New proposal to manage skill specialisation (and prevent hyperspecialisation):
Each character has a base level defined according to their XP total:
Base level = (5 + (sqrt (XP / 7)))
Hazō has 3141 XP.
You are allowed to have:
3 primary skills at 1.25 * base level (32 for Hazou)
3 secondary skills at 1 * base level (26 for Hazou)
3 tertiary skills at 0.75 * base level (19 for Hazou)
An unlimited number of skills below that.
Could you-the-playerbase run the numbers on that for me? I don't think it's going to be the case that all jōnin will look the same or that there is one 'optimal' build under these rules.
As a point of reference, given the plans that the playerbase has made, Hazō has earned about 4 XP / day since TGR and a ninja would typically be promoted to jōnin after 6-10 years depending on their level of brilliance.
Sure, I can start some basic analysis. First: here's the skill caps for various skills over time using different ninja growth rates:
From this, we can see that a "perpetual genin" would indeed exist. If someone gets 1 XP per day, in 10 years, they'll be able to level their primary combat stats to around 35. Hazou, if he trains for 10 years, will be able to hit primary skill levels of around 60. This, may have some ramifications, which brings me to my second plot.
Second, I plotted the XP cost required to reach certain skill metrics (e.g. maxing 3 primary skills and 3 secondary skills) over the XP gain of a 10 year ninja growth with a growthrate of 10 XP per day. This results in the following:
On the x axis, we have the total XP available to the ninja. Note that it ends at 36,500, the total XP a ninja would gain after 10 years if they gained XP at a rate of 10 xp per day during that time. The y axis is the amount of XP required to max certain skills, as determined by the lines. The X scalling for this graph is the same as the x-scale for the first graph, though this one displays it in XP where the other one displays it in years. As an example interpretation, the top blue line is the amount of XP required to max 4 primary skills (or 3 primary skills, one of which is sealing), 3 secondary skills, and 3 tertiary skills. This graph suggests that high level Jounin would have very little to spend their XP on, as the skill caps would effectively stop them from improving their skills as they gain additional XP, leading to the accumulation of many tertiary skills.
That said, this graph is a little difficult to interpret from a chunnin perspective, since it focuses so much on the end behavior. To look at chunnin behavior, we consider Hazou's growth curve, using the rate of 4 XP per day instead of 10. In effect, this just rescales the above graph to examine the behavior before the square root term dominates.
Here, instead of using the 10 XP per day growth rate, we use Hazou's growth rate over 10 years (hence why the graph ends at 4 * 365 * 10 = 14600 XP). From this, we can see that Hazou's build might require some juggling before we hit ~4000 XP, though, at that point, the skill cap limits will dominate and we can again invest heavily in random XP sinks.
From these plots, I think the proposed skill cap method is too rough/stringent. I think that the rule of:
Each character has a base level defined according to their XP total:
Base level = (5 + (sqrt (XP / 7)))
Hazō has 3141 XP.
You are allowed to have:
3 primary skills at 1.25 * base level (32 for Hazou)
3 secondary skills at 1 * base level (26 for Hazou)
3 tertiary skills at 0.75 * base level (19 for Hazou)
An unlimited number of skills below that.
Does not give characters enough to spend their XP on once they reach a certain level, and, as such we should pursue a slightly different model. As I've largely automated the production of these graphs, I'm going to try a few different models creating the same figures with different XP skill cap models and post later tonight with a suggestion. If anybody has a pet function they want plotted, let me know and I'll add it to the plots.
You give a vague guess at how sure you are of that the information you have is correct in percent form (he trained five ninja, four of which are S-rank), and then multiply the probability that he's a good teacher by that percent (ie * .7 for 70% sure). Now, this doesn't help with determining the outside probabilities, but it's a good start at determining how likely they are. Obviously this is subjective to greater or lesser extent, but it's a good start for nailing down probabilities.
To do that, you are implicitly guesstimating the denominator--you're saying it's about 7 or 8, in this case. I think that's way more of a guess than an estimate; it could easily be double that or more. Maybe much more.
To do that, you are implicitly guesstimating the denominator--you're saying it's about 7 or 8, in this case. I think that's way more of a guess than an estimate; it could easily be double that or more. Maybe much more.
Apprentices need investments of time, and not trivial amounts of it if Jiraiya's mentorship is to mean anything. As the spymaster and second in command of Leaf presumably for much of his career, he might have time for a few apprentices over his life but even 7 or 8 strains credulity (less so when you group them together like Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan were, so it's not that bad). Jiraiya's life, from all we've seen, can be aptly described as 'not enough hours in the day' and as such it is much more likely that he has had fewer apprentices than more apprentices.
Apprentices need investments of time, and not trivial amounts of it if Jiraiya's mentorship is to mean anything. As the spymaster and second in command of Leaf presumably for much of his career, he might have time for a few apprentices over his life but even 7 or 8 strains credulity (less so when you group them together like Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan were, so it's not that bad). Jiraiya's life, from all we've seen, can be aptly described as 'not enough hours in the day' and as such it is much more likely that he has had fewer apprentices than more apprentices.
I appreciate your suggesting a reason why 7 or 8 seems like it should be near the max number of potential Jiraiya apprentices.
That said, I'm not sure I agree with your givens. How many years has Jiraiya been an elite ninja? At some point he was just a hotshot kid with a lot of potential--how long ago was that?
