Category: Systems

I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for lifepath systems*, ever since back in the days of Traveller. I thought, and still think, there’s something cool about a system that was so hard-core you could actually die during character generation, and I whiled away many an hour in study-hall rolling up Traveller characters and joining the various services. Back then I wasn’t experienced enough, or parsimonious enough with my time, to even use all those characters as NPCs. Nope, I was purely rolling them for the fun of rolling them. It was almost like a slot machine: maybe this would finally be the one who could muster out with a suit of powered armor!

Much later on, I glommed onto a copy of Paul Jennell Jaquays’ Central Casting: Heroes of Legend (still got it around here somewhere), which was a non-system specific set of tables for coming up with a character history for a fantasy setting. I liked that idea so much that I went to the trouble of coding my own version of it in Python as part of an open-source generic table-roller program I wrote. The web version of that is still running here, though I don’t think anyone but the robot spiders ever hits it.

So I picked up the Savage Worlds Fantasy Character Generator Toolkit, and it’s probably no surprise that I like it, even though I doubt any of my players would want to use it. While it’s nowhere near as detailed (or as wacky) as the 180 or so pages of Heroes of Legend, it does a really good job of producing a playable Savage Worlds character with a background meaty enough to sink your roleplaying teeth into. You start out with a d4 in each of your attributes, and no skills, edges, or hindrances, and you go through the tables step-by-step, sometimes being directed to sub-tables or to roll a certain number of times on a specific table in a later step. Each entry in one of the tables tells you more about the character, and alters your attributes up or down, or assigns you extra dice in traits or specific edges or hindrances. Some of the time you have a choice as to how to split the dice or whether to roll, but it’s mostly mechanical. So far, none of the characters I’ve tried rolling have wound up as complete scrubs, and a couple have been well beyond what a Novice character could afford by the normal point-buy system. In fact, I’d say that on the whole the system is weighted to give you slightly better than normal characters as a compensation for the randomness of it all. On the other hand, the characters are decidedly not optimized for their roles; a mage is pretty much as likely to end up Burly, or a fighter to be Anemic, as anybody else, though everybody should end up with a fair degree of competence for a Novice in their profession.

As written, you don’t really have much of a choice as to what that profession is. You roll randomly for your family background, which might assign you a starting profession or the option of one; if not, then you roll randomly for your starting profession. Depending on your character’s age, you have a certain number of rolls to make on the specific chart for that profession; if you don’t like your profession after each roll you can roll again on the starting profession chart and if you prefer that one switch at the cost of one of your allowed rolls.

One obvious change to make if your players don’t mind a certain amount of random chargen but draw the line at being forced into a profession would be to just let them pick their starting profession. The tables aren’t so delicately balanced that forcing that one result throws things out of kilter.

Also, as written it requires a lot of rolling on tables…thirty or more rolls, and a lot of the rolls having to do with your family have no mechanical effect. A completist might want to roll for the birth order, current status and attitude towards you of each of your up to eight+1d3 siblings, but I’d say that most of the time you can write down the number and move on. If you want to know your own particular birth order, just roll a single 1dN (where n is the number of siblings including yourself). Depending on the kind of campaign you might also elect to skip things like determining the reason your family originally emigrated to the land of your birth.

If you like lifepath systems, and play Savage Worlds in a fantasy setting, I can whole-heartedly endorse this PDF (take it to Staples or someplace and get it spiral bound, though…loose pages are a pain in the butt to work with when you have to do a lot of flipping). I suspect that doesn’t describe all that many people, which is too bad, because it really is pretty well done. You’ll have to excuse me now, though…I’ve got to get back to seeing if I can roll up a character who starts with a nifty magic sword…

update: Cool!  You can actually die during character creation in the FCGT, too!

* RPG character generation systems that took you through the early life of the character, from circumstances of birth up through career training prior to the start of the game.

It had completely slipped my mind that Shane Hensley, the guy who designed Savage Worlds (and Deadlands before that) spent a couple years as one of the City of Villains designers.

