Hey all, I’m thinking about the design of the game after watching the excellent “A History of Blades” videos on John’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlGyUKlXVbY
One thing I didn’t hear in the video is something I’ve seen people ask quite often. What mechanical considerations are involved if you choose to trim the list of action ratings from 12 to 9 (e.g. 3 per Attribute instead of 4). My search efforts haven’t turned up previous examples of that question here in the community so I shamefully introduce it once more.
What do you think? I feel like lowering the point for character generation from 4 to 3 makes sense but I would miss the symmetry of the “1 for Heritage, 1 for Background, 2 for what you will” method.
So this is what I did for the cyberpunk hack I’m working on.
This also meant limited the action dots you assign at character creation from 4 to 3 (at least in the current version, we’ll see how that goes). I made that decision since it made sense mathematically (4 is a third of 12, 3 is a third of 9) but I have yet to see if it works well in play.
I also realized this would limit attributes and resistance rolls to 3 dice rather than 4. Scum & Villainy gets around this sort of thing by using the gamble dice pool to offset the max 3 action rating. I considered something similar, but that’s when I thought of the Augmentation dot system.
Characters gain augmentations with certain special abilities and assets, allowing them to get the max 4 dice in their actions and attributes. It also lets the players imagine the modifications or surgeries their characters undergo to get these increased traits.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fEzAJKxXRmGsSMclxHNMAzK3b3LFPQHrzaxSAwCvqztxngiiJ9hZqvPEEcQA89YpXu87W76aiQpjwn3x6b0NUl5IhPXWDXtLjrI=s0
“…I would miss the symmetry of the “1 for Heritage, 1 for Background, 2 for what you will” method.”
So reduce the “what you will” allotment to 1 and the symmetry is enhanced. 🙂
Michael Elliott I hadn’t considered losing a die like you describe. Thanks for putting it on my radar! This is exactly why I posed my question.
Augmentations are quite appropriate for the (fantasy) setting I’m imagining but I’m thinking now of a Special Ability in several/all of the playbooks that grant you a bonus Attribute/Resistance die in the most relevant Attribute (or two). For example, the Cutter might get a bonus die to Attribute and Resistance rolls that use Prowess. Thanks to the Veteran Special Ability, it would be possible to collect all of those “die boost” abilities if you want to do so.
Benjamin Davis what I mean by symmetry is that you’re free to distribute half of your dots however you please. If the “what you will” category goes down from 2 to 1, then you only have complete freedom with a third of your dots. I like that BitD makes it easy to avoid racial stereotyping a la D&D races or what have you.
But I suppose since the only prompts for heritage and background are “assign dots that you feel represent your heritage and background,” there’s already a safeguard baked in to avoid those stereotypes. Maybe 1 free dot isn’t so bad after all! Thanks for giving me this thought to chew on.