[Final Twilight] Point based structures

[daMoose_Neo]

I'm looking for some examples of good point based character creation or systems. This has always been a weakness of mine as things end up oddly and poorly balanced but I've got a need for it now.
Currently, I'm dealing with a rough system where each feature costs 1 point and has numerous areas to apply:
- Costs to use abilities (apply points, lower cost)
- Abilities (apply points, raise basic ability)
- Keywords and assocaiations
- Alligences
- Hit Points
- Available resources

It works okay, but doesn't do what I want it to, and would like to see some other, solid examples.

[Bill Masek]

daMoose,

I'm affraid that it is a bit difficult to give you feed back about your system, as you have written very little about it.  In some games the character creation scheme you outlined would work fine.  In others it woulden't.  It is my belief that you should determine what the goal of your game is before creating it.

That said, there are many good games that use poits as the base for character creation.  I designed a game called Almost Universal in which uses a stat called Soul which provides players with extra temperary dice each session, or can be used to increase that players other stats and attributes.

The Pool is another game which has a point system that can be used to modify rolls or to increase stats.  Unlike Almost Universal, the Pool does not start the players out with any stats besides their pool of starting points.

Big Eyes Small Mouth (AKA the Tri Stat System) uses a point based system to determine stats and buy attributes.  Players may then buy defects to further increase these points.  The points in this system do not provide any benefit if kept aside.  It is also one of the most breakable games I have ever played.  

Godlike is a good example of a game which has a set of pre-determined powers that the player can modify.  Unlike an actual point system, its checks and balances are restricted to each power, not the over all power level.  I've played Godlike fewer times then the above systems, but it seemed fairly balanced.

Best,
Bill

[daMoose_Neo]

Big Eyes Small Mouth (AKA the Tri Stat System) uses a point based system to determine stats and buy attributes.  Players may then buy defects to further increase these points.  The points in this system do not provide any benefit if kept aside.  It is also one of the most breakable games I have ever played.  

I've actually got a d20 of BESM right here at my desk with me ^_^
Kinda thought BESM might be 'broken', but I don't know if that was fault or design (look at your average anime. "Broken" to gamers is standard expectancy for most anime heroes).
The trouble is, I know exactly what I want, but I can't get my system there.

I want players to be able to create powers/abilities, selecting abilities from a list, calculating a cost per use based off of that. The cost can then also be risen/lowered by applying limitations or expanding the power of the ability. Thus a "Lightning" that deals X damage costs say 3 points. Limit the target to A) Things/people on tall buildings or B) near water, and the cost goes down. Raise the damage three points, the cost per use goes up.

I want to check out some other systems, see what else works and how they're balanced. I've got that BESM as I said, but as you observed its easy to abuse and with my infamiliarity with point based I don't know that its the best research document.

[ffilz]

Have you looked at the Hero system? That has a lot of what you are asking for, though Ron has pointed out the problems it has with derrived stats (in that you can buy up a stat and then buy down the derrived stats from it regaining you more points that you spent on the stat increase, rinse and repeat until you get whatever primary stat value and derrived stat values you want).

You may want to take a step back though and ask yourself first, what is your goal? What is the game about? Who are the characters and what do they do? Then think about how to build a system that enables that goal.

Any complex point buy system will have holes that can be abused. Especially anytime you can put limits on your abilities to reduce the cost.

Frank

[J. Campbell]

There are no truly good examples, as every system is broken in one way or another. I've always appreciated the way Action! does things, but perhaps that's just me.

In any system, the more complex things become, the harder things are to keep balanced. Once you introduce more than one dynamic to the system (adding skills to attributes, then piling special abilities on, and then piling in advantages and disadvantagesl, etc) the ability for you as a game designer to properly calculate and playtest such results becomes severely limited. If a game such as Imagine were to be made point-buy, I can only surmise that the difficulty of balancing it would be grotesque.

On the other hand, there's a certain history towards making everything fair for everyone... It doesn't matter if Hit Points and Special Abilities cost the same (even though Special Abilities are "better") if the cost and benefits apply to everyone. It takes balancing every portion of your system and balancing it against the rest and throws the idea out of the window, on the premise that if it's fair for everyone, it shouldn't matter if some abilities are more powerful or useful, because everyone has access to them.

One problem with a system like this: You have to balance the individual parts of each category against each other, and make sure that though there is an advantage to picking this Special Ability over that Attribute, it's not such an advantage that everyone will always take it no matter what... and you also have to make sure that there are distinct advantages to specializing in any Attribute, Special Ability, or whatever. Sure, it might make sense that the most powerful abilities in your game are all Speed/Agility-based, but unless you want to see parties of pure Speed/Agility characters, you have to make the other options equally attractive.

This leads me to the second problem: Overlap. All too often, a Special Ability will imitate a Skill, which will imitate an Attribute, which will (in turn) imitate a Special Ability. Don't have a Skill called Endurance if you have an Attribute called Fortitude, and don't have a Special Ability called Might which just gives a flat bonus to your strength if you have an Attribute called Strength. If a two different facets of your system overlap perfectly, you are left with two equally distasteful choices. You either have to match the cost for each perfectly (which makes one redundant) or you have to change the cost for one (making the lower-priced one infinitely more appealing, because it does pretty much the same thing). In either case, it becomes something for the players to grumble over.

Personally, I've always thought that a Priority-based system (like Shadowrun or WoD) which uses points but gives strict balance for each is the best way to go for any point-based system. Freebie points allow you enough wiggle room to do what you like, but there's still structure to your system which keeps everybody from turning out carbon-copies of the three or four most useful builds, with some minor variations adapted to the setting.