BAB and Class Balance

[princelian]

I have not yet started my T20 campaign - we're still deeply embroiled in my current D&D campaign and (alas!) I don't have time to run more than one campaign at once. Ah, the good old days of wasted youth....but I digress.

In reading the T20 classes, one thing that **LEAPS** out at me like an enraged Aslan male is that there are classes with a +1/4 BAB progression. 20th level character with a +5 BAB? And armor both reduces damage AND still makes it harder to hit you?

My initial reaction was to make all classes +1/2 [wizard] progression or higher, and to scale them all between +1/2 and +1/1. (I long ago created +5/8 and +7/8 progressions for my "multiclass" classes...one example is the Blade, a Fighter-Rogue type class, which blends the abilities of the two classes, and has a +7/8 BAB progression. Trust me, it works...)

Anyhow, I'm wondering what your take on the dichotomy between the Barbarian/Marine/Mercenary (+20/+15/+10/+5 at 20-level) and the Academic/etc. (+5 at 20-level). Is it a problem in actual game play?

 

[mike wightman]

There are a couple of things that mitigate the low BAB of some classes IMHO.

First is the ease with which you can multiclass in T20, and thus pick up a couple of levels in a class with a better BAB.

The second is that there's no equivalent of the magic armour, ring etc. AC bonuses that stack up so quickly for mid-level D&D characters.

And what balances everything in my playing experience is the ease with which a B/M/M +20 etc can be killed by gunfire. Not getting hit is just as important, if not more so

All the other guy has to be is lucky...

 

[Chaos]

Also, overall, T20 places much less of a focus on personal combat than d20.

The Academic with the lousy BAB has a huge load of skill points - a Human Academic with Int 16 (should not be too unusual for an Academic) for example has 12 skill points per level. He can max out ALL Technical skills, and then some... In a starship fight, you want THIS guy on your side, not the Barbarian/Marine/Mercenary - sensors, jamming, damage control, you name it, he´s good at it.

 

[opensent]

Originally posted by Chaos:
Also, overall, T20 places much less of a focus on personal combat than d20.

The Academic with the lousy BAB has a huge load of skill points - a Human Academic with Int 16 (should not be too unusual for an Academic) for example has 12 skill points per level. He can max out ALL Technical skills, and then some... In a starship fight, you want THIS guy on your side, not the Barbarian/Marine/Mercenary - sensors, jamming, damage control, you name it, he´s good at it.

Screw that guy. Give me a professional whose done a tour in the navy. Almost as many skill points and he can take 10 on two his skills while in the middle of combat!

 

[loperrod]

Originally posted by Furtive Envoy:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Chaos:
Also, overall, T20 places much less of a focus on personal combat than d20.

The Academic with the lousy BAB has a huge load of skill points - a Human Academic with Int 16 (should not be too unusual for an Academic) for example has 12 skill points per level. He can max out ALL Technical skills, and then some... In a starship fight, you want THIS guy on your side, not the Barbarian/Marine/Mercenary - sensors, jamming, damage control, you name it, he´s good at it.

Screw that guy. Give me a professional whose done a tour in the navy. Almost as many skill points and he can take 10 on two his skills while in the middle of combat! </font>[/QUOTE]How about someone in the middle: Academic/Navy/Professional. Take 10 on 2 skills, plus Advanced Knowledge in at those two (Technical) skills (dumping Edu modifier more skill points in each).

 

[Shadowdancer]

princelian: welcome!

As you may already know, it all depends on the type of game you and your players want to play. If its "all combat, all the time," then everyone can play marines/mercs and have lots of mad combat skilz. And you run a merc campaign, and everyone is happy.

But if y'all want a game with things to do besides combat, then the characters need to diversify, which means some are going to have lots of non-combat skills and feats, but won't be good in combat. Which those characters shouldn't be good at, because they don't have the necessary combat training/experience.

 

[opensent]

Originally posted by loperrod:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Furtive Envoy:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Chaos:
Also, overall, T20 places much less of a focus on personal combat than d20.

