Nuclear Beasts: game balance question

[MajorKiz]

Can't remember if I've posted here before, but even if I have, it's been so long since I read this forum that I might as well be a newbie.

Anyway, I'm looking for opinions on a game balance issue for the RPG I've been working on. The basic setting is that humanity was wiped out in a great war but that A.I.s have genetically engineered certain animals to be able to think and talk and then released them. Animals which have been altered only a little are called Low Beasts... those that have been turned into humanoid creatures are called High Beasts because they walk upright instead of on all fours.

I want both High and Low Beasts to be playable characters in this setting, but there's a serious balance difference to be dealt with. Since there are ancient ruins around and some scientific knowledge has been rediscovered, it's not impossible for a High Beast to eventually acquire items like guns, portable mini-computers or high-tech armor. I'd generally assume that the longer that the campaign runs, the more likely this is to happen.

Since Low Beasts don't have hands and either can't use or have serious penalties to use most devices, I'd expect a Low Beast PC to eventually become annoyingly weak compared to any High Beasts in the same group. I'm looking for a way to compensate for this.

Some ideas:

[*]Give them some starting bonuses like faster movement or an improved stat. The downside I see is that with sufficient XP, any PC can buy similar benefits. I'd probably prefer to combine that with another idea. I don't want Low Beasts to rock initially, then gradually fall behind.[*]Give them extra XP every session, so that they always get a little bonus to make up for their weakness.[*]Give them some bonuses like innate psychic powers that High Beasts can never purchase, or which are much weaker for them.[*]Give them some sort of game-influencing advantage, like extra "Hero Points" that they can spend for rerolls. The big problem here is that I dislike metagame resources, so it would ideally have to be something that they'd use in-character. [*]Make weapons and other devices so ineffective that using them is only a slight advantage over doing without. This is probably too unrealistic for me.
[/list:u]Anyway, I'm just hoping for some suggestions and comments. I know that there isn't really a right answer but I'm indecisive about how I want to handle it.

[ethan_greer]

I think you should make the low beasts stronger, faster, and tougher than high beasts. In other words, the strongest, fastest, toughest high beast cannot compete with the strongest, fastest, toughest low beast, but there can be high beasts characters that have superior game stats to low beasts - it's the upper limit that is different.

Also, you could suggest different roles for the low beasts and high beasts in a party. Low beasts could be scouts, messengers, guerillas, etc., and high beasts could be scientists, tech weenies, munitions experts, etc.


Also, I would think  the low beasts should have better senses - eyesight, smell, hearing - than high beasts.  And I think the low beasts should be better in unarmed combat - stronger teeth and claws, more acrobatic and stable on four feet than two, etc.

However, I also think you should give some serious thought to the concept of balance and what it means to you in the context of this game.  What is balance? And why is having balance important in the game?

Just a brain dump; hope it's helpful.

[MajorKiz]

I think you should make the low beasts stronger, faster, and tougher than high beasts. In other words, the strongest, fastest, toughest high beast cannot compete with the strongest, fastest, toughest low beast, but there can be high beasts characters that have superior game stats to low beasts - it's the upper limit that is different.

Yeah, that could work. It has the advantage that it only affects balance over the long term... starting PCs can still remain relatively similar in power. Of course, if the Low Beast PC isn't interested in buying up their stats, they won't see any benefit, but the stats are important enough that they'd doubtless want to improve them.

Also, you could suggest different roles for the low beasts and high beasts in a party. Low beasts could be scouts, messengers, guerillas, etc., and high beasts could be scientists, tech weenies, munitions experts, etc.

Oh, yeah, that's a given. It's not a critically important problem to me because, as you say, they can just take different roles that don't overlap. But I also don't want a High Beast scout with a gun to be clearly superior to a Low Beast scout without one. Sort of like how, with the right choice of spells, a D&D mage can be a better thief than someone with the actual thief class.

Also, I would think  the low beasts should have better senses - eyesight, smell, hearing - than high beasts.  And I think the low beasts should be better in unarmed combat - stronger teeth and claws, more acrobatic and stable on four feet than two, etc.

However, I also think you should give some serious thought to the concept of balance and what it means to you in the context of this game.  What is balance? And why is having balance important in the game?

