Alicornutopia

I don't think I'm getting a clear picture of what level 4 is supposed to mean. "Basically competent at their jobs" and "badassery level zero" are not meshing well in my head.

Kappa wrote:I don't think I'm getting a clear picture of what level 4 is supposed to mean. "Basically competent at their jobs" and "badassery level zero" are not meshing well in my head.

My head translates it as "not gonna die from everyday stuff". Not sure if that waht it means.

We're around where the Fellowship of the Ring were when they started out. Not Gandalf, probably not quite as awesome as Aragorn, but not the assorted hobbits either. (Aragorn is level 5, Gandalf is about 8.) We're in a world where badass potential goes really high, so the serious players of the world are all more awesome than that. We are thoroughly competent, but not capable of doing crazy superhuman action-hero stunts.

The chart I was pulling from with that last comment was:

Levels 1-5: Gritty fantasy
Levels 6-10: Heroic fantasy
Levels 11-15: Wuxia
Levels 16-20: Superheroes

So we're doing gritty-ish pulp fantasy in a world where the world-class celebrities are basically superheroes.

Kappa wrote:I don't think I'm getting a clear picture of what level 4 is supposed to mean. "Basically competent at their jobs" and "badassery level zero" are not meshing well in my head.

Does it help if you set "their jobs" != "jobs that typically involve punching things"?

EDIT: Crosspost. Mostly agree with what PDV said, but want to emphasize again that this is not really a combat-focused campaign, so you shouldn't be expecting to have to fight superheroes either except to the extent you think a philosophical/geopolitical struggle counts as a fight. :p

PDV: That makes more sense (and doesn't give me any character-concept-related trouble), but seems to conflict with jalapeno_dude's followup.

jalapeno_dude: Well, it helps me form a mental picture, but then it invalidates my character concept (re: "seeking lucrative work in the violence field"), so...

Yeah, it's less important whether Superman exists and more important that somewhere there is Batman.

PDV: ???

jalapeno_dude's edit: Then maybe the thing that's confusing me is having character levels defined in terms of how good they are at something that's mostly irrelevant to the campaign but (for me) highly relevant to character flavour?

Kappa wrote:jalapeno_dude's edit: Then maybe the thing that's confusing me is having character levels defined in terms of how good they are at something that's mostly irrelevant to the campaign but (for me) highly relevant to character flavour?

Yeah, that could be it. In D&D 3.5 and most other RPGs with levels everything scales with one numbers -- so as you get better at punching things you also get better at various non-punchy skills (which could range from talking to people to tracking animals through the wilderness to crafting things).

Because we're doing diceless, though, that's not an issue. You should make your character precisely as competent at violence as you see fit. (If nothing else, remember that there has been a war going on for the last while, so there will be lots of people good at violence to different degrees.) It will only become an issue if you want them to be better at violence that literally everyone else in the world, but it's perfectly fine if you want them to be better than 99% or even 99.99% of people.

Heh. Sefton is not better at violence than Literally Everyone, but he is better at violence than he is at most other things, and good enough for it to be worth somebody's time to hire him in some violence-involving capacity. (I had assumed, perhaps erroneously, that there would be room for this sort of a person on an expedition to the Land of Hazards and Goodies.)

Kappa wrote:(I had assumed, perhaps erroneously, that there would be room for this sort of a person on an expedition to the Land of Hazards and Goodies.)

Seems like a good assumption!