[Rq-rules] Re: RQ-Rules Digest, Vol 9, Issue 15

[Frank Filz]

Julian Lord wrote:
>> Individual Characteristic+Characteristic bonuses for specific skills
>> is a step forward IMO, but the basic system there is a bit broken,
>> because it's inherently unfair ; and IMO a system of Talent
>> allocation, whereby a starting PC would get a certain number of
>> Talent points to distribute freely to skill bonuses as desired, with
>> no meaningful maximum, would be preferable to all this
>> pseudo-simulationist number-crunching IMO

Hmm, that's sort of almost what I did for my current game. I knew I didn't 
want randomly rolled characters, but I also realized that with the RQ way of 
determining skill bonuses, that there would be little reason for any PC to 
have less than an 18 INT.

So I ended up divorcing the skill bonuses from attributes, other than 
through a rought "if you're going to have a +25 defense or stealth, you 
better be small and dextrous". Instead of a point buy for the bonuses, I 
give each character an array: 1x +5, 2x +10, 2x +15, 2x +20, 1x +25 to be 
distributed amongst attack, parry, defense, manipulation, stealth, 
perception, knowledge, and communication. And PCs get 103 attribute points 
(kinda high, but the first PCs were actually created without any system, 
then I backtracked to come up with a system, and trimmed a couple stat 
points off the absurd PCs - oh, and they had to completely redo their skill 
bonuses because they had them way too high).

Of course the 103 stat points should let a PC make a nice dark troll and 
things like that should it ever make sense to have such a PC.

Frank