[V3] Character Backgrounds / Traits

[ZeroPants]

These two are really unbalanced... 10 SC aren't that hard to get, really. Not worth losing 10 skills or 10 skills and 1 attribute


These two, contrary to the others are overpowered, as even though you are an anti-citizen, it just feels like a way for people to create throwaways to use for S2RP with just a single click (I create an anti-citizen character with +10 strength and go attack a CP with melee that I can craft in 2 seconds)

How would you balance it, truthfully I haven't been able to play in a while so I don't have the best feel of the current balance.

 

[Risvolto]

How would you balance it, truthfully I haven't been able to play in a while so I don't have the best feel of the current balance.

Mainly, keep in mind that SC aren't the holy grail and they can be obtained pretty easily, so loyalists should probably get less negative traits if the only thing they're getting is SC. I would value every SC as around 1-2 hour of playing (approximately, since a work shift gives you more than one and you do it in very low time, and there are events that literally require a few minutes and hand out 10 SC's as rewards). Getting SC's shouldn't lead to losing something for the entire duration of a character

On the other hand, backgrounds for rebels would perhaps be more balanced if instead of getting you +5 attributes for being an anti-citizen, lower it down to +1 or +2 to the normal amount.

As for the normal outcast, rebels don't really care about SC's (If you're making an outcast character you really don't care a lot about them either way), so instead of getting +1 attribute, you could make it so that you get a few chips just like it used to be back in the day (You used to get 20 chips), but to make it an actual option, as no one intelligent loses 20 SC's for 20 chips, make it so that it removes 20 SC's and gives you 200-500 chips.

 

[ZeroPants]

Mainly, keep in mind that SC aren't the holy grail and they can be obtained pretty easily, so loyalists should probably get less negative traits if the only thing they're getting is SC. I would value every SC as around 1-2 hour of playing (approximately, since a work shift gives you more than one and you do it in very low time, and there are events that literally require a few minutes and hand out 10 SC's as rewards). Getting SC's shouldn't lead to losing something for the entire duration of a character

On the other hand, backgrounds for rebels would perhaps be more balanced if instead of getting you +5 attributes for being an anti-citizen, lower it down to +1 or +2 to the normal amount.

As for the normal outcast, rebels don't really care about SC's (If you're making an outcast character you really don't care a lot about them either way), so instead of getting +1 attribute, you could make it so that you get a few chips just like it used to be back in the day (You used to get 20 chips), but to make it an actual option, as no one intelligent loses 20 SC's for 20 chips, make it so that it removes 20 SC's and gives you 200-500 chips.

The reason I made the boost for anti-citizens so high is because you are pretty much sacrificing your ability to do city RP with the character, no rations, stores, workshifts, or vending machines to get items. I think large stat boost for someone giving all of those things up would be worthwhile

 

[Risvolto]

The reason I made the boost for anti-citizens so high is because you are pretty much sacrificing your ability to do city RP with the character, no rations, stores, workshifts, or vending machines to get items. I think large stat boost for someone giving all of those things up would be worthwhile

People give it up for a hazmat suit stolen from CWU, or a USP.
I think you overvalue it because you have never been an anti-citizen for a long period of time, but I own an anti-citizen and have owned it for years and you can get everything on the sewers, you also don't really miss out on CityRP as there's a lot of RP in the slums as well, also, let's not ignore the RP in the sewers themselves.

The only thing you really lose is the rations(Which are useless for an anti-citizen, really), and the stores. (Which are the worse part)
Vending machines? Well, you can still buy shit from them, or even break them. (Also, any anti-citizen has everything any vending machine can offer)
Workshifts? To get what, credits that you can't use? Because we all know workshifts aren't RP(It's put this can in this machine)
CityRP? You can talk with people to get stuff from the city, or tell them to find x or y person for you.