Since Russell was asking about a rule of thumb for how tough to make encounters:

From the Savagepedia (Creative Commons Share-Alike license):

6.1 Challenge Ratings

For all of you who need some “math” to backup your encounter choices – Clint has proposed a “Damage Rating” system for checking out the lethality of your encounters:

Try getting a Damage Rating for your PC’s. Take half their Strength plus the bonus from their “standard” weapon. You can average this to figure out a Damage Rating for the group as a whole. Then compare the Damage Rating t their opponents Toughness.

• If it’s equal, then the PC’s have an edge over an equal number of opponents (where 2 Extras equal 1 Wild Card).
• If the Toughness is a point higher, then the fight should be about “even.”
• If the Toughness is 2 points higher, then it will be a (pardon the pun) tough fight (1 opponent for every 2 PC’s).
• If it’s 3 points higher, the PC’s are in trouble (1 Opponent for every 4 PC’s). And generally the progression continues to double.

So if your group has an average Damage Rating of 5 and you throw a 10 Toughness npc at them, then you should have about 16 PC’s or understand that it may take 4 PC’s four times as long to take him down. From Clint Black

Clint Black (Pinnacle Games forum admin and rules guru) posted an improvised magic system for SW a while back:

Improvised Magic Rules for Savage Worlds
By Clint Black

These rules were designed to simulate Arcane abilities where the user is only limited by their power and creativity. They could also function for characters whose powers are limited only by a theme or trappings or simply as a basis for creating new Powers.

All Powers start with a Primary Effect with a base Power Point cost. From there the cost can be increased or decreased based of choices of Modifications, Range, Duration, and Casting Time. Reductions in PP cost can never decrease the cost of a Power to less than 1 PP. Unless otherwise stated, the base Duration for all Powers is Instant, the base Range is Touch, and the base Casting Time is 1 Action.

Primary Effect: (OPP: Opposed Roll applies if target wishes) (Base cost: 1PP)

3d6 Damage: OPP for any Duration beyond Instant

Increase or decrease a single Trait one die type (two with a raise): OPP

Decrease a Derived Stat by 2 (Shaken with a Raise): OPP

Increase a Derived Stat by 2 (Target gains a related Edge with a Raise). Replace Edge with Monstrous Ability (+1 PP)

Summon a character or creature with 3 points in Attributes and 8 points for Skills

Negate one Wound or Fatigue Level applied within the last hour (two with a Raise)
-This Effect starts with a Duration of 3 (1/rnd). For +2 PP, the Duration is Permanent.

Negate or impose a –4 Situational modifier (-6 with a Raise) for a target or against a target (+1PP): OPP
-This Effect can have a multitude of functions. Examples: Negating a modifier for a target (Darkvision that negates Lighting penalties). Imposing a modifier for a target (Blindness that causes Lighting penalties). Negating a modifier against a target (Glittering dust that counters a target’s Invisibility). Imposing a modifier against a target (Basic invisibility).

Modifications

Reduce damage to 2d6 Damage (-1)

Uses Small Burst Template (+1)
Uses Medium Burst Template (+2)
Uses Large Burst Template (+4)
Caster chooses who in Template is affected (+1)

Per each +2 points to increase a summoned creatures Attributes (+1)
Per each +4 points to increase a summoned creatures Skills (+1)
Per 2 net Monstrous Abilities or Edges of summoned creature (+1)
Per Weakness or 2 points of Hindrances of summoned creature (-1)

Negate Wounds or Fatigue over an hour old (x3)
Negate non-permanent Crippling Injury (x6)

Multiply Power (+1)
-Allows one Power to be activated multiple times in one action. The character pays the base cost for each use. He rolls one Power Skill die for each activation separately, but only gets one Wild Die on the roll.

