Item bonuses and player character progression

[krbz999]

Following points need to be considered.

What is the initial setup of a "base" player character?

• Initial skill levels?
• Pool sizes?
• Health size?
• Starting equipment?

How does a player character "progress"?

• The main progression is the gathering of better equipment.
• Do skills progress at some thresholds? E.g. some points to spend on a "level up" (if that's a thing).
• Pool and health size increases?

How do items scale as the game progresses?

• Damage dice (does this every change?)
• Armor bonus
• Resistance bonuses
• Damage bonuses on "magic" items (a percentage bonus?)
• Skill bonuses.
• Pool size bonuses.
• Health size bonuses.
• Per-turn pips bonuses(?)
• Any other bonuses one can think of?

[krbz999]

Actors need a property that describes their current amount of unspent skill points. Possibly values regarding pools as well (need Myers' input on that).

[krbz999]

An actor starts with 15 skill points that can be spent to raise the level of skills. Skills cannot go higher than level 4 initially.

[Mythacri]

What is the initial setup of a "base" player character?

All skills should start at level 1, assuming at least a base understanding of how the world works. Meaning a player can always at least attempt a check and roll 1d6.

Pool sizes for a starting character should start at a 5, 4, and 3 maybe? Dispersed as the player sees fit.

Starting health should be strong enough to survive a few attacks, with an extra amount put on it for each die in the health pool. Based on the damage numbers we've seen from basic attacks so far at around 12-20 for simple weapons dealing damage in dice pools of 4. I would suggest 50 to be a good base starting health; with an extra 10 added for each die in the health pool.

Starting equipment may be best done as being pulled from a shorter list of equipment where a player can pick from columns? X sets of 3 choices with each trio of choices relating roughly to one of the three pools? This one may require a further brainstorming session.

How does a player character "progress"?

Main progression is based on gathering new equipment. As such, 'levels' should be based on a similar concept. I suggest that powerful monsters be given special loot which allows players to 'level' up. These loot items are one time use and could be divided into two categories:

• Skill Pods (used to add 1 skill point to a character to be spent as they see fit)
• Attribute Pods (used to add 1 attribute to a character of a specific type. Pods could have variants which feature 1, 2, or all 3 attributes as options)

By making these lootable items, players can have a greater sens of accomplishment when defeating enemies AND they have the ability to target specific enemies with items they know they may want.

Skill Progression can occur ever 3 or every 5 points added into a skill. This assumes the skills max out at around 10 for each one. The lower the number for bonuses, the more incentivized players will be to differentiate between different skills.

Pool and Health sizes can also be upgraded with special Attribute Pods perhaps? Allowing them to change the dice size (note change and not necessarily increase) and the pool size with different items

How do items scale as the game progresses?

• The damage dice of an item changes with fusions being added to it and enhancements being made. At current, this should be the only focus for upgrading weapons and spell damage generically like that.
• Armor Bonuses should follow with weapon bonuses and be based around upgrading them with gear.
• Resistance and Damage bonuses that are affected by percentages COULD potentially be an upgradable trait which works in the same way as the Skills or Attributes where one time use items are used to buff them. Then, items could keep flat number resistances and bonuses which keeps the two type of benefits separate.

[NMyers17]

Progression:

Instead of an item being then transferred into the referenced "skill points" that can be used to increase skills and potentially attributes but the balance perspective on that is debatable. Another possible implementation would be something similar to the "pips" system. Whereby the GM can award these points directly the players which then appear on the character sheet either in some sort of display (box?) or in a bar (like an xp bar) the players could then keep track of these points, save them to purchase something big/of a higher tier or spend them instantly on lower tier skills. obviously all dependant on the actual values we give to these.

I imagine the interface on the GM side having a work flow like: Choose Character > select type of point to give to character/s (if different types would exist?) > select amount to give to character/s > submit and points are then pushed out to character/s.

Equally the players should have a way to interact with the sheet to spend (up to) their current value of skill points, such as a button next to the skill points or some sort of edit mode for the skills/sheet.