 

[ZeroPants]

People give it up for a hazmat suit stolen from CWU, or a USP.
I think you overvalue it because you have never been an anti-citizen for a long period of time, but I own an anti-citizen and have owned it for years and you can get everything on the sewers, you also don't really miss out on CityRP as there's a lot of RP in the slums as well, also, let's not ignore the RP in the sewers themselves.

The only thing you really lose is the rations(Which are useless for an anti-citizen, really), and the stores. (Which are the worse part)
Vending machines? Well, you can still buy shit from them, or even break them. (Also, any anti-citizen has everything any vending machine can offer)
Workshifts? To get what, credits that you can't use? Because we all know workshifts aren't RP(It's put this can in this machine)
CityRP? You can talk with people to get stuff from the city, or tell them to find x or y person for you.

still, it greatly restricts what things on the server you are allowed to do and what things you are able to participate, only fair if we give players something to make up for it

 

[Risvolto]

still, it greatly restricts what things on the server you are allowed to do and what things you are able to participate, only fair if we give players something to make up for it

I just told you what I thought from my perspective and the fact that allowing for +10 attributes in total from the very beginning is letting someone create a character and instantly have +10 strength or +10 agility and win against anyone in S2RP.

If you disagree, that's fine, but I think you should consider my opinion as I tell you from first hand being an anti-citizen isn't as hard as you think it is.

In my opinion, a permanent +1 or +2 on an attribute is more than enough (By a lot)

+5 (assuming you also get the default +5) is just overpowered.

 

[M!NT]

Fuck it, lets steer into it a bit more.

Lets redo the whole character creation system for V3. I've never been a big fan of how we sort of halfass the character system. We have dice for rolling, and skills and such, but we only have skills/attributes and it seriously lacks depth.

I've always wanted to follow something more akin to a ttrpg with classes, and skills, and backgrounds and such. This would require a more in depth character sheet system which can be accessed via the F1 menu.

This will be sure to ruffle some feathers though. People want to be able to powertrip the ultimate do-it-all character and they typically don't like it when a 'system' interferes with that. I hate to tell you but, in just about every other roleplaying game there are stats, rolls, and so on so that characters are balanced. It is the defacto way to solve conflict in roleplay scenarios and, conflict is the heart of any good storytelling.

Sometimes your characters will fail a roll and lose. Next time, maybe do something your character is better at

Backgrounds:
As we've already discussed in this thread, we should have more varied backgrounds that give you certain bonuses for characters to chose between. There should be a way for people to ask for their own background, and can skip it, and GMs can modify this in game to fulfill character auths.

Abilities:
Similar to DND you can roll various checks (perception, insight, history, intrigue, and so on) to either a GM, or to other player characters. The targeted character will automatically role a save and if they fail, then the targeted character must do X depending on the degrees of success.

For example, if you're at a workshift and try to steal something, then the foreman can roll perception, and the person trying to steal will have a dice roll automatically rolled. If they fail, they have to emote stealing it to the foreman and the RP can continue in that direction. If they succeed with minor success, the foreman doesn't know anything and moves on. If they succeed with a major success, then they get an advantage on the next thing they try to steal during that workshift.

We would have to make a series of rules about these checks and what they can be used for, and how someone should respond when failing one. There may be some kind of tool tip in the menu that explains it at a 10,000ft view, and rules which further enforce it.

Attributes:

To keep things simple we'll do a simple point buy type of system (from 0 to 20) where 10 is considered 'average' (+0). Every 2 points above 10 gives you a +1 modifier to your rolls that are affected by that stat (against ability checks, from above) where +5 is the maximum, and the opposite applies down to -5 on these rolls. If these rolls are implemented as a 1d10, it makes you up to 50% more likely to succeed, or fail at something, depending on your character. If its a 1d20, then it is 25%. And so on and so on.

Not every attribute has bonuses to skills. To keep things balanced, some of them do and some of them don't. Others give you a bonus to saving throws or ability throws. Effectively making your character more resistant to these attacks, and making them stronger at performing them on others at the same time.

