructed" rate or the "alone" rate?  
> Oddly, the
> > book does not specify. On the one hand, characters would start  
> with a
> > whole lot of spells if they bought them all at the discount rate,  
> yet
> > the apprenticeship does seem like the very definition for  
> instructed.
> > So I'm curious what you all are doing.
> >
> I always buy at the instructed rate if I am purchasing the magic  
> skill (pay the expertise to be taught). The only time I have ever  
> payed the non-instructed rate is if the descriptions of learned  
> stated so or I had a nasty event rolled that permitted me to not  
> have a teacher, though I could still learn to cast magic.  
> Otherwise, the alone is for when a char is learning a spell in game  
> without anything.
>
> > Thank you all for your continued support of the Noob Questions
> > franchise. We hope to have a television series soon complete with a
> > tasty cereal line and Hallmark cards.
> >
> > Scott M
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > pnp mailing list
> > pnp at abroere.xs4all.nl
> > http://abroere.xs4all.nl/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pnp
>
> Tobie
>
> Gear up for Halo® 3 and get a $25 Best Buy gift card. It’s our way  
> of saying thanks for using Windows Live™. Get it now!
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