It's true that the part of his life that we've seen can be described as "not enough hours in the day," but by this point he was (as you say) second-in-command, and then Hokage. In earlier stages he may've had more time available for training younger ninjas.
Also, while I'm no canon expert, it seems to me that his mentorship style with Naruto was basically "here's the idea--now you practice while I go do other stuff." If that's what he applied to all of his apprentices, it may indeed have been something he did betwixt and between.
Having previously investigated the proposed skill cap method, we consider four alternative skill cap models using very similar metrics. For each model, we produce 4 plots. The first, describes the skills vs. Time graph for ninja of varying growth rates. The second through fourth graphs provide different windows into the spread of skills for each of the three growth rates considered over a 10 year span, with a black line delimiting total XP available, and a variety of colored lines representing the cost to max the skills denoted by the legend.
None of the models involve changing the base rate, only investigating the effects of changing the multiplier in from of it for various skill caps. The base rate is left unchanged at:
base_rate = (5 + (sqrt(XP / 7)))
For each of these models, I provide the skill cap calculation method of the model, the graphs I've created, and my analysis based on the graphs. Feel free to add your own insights.
Default model
Model:
Primary skill cap = 1.25 * base_rate
Secondary skill cap = 1.00 * base_rate
Tertiary (and all other) skill cap = 0.75 * base_rate
Analysis (see previous post)
High s Model: Raise only the secondary skill cap limit from the default
Model:
Primary skill cap = 1.25 * base_rate
Secondary skill cap = 1.15 * base_rate
Tertiary skill cap = 0.75 * base_rate
Analysis
This model would make a large cutoff between secondary and tertiary skills, while reducing the difference between primary skills and secondary skills. Looking at the Skills v Time graph, we can see that it would allow a more experienced ninja to handily out-skill an opponent's primary skills with their secondary skills, should they have invested significantly in their secondary skills. From the rate 10 graph, we can see that the all xp spent line intercepts the 4 primary, 3 secondary, 3 tertiary line at ~25,000 XP, or 6.8 years for 10 XP/day ninja, 17 years for Hazou, and 68 years for 1 XP/day ninja. At this level, they likely would have maxed their primary and secondary and tertiary skills, thus allowing them to match someone's primary skills with their secondary skill, so long as their opponent has ~4000 less XP than them (~3 years for Hazou). That said, their tertiary skills would only be as strong as someone with ~15,000 less XP than them (10 years of Hazou experience), making specialization matter, but the distinction between primary and secondary skills only matter at the highest levels of competition. A match between slightly different expert specialists would be close, determined by factors outside of straight skill levels and specialization routes, though the specialization would matter. Additionally, aside from high level ninja, *how* someone spent their XP would matter a fair amount. Additionally, at the highest levels, a significantly less experienced specialist could significantly compete with a more experienced ninja who was awkwardly specialized - for instance, someone without a stealth primary or secondary would be unlikely to be able to sneak past a less experienced ninja with Alertness as a primary, despite being more than twice as experienced as them.
From the Rate = 4 graph, we see that the 3 primary, 3 secondary, 3 tertiary intersect for the All XP Spent line is ~6000 XP, this is where ninja who don't take a more expensive skill (e.g. sealing) would hit the point described above. This suggests that ninja will tend to run into skill cap limitations around 6000 XP, or, ~4 years of Hazou experience, unless they took a more expensive skill (and then they'll hit them around 25,000 XP).
From the Rate =1 graph, we can see how genin would be affected by the skill caps. We see that the 3 primary line intercepts the All XP spent line at ~400 XP, meaning that's when they'd start working on their secondary skills. This seems likely to correspond with academy graduation, and so seems about right. At 400 XP, their primary skills will be at 15, which is firmly between "Average" and "Fair," but would handily defeat any civilian unless fudge dice went terribly wrong (assuming civilians roll 0). This seems about right. Interestingly, it isn't until a genin hits ~2200 XP that they reach the cap for their secondary skills (assuming they're min-maxing and don't have a high-cost skill). This puts their primary skills at 28, and their secondary skills at 26. This is around the point that any ninja would start investing in tertiary skills (unless they have a high-cost skill).
Ultimately, this largely negates the Jounin XP spending problem of the default model, maintains the strict limits on Skill Caps (at least, at anything approaching reasonable XP levels), and makes it very difficult to be a generalist, without being an incredibly experienced ninja (or, if you can do everything you want to do with only 6 skills).
High p Model: Raise only the primary skill cap limit from the default
Model:
Primary skill cap = 1.5 * base_rate
Secondary skill cap = 1.0 * base_rate
Tertiary skill cap = 0.75 * base_rate
Analysis
This makes the primary specializations of a ninja insanely important. From the Skills v Time graph, we see that the primary skills of someone like Hazou can keep up with the secondary skills of someone with 10 XP per day, assuming both are maxing out their skills. This makes ninjas incredibly specialized, as the primary stat of a ninja can defeat the secondary stat of a ninja more than twice their experience, if both have maxed their skills.
