Chapter 1: Character Races

[Mark_Aurel]

In this case, I believe "b" follows the established 3e multiclassing rules, and should be the overall correct solution; if a skill has been a class skill at one point, the maximum rank for it is 3 + character level, and you can always max it out if you have skill points, though purchasing that skill may be at a cross-class cost. A fighter/rogue could use his fighter skill points to max out some of his rogue skills. In some cases, that would be bad buying habits, though, as you might end up effectively wasting skill points. The exception to this rule would be class-exclusive skills; you could only buy additional ranks in those skills when you advanced in a class that had the skill (i.e. rogue and use magic device), but you also have the option to max out in that case (i.e. a 5th level character taking a level of rogue and blowing all his skill points for that level on use magic device).

[doom]

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 02:43:47PM -0500, daniel mcsorley wrote:
> > That is correct. A Khinasi character (raised in the Khinasi manner)
> > treats all knowledge skills as class skills at first level only. Feats
> > and/or class selection dominate all future advancement. This ability
> > was meant to "represent" the high availablility of education (and its
> > value) in Khinais culture... but not to provide an unlimited potential
> > for educaton for a character that did not take concious decsions to
> > _further_ that education. In other words, a Khinasi starts with an
> > opportunity to have an Education (if they want to spend the skill points),
> > but this early education does not necessarily have life-time learning
> > advantages.
>
> This ignores the class skill rules. If a skill is ever a class skill for
> you, it always is, for purposes of the max skill ranks you can have.

I`d argue that this fits in seamlessly with the existing class skill
rules. In effect, you`ve "Added" Knowledge (Any) to the class list of
the character`s first level class, but only at first level. The
maximum skills rank are exactly equivalent to what they would be for
any class which had Knowledge (Any) at first level. Future ranks,
however, cost 2 skill points unless the class in which advancement
takes place has the Knowledge skill as a normal class skill (as per
norm).

> Doesn`t matter. You don`t balance mechanical benefits with
> roleplaying disadvantages, ever.

I respectfully disagree with you. There are NUMEROUS game system in
which benefits are balanced with "roleplaying disadvantages": GURPS,
HERO, White Wolf, and AD&D 2e (Player`s Option), to name a few. I
agree that the designers of D&D 3e went to great lengths to remove
role-playing disadvantages from consideration. This is an appropriate
decision for a game system used in both role-playing heavy and
role-playing light games. I do not agree that this necessarily
provides a strict mandate that such factors are not worth considering
in a specific instance (in this case Elves in Birthright). Clearly
role-playing consideration shoudl not dominate, but IMHO, they are
ALWAYS worth considering (particularly in the BRCS - a work which is,
fundamentally, about a specific role-playing setting for a campaign).

- Doom

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[jaldaen]

Originally posted by Mark_Aurel
In this case, I believe "b" follows the established 3e multiclassing rules, and should be the overall correct solution; if a skill has been a class skill at one point, the maximum rank for it is 3 + character level, and you can always max it out if you have skill points, though purchasing that skill may be at a cross-class cost. A fighter/rogue could use his fighter skill points to max out some of his rogue skills. In some cases, that would be bad buying habits, though, as you might end up effectively wasting skill points. The exception to this rule would be class-exclusive skills; you could only buy additional ranks in those skills when you advanced in a class that had the skill (i.e. rogue and use magic device), but you also have the option to max out in that case (i.e. a 5th level character taking a level of rogue and blowing all his skill points for that level on use magic device).

Thanks for the prompt reply ;-)

I would suggest making the above clear in the cultural traits section (or skill section) so that players and DMs will know how these cultural class skills work...

Now for another question that I forgot to ask... If you don't put any skill points into a skill would you still gain the above mentioned benefit... For example: at 1st level the Khinasi fighter does not choose to put any ranks into Knowledge (religion)... would he still have the 3 + character level max? I would probably say so for simplicity's sake, but it is a possible point of confusion that may come up...

IF I think of any other questions I'll let you know.

Thanks,
Joseph Miller

[Solmyr]

daniel mcsorley wrote:
>
> > Since your system takes notes of disadvantages as well as advantages you may
> > want to add in a rather serious disadvantage for Elves into your calculation.
> > Elves, being distrusted (at best) by most human races find it harder to
> > interact with humans characters (generally the predominate race in most
> > BR campaigns).
>
> Doesn`t matter. You don`t balance mechanical benefits with roleplaying
> disadvantages, ever.