1. Willpower - Mental strength. This dictates how strong-willed and mentally resolved your character is. It effects the following things:
   1. Sanity loss & gain
   2. Determines resistances to persuasion, intimidation, and other such mental related attack throws.
2. Intellect - Knowledge. This determines how quickly one can learn and pick up new bits of information.
   1. Used for throws related to history and intrigue.
   2. Provides a bonus to intellectual skills (such as crafting, medicine, etc)
3. Cunning - Deceit. Determines how well your character can convince others by deceit, via lying or other means.
   1. Used for rolls related to lying and coercion (such as persuasion)
   2. Also used as a save modifier for someone trying to detect that you are lying (intrigue)
4. Agility - Speed. This stat decides how quickly you can do things, and how dexterous your character is.
   1. Determines movement speed, item pickup speed, trash search speed, and any number of other in game mechanics.
   2. Also could give you a bonus to critical hits in S2K (making it more unlikely someone will get a crit on you, and more likely to critical hit others)
5. Strength - Physicality. This one is pretty obvious. It determines your physical strength.
   1. Determines damage done via melee weapons, determines inventory size, fatigue, and other similar things in game.
6. Constitution - Physical resistance. How strong-willed you are physically (whereas willpower determines your mental resolve).
   1. This affects how quickly your character heals from medical items after being damaged.
   2. Give you a boost (such as your modifier * 5) to your total available health.
   3. It also effects the bleedout timer (how long you can stay in bleedout before dying).

With the above stats, you can really dial in what kind of character you want. Do you want to play a loyalist character? Dump your points into the mental stats such as cunning and willpower. This will allow them to be naturally better at climbing the ranks of the loyalism tree. Want to make a rogue rebel? Dump your stats into constitution and agility to be better in firefights, or dump them into constitution and strength to be better in hand to hand S2RP with melee. Want to be a CMRU doctor? Dump your points into willpower and intellect.

This makes it so that your character is inherently much better than others at certain things within the game, but also has a hefty disadvantage at doing some other things. A scrawny CMRU doctor will be great at tasks which require them to use their mind, and their hands. However, they're not going to be as natural with a gun, a weapon, or with winning a political debate.

This makes your characters much more focused, and helps them get an advantage in whatever it is you want to do with them, at the cost of making other things more difficult.

During character creation you're given 60 points to spend, and all points start out at 0. This means a typical spread could look something like:

A character who is balanced equally in all things (but not good at any of them):

10 WLP +0

10 INT +0

10 CNG +0

10 AGI +0

10 STR +0

10 CON +0

Strong but stupid:

15 WLP +2

5 INT -2

5 CNG -2

5 AGI -2

15 STR +2

15 CON +2

Smart but weak

6 WLP -2

18 INT +4

16 CNG +3

10 AGI +0

4 STR -3

6 CON -2

Leveling:
I still like the idea of leveling up skills over time which you perform regularly, such as medicine, crafting, and so on. In addition to that, you will gain skill points each time you succeed in a saving roll or by using your abilities on someone (succeeding a persuation check, for example). The bonuses you ahve in your attributes will also dictate how quickly you level up certain skills. Do you have high agility? You'll level up strength much faster than everyone else, for example.

Every x levels (lets say 10 for now) gained in any skill grants you a feat selection. A menu which you can open when a point becomes available. You will be able to select a positive trait which increases your attributes permanently.

For this example, we could say that the options at the first level of the 'relocated citizen' background is:

1. Quick Learner - Your curiosity has paid off. You've become much more aware of the city you've been relocated to, and understand more about it's inner workings. (+1 intellect, +1 cunning).
2. Sheltered - You prefer to stay indoors. Higher indoor air quality as made you feel better, and less sick from thick industrial pollution. (+2 constitution)
3. Wary - This city is a place full of all kinds of strange people. Due to your growing mistrust of the citizens living here. (+2 willpower)
4. Stalwart - You've attended every workshift you can. All this physical exercise has made you stronger.