The Academic with the lousy BAB has a huge load of skill points - a Human Academic with Int 16 (should not be too unusual for an Academic) for example has 12 skill points per level. He can max out ALL Technical skills, and then some... In a starship fight, you want THIS guy on your side, not the Barbarian/Marine/Mercenary - sensors, jamming, damage control, you name it, he´s good at it.

Screw that guy. Give me a professional whose done a tour in the navy. Almost as many skill points and he can take 10 on two his skills while in the middle of combat! </font>[/QUOTE]How about someone in the middle: Academic/Navy/Professional. Take 10 on 2 skills, plus Advanced Knowledge in at those two (Technical) skills (dumping Edu modifier more skill points in each). </font>[/QUOTE]Sounds good to me!

Even a nerd like that could get a decent BAB with the Martial Training feat. +5 to BAB over the full 20 levels.

 

[opensent]

4 PROF
4 ACADEMIC
12 NAVY
+ Martial Traing Feat
---
+13/+8/+3 BAB
156 Skill Points (not including Human or Int Bonus)
Two take 10's with Advanced Knowledge in each

Now that's crazy!

 

[princelian]

Thanks! One thing I had noticed in the skills section was the Gunnery skill, which counts as your vehicular/starship BAB and is independent of your melee/ranged BAB.

Actually, that's not a bad mechanism for melee/ranged attacks...hmmmm...."combat" characters have it as a class skill, and "non-combat" characters have it as cross-clsss... That'd be a lot more like CT - your combat skills are entirely what you buy, not a class/level based system. You'd still have skill caps based on level...

This requires more thought...

 

[Turin2]

I'm working on a completely Skill-Based BAB System ... see below.
I base everything on 8 Weapon Proficiency Skills :
Unarmed, Melee, Pistol, Rifle, Heavy Weapon, Starship, Vehicle, Throwing

Any comments and/or ideas ?

Thanks
#################################################
- Attacks -
- Weapon Skills determine your Base Attack Bonus.
- You can't increase Weapon Skills with normal Skill-Points ! Instead they are developed with Weapon Skill Points (WSP), which are determined by the Class of the PC. Each Character Class has an Entry about how many WSPs you get when you reach a new level.
- Unused Weapon Skill Points are kept vor 1 Level and are forfeit after that.
- There is a Limit to the Development of all given Weapon Skills determined by the level of the Class in which you reach a new level
(see BAB-Max-PCs.xls).
- When your Weapon Skill-Bonus reaches +6 / +11 / +16, you gain the possibility for a second / third / fourth Attack. You have to
spend an additional Weapon Skill Point per Weapon Skill to activate this Second/Third/Fourth Attack. After spending this point, it
increases further with the Primary Weapon Skill at no additional Cost.
- Weapon Proficiency Feats determine in which Weapon Skills you may Spend your Weapon Skill Points when reaching a new Level.
- If you don't have a Weapon Proficiency Feat, you are at a basic -4 at using a Weapon of this Type and can's spend WSPs on that
particular Weapon Type.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
There may be exceptions to these rules via the following Feats:

Combat Training (Basic / Advanced / Professional)
- Gain 4 Weapon Skill Points (usable up to three times)

Smooth Fighter
- You may get an additional Attack in a Weapon Skill one point before the normal cyclus once !(usable more than once, not stackable)

Weapon Expert (Basic / Advanced / Professional)
(Prerequisites : BAB +0 / +5 / +10)
- Gain a Skill Maximum of +1 in any one Weapon Skill you are already proficient with (Maximum still is 20) (usable more than once, stackable max. 3 times)

Weapon Proficiency (specify)
- gain a Weapon Proficiency as Proficiency for the Class you just reached a new level in

--------------------------------------------------
When Fighting with Two Hand Weapons/Pistols you gain exactly 1 additional Attack !

Multi-Classing :
You may advance only in Weapon Proficiencies of the Class you advanced in plus all Weapon Proficiencies, which were added by a feat.

 

[princelian]

Weapon skill points are class-based BAB by another name, as I see it, but it's a step toward what they've done with Gunnery.