Especially since this "disadvantage" is never applied in practice (one
only has to look at PBEMs and the wide-eyed awe that elf domains tend to
receive, no matter what they do; speeches like "all this land once
belonged to the elves, so they are right and we are wrong" coming
routinely from humans, etc).

--

Solmyr of the Azure Star
solmyr@kolumbus.fi
World of Enothril website - http://enothril.topcities.com/
The Archmage`s Tower - http://www.geocities.com/solmyr.geo/
"War does not determine who is right. War determines who is left."

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[Birthright-L]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Solmyr wrote:
> > > Since your system takes notes of disadvantages as well as advantages you may
> > > want to add in a rather serious disadvantage for Elves into your calculation.
> > > Elves, being distrusted (at best) by most human races find it harder to
> > > interact with humans characters (generally the predominate race in most
> > > BR campaigns).
> >
> > Doesn`t matter. You don`t balance mechanical benefits with roleplaying
> > disadvantages, ever.
>
> Especially since this "disadvantage" is never applied in practice (one
> only has to look at PBEMs and the wide-eyed awe that elf domains tend to
> receive, no matter what they do; speeches like "all this land once
> belonged to the elves, so they are right and we are wrong" coming
> routinely from humans, etc).

That is exactly the reason. Many of the 2e kits were `balanced` this way,
and they were awful. Roleplaying disadvantages don`t work in practice to
balance mechanical advantages, so they shouldn`t be written into the
rules. As it stands now, Cerilian elves at least, and maybe the dwarves,
need an ECL modifier.
--
Communication is possible only between equals.
Daniel McSorley- mcsorley@cis.ohio-state.edu

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[jaldaen]

Originally posted by Birthright-L

> Especially since this "disadvantage" is never applied in practice (one
> only has to look at PBEMs and the wide-eyed awe that elf domains tend to
> receive, no matter what they do; speeches like "all this land once
> belonged to the elves, so they are right and we are wrong" coming
> routinely from humans, etc).

That is exactly the reason. Many of the 2e kits were `balanced` this way,
and they were awful. Roleplaying disadvantages don`t work in practice to
balance mechanical advantages, so they shouldn`t be written into the
rules. As it stands now, Cerilian elves at least, and maybe the dwarves,
need an ECL modifier.

I agree with you that roleplaying disadvantages are "insignificant", but I think it is okay to use such in an overall view of a race. Note that when I say insignificant I'm talking about it in regards to the above system as well as to the "penalty" that is "suffered" by the PC...

Thus such a roleplaying penalty would only be .5 points on my scale... hardly worth noting... still though I would only consider weighing such "role-playing" penalties if their was a concrete and spelled out penalty... which I do not see thus far in the BRCS-playtest version.

Such "insignificant" penalties would need to be in the vien of:

Birthright Elves have a -2 penalty to Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Innuendo, and Sense Motive when dealing with non-elves.

Now that is a "penalty" I can consider when determining the power levels of a race.

Good Gaming!
Joseph Miller

[Malice3679]

> > Since your system takes notes of disadvantages as well as advantages you
may
> > want to add in a rather serious disadvantage for Elves into your
calculation.
> > Elves, being distrusted (at best) by most human races find it harder to
> > interact with humans characters (generally the predominate race in most
> > BR campaigns).
>
> Doesn`t matter. You don`t balance mechanical benefits with roleplaying
> disadvantages, ever.

Ja...as an example, in the old Street Fighter storytelling game, cyborgs and
animal hybrids were released in the Player`s Guide...and their "drawbacks"
were reduced interaction in social situations...

Now, the game was about martial artists traveling around the world and
kicking each others` butts. Three guesses as to just how often that
disadvantage came into play...=P

FWIW, though, I used one cyborg NPC in my game, and one of the PCs had an
easier time with him then he did a well-balanced "normal" fighter.

Tommy
Who Isn`t Sure He Made The Point That He Was Trying To

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[Shade]

>Especially since this "disadvantage" is never applied in practice (one
>only has to look at PBEMs and the wide-eyed awe that elf domains tend to
>receive, no matter what they do; speeches like "all this land once
>belonged to the elves, so they are right and we are wrong" coming
>routinely from humans, etc).

Yeah, but there`s a lot of really bad roleplaying in PBeMs too..

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[geeman]

At 04:52 PM 2/6/2003 -0500, Daniel McSorley wrote:

>Many of the 2e kits were `balanced` this way, and they were
>awful. Roleplaying disadvantages don`t work in practice to balance
>mechanical advantages, so they shouldn`t be written into the rules.

