Author Topic: buying abilities with experience/point buy  (Read 3698 times)

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Kerelis

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buying abilities with experience/point buy
« on: May 24, 2008, 01:51:39 AM »
I was wondering if anyone has every created a D20 variant system that basically gets rid of classes for the most part and allows people to use exp and/or point buy to buy abilities.  It seems like this would be possible.  You could rate different BAB (poor, average, good, etc) and rate them with an exp or point buy cost.  You could do the same with spell progressions, spells by school, skills, etc.

Does anyone have any ideas about this?

AfterCrescent

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2008, 01:58:06 AM »
Step one to the success of this system is a spell overhaul. You have to be wary of spells like Divine Power, which makes having a BAB of poor irrelevant.  It sounds like an interesting experiment, but the DM has to carefully decide what to allow/disallow.
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Kerelis

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2008, 02:03:03 AM »
Yes, that would certainly be the case.  Divine Power isn't considered the epitome of balance in a normal 3.5 game, either.  :lol

AfterCrescent

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2008, 02:09:55 AM »
Yes, that would certainly be the case.  Divine Power isn't considered the epitome of balance in a normal 3.5 game, either.  :lol
That depends on who you are :wink.  But I digress. That's just one example. It'll take a lot of work to make sure that being able to cast bear's endurance all day > paying for that 18 in Con. These little things that people will look at make all the difference. Everyone wants to get the best bargain for their buck.
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Josh

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2008, 03:44:40 AM »
I was wondering if anyone has every created a D20 variant system that basically gets rid of classes for the most part and allows people to use exp and/or point buy to buy abilities.  It seems like this would be possible.  You could rate different BAB (poor, average, good, etc) and rate them with an exp or point buy cost.  You could do the same with spell progressions, spells by school, skills, etc.

Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Mutants and Masterminds does this. 
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Skara Brae

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #5 on: May 24, 2008, 03:56:14 AM »
I was wondering if anyone has every created a D20 variant system that basically gets rid of classes for the most part and allows people to use exp and/or point buy to buy abilities.  It seems like this would be possible.  You could rate different BAB (poor, average, good, etc) and rate them with an exp or point buy cost.  You could do the same with spell progressions, spells by school, skills, etc.

Does anyone have any ideas about this?
It's not quite what you're looking for, but there is a class construction engine at http://rumkin.com/reference/dnd/download/classconstruction.pdf that has been around forever.  It's a little on the powerful side from what I remember.

Orion

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #6 on: May 24, 2008, 06:52:45 PM »
Phoenix uses classes (see below), but it's very modular, in the way you're describing. I just saw someone on the Wizards boards, either the 3e or d20M sections, inventing exactly the kind of thing you're talking about, though. Pay X number of points for Good BA, pay Y number of points for 4 skills per level. That kind of thing.

chibishuffle

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #7 on: May 24, 2008, 08:50:14 PM »
BESM tri stat does exactly this  :D
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Sunic_Flames

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #8 on: May 24, 2008, 11:16:02 PM »
Systems that do this are especially prone to infinite loops. :P
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Prime32

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2008, 11:35:29 AM »
BESM tri stat does exactly this  :D
And the d20 version has it as an optional rule - I think for every 10 character points, your ECL goes up by 1.
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The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Kerelis

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #10 on: May 26, 2008, 02:13:17 PM »
What does BESM stand for, if you'll pardon my ignorance?

yellerSumner

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #11 on: May 26, 2008, 02:16:16 PM »
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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #12 on: May 28, 2008, 05:18:15 AM »
BESM is a poor system IMO.  The stats barely mean anything since you wind up adding all three to 90% of your rolls in the first place, the abilities you buy with your points vary wildly in power per point, and infinite loops are extremely common.  Whats more, many of the abilities are so open-ended that you just about have to make your character with your GM over your shoulder telling you what you can and can't do with it.  Finally, I failed to find rules for any sort of character progression whatsoever.

If you still want to do this, I suggest mimiccing God of War.  I played God of War 2 and it actually had a very nice, if simplistic, method of character advancement that I am uncertain whether or not was also in the other 3 games.  You collected and sacrificed special items in order to increase your heath and magic power and your XP was used to power up abilities originally granted through story progression.  If you add ability scores and derived values to that then you've got the beginnings of a good system.

Whether or not someone has actually done this... I have no clue.  Now that I think about it, I just might do it myself.

Prime32

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #13 on: May 28, 2008, 05:49:49 AM »
BESM is a poor system IMO.  The stats barely mean anything since you wind up adding all three to 90% of your rolls in the first place, the abilities you buy with your points vary wildly in power per point, and infinite loops are extremely common.  Whats more, many of the abilities are so open-ended that you just about have to make your character with your GM over your shoulder telling you what you can and can't do with it.
Is it really worse than the epic spellcasting system? Some of those spells just make no sense. I believe one example uses the "create stuff" spell seed to deal an arbitrary amount of damage.

Finally, I failed to find rules for any sort of character progression whatsoever.
There aren't any in the SRD either. They can't put those online.
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The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

X-Codes

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Re: buying abilities with experience/point buy
« Reply #14 on: May 28, 2008, 07:35:59 AM »
BESM is a poor system IMO.  The stats barely mean anything since you wind up adding all three to 90% of your rolls in the first place, the abilities you buy with your points vary wildly in power per point, and infinite loops are extremely common.  Whats more, many of the abilities are so open-ended that you just about have to make your character with your GM over your shoulder telling you what you can and can't do with it.
Is it really worse than the epic spellcasting system? Some of those spells just make no sense. I believe one example uses the "create stuff" spell seed to deal an arbitrary amount of damage.

Finally, I failed to find rules for any sort of character progression whatsoever.
There aren't any in the SRD either. They can't put those online.
Ok, being worse than the Epic Spellcasting system doesn't mean something is good or even decent.  Fact is, BESM is pretty damn bad.  Not worse than Epic Spellcasting, but still pretty damn bad.

As for being unable to put progression rules on the SRD, thats WotC's fault for being anal.  If I'm allowed, I'll post the XP table in my next post on this thread.