I’ve been taking up an interesting pursuit lately now that we’ve almost gotten The Raider’s Companion completely out of the door. I’m taking all my years of gaming experience and working on a rule system for a board game. My goal is to come up with something that allows players to build an attachment to their character and the game world but is so straight forward that anyone can pick up on how to play. The mechanics of the rules were actually pretty “easy” to work out. What has me moving slowly right now is looking at the intersection between race and class and the statistics that go behind them.
One of my goals was to create fun races that would be exciting from a lore perspective, different from a mechanics perspective, but not be so much clearly defined that every melee DPS is race X and every arcane DPS is race Y. More importantly, I am running into the an issue I call the space marine problem. If you’re unfamiliar with space marines they are a genetically altered, super soldier from the Warhammer 40K universe. In the lore, a single space marine can take on tens to hundreds of opponents and win. 100 space marines can go up against armies of tens of thousands. Some individual hero marines have been around for almost 1,000 years of constant battle.
Now, lore aside, in Warhammer 40K space marines die all the time, including the heroes. Thus the space marine problem is taking something that in the lore is over powered and dropping it into the game and not have it be over powered but not ruin it. Enter the Vargan. In my intellectual property the Vargan race is fairly small in numbers. They are a race created by a demi-Goddess specifically to serve her purpose in the mortal realm. They range from 6’6″ to 8′ tall, are broad, regenerate, have wolf-like senses, command divine magic very well, and are generally not someone you want to cross. In RPG settings I have some balances against those advantages.
A Vargan would rather die than tell an outright lie or half truth. In our tabletop games that is a huge disadvantage. They’re also rather inept when it comes to arcane magic. They’re usually not stealthy and have trouble getting into small spaces. There are lots of ways that a GM can exploit these issues to balance the raw combat and divine power the race posses. In a hack and slash board game where there is little to no role-playing and lots of combat those things don’t matter that much. The player would simply not make a Vargan Elementalist. The thing is, I wish someone would! If you like the class and the race, combine them. That is where I get back to my thoughts on how to balance this.
I noted that the game should be fast paced with easy to play rules. If there are a million different stats and conditions that means slowing down to look up rules. I don’t want that. I’ve distilled races down to just a few statistics (and changed the names): Base attack, Base Defense, Arcane Magic, Divine Magic, Magic Defense, Regeneration. I then used a points system to keep the delta between each race small. So the “worst” melee DPS race might have a base attack of 3 while the “best” has a 7. In play testing, how big of a difference does that four point spread make? Only time will tell.
The up side is that there should be, at a minimum, two best, two good, and two worst at each primary function: melee DPS, arcane use, divine use, and tanking. For the Vargan specifically I tried to go with something lore based to bring them in line. I feel like it is somewhat clever and at least keeps with the spirit of the game.
Vargan obviously have a high base attack and divine score. I also gave them a better than average regeneration. To balance them I reduced their arcane (which does nothing) but I also heavily reduced their base defense. Why? In this game defense is a combined stat. It takes into account your armor, your ability to block, your ability to parry, and dodge. Remember, this is supposed to be simple. So the Vargan tend not to be big on dodging or parrying. Generally speaking, they rely on their brute force and regeneration so it makes sense that most of their defense would only come from the armor they wear. They hope they’ll destroy their foe fast enough for their regeneration to save them. It seemed like an interesting idea. We’ll see how it works in practice!
With all of that said, what do you think? Are you still going to no-question pick a Vargan for melee DPS? What if you really prefer to play an elf and in this game there is no finesse option? Where is the cut off between “I want to be X race no matter what” and raw statistics. To the other side of this, when does me trying to make all races interesting for all classes make the races feel pointless? I’d love to hear some thoughts.
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Okay, I’m going to make a few assumptions here. When you say “board game” I’m going to assume you’re talking about something similar to a war game, maybe played on a set board instead of constructed scenery.
The traditional way to handle power differentials is with a point system. Let people buy options with points. So, having a “less powerful” race/class combo would cost less points than a more powerful one. Then allow players to buy other perks with points to even it out.
The big design decision will be what different choices get you. The easy answer is to try to give parity in power. If someone picks a “weak” race for a melee character, then maybe you can let them use points to buy a +4 weapon to make up the difference between 3 and 7. The more advanced route is to allow diversity and optios. For example, perhaps the weaker race can buy a weapon that does AoE damage. So, they do less damage to a single target, but if they get surrounded they have an advantage.
Chew that over, let me know if you have any questions.
I like the idea of people being able to do things differently. I’ve been looking at creating racial traits/abilities that would be less focused on a particular role and more on flavor/utility.
I’ll think on it and hit you up with my next questions!
In my experience, most folks are min maxers (dnd experience as well as video games). They will look at the type of the game, the object of the game, and no matter what the “lore” is, they will go “ok I’m playing melee dps …what has the best attack…oh this one with +7, done. After they figure out their mathematical stats, THEN usually (dnd again) they figure out an RPG story to playing that particular race/class combo.
I’ve never played a war game, but I’ve DMed and Played a crap ton of pen and paper RPGs, and Like psychochild says, give the weaker guys something cool that makes them desirable over the +4 attack. This is where racial abilities could come into play. so maybe your weak race has an additional ability to boost their attack bonus for a short period of time, or maybe a racial ability that makes them able to put a + stat, like lets say +4 towards their attack or defense as a “fighting style” for a short period, so even though the stronger melee has a constant +4 to their attack, the weaker guy can buff their Defense in a pinch, or their attack if they really need to take out something.
Good post. The one thing that bugs me however is the idea that races HAVE to be balanced. What you’re essentially stating is that Race selection is more important than Class selection. I understand the desires to have a game consist of “balanced” races so you do not see 100 Wood Elf Rangers running around and only a few other race/ranger combinations. I even understand, and respected what EQ2 did by opening up all class/race combinations. It was a HUGE selling point for me when making that jump from EQ to EQ2. But even I have to admit, it was a little off putting seeing Ogre or Troll Paladins running around after awhile. Arguing through a lore perspective, it just made no sense.
What I mean by this is that if you want your world to feel “real” (as real as a fictional setting can be) it is important to understand that even while races should be balanced from a ruleset viewpoint, it is also important to have a certain amount of imbalance amongst them also. One of the things that got to me in EQ2 after awhile was thwart it was hard to invest in any kind of lore when class/race combos meant little in the grand scheme of things. Things have only gotten worse with the removal of all racial traits too. I mean seriously, it was tough to justify an Erudite being equally as effective as an Ogre in a tanking role (or vice versa – I.e. magic casters). I believe that in a system like EQ2′s, there should be a certain hierarchy to best/worst combinations. If you REALLY want to make an odd combo, it should be understood that you will be giving up a certain amount of “power” later in the characters lifespan.
On the other hand, in a system like EQ or WoW, where classes are restricted by race, it should be important to balance the available classes to the best of the developers ability. Unique abilities could sway players one way or another, but nothing that makes a class a “must have”. WoW’s Undead race ability of Cannabalize comes to mind: a great ability for Warlocks, but nothing game breaking. Moreover, games like EQ always felt more immersive, because choosing certain races actually had real repurcussions. Being Evil-Alligned meant you may have to sneak into certain trade hubs to simply empty your bags, for example. It made the world of Norrath feel more dangerous, and more real in the long run.
I guess the bottom line for me is that any desire of “balance” in gaming is just wishful thinking. Moreover, it’s simply not necessary! Does racial lore mean more than class lore? Or vice versa? In every aspect of life (reality and fantasy alike) it is important to choose between our desires and logic. While I completely understand the desire for a certain level of balance, we have to ask ourselves, is it for the betterment of what we are attempting? I would argue that it isn’t.
P.S. – Congratulations on your engagement and the release of your second publication, Ferrel!
Yeah I agree to some point, Lore/RPing SHOULD mean more than math, but you really have to look at who you are designing the game for, and also who your player base is. If you are building a game for RPers, who are into that, then yeah unbalance is understandable and in some ways maybe even desired. I can remember playing weird race /class combos just for the RP perspective. On of my favorite dnd characters was a human druid, who was 50, so I had age penalties, but he was a kick to RP. However, if your game is for a broad audience,then you pretty much have to make it as balanced as possible otherwise you’ll end up like every other game, having a flavor of the month type class/race combo.
On the flip side of the coin, you could simply split up the racial benefits. So say Vargans ALWAYS receive +4 regeneration, Elves always receive +4 base defense (for their agile ways), Dwarves always Receive +4 Magic Defense. Then, stack them up with a class. So vargans no matter what class get +4 reg….
however if you are a Vargan warrior for example you get +4 to regeneration and +4 to Base attack.
If you are an elf Warrior, you get a +4 to base defense and +4 Magic defense. That one stat stacks with the race and the other with the class, so there is benefit depending on your play style for combining the two. If you were going to be a “defensive warrior” it might be more beneficial to be an elven warrior, while if you were a “offensive” warrior would be more beneficial to be a vargan.
You can do this with other classes too…
So a Vargan Cleric might receive +4 regeneration and +4 divine magic. An elf cleric may receive +4 to base defense and +4 to Arcane magic, A dwarf cleric might get +4 to arcane defense and +4 to regeneration.
That way your benefits aren’t reliant just on a class…if your vargan got +4 regen and +4 attack, but it wasn’t tied to a class, then you may always end up with Vargan warriors, where as splitting up the bonuses would encourage kinda thinking outside the box for those unusual class combos.
After all the feedback I really got to thinking about this. I think focusing too much on the racial statistics isn’t a good idea. I’m going to shift that focus to classes.
For the races I’m going to give the player a choice of a “racial bonus package” that meet the flavor of that race.
I think that’s a good idea Ferrel. It’s just hard to justify balanced Races when everything about diversity in races means having distinct differences between them. Of course, you wouldnt want one particular race to be hands above any other race in any particular role, but I believe it’s desireable to have certain races be “better” at doing certian jobs than others. As I mentioned above: it can be difficult to accept something like an Ogre Wizard being just as effective as a Gnome Wizard, when everything about Ogre lore screams “Big, Dumb, Brute.”
In a way, I really truly believe that EQ had their race selection process done perfectly. Every race had their base stats and an alotted amount of spendable points. This allowed people to configure their character to their wants/needs. I can still remember seeing my first Erudite SK in EQ and my eyes nearly popping out of my head! But upon further inspection it made sense that if you wanted to focus more on spell casting with your SK, you were already set on base spell-casting stats with an Erudite. You were then set to simply throw all of your extra “development” points into Melee stats to mitigate the Erudite races phyical shortcomings. EQ had a plethora of class/race combinations that worked in the same way too.
In a way, the removal of those “development points” in future (since EQ) games really gimped the character creation process by homogenizing the Races within games. I really believe that the simple addition of such a system to our games would make our characters way more unique and feel more like “ours” in the long run.