Looking at the Rate = 10 graph for XP spending, we see the All XP spent intercept with the 4 primary, 3 secondary, 3 tertiary skills is not included in the chart. This suggests that a ninja who takes a high-cost primary skill like sealing will never need to generalize much, unless they gain truly phenomenal amounts of experience. Most ninja will need to begin investing in more and more general skills at the All XP spent intersect with the 3 primary, 3 secondary, 3 tertiary line, at ~15,000 XP. At that point, a ninja will have primary skills = 76, secondary skills = 51. This puts them at the "Epic - Legendary" section of the skill charts in their primary skills, and merely "Superb" in their secondary. Their tertiary skills would be at 38. At that level, a ninja's specialization would play a huge role in combat, as the secondary skill of someone with 15,000 XP (10 years of Hazou XP) is equivalent to the primary skill of someone with ~6000 XP (3 years of Hazou XP). Thus, a diplomacy specialist would almost always be defeated by someone who has maxed combat (assuming the diplomat didn't focus their defensive skills).
Looking at the Rate = 4 graph for XP spending, we can see the middling growth rates. From this, we see that someone will have maxed their primary and secondary skills by ~4000 XP (2.7 Hazou-years) if they didn't take a high-cost primary or secondary. This is around the point ninja would start taking tertiary skills. This puts their skills at primary = 43 ("Great"), secondary = 28 ("Good"). In other words, their secondary skills would be equivalent to someone who has ~1400 XP, or 1 Hazou year.
Finally, looking at Genin growth rates on the Rate = 1 chart, we see that a ninja will have maxed their three primary stats (assuming min-maxing) at around 1000 XP. This gives their primary skills at 25, or halfway between "Fair" and "Good."
Ultimately, this removes the jounin-XP-spending problem entirely, makes specialization choices more important than XP (by about a factor of 2), and means ninja would start exploring secondary skills at 1 Hazou-years, and tertiary skills at ~3 Hazou-years.
High p, High s Model: Raise the primary and secondary skill cap limits from the default
Model:
Primary skill cap = 1.5 * base_rate
Secondary skill cap = 1.25 * base_rate
Tertiary skill cap = 0.75 * base_rate
Analysis
From the skills v time graph, we see that a ninja with twice the experience of another ninja will handily defeat their opponents primary skills with their own secondary skills (if they've leveled their secondary skills enough). We also see that the skill caps at high levels recede begin to go off the chart of skill in Fate, as Fate is scaled to 80 max. Specialization choices are important, but so long as something is in your primary or secondary skill, it will likely matter more which skills you invested in.
From the Rate = 10 graph, we see that ninja will likely never become generalists, as 10 years of 10 XP per day doesn't reach the point of having two maxed tertiary skills. This suggests that high level ninja will never cease from leveling things in their favorite six skills. That said, we can look at the Rate = 4 graph to see when that max starts to come into effect.
From the Rate =4 graph, we see that ninja can max their primary and secondary skills by ~15,000 XP (10.3 Hazou years), with primary skill = 76 ("Epic"), secondary skill = 64 ("Fantastic"). If numbers remain consistent across the new system from the old, this suggests that only S-rank ninja specialize.
From this, we reject this model for consideration, as there is significant evidence in universe that ninja begin to generalize before hitting S-rank, thus the skill cap limit set by the high p, high s model fails to solve the problem it set out to solve (though it may introduce other problems, further analysis could look into that).
High All: Raise all the skill cap limits from the default
Model:
Primary skill cap = 1.5 * base_rate
Secondary skill cap = 1.25 * base_rate
Tertiary skill cap = 1.0 * base_rate
Analysis:
This will run into the same problems High P, High S did in failing to solve the problem it set out to solve. The specifics will be slightly different from the prior case, as tertiary skill caps will be different, but ultimatly these differences are irrelevent because the model should be rejected due to the same concerns.
Conclusion
From this analysis, we saw a pair of interesting and useful changes by changing the secondary or primary skill caps, and a pair of poor changes by increasing the skill caps into irrelevance. From the currently considered models, I suggest either high p, or high s as initial models for skill caps, depending on desired characteristics of ninja skill levels. The high s model will make ninja generalize earlier, and make primary vs secondary differences less important. The high p model will make ninja more specialists, with a large gap between the primary and secondary skills.
Future Work
I believe that the best model has not yet been found. I believe the ratio of coefficients in front of the base rate should be slightly modified, raising both the primary and secondary limits from the base model, but not nearly as much as the high p, high s model did here. I also believe investigating the effects of the base rate terms, especially the divisor of the XP total, and the addition term may be informative on characteristics affected by skill caps, and the end model we eventually take.
Regarding skill caps like I've started doing analysis with. If we go with them, it's a fairly ad-hoc way of forcing the world to look the way it used to within the MfD rules. It would make hyperspecialization be hard-capped, not soft-capped (as it was in the old rule-set). This means the new system would make it impossible to hyperspecialize, not just sub-optimal. This would presumably make the world look different, as people like Kagome and civilians are probably hyperspecialized into sealing and farming respectively. It's also worth noting that making all skills cost the same (as the new rules currently propose) will lead to changes in the world regardless of skill level caps. As an example: in the old system, hyperspecializing in Taijutsu was more XP intensive than hyperspecializing in Weapons or Ninjutsu. In the new system, hyperspecializing in Taijutsu is exactly as expensive as Weapons or Ninjutsu. This makes some skills significantly more powerful than they were in the old system, as the relative costs were not the same between skills. A hard-cap to skill levels as has been proposed will fail to impact this. One way to address this is to (as you've done for sealing) make the skill more expensive than other skills, making different skills have different relative costs. That said, increasing relative costs alone will not address specialization concerns, and it will either be fairly unintuitive what the costs are for each skill, or some builds will be clearly superior for leveling (e.g. Taijutsu builds).
My intuition for how to solve the specialization motive properly is to import the same (or similar) soft caps from the old system. The simplest and easiest way to do this would be to just straight up import every attribute and skill from the old system, including their XP costs, and just use FATE interactions or flavor the new attributes and stats with FATE mechanics (e.g. stress trackers build off attributes).
If you don't want to do that, I could build a program which calculates the cost of each skill relative to each other skill in the old system. This would make a network of skills such that it calculates the cost for each skill according to the levels of all of your skills, so as you improve in one skill, it gets easier to improve others, but harder to improve the skill you're leveling unless you improve another skill (all of which would still scale lineary as every proposed skill leveling system has thus far). This effectively replicates the relative costs and incentives of hyperspecializion as the old system, while technically getting rid of attributes. It also solves the relative skill levels problem that hard capping fails to solve. That said, this would make the expense of a skill level (almost) unique for each possible skill combination, and impossible to calculate without the algorithm and difficult to intuit.
Right now, I'm just working on the hard-cap problem since that's what you've expressed the most interest towards having work done on, and it could possible work out passably if combined with a more simple method of calculating relative costs of skills. That said, I do not believe we will wind up in a world which looks the same as the old one by going down this route, and so suggest considering one of the other two methods I've proposed above.
I definitely agree with Radvic here: I've seen problems with the lack of differences in XP costs for different skills in messing around with the character sheets, too.
I take your point, but I'd prefer to find a different approach. The attribute system from the old rules was one of the things the QMs hated the most, and it doesn't really help anything since it adds more problems than it solves. Among other things, it completely cracks open the Fate rules and means that we give up all the advantages of having a playtested system in favor of having a random set of poorly homebrewed rules that now have Aspects laid on top. We're already stretching things by using a 1-80 scale instead of 1-8 and making all the necessary adjustments, although I think we've kept it fairly tight.
Stepping back a bit...I wonder if this hyperspecialization question is really an issue? In the old system system skills were soft-capped by their increasing costs; the general tenor of the discussion over the last few pages seems to imply that these soft caps somehow prevented hyperspecialization. Well, the new system has the same increasing costs, so it's still soft-capped -- granted, it lacks the attribute tax so the effective caps will be higher. One solution would be to simply fold the attribute costs in -- e.g. we could double the costs, or we could say that every 10th level costs an extra <N> XP, for whatever value of N we like. There are undoubtedly better approaches, these are just two that spring to mind.
As to whether the old system actually prevented hyperspecialization, I'm not sure it did. Here's what I see when I look at Hazō's character sheet:
Sealing: 20
<Punching>
Taijutsu: 32
Deception: 24 (bought almost exclusively because it gave a boost to Taijutsu)
<Combat Utility>
Awareness: 20
TacMov: 27
Stealth: 15
<a few jutsu>: a few points each
<a few random skills that have never been used>: 1-5 points each
This looks like Sealing + a hyperspecialized taijutsu build to me. Changing this to a Fated to Die build is pretty much a search/replace on the names:
Sealing: 20
<Punching>
Taijutsu: 32
Deceit: 24 [we'll need to figure out how to handle Roki]
<Combat Utility>
Alertness: 20
Athletics: 27
Stealth: 15
<a few jutsu>: a few points each
I'm also unsure why it's an issue that all skills now cost the same...that sounds like an advantage? Before, there were skills that were strictly better and skills that it didn't make sense to pursue. Now, there are a much larger number of reasonable builds.
As to keeping the soft caps a little closer to where they used to be, let's see what happens if we make all skills cost 2N for level N, or 4N for Sealing. This would let us build Hazō as follows:
Sealing 20 [840 XP]
<Punching>
Taijutsu 32 (29 + IN) [870 XP]
Deceit 24 [600 XP]
<Combat Utility>
Alertness 20 [420 XP]
Athletics 27 (24 + IN) [600 XP]
Stealth 15 (12 + IN) [146 XP]
<a few jutsu> @ a few points each: [300 XP??]
This is a 3,776 XP build, which is about 600 XP more than Hazō actually has -- a pretty close match! A one-time block of XP to smooth the transfer from one rules system to another seems perfectly reasonable.
Let's assume that you continue earning 4 XP / day going forward. It will cost 1020 XP to raise Sealing from 20 to 30, which is 255 days in-universe and probably 6-ish months of real time. (That's a very approximate guess.) Alternatively, if you want to get your Taijutsu up to 37 (effective 40), it would cost 532 XP, which is 133 days in-universe. That would mean that in a little over 2 years Hazō went from Academy graduate to entry-level chūnin in taijutsu...that's a little faster than someone of his talent level would typically make it, but not unreasonably so.
Let's take it out further: over the course of 10 years Hazō will earn 14,600 XP. If from now on he hyperspecialized in punching, how might he spend that?
Things he already has: (1886 XP total)
Sealing 20 [840]
Deceit 24 [600]
Stealth 15 [12 + IN : 146]
<a few jutsu> @ a few points each: [300 XP??]
Chakra Reserves 20 [420 ; only for boosting]
Taijutsu 65 [62 + IN : 3906]
Athletics 65 [62 + IN : 3906]
Alertness 66 [4422]
...60 XP remaining
This build leaves Hazō with no socials aside from Deceit, meaning he'll be wrecked by every shopkeeper and politician that comes along. It doesn't buy any Discipline so the chakra costs on his jutsu are going to make them unusable. There's probably a few other important things that I'm not thinking of. All that and he's hitting the jōnin ranks right on schedule at about 10 years.
It seems like doubling the costs in order to account for the old rules' attribute tax pretty much solves the issue. Have I forgotten / not thought of anything?
Personally, my problem with the new skills is more a problem with direct-import of XP: There are a lot of skills with not-entirely-direct translations, and something that didn't exist entirely in Augjev (Presence, Conviction, etc). This means that some things that Hazou would seem to be good at by his characterization, etc. Like for instance, Hazou seems to be a pretty inspiring persona, at least to his team. Deceit doesn't really fit with that, but Rapport or Presence might.
Personally, my problem with the new skills is more a problem with direct-import of XP: There are a lot of skills with not-entirely-direct translations, and something that didn't exist entirely in Augjev (Presence, Conviction, etc). This means that some things that Hazou would seem to be good at by his characterization, etc. Like for instance, Hazou seems to be a pretty inspiring persona, at least to his team. Deceit doesn't really fit with that, but Rapport or Presence might.
Though some of that is just that, characterization - his Diplomacy of 8 in the old system would hypothetically cover about the same thing as Presence/Rapport (it is slightly awkward that Diplomacy is kinda two skills now - Deception being, effectively, split into Deceive and Empathy is similar but likely more fair). Using the old Chakra Control as an approximation as to how much Discipline a character has could have some merit.
I do agree that there's room for a little tweaking in the character's stats to try to bring across their capabilities instead of just porting over their character sheets, and there's a lot of room there for us to figure out which skills really need tweaking to fit the setting-as-previously-presented. For example, Hazou could probably keep his high Deceit, but have less (but not none) in Empathy. Noburi's Diplomacy fits more into Rapport than Presence - he's easy to get along with and good at chatting people up, but not great at giving speeches. Keiko, on the other hand, is better at negotiation and intimidation, so fits Presence over Rapport. (that's fun, actually, that that worked out so well. Points to the Fate/DF writers for making those distinctions so smooth).
The tricky part of bringing over capabilities, of course, is that a fair bit of the PC's power was stuff that doesn't smoothly translate into Fate (such as Roki). The simplest thing to do with it is just say that it's an excuse for Hazou to use Deceit to create Aspects in combat, but that probably undersells its power compared to the old system; then again, there's an argument to be made that it was better than it really had the right to be before, and this is just bringing it into line with "I'm good at fighting and also tricky".
So, that's the big question - how much fudging are people, QM or player, willing to accept in the system change? I'm all right with saying "this was only so strong because of system oddness before, and now's as good a time as any to tweak that" for things like Roki and Mist Draining, but the flip side of that should be letting the PCs round out their skills where they now need to but didn't before.
So, that's the big question - how much fudging are people, QM or player, willing to accept in the system change? I'm all right with saying "this was only so strong because of system oddness before, and now's as good a time as any to tweak that" for things like Roki and Mist Draining, but the flip side of that should be letting the PCs round out their skills where they now need to but didn't before.
Absolutely agree with this. The goal is to translate the characters, not the character sheets. I haven't explicitly asked the other QMs this but I feel pretty confident in saying that none of us are going to object to dropping a bunch of XP on Hazō and the kids if that's what it takes to build character sheets that we all agree are good representations.
Not quite sure what we'll do with the Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast that is Really Strong and Tough, or Roki, or Explosion Master, but we'll figure something out. Maybe some sort of skill roll that if you succeed it gives you a free tag once per fight? Dunno. Again, we'll figure it out.
Absolutely agree with this. The goal is to translate the characters, not the character sheets. I haven't explicitly asked the other QMs this but I feel pretty confident in saying that none of us are going to object to dropping a bunch of XP on Hazō and the kids if that's what it takes to build character sheets that we all agree are good representations.
Not quite sure what we'll do with the Youthful Fist of the Mythological Beast that is Really Strong and Tough, or Roki, or Explosion Master, but we'll figure something out. Maybe some sort of skill roll that if you succeed it gives you a free tag once per fight? Dunno. Again, we'll figure it out.
This is the kind of thing that Stunts in FATE did well.
Something like: Roki - May always use Deceit to create advantage in combat. +10 to use Deceit to create advantage in combat.
If you wanted to use stunts, having them also be used for things like buying elemental affinities (everyone gets a starting stunt of that), access to seals, summons, and bloodlines.
Cost of something like: Each stunt costs 100*N EP where N is the number of current stunts a character has.
Each stunt is a specific rule break, or a specific bonus.
This is the kind of thing that Stunts in FATE did well.
Something like: Roki - May always use Deceit to create advantage in combat. +10 to use Deceit to create advantage in combat.
If you wanted to use stunts, having them also be used for things like buying elemental affinities (everyone gets a starting stunt of that), access to seals, summons, and bloodlines.
Cost of something like: Each stunt costs 100*N EP where N is the number of current stunts a character has.
Each stunt is a specific rule break, or a specific bonus.
I take your point, but I'd prefer to find a different approach. The attribute system from the old rules was one of the things the QMs hated the most, and it doesn't really help anything since it adds more problems than it solves. Among other things, it completely cracks open the Fate rules and means that we give up all the advantages of having a playtested system in favor of having a random set of poorly homebrewed rules that now have Aspects laid on top. We're already stretching things by using a 1-80 scale instead of 1-8 and making all the necessary adjustments, although I think we've kept it fairly tight.
Thanks for the response! I'll do my best to respond before going to bed tonight.
I totally understand wanting to get rid of Attributes, they were a rather hard-to-model way of linking things together. Regarding the rule changes from FATE, I think the biggest change is actually the fact we're buying skills with XP rather than using the skill pyramids the game has. This means we're going to have skill distributions which look quite different than one can get in base FATE, invalidating most of the playtesting FATE has. For instance, in FATE, you need a lot of skills to throw at the bottom of the pyramid, so it makes sense to have socials split into so many skills. Here, since that's no longer necessary, skill splitting just makes the related thing harder to do with XP. The 1-80 scale likely will make a small difference, but I expect the 1-80 vs 1-8 difference from base FATE to be overshadowed by the fact we can buy skills without consideration of a pyramid. Ultimately, I don't think we're likely to get much of any benefit from FATE's play-testing due to these changes, expecially when combined with all the exceptions we're putting in for things like combat techniques (e.g. Roki, Akane's thing), ninjutsu & ninjutsu-skills (e.g. water-whip), sealing, chakra, and all the modifications to the skills we've been making from base rules (lumping things together and whatnot).
Stepping back a bit...I wonder if this hyperspecialization question is really an issue? In the old system system skills were soft-capped by their increasing costs; the general tenor of the discussion over the last few pages seems to imply that these soft caps somehow prevented hyperspecialization. Well, the new system has the same increasing costs, so it's still soft-capped -- granted, it lacks the attribute tax so the effective caps will be higher. One solution would be to simply fold the attribute costs in -- e.g. we could double the costs, or we could say that every 10th level costs an extra <N> XP, for whatever value of N we like. There are undoubtedly better approaches, these are just two that spring to mind.
As to whether the old system actually prevented hyperspecialization, I'm not sure it did. Here's what I see when I look at Hazō's character sheet:
Sealing: 20
<Punching>
Taijutsu: 32
Deception: 24 (bought almost exclusively because it gave a boost to Taijutsu)
<Combat Utility>
Awareness: 20
TacMov: 27
Stealth: 15
<a few jutsu>: a few points each
<a few random skills that have never been used>: 1-5 points each
This looks like Sealing + a hyperspecialized taijutsu build to me. Changing this to a Fated to Die build is pretty much a search/replace on the names:
I don't think this build is nearly as hyperspecialized as you portray it. For one thing, we do have at least 8 levels in Diplomacy, Transformation, Substitution, and Living Roots in addition to those shown above. Also, prior to finding out about the Chunnin Exams (and the need to hyperspecialize to punch above our weigh-class), we were leveling skills in conjuncture with their attributes going up, since that maximizes gains from XP. We were highly likely to bring Stealth and Diplomacy back up to the levels the attribute caps allowed us to max them at before leveling Taijutsu more. As it's this shared XP purchase cost which is going away, characters in the new system have significantly less incentive to invest in things aside from their specialty. I think it's fairly telling that Hazou has 8 skills in the double digits, and 5 skills at 20 or above in the old system, rather than the 3 or 4 we would likely stick to leveling in the new system.
I'm also unsure why it's an issue that all skills now cost the same...that sounds like an advantage? Before, there were skills that were strictly better and skills that it didn't make sense to pursue. Now, there are a much larger number of reasonable builds.
Hmm... I think I might have misunderstood the goal. From the perspective of "simple to level up characters" and "intuitive to model" skills all costing the same is an advantage. But, then again, just straight up "use the FATE rules as written" would also achieve that goal. From the perspective of "keeps the world in roughly the same shape pre-and-post mechanics change," skills all costing the same is a disadvantage as it would change incentives for character leveling. I also disagree that skills are all equally worthwhile because they cost the same.
As an example, in the old system, you needed one high fighting skill (and it looks like this will be true in the new system as well). However, in the old system, XP spent towards this skill could help towards other skills (ninjutsu or stealth or awareness come to mind). As such, getting a skill like water-whip made sense because it cost significantly less than Taijutsu, even though you could do less with it and it had stricter requirements (need to have chakra to use, need hands free to cast). In the new system, if water-whip (or any combat jutsu) costs the same as Taijutsu or weapons, there is little reason to get a ninjutsu. There certainly is not an incentive to get *multiple* ninjutsu, a thing highly incentivized by the old system's half-cost ninjutsu and attributes system. This means that despite costing the same amount as other skills in the new system, the relative balance of power between taijutsu and ninjutsu has been heavily tipped in favor of Taijutsu from the previous equilibrium. I think this actually means *fewer* combat builds are viable than in the previous system, as Taijutsu will now outperform most ninjutsu skill builds.
(side note: for some reason I had it in my head that we'd have hit jounin in ~3-5 years of experience in the old system. Good to know that it's jounin after 10 years. I thought that we would be around jounin stats after 3-5 years in game in the old mechanics, but that's a different discussion, probably best answered by @Cariyaga or someone else with more experience with the spreadsheets than I)
It seems like doubling the costs in order to account for the old rules' attribute tax pretty much solves the issue. Have I forgotten / not thought of anything?
From a modeling perspective? My biggest concern is that you're using the same single test case (Hazou) to both train and test your model, in addition to not validating the test case's prediction with a Hazou build from the old perspective 10 years down the road and comparing. @Cariyaga is probably better situated to test a "10 years advanced in the old system Hazou" than I am at the moment, but I'll investigate a second test case (Noburi now old system vs new).
Noburi's high and relevant skills were:
Diplomacy: 20
<Medic>
Medicine: 12
Medical Ninjutsu: 12
<Combat Utility>
Awareness: 20
TacMov: 22
Stealth: 15
<a jutsu>:
Vampiric Dew: 24
Water Whip: 34
Syrup Trap: 22
Hozuki's Mantle: 18
If we map Noburi's skills onto the new system, we run into a couple conversion issues. First, Noburi's Diplomacy would need to be split between several skills: Empathy, Rapport, Conviction, and Discipline. We also don't currently have a Medical Ninjutsu skill, but I'll assume we can just add a skill there, putting it at double cost as it's also got fairly strict attribute requirements and is a thing most ninja don't have access to. If I understand it right, Hozuki's Mantle and Syrup Trap could probably be rolled into the Ninjutsu and chakra skills effectively. For now, I'll assume that Noburi can get away without Discipline for his social skills. This leaves us at:
Empathy: 20 [420 XP]
Rapport: 20 [420 XP]
Conviction: 20 [420 XP]
<Medic>
Medicine: 12 [156]
Medical Ninjutsu: 12 [312]
<Combat Utility>
Awareness: 20 [420]
TacMov: 22 [506]
Stealth: 15 [120]
<jutsu>:
Vampiric Dew: 24 [600]
Water Whip: 34 [1190]
Ninjutsu: 22 [506]
Chakra Control: 18 [342]
Total XP: 5412
This suggests that where Hazou could make due with a ~600 XP boost, Noburi needs an extra ~2400 XP to reach his old abilities.
This suggests there the model does not accurately represent our old data (builds which would have been effective in the old system are not in the new system).
From a "can this be solved by a single different infusion of XP?" perspective, the answer is no. Noburi's current projected build will continue to cost more than Hazou's, as Noburi's multiple skill dependency drives him further and further behind Hazou, where the old system alleviated that by making the relative cost of his skills lower. This is a lot of what I mean by hyperspecialization. In the old rules, it was possible to be leveling multiple things like Noburi and keep up with other characters, so long as you were willing to be bad at things without chakra. In the new rules, unless we do something about the relative costs of skills, this isn't going to be true anymore, which, I believe will make both social builds and ninjutsu builds significantly worse. The same situation is likely to play out in weapons, as it is now two skills, both of which are as expensive as Taijutsu, where previously it was a single skill which had a lower relative cost than Taijutsu (since Strength was only used for Taijutsu).
It's worth noting that the problems Noburi faces here will only increase for ninja who want to use more than a single ninjutsu ability to attack, which, while not having been shown explicitly in MfD, was definitely the case in Naruto, and has not been commented as being false (to my knowledge).
Ultimately, I think that looking at Hazou's build in the old system suggests that it isn't as hyperspecialized as it would have been if designed under the new system (work with the old character sheets would be helpful on that front), and I think that making all the skills cost the same will make certain builds (especially Taijutsu builds) significantly more viable than other builds (especially ninjutsu or social builds).
Assuming we still get around 4 XP per day average for the next 8.5 years (making ten years of being a ninja), Hazou will earn 12,410 additional XP and 2488 Conditioning XP.
This is entirely unoptimized -- just a rough guess of how he'd look. He'd also likely have long since switched from Roki to Youthful Fist, and gotten the latter nerfed as the QMs realize that getting +42 from that fighting style against opponents with 20 Strength/Stamina is ludicrous.
Sorry if my argument is out of turn, I don't have the sort of time, to track MfD as it unfolds (the amount of posts that appear here is staggering). But it seems we were having trouble figuring out how to fit the Fate Points into the system as we have it, and it seems to me that we are kinda looking at it from the wrong angle.
Everyone is all about how using FP in combat is that crucial thing, and whether or not you use it at the right time means life and death. Don't get me wrong, it very well may, with the system as it is, the point is, we already have to put a lot of faith in our QMs not to screw us over. If they wanted to kill us, they could just make an opponent that is just a few skill points out of our capability to defeat, they wouldn't need to misuse the FP points to do that. They also have a nested interest in keeping us alive (I mean they lead this quest for some reason, so they have to get some enjoyment out of it).
But I'm getting a bit off-track. My point is, instead of treating each individual FP as a concrete value, to be spent on this thing or that, we should maybe start thinking of spending them in the cumulative sense.
What I mean by that is, lets agree to treat FPs as a sort of currency between QMs and the players. They award us FPs for playing well, or in-character, or maybe for playing according with ninja-sense as opposed to trying to munchkin rules, or maybe as a recompense each time, they have to overwrite our plan due to things outside our control (that's actually the hardest part, deciding rules for awarding FPs, and how to differ it from xp-awards). We in turn can spend FPs cumulatively to screw any given situation to our advantage. Let's say we are facing a really tough fight, that we don't think we can win - we can just include in the plan a clause that we are willing to pay QMs 10 FP to get us out of it alive, or to prevent anyone from dying, or whatever. Or even we are travelling and can pay FPs to keep us out of trouble untill we get to our destination. Or we suspect that we may be putting foot in our mouh again, and decide to pay QMs to apply ninja common-sense to our plan via Keiko-intervention. Or heck we could decide that it's too dull (yeah, I know, don't scream Kagome at me) and pay them FP for something interesting to occur.
Then it's up to them if they spent those FPs on aspects and rerolls, or even use them completely outside the box, and make a third party appear, to pull our collective asses out of it. They can see the situation as it unfolds. Heck they can roll the whole fight, look back at it and put the FPS retroactively, and we would never know, or really care.
We could always discuss it later on case to case basis. But treating it as a currency gives us another level of meta-game here. If the QMs don't like us doing something they can put FP awards to promote different sort of actions from the players. And then if players feel like QMs are unreasonable to put us in some situation we as collective have no idea how to get out of - why we can spent those hard earned awards to get us out of it, even if our plan is not good enough on it's own.
Sorry if my argument is out of turn, I don't have the sort of time, to track MfD as it unfolds (the amount of posts that appear here is staggering). But it seems we were having trouble figuring out how to fit the Fate Points into the system as we have it, and it seems to me that we are kinda looking at it from the wrong angle.
Everyone is all about how using FP in combat is that crucial thing, and whether or not you use it at the right time means life and death. Don't get me wrong, it very well may, with the system as it is, the point is, we already have to put a lot of faith in our QMs not to screw us over. If they wanted to kill us, they could just make an opponent that is just a few skill points out of our capability to defeat, they wouldn't need to misuse the FP points to do that. They also have a nested interest in keeping us alive (I mean they lead this quest for some reason, so they have to get some enjoyment out of it).
Correction: They have no interest in keeping us alive beyond the subconscious ones. They attempt to simulate the world as accurately as they can manage with no expectation of our opponents' scaling to our skill levels. If we die, we die.
As to the rest of your post, I'm not sure how much I like the idea of FP as meta-currency. That reeks of narrativism and favoritism toward the PCs.
This is the kind of thing that Stunts in FATE did well.
Something like: Roki - May always use Deceit to create advantage in combat. +10 to use Deceit to create advantage in combat.
If you wanted to use stunts, having them also be used for things like buying elemental affinities (everyone gets a starting stunt of that), access to seals, summons, and bloodlines.
Cost of something like: Each stunt costs 100*N EP where N is the number of current stunts a character has.
Each stunt is a specific rule break, or a specific bonus.
Seconded - Stunts are likely to be the best way to represent weird mechanical edge cases, and moving them from costing Refresh to costing XP should be fine - the hardest part is qualifying for whatever thing you're doing, either way (in the sense of bloodlines and teachers). Though I'd have a flat cost/stunt, as unless you let them stack they're separate enough that having a bunch of them isn't OP the way a huge skill advantage is.
I think there's room for the world to look basically the same in overview with slightly different details and incentives, but I do agree that the skill list needs to be tweaked to make sure MAD builds don't just get steamrolled as soon as they face a specialist in a field that doesn't require as many different skills. It's why I'm pushing for rolling Jutsu into umbrella skills - for example, Earth Jutsu is likely fair across from Taijutu, as it's harder to use (Chakra costs, finding teachers) but more versatile (Taijutsu can't build walls). If you have to buy each Jutsu individually, it really punishes characters who do ninjutsu builds involving even 3-4 jutsu, let alone the versatility some characters can manage.
This is entirely unoptimized -- just a rough guess of how he'd look. He'd also likely have long since switched from Roki to Youthful Fist, and gotten the latter nerfed as the QMs realize that getting +42 from that fighting style against opponents with 20 Strength/Stamina is ludicrous.
To be fair, now that we're running in Fate we can set that up as some kind of Physique-based advantage, and our opponents are much more likely to have decent Physique then they were Strength/Stamina.
Thing is, the world may be fundamentally unfair, but the only way to have a system that allows for a variety of viable builds is for the game to be fair (in the sense of general balance - obviously, characters with different XP, bloodline advantages, etc will have unfair mechanics on their side).
So. What sort of skills do we really need to see? Athletics and Physique for general physical aptitude, Alertness vs Stealth is a staple of the genre. Social skills should be, at minimum, something for trickery, something for honest (ish) dealing, and at least one defense (possibly the Empathy/Conviction split, maybe something simpler). Then there's Taijutsu/Melee/Ranged, for mundane attacks, and some variety of Ninjutsu skills (separated out as desired) for supernatural attacks. Genjutsu is probably its own thing as well.
I kinda like the idea of making medical ninjutsu a stunt that you roll off of your mundane Medicine skill, because I don't think it's powerful enough to require the same kind of double-dipping that Calligraphy-Sealing demands - its rarity is better explained narratively (most ninja learn to destroy, not to heal). Technique Hacking is a thing. A skill for building stuff, maybe a skill for general education/bureaucracy, and a Chakra Rating skill.
Is there anything else, broad-strokes, that we need? Or, barring need, would be mechanically fair and interesting?
I kinda like the idea of making medical ninjutsu a stunt that you roll off of your mundane Medicine skill, because I don't think it's powerful enough to require the same kind of double-dipping that Calligraphy-Sealing demands
While I agree that it probably shouldn't triple dip the way sealing does (2x cost Sealing as well as Calligraphy), I think double dipping is probably okay?
That said, @OliWhail will make you regret saying that. ...aaaaaand I just realized that Orochimaru and Kabuto are OliWhail-powered. Shit.
From this, we can see that a "perpetual genin" would indeed exist. If someone gets 1 XP per day, in 10 years, they'll be able to level their primary combat stats to around 35. Hazou, if he trains for 10 years, will be able to hit primary skill levels of around 60. This, may have some ramifications, which brings me to my second plot.
