Chaos & Order, after the playtesting

[jphannil]

Hi all (again), especially Mike :) !

I've toyed with the system a bit after initial playtesting. The new version is online at the same address:

http://www.cc.jyu.fi/~jphannil/Chao.html

The additions are:

1) Point based character creation
I've been fiddling with this extensively. Now the point pool is general, but broad traits cost 3 times as much as narrow traits. They raise also three times slowlier in experience so that should give some reason to use narrow traits as well. The half to narrow and half to broad -division was cumbersome, but Mike (and others) if you have any objections please don't hesitate to give them :). I've done some '5 minute thinking' models of some popular tv and cinema characters and they vary in points from around 30 points (Joey Tribbiani) to more than 170 points (James Bond).

2) Group effort in success roll
The default way is now that all throw dice and add trait, the biggest value is taken and all the helpers give +1 to the roll. In special cases where helping needs skill (i.e. chess match, even 100 helpers aren't very good if they don't know how to play) the helper's result needs to be at least the best result - 5 (as this was before). This is because the upper is easier to handle, no need to count other results.

3) Trait affinity
This is the most flawed thing so far, not only it had odd results when traits change (for example the value of multiple trait use would decrease) but I found an example which caused me to change this:

In the earlier version, if multiple traits were used, the used trait would be the highest and others add +1 if they are at least the highest trait -5. Then Mike suggested that everyone could invent 3 natural +0 traits to affine everything and give +3 to any trait that was +5 or lower. I excluded that by saying that only traits in character's trait list could be used in such a way. As we saw in the playtest, this won't solve the problem, it just tries to make it go away.

If someone is using a sword and has sword trait +3, and he hasn't got any strength-trait, his ability would be +3. But if someone has Sword +3 and Strength -1 (actually weaker guy than the one before), he would have +4 if player can describe it properly to the gm. This is why I changed it.

Now in affinity, the highest trait is taken and all other give +1. However for natural traits, only positive ones can be applied (this automatically eliminates the 'player can invent dozen +0 traits to affinity' thing).

What do you think ?

Best regards