I posted a bunch of stuff on disadvantages or drawbacks for 3e a while
back. What I found was necessary to prevent a min/maxing problem (not that
I want to rehash that little debate) is that the disadvantage should take
effect to blunt or eliminate what would otherwise be a bonus. The
disadvantage that gave a character a penalty to initiative checks, for
example, had a Dex 13+ requirement. That prevents players (or DMs) from
taking that disadvantage in a way that makes no effective different to the
character`s stats.

When it comes to role-playing disadvantages, I agree that they should not
be used to balance game mechanical disadvantages because, in effect,
role-playing disadvantages can be role-played around. I like to encourage
role-playing, but I`d suggest that there is good role-playing in which a
player is "in character" and there`s role-playing that a player does that
is mostly a chore, one that must be performed repetitively, so role-playing
around a role-playing disadvantage can often turn into a struggle of wills
between player and DM. Aside from which, without some pretty elaborate
guidelines for how the role-playing disadvantage takes effect, players try
to do the minimum role-playing to satisfy the situation, because they are
really interested in gaining the advantage, not engaging in role-playing a
disadvantage. That puts the DM into more of the parental/babysitter
position than I am personally comfortable with. If one enjoys that kind of
interaction with players then I say go for it, but institutionalizing it
into a system of play is probably not a good idea.

>As it stands now, Cerilian elves at least, and maybe the dwarves, need an
>ECL modifier.

I`m going to take advantage of this to describe some of my current thinking
on this kind of thing.

One of the weird things about D20 is that there are really two broad
categories of beneficial character class traits, and in order to reflect
things like ECL for a race I think there needs to be a bit of description
of what those things are. For the purpose of discussing here I`m going to
dub them "flat bonuses" and there are "multipliers."

Flat bonuses are those that simply add a one time bonus to a particular
class feature. Flat bonuses are things like an increase to a particular
aspect of the game mechanics, like the +4 to initiative checks made by the
Improved Initiative feat. Most of the racial bonuses are flat. Then there
are "multipliers." Multipliers are traits that that go up each level,
effectively turning character level into a multiplier. The bonus skill
points of human characters, for example, are multipliers. Bonuses to
ability scores usually effectively become multipliers because most of the
ability score bonuses are multiplied by character level to increase some
basic aspect of character class; hit points, skill points, number of
spells, etc. That`s not always the case, however. A few ability scores
don`t always act as multipliers.

Bonuses from ability scores are often both flat and
multipliers. Intelligence, for example, gives a flat bonus to performing
various skill checks, and a multiplier when it comes to skill
points. Other ability score bonuses are only flat. The bonuses from
strength are not in and of themselves multipliers, nor are the bonuses for
dexterity, and there are few character class special abilities that use
those ability scores as multipliers. Depending on character class wisdom
and charisma are not multipliers either--though those characters who have
high scores in those abilities tend to take advantage of that by levelling
up in characters classes in which they operate as multipliers. One needs
to take the overall effect of ability scores into account when determining
the ECL of a race. A race that gets +2 to intelligence, for instance, gets
for all intents and purposes the human racial "multiplier" bonus to skill
points, plus a flat bonus to intelligence based skill checks, and a
possible multiplier bonus to spells.

At first, flat bonuses would appear to be easier to rate for ECL, but in
actuality multipliers probably are. Multipliers often fit right into the
character class system and are, therefore, easily equated to particular
character class features. The bonus skill points of human characters, for
instance, is worth exactly as much as a skill point. One way to look at
this is that flat bonuses equate to the effect of levelling up once, while
multipliers become the equivalent of character class features.

The trick then is determining the relative value of flat bonuses and
multipliers. Flat bonuses can add up to an ECL, but multipliers can
provide a much more drastic effect and should probably be rated differently.

Gary

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[Birthright-L]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Gary wrote:
> The trick then is determining the relative value of flat bonuses and
> multipliers. Flat bonuses can add up to an ECL, but multipliers can
> provide a much more drastic effect and should probably be rated
> differently.

I don`t think so. They`re all most important at low levels. By high
levels, individual skill ranks (the `multiplier` example) tend not to
matter, as there are innumerable spells, items, and party aids which can
render skill checks unimportant. Likewise, darkvision, stonecunning,
saving throw bonuses, immunity to /sleep/, etc, the flat bonuses, also
tend to be supplanted by charater abilities and magic. By mid to high
levels, racial bonuses don`t matter much at all, so it`s best to just aim
for equivilance at 1st character level and let it go from there.
--
Communication is possible only between equals.
Daniel McSorley- mcsorley@cis.ohio-state.edu

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