Duration
3 rounds (1/round) (+1)
1 minute (1/minute) (+2)
1 hour (1/hour) (+3)

Range
Smarts (Damage Powers have a Medium Range of 2x Smarts and a Long Range of 4x Smarts) (+1)
2x Smarts (Damage Powers have a Medium Range of 4x Smarts and a Long Range of 8x Smarts) (+2)
Line of Sight (Damage Powers suffer no penalties to hit for Range) (+3)

Casting Time
Full Action (No other actions at all, including Free Actions or movement) (-1)
1 minute (-2)
1 hour (-4)

All that stuff is obviously copyright Cliff Black, etc. but I reproduce it here for discussion.  Something along these lines might be suitable for the Ritual Magic that Russell wanted to have in his (ex)D&D setting.

Russell and I spent a bit of time playing around with Savage Worlds this weekend, both to entertain ourselves and to see how it would work as a replacement system for the D&D 3.5 campaign he ran last time he was in town (now that he’s seen it he has no desire to move to 4e, but 3.5 has a bunch of flaws that annoy him but he doesn’t feel like trying to fix now that it’s orphaned).

So we rolled up some characters (in a couple cases literally, using the SW:Fantasy Character Generator, the rest we just made up using the usual point-buy) and I ran him and Elyssa through most of a level of Under Xylarthen’s Tower.  Overall it went fairly well.  A couple of observations:

• Chargen is not as fast as OD&D, naturally, but probably faster than 3e…and was getting faster as we got more used to it.  Most of the same sorts of decisions are there, but there are fewer options and modifiers.
• For a dungeon crawl, monsters should be treated as Wild Cards unless they significantly outnumber the PCs.  I was running them as Extras (so one wound disposed of them and they didn’t get the Wild Die), and the party of 5 PCs was just running rough-shod over them.  As an experiment afterwards we went back and Russell and I reran the encounter with the two Giant Weasels, making the Weasels Wild Cards, and while the PCs still won handily, it took more than a round and they had to expend some effort; with better rolls, or if I had used more GM bennies the weasels might even have inflicted one or two wounds.
• Even with the monsters as WCs, Novice Savage Worlds characters are more robust than OD&D 1st level; that’s probably a feature, not a bug.

There are a couple of rules I got wrong as we went, though nothing that really changed the outcome.  Still, it’s worth recording some of the stuff that I looked up in the FAQ afterward so I can use this post as a reminder:

• When casting multiple Bolts, each Bolt gets 1 skill die, which counts as both the spellcasting and the to-hit die.  A Wild Card also gets a wild die, but only one for the set, and it can only substitute for one of the skill dice.
• When firing into melee, a 1 on the skill die only counts as hitting an ally if the shot would miss; if you can turn the shot into a hit using the wild die, the fact you rolled a 1 doesn’t matter.
• You only suffer a free attack against you for exiting melee if you were actually in melee (you’d made a Fighting roll against an adjacent opponent or vice-versa), not just for passing through a square that is “threatened.”  It really is different from Attacks of Opportunity.
• You can move both before and after attacking, as long as you don’t exceed your Pace (or are willing to take the -2 penalty for performing an action on a turn when you ran).  That might trigger a free attack for withdrawing from melee, but again it’s different from Move then Attack in D&D.  This didn’t come up, but it makes popping out from cover, firing, and popping back a good strategy.

Since the dungeon crawl went reasonably well, we spent some time on Tuesday converting everybody’s characters from D&D 3.5 to Savage Worlds.  Mostly this was to see if we could do them justice without a lot of house rules; it’s no guarantee that Russell will actually elect to use Savage Worlds if we continue the campaign past the end of the current adventure.  Still, it was pretty easy to convert them using a couple of mechanical rules of thumb we came up with, paying no attention to the costs or prerequisites.  We took another pass, this time just making them up from scratch using the point-buy system, and actually was more satifactory, IMO.  Making decisions about what the character should have based on what seemed essential and useful to the concept, even if it wasn’t a one-for-one “he spent ranks in skill x, so he should have this die-size” just produced better, more distinctive and coherent, characters.