You'll be able to see all of these things in your F1 menu at all times, where you'll also be able to do your rolls. Upon clicking them and selecting a target, the roll will be performed and the result put into chat.

 

[ZeroPants]

Fuck it, lets steer into it a bit more.

Lets redo the whole character creation system for V3. I've never been a big fan of how we sort of halfass the character system. We have dice for rolling, and skills and such, but we only have skills/attributes and it seriously lacks depth.

I've always wanted to follow something more akin to a ttrpg with classes, and skills, and backgrounds and such. This would require a more in depth character sheet system which can be accessed via the F1 menu.

This will be sure to ruffle some feathers though. People want to be able to powertrip the ultimate do-it-all character and they typically don't like it when a 'system' interferes with that. I hate to tell you but, in just about every other roleplaying game there are stats, rolls, and so on so that characters are balanced. It is the defacto way to solve conflict in roleplay scenarios and, conflict is the heart of any good storytelling.

Sometimes your characters will fail a roll and lose. Next time, maybe do something your character is better at







View attachment 33567

I love this, I think it would be a good idea to move towards a more complex character creation system.

I am not sure about including intimidation or other charisma-based skills, being on the receiving side of those skills wouldn't be any fun, those skills are only ever good in singleplayer or DnD games because you are able to use them on NPCs.

We should use something similar to the character creation system used in the original fallout.



There are some stats, skills, traits, and a few other things that we won't need for the server such as the luck and charisma stats.

 

[Risvolto]

we won't need for the server such as the luck and charisma

I really don't see why "luck" is something we don't need for the server... There are literally CASINOS opened right now... And many more shit that luck could be used for, like maybe regarding loot, or many other situations. I like it

 

[ZeroPants]

I really don't see why "luck" is something we don't need for the server... There are literally CASINOS opened right now... And many more shit that luck could be used for, like maybe regarding loot, or many other situations. I like it

shit, I didn't think of that, good point, having luck increase the amount of good loot you get would be very powerful.

Willard would use the S.P.E.I.A.L system in that case, not the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system.

Each stat should have different effects as well instead of just boosting stats and helping with /rolls, it would be cool if a highly perceptive person could tell what someone's stats are just by looking at them, a perceptive person may also be able to tell how much health a person currently has instead of just seeing text saying "This person looks injured"

As for the trait system, in the original fallout system players could pick a maximum of two traits, these traits would have a positive and negative effect, for example, you could choose to start out with more SPECIAL stats at the cost of starting with a lower amount of starting skills. We should do the same, all traits would need to have a positive and negative effect to keep things even.

 

[M!NT]

I am not sure about including intimidation or other charisma-based skills, being on the receiving side of those skills wouldn't be any fun, those skills are only ever good in singleplayer or DnD games because you are able to use them on NPCs.

It might not be fun to be on the recieving end of this, no. I agree on that. However, without such a system, it becomes quite hard to do it effectively on other people. Some players are good sports and allow it to happen, others vehemently refuse to allow other characters to negatively effect them in some way. This will put everyone on the same playing field.

We should use something similar to the character creation system used in the original fallout.

There are some stats, skills, traits, and a few other things that we won't need for the server such as the luck and charisma stats.

This is basically what we already have, and I don't like it very much. This isn't a singleplayer game like fallout.

 

[Goulashnikov]

Fuck it, lets steer into it a bit more.

Lets redo the whole character creation system for V3. I've never been a big fan of how we sort of halfass the character system. We have dice for rolling, and skills and such, but we only have skills/attributes and it seriously lacks depth.

I've always wanted to follow something more akin to a ttrpg with classes, and skills, and backgrounds and such. This would require a more in depth character sheet system which can be accessed via the F1 menu.

