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I apologize if this has been cleared up already, but I figured I would ask since I can only find bits and pieces.
The rulebook gives us a sidebar that tells us the stripped down mechanics of how to build our own characters. Boxes and numbers only, though. A clear issue comes about when trying to determine powers and balancing them with the existing characters. Now, I'm a roleplayer (I also enjoy design) and so my instinct is just to muck about with creating my own powers from scratch and playtesting the crap out of them. But a few of the people I play this game with are better described as board or card gamers. There will also be some people I play with who are new-ish to games in general. They might prefer the comfort of an official system.
I read somewhere, here or at bgg I'm sure, Mr. Selinker saying in August he was going to work on some kind of character creator or creation thread here in about a month. Is that still in the works? Or did I just skip over it?
I also read that these rules weren't included in the base game because the designers wanted to see how the fans might go about creation first and to judge whether there was significant interest in doing so. Which is totally understandable. I just wondered if that data had been gathered and if any such rules were forthcoming. And if so, when.
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I'd be curious to see that, too.
But I would be even more curious to see advice on making your own scenarios. Given that there are only 8 in the base game, this would seem like the higher priority, although we're expecting 5 more every two months.
Also, advice on making your own cards of other types (and selling blank cards for us to write on!) would also be appreciated.
In short, this game seems like it should be very customizable, but they don't really give us many tools to do so. And as you pointed out, the one thing they do explicitly give advice about in the rulebook is kinda lacking.
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I have every intention to do both of those soon. I just have some housekeeping to take care of first.
+1 to the idea of selling blank cards! Either just with the pathfinder back and a blank front or card blanks with the 'frame' on them for Items, Spells, Weapons, etc.
I just wanted to pop in and check on the progress of the housekeeping and/or the character creation system.
I haven't gotten to it yet. We've had a busy couple of months. It's still on my to-do list.
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I made a sheet that compares the stats of all the 11 iconics in the game. I did it because I wanted to make a character and so I wanted to see a little more about how the iconics had been made.
I was hoping to discover some magic forumla that would balance skills, bonus skills, proficiency, and powers. But it doesn't exist. There are two reason why.
First, simply counting powers doesn't really measure their usefulness. Lini's 1d4 for revealing an animal ally is (and this is coming from someone what has Sajan as his second favorite character) vastly superior to Sajan's power to use dexterity instead of strength when attempt a combat check without a weapon.
Second, we have no way to judge the usefulness of any skill. Not only do you not know what percentage of cards in the game allow you to use fortitude vs what percentage allow you to use intelligence, but you also can't predict the random shuffling of what cards you will encounter. So fortitude could be an objectively less useful skill but could also be a subjectively more useful skill. Over time you expect your encounters to tend more towards the percentages of the cards in the box, but it might not.
Anyway, the sheet is contained in here if you want to take a look. (There was a rather neat discovery about median die for each character.)
So when I made my characters, I just posted them on the forum then took the feedback I got from others about the powers.
Even if Mike does give us some more guidelines, I don't think we'll reach the point any time soon where there will be a published list of acceptable powers or even acceptable things powers can do. Powers are meant to be rule breakers. Of course if they can break the rules too vastly, it runs the game. But they have to break the rules to be useful.
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I also agree that we will never see that list. However, there are principles used in the design of Skull & Shackles' characters that are forming some basic guidelines. I will get to this.
Excellent. I'd love to see it when you do get it done. Thanks for always meeting our desires for more and more from your game.
I'm dancing as fast as I can. :)
Even though Mike said it's probably impossible to actually publish a full power feat system (since it would just be a limiter), I could totally see someone homebrewing something like a points system for feats that are kind of loosely based on the Pathfinder RPG feats.
You know, something like (example)
Weapon Training (5 points) - Choose a Trait from (Axes, Swords, Bows, Mace, Hammer, Spear, Polearm, Staff). Reveal a weapon with the chosen Trait to add 1d4 ([]+1 []+2) to your combat check.
(It's possible 1d4 is too low for this since Valeros can recharge for the discard amount. But it's only a reveal.)
Critical Focus (3 points) - If you roll the maximum amount on any of your dice during your combat check, add 1 to your combat check for each die that is the maximum. (eg if you roll a 12 on a d12, 4 on a d4, and 3 on a d6, add 2 to your combat check.)
Ooh, this is fun!
I realize this post is a few months old, but I'm curious Mike, I'm curious if you got to the principles that were being used in character creation for Skulls and Shackles.
I love this game and would love to be able to build viable non game breaking custom characters for it.
Thanks!
Mike posted this guidance. It has some other info through out the thread.
Mike has not yet posted the article that he mentions, but he continues to work on it. You can find some further discussion from Mike, Vic, and others in this thread and this one.
thanks for the reply. I did some digging after I posted and found all the aforementioned threads. Thanks very much. Looking forward to a more thorough and straightforward article from Mike and Chad on this, but this information is a good start!