I'm by no means a good game designer (or one at all, really), but it might work to include a significant risk with the use of the "limit break"-type power. Like:
*It only comes out when someone is heavily damaged, like in the Final Fantasy games. *If someone can use it while healthy, it causes a certain amount of damage itself. Case in point: one of my D&D characters has an ability that allows her to jump into and control someone's body. Pretty powerful, but Adam added two powergaming safeguards: limited uses (every few weeks) and when she does use it, she spends the next few hours or even days weakened when she returns to her own body. *Add an extra die roll to whatever the character needs to roll for the action: 4-6 means that the super power works, 1-3 means that it fails cataclysmically. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. :-P
These are just the suggestions of someone who hardly uses rules and mechanics at all when she runs games, so they might not be very good, but I hope they help.
Absolutely. Those are similar to some of the potential rules I was considering for this conversion. But what I really can't figure out is, even after you have the appropriate risks, limits, and costs to having the power, at what point does its very *existence* become too much of a safety net? ("If it looks like I'm about to lose, I'll just unleash my limit break...")
Or, now that I think about it, is that maybe how you can tell whether the power is appropriately balanced? - A well-balanced power doesn't become a safety net even if it is over-the-top powerful?
That may very well be the case. Since the example of limit breaks has seemed to work well as an analogue--I can still remember countless major battles from FFVII where I epically failed despite having that big stick to unleash. If it can provide enough awesome badass moments without being an automatic victory generator, then it's probably well balanced.
How to make it so? That's when the non-game-designer has to step down and leave the question up to wiser minds. :)
I think you've hit on some important points- like making sure that they're not "automatic victory generators." And what was bothering me wasn't so much the process of balancing them, but of making sure that it was even possible to make them useful and interesting without making everything boring. Which seems to be a "yes," according to your experiences then?
You know, what you're discussing is similar to a basic mechanic in the new 4E D&D rules. All characters have powers usable at will, once per encounter (or once every five minutes if you're using an "encounter" power outside an encounter situation), and once per day. In my experience of this rules system, having such "big guns" in reserve makes for some interesting story, as it allows you to have a cool special move to pull out at an appropriately dramatic moment, and if you're hard pressed when you know you've got fights ahead it forces you to choose whether to try to soldier on with weaker abilities (which may force you to get creative with them- always a good thing), or unleash your big power now and know you're going into something tough without it later.
Well, in your experience, does that continue to hold true even for campaigns that are light on combat, too? Despite the amount of interesting combat-related stories floating around from my own campaigns, long-duration battles tend to be quite rare.
Comments 7
*It only comes out when someone is heavily damaged, like in the Final Fantasy games.
*If someone can use it while healthy, it causes a certain amount of damage itself. Case in point: one of my D&D characters has an ability that allows her to jump into and control someone's body. Pretty powerful, but Adam added two powergaming safeguards: limited uses (every few weeks) and when she does use it, she spends the next few hours or even days weakened when she returns to her own body.
*Add an extra die roll to whatever the character needs to roll for the action: 4-6 means that the super power works, 1-3 means that it fails cataclysmically. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. :-P
These are just the suggestions of someone who hardly uses rules and mechanics at all when she runs games, so they might not be very good, but I hope they help.
Reply
Or, now that I think about it, is that maybe how you can tell whether the power is appropriately balanced? - A well-balanced power doesn't become a safety net even if it is over-the-top powerful?
Reply
How to make it so? That's when the non-game-designer has to step down and leave the question up to wiser minds. :)
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment