@arkandel said in Wheel of Time mechanics:
Yes, that'd be great. But (and this isn't WoT-specific), what makes it worth it for them? What can they do, in practical terms?
Crafting is easier in a way - they can make cool swords and staves. Trading requires an economy, and we haven't discussed that at all, but I'd very much like to. Finally... lore.. I don't have anything here. What's going to come in as handy as the stuff we've been discussing already?
Non-combat and non-magic (combat magic in particular) things are always hard to incentivize (include social combat in there if there's a hard system for it), because what it comes down to is: what are you gaining from the skill? In combat, you gain winning the fight, killing the enemy, and staying alive (plus looking badass). With crafting, unless you're a combat character too and are crafting cool gear for yourself, all you really get is money. Which means that you need an economy, and you need lots of things to draw money out of the economy, or everyone is just going to be rich.
It's making sure every single choice on the tier is, at least roughly and within thematic reason, equivalent to the other. I'd love social skills to be a real thing since it's such a strong trope in fantasy, but can I provide players with returns for those purchases that can compete with stabbing people really well? I'm not saying I can't, or that it can't be done, but we're missing the other piece of the puzzle - the economic and military resource management.
I would actually say economic, military, and social resource management systems, actually. Because using social skills on NPCs in scenes (or for investigation requests or whatever) is all well and good, but if you can gain resources (favors from NPCs, information about plot, economic resources, military support from NPCs, etc) with social skills, they'll be valued.
What if we broke things down into three distinct ... let's call them templates? Then we can see what each can do. And if we can add a forth then let's do it.
- Channelers.
- Non-channeling combatants.
- Military and social prodigies. Let's merge these from a design perspective although they are separate skillsets IC, to keep things simple and not add too many skills - remember, the more selection of useful skills we offer the less power these archetypes will have, since they will need to spread out their spends compared to a physical character who can specialize better.
I don't know that I would work too strictly on closed archetypes like that... because most people are going to want to be some mixture of them. I know that book characters (especially mains) are all overpowered, but Mat and Gareth Bryne are both commanders and combatants (Bryne is a Blademaster and Mat beat two of them at once), Moiraine is an exceptionally powerful channeler and a social expert, Thom is perhaps the best player of Daes Dae'mar in the world and can still throw a mean dagger (and fight a Fade one-on-one with daggers only).
I do agree that the three general "buckets" that most skillsets will tend to fall into are Channeler, Fighter, and Expert (commander, socialite, crafter, investigator, etc). I just think that most PCs are going to want to have a primary and a secondary--most book characters have two primaries. And yes, there'll have to be a good balance that allows someone to have a primary and a secondary, but not two primaries, and for someone who just pours -everything- into one bucket to be somewhat better than someone with a primary and a secondary, but not nearly as flexible.
One obvious way to curtail this - which we'll definitely need to for channelers else we'll have powerhouses on our hands no matter what - is to have XP tiers which can be increased as the game goes by. It's not that radical a notion, and it should work fine.
I do like the idea of a shifting cap. You could also arrange that with a shifting -bottom- cap: characters created after X date start with Y XP. You could even have a combination of the two.
Hrm, so you're saying that instead of spending XP the 'interesting choice' we are asking players to make is to pick a flaw and edge? Be stronger in Water but weaker in Fire at the same time?
I was thinking on a weave level, not a flow level. So you don't have to track what everyone has for their Fireball skill, but if someone is particularly good at it, they can take a weakness (say, Weather Control) and get a boost to their Fireball skill. And then you only have to track that they're strong in one weave and weak in one other, instead of where they're at in every weave in your database. You could even integrate it into every other bucket, so you could take, for instance, a weakness in Fireball (assuming you're a channeler), but a strength in Military Rank and become a Dedicated. That would be exceptionally difficult to balance, but... it would certainly lend itself toward choices.
Amos. Just, <3.