Just a brain dump; hope it's helpful.

Oh, it's definitely helpful. Discussing stuff always helps me sort things out in my head, if nothing else.

Here's what I see as the problem in a nutshell:

At character creation, the PCs will generally have very little equipment, and that will be crude and primitive, hand-made tools. After extensive adventuring, they may well have stuff like guns, binoculars, etc., that the High Beasts can use easily but the Low have difficulty with.

I want a way to balance things out so that Low Beasts and High Beasts are roughly equivalent in effectiveness at both character creation and after extensive adventuring. That's the tricky part.

[ethan_greer]

You could include rules for gear that low beasts can use.

You could make a character's experience level more mechanically important than the gear the character is carrying.

You could make using technology risky - i.e. the ancient plasma pistol could explode and hurt the person shooting it.

You could give the low beasts mystical abilities that the high beasts don't have - like magic or psionics or something.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not seeing the problem with eventual imbalance. You're saying that you'd make equipment be more potent as a developmental avenue than stats as a developmental avenue. So just don't do that.

I mean, these are genetically messed with creatures, right? Well, just say that they have the potential to become as powerful as the high tech equipment.

That is, if you're saying that it's possible through play to actually become substantively stronger or quicker than you started, then why not allow these to become so high that they are just as good as the tech that's available?

Have you seen Hero Quest? In HQ, everything is an ability. So, as the game progresses, your mutant bear goes from a Strong 30 to a Strong 50. Over the same period, the high bear gains a Ray Gun 33 to go with his Smart 30 that he started with. Mechanically these are roughtly equivalent in the game. So where's the advantage to either side?

So there's an example of a system that keeps everything balanced mechanically. Just make your system do the same sort of thing, and you'll have no problems.

Mike

[MajorKiz]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I'm contemplating some serious changes to the basic system (that's not too bad; I wasn't entirely happy with it, anyway) and I think this has helped.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Here's a thought:

What if High Beasts lose something as they become more dependent on technology -- they become "too human" and start at least upsetting other Beasts (reaction penalties) and at worst lose touch with their animal instincts and natural abilities? Kind of the way humans evolved amazing tool use (and good hand-eye coordination to go with it) but completely trashed, say, sense of smell. So you make a trade-off -- every time your "use tools like a human" stat goes up, your "natural animal abilities" score goes down. Instant game balance.

Conversely (I keep on editing this post as new ideas come to me while I'm doing the dishes), you could give Low Beasts the option to "power up" by becoming more animalistic, at the price of becoming ever less rational and human-like. So innate natural abilities would go up but reason, self-control etc. would go down.

Play with this mechanic a little, and this game starts developing Narrativist-style "premise" in a big way: How do I balance reason and instinct without losing touch with either? What's human? What's animal? And who the hell am I?

[Mike Holmes]

Interesting idea, Sydney. Check out the post on Transhuman play of Sorcerer: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11478

Might give some ideas.

Mike

[Ben Morgan]

MajorKiz:

I don't know what you have in place already for the system, but to build on Sydney's idea, what if you had a number that ranged from, say, 1-10 (or functionally, 2-9), and (like Trollbabe) you roll under that number on a d10 for actions involving reason and logic, and roll over that number for actions involving instinct. So High Beasts would have a number greater than 5, and Low Beasts have a number lower than 5. If you wanted a finer granularity, you could use a 2-19 range, and roll a d20.

-- Ben

[MajorKiz]

MajorKiz:

I don't know what you have in place already for the system, but to build on Sydney's idea, what if you had a number that ranged from, say, 1-10 (or functionally, 2-9), and (like Trollbabe) you roll under that number on a d10 for actions involving reason and logic, and roll over that number for actions involving instinct. So High Beasts would have a number greater than 5, and Low Beasts have a number lower than 5. If you wanted a finer granularity, you could use a 2-19 range, and roll a d20.

-- Ben

Definitely a nifty idea. I'm personally going for a more traditional RPG, so currently the two aren't incompatible (you could have really strong instincts AND be good with tech, it's just expensive) but I'll keep that in mind. It might be worth working in to the game.