I'm a point-buy guy. Most of the time when I play games with classes and levels I don't like them. The classes are too restrictive in flavor or mechanics while the levels are the game's fun police telling you that you're not tall enough to do the cool things that you're playing the game to do.
So why would I make a class and level game, then? Because I think it works best for the kind of game that Monsterpunk is. That and because I tried to make it point-buy and it just wasn't working out. You can read more about how that happened here.
Classes and Levels: The Good
There are two primary benefits to going with a class/level system:
It is easier to balance. When you have to make sure that every single power, weapon or what have you works well not just with each other but also doesn't accidentally break the game's balance (or, worse, make it stop functioning altogether) then you spend a lot of time fine-tuning all the numbers and hunting down unintended interactions that could spell the game's doom if left unchecked. BCG and BCZ (particularly the latter) have had quite a few hiccups with powerful synergies that spiraled out of control. In a class-based game you don't have to worry about how dangerous the A+B combo is if I keep option A to the classes that don't get option B. Similarily, if the class with option A is weaker than the class with option B then I can simply make it stronger without worrying about how much that might make the class with option B even stronger.
It is easier to grok characters and make them with. Character creation takes time. This is especially true when you have to do math, such as in point-buy, instead of just going through a checklist which is what you often do with class/level systems. Creating PCs and NPCs alike in BCG is much faster than in any edition of D&D, but it doesn't seem that way because you have to do quite a bit of math, while in D&D you can just pick the guy that swings the sword, choose his kind of sword, pick some feats that make you swing swords better and call it a day. Monsterpunk characters are very easy and fast to make, and in a game like this where most PCs are actually two characters that wouldn't be possible without a class/level system.
Classes and Levels: The Bad
Now there are also some problems present in class/level systems but I think I've managed to sidestep nearly if not all of them. Point-buy systems offer freedom at the cost of complexity while class/level systems offer simplicity at the cost of freedom. Here's how:
Classes don't restrict you from playing the character concept you like. While Monsterpunk classes are more interesting and less generic than "guy with a sword" or "lady that heals", they're still broad enough that you can tweak them to your liking. Furthermore, the game is trivially easy to reskin, so this is not a problem.
Classes don't restrict you mechanically. In addition to having a good 2-3 obvious ways to build any of the classes, you can mix and match them with different monsters to get many more combinations of abilities and allowing you to combine nearly all of them to give your PC whatever you want. The caveat here is that this doesn't apply to Ubermensch classes, which, well, I admit am not super happy about... But 12 out of 16 is a pretty good total! Oh right, also there's dual and custom class systems in the back of the book, so yeah.
The level system doesn't gate you out of anything. Levels make PCs stronger over time, yes, and high level PCs play fundamentally differently from low level PCs (having two Advanced Techs or starting with an Orgone Point is a world of difference) but it doesn't dangle all the cool and fun abilities like a carrot in front of you and tell you that you don't get to use them until you've reached some arbitrary benchmark. It's more like being at the candy store and being told you can get anything but not everything.
Classes and Levels: The Ugly Conclusion
I've written at length about BCG's many issues and of those the ones I dislike the most are how difficult it is to start playing if you're not a mechanically oriented type of player. There's a lot of emphasis in what makes things easier for groups that are picking up the game for the first time, which I think is one of the big draws of having classes. However, Monsterpunk is also an experiment in trying to use a class/level while doing away with all the things I dislike about class/level systems.
Whether I've succeeded or not is up to you all to decide. Ultimately, this is an open beta, and I'm well aware that I'll probably have to change a bunch of things. I don't think I'm going to change the class/level system, but I do think I might have to work more on the custom class system if there's enough clamor for a point-buy alternative.
That's all for today! This and more were originally going to be part of last week's post but I was out of energy like half a paragraph into the class/level chat so I decided to leave that for next week. Not really sure what the next post is going to tackle, it's probably going to be more first impression stuff, I imagine.
Until then, Gimmick Out.
I've generally found "point-buy" systems to be a synonym for "we didn't know how to balance this so good luck finding a way to make a real game out of these parts" systems. Any attempt at balance has a hidden assumption that the points are being distributed among a few often-hidden categories with almost-always-hidden proportions, and there's no way to casually rule out degenerate cases like the all-attributes or all-advantages character. Not only can characters be built to be super-powerful, it's very easy (especially for new players) to build characters to be super-weak, typically from not knowing how many points to allocate to early options and running out before they have everything they need, without any way to know that this is the case because everything is in one bucket. You quite simply can't make two characters in isolation and expect them to be playable in the same game.
ReplyDeleteNow, it's possible to have this power disparity in class/level systems but typically from poor synergy across your checklist options, and if you have even the most basic best-in-slot heuristic then a well-designed system will allow those two characters designed in isolation to at least play the first session together.
Maybe this is because I'm missing some unwritten cultural rules for point-buy games, but if that's the case, could someone write those down so I could stop having to write off every point-buy system as a terrible experience?
I disagree on your description of point-buy systems. I think they are a lot more *honest* about how the designers think about game balance, because every single ability can be objectively compared to each other in a vacuum. The problem there is, of course, that many designers don't know or don't care how to cost said abilities in a way that keeps them balanced to each other.
DeleteI agree that it is a lot easier to accidentally make a character that is too weak and that poor balance leads to exploitable builds, which are definite flaws in the point-buy method. But I think saying two characters made in isolation can't be used in the same game is hyperbolic and more an issue of the game itself rather than the method it uses to create characters. I don't know which point-buy systems you've played but BCG is a wholly different beast from BESM which in turn is very much not the same as Mutants & Masterminds.
Furthermore, it is untrue that this problem does not apply to class/level systems. The most infamous optimization exploits in the industry (pun pun, locate city nuke, etc) all come from Dungeons & Dragons, which has always been terrible at game balance and even in 4E where spellcasters for once didn't completely overshadow noncasters there was still stuff like 2hrangers right next to the seeker.
I think there is a misattribution of responsibility here. RPGs are fundamentally a social activity and you cannot build characters "in isolation" and expect an experience as satisfactory as one you would get if you communicated with the rest of the group. This applies to the experience as a whole, not just to making characters. And without communication, even in class-based games you still end up in situations where nobody picked a healing class, so it's not like they are that much better about solving the issue.
I wouldn't call it an unwritten cultural rule, but I think that point-buy makes it much more evident that without communication you're not going to have a great time.