This will be sure to ruffle some feathers though. People want to be able to powertrip the ultimate do-it-all character and they typically don't like it when a 'system' interferes with that. I hate to tell you but, in just about every other roleplaying game there are stats, rolls, and so on so that characters are balanced. It is the defacto way to solve conflict in roleplay scenarios and, conflict is the heart of any good storytelling.

Sometimes your characters will fail a roll and lose. Next time, maybe do something your character is better at







View attachment 33567

+Support to the 100th degree.

 

[Risvolto]

It might not be fun to be on the recieving end of this, no. I agree on that. However, without such a system, it becomes quite hard to do it effectively on other people. Some players are good sports and allow it to happen, others vehemently refuse to allow other characters to negatively effect them in some way. This will put everyone on the same playing field.

I can see people not liking this, but it doesn't mean that it's not a good skill to be added...
It would just mean that this kind of skill would only be used on expeditions for example or things that require good faith, like something that won't cause another character to suffer an unreasonable amount of damage, or on an expedition where there are EVENT characters, which should be obligated to follow on with said rolls

 

[ZeroPants]

A charisma stat could boost the smuggling stat, thats the only actual stat I can see it boosting

 

[Candle]

while i'd normally agree on a speechcraft / luck system, i worry that people will default to using rolls to try and convince people instead of trying to dynamically convince someone of something oocly. plus being 'forced' to take someone at their word because of a good roll might be odd

 

[ZeroPants]

while i'd normally agree on a speechcraft / luck system, i worry that people will default to using rolls to try and convince people instead of trying to dynamically convince someone of something oocly. plus being 'forced' to take someone at their word because of a good roll might be odd

That's my biggest worry, I'd hate having to believe or do what someone says just because they pass a speech check. Speech is stat that works good on NPCs, but isn't fun on players.

If we have a "speech" stat of any kind, players shouldn't be forced to use it, both parties involved should agree to do it instead.

I think the speech system could probably work with the NPCs we have already, the BMDs in the sewers, perhaps you could get lower prices or access to a better stock

 

[boots]

That's my biggest worry, I'd hate having to believe or do what someone says just because they pass a speech check. Speech is stat that works good on NPCs, but isn't fun on players.

If we have a "speech" stat of any kind, players shouldn't be forced to use it, both parties involved should agree to do it instead.

I think the speech system could probably work with the NPCs we have already, the BMDs in the sewers, perhaps you could get lower prices or access to a better stock

Good amount of roleplayers already roll intelligence for whether they remember something, or whether they believe a blatant lie.

I think the expansion of this into speechcraft and charisma is unnecessary, and I feel it's sort of powergamey.
Players already set a good roleplay example by rolling int, and encourage others to take after them by making it fun.

 

[BantaMan]

Fuck it, lets steer into it a bit more.

Lets redo the whole character creation system for V3. I've never been a big fan of how we sort of halfass the character system. We have dice for rolling, and skills and such, but we only have skills/attributes and it seriously lacks depth.

I've always wanted to follow something more akin to a ttrpg with classes, and skills, and backgrounds and such. This would require a more in depth character sheet system which can be accessed via the F1 menu.

This will be sure to ruffle some feathers though. People want to be able to powertrip the ultimate do-it-all character and they typically don't like it when a 'system' interferes with that. I hate to tell you but, in just about every other roleplaying game there are stats, rolls, and so on so that characters are balanced. It is the defacto way to solve conflict in roleplay scenarios and, conflict is the heart of any good storytelling.

Sometimes your characters will fail a roll and lose. Next time, maybe do something your character is better at







View attachment 33567

I have never supported something so much in my entire life

 

[George]

John: hello mr ota please defect and join my side
John has rolled a 20 in charisma!

 

[boots]

John: hello mr ota please defect and join my side
John has rolled a 20 in charisma!

** John steals the bag full of resin from the warehouse, holding it by his side.
Worker: Did you steal from the warehouse?
John has rolled a 20 in charisma!
John: No?