I've been thinking about this since I posted:

To redefine the skill system to truly represent weapon skills (a la Classic Traveller), one would have to probably revamp the whole advancement system.

To wit:

A) You'd have to give a lot more skill points.
B) You'd probably want to switch to a feat point system (FPS) such as the one proposed by Sean Reynolds for D&D. [Anyone who's interested can have a copy of the one I've implemented for my D&D campaign. Just let me know.]
C) 1 Feat Point = 1 Skill Point, and you buy feats and skills out of the same pool.

You might even want to go so far as having a stat increase be worth <x> skill points, and roll stats into the feat/skill mix. Let's look at the "average" character.

At L20, a character has had 5 stat increases and *about* 20 feats (I know it's not exactly 1/level, but it's close enough). An "average" character class gets about 5 skill points, base, and let's assume a 14 Int, so 7 x (level + 3). At L20, that's 161 skill points. Under the FPS, the mean cost of a feat is about 7.5, so 20 feats = 150 points. Let's add another 150 for stat increases (making +1 stat cost 30 skill points) and we're up to 461. Let's say that about +1/2 BAB progression is "base" and have it cost another 150... And finally, base saves for the average character class is another 150, so we're up to 761 for this theoretical "average" class.

Round that to 800 and divide by 20 and you get 40 skill/feat/saving throw points per level. Spend 'em however you want, save 'em level-to-level (that only gives you a DISadvantage for your current level), and build whatever character you want.

You'd also need a starting pool, possibly subdivided into certain areas - weapon profs versus T/ and K/ skills, say - and like d20 Modern, you'd have a certain number of skills to "set" as class skills based on your profession. Marines and Army would have several (many?) weapon skills as class skills, for example, and could choose additional things like driving and T/Mechanical as class skills, for example. A merchie would have a different set of base class skills.

All characters would have a number of choices for additional skills to consider as class skills. (d20 Modern has 9 "set" ones for each profession and 3 that the player chooses.)

This is deviating pretty far from d20, and there's plenty of potential for min/maxing and other abuses, but it might make a workable unified system.... I need to flesh it out and then put in some boundary cases to see how easily it breaks...

 

[Falkayn]

Hmmm ... sounds over-complicated to me. Do bear in mind that the average T20 character will be multi-classed to Andromeda and back again. I've never had a problem with it, but then again I always have tight themes for my Traveller T20 crews. One was a set of undercover intelligence agents, whilst the other was a local anti-terrorist squad.

The first avoided combat once they worked out how deadly it was (it only took a few days in hospital ...) whilst the second revelled in it, but then found that luck on dice rolls played a greater part in their relative success than skill points or BAB (2 were real lucky, 2 were real unlucky ...). You should make the deadliness of combat affect the NPCs too - they should be much more prepared to respond positively to bluff/bluster than average D&D/d20 NPCs (after all that knife WILL hurt!).

I suggest you let the players do what they want, but concentrate on having a good theme for them to fit into - one they can understand really well, and then worry about actually running the game. Do point out the BAB differences to the players, and maybe even run a few sample combat with sample characters so they can see the difference.

 

[princelian]

That's a good point - there is plenty of flexibility in a d20-based system where there aren't spellcasting classes if you multiclass. (Spellcasters' multiclassing is broken IMHO.)

Actually, another thread on this board - talking about how multiclassing and Prior History actually work - cleared a lot of it up for me. I don't remember whose post it was, but it said something to the effect of separating career from class and it suddenly all became clear to me.

Up until that point, I had assumed (wrongly) that you did your Prior History, taking levels in whatever class was associated with that career path (two terms Rogue = all Rogue levels, followed by two terms Merchant = all Merchie levels). NOW I understand that you could mix and match character classes within a career - within some limitations and within reason - and that's much better.

 

[Rover]

Originally posted by princelian:
I don't remember whose post it was, but it said something to the effect of separating career from class and it suddenly all became clear to me.

It took a long while for that light to go off for me and my gaming group.

Jim

 

[archhealer]

Multiclassing aside, You'd be surprised nhow not unbalanced these appallingly slow attack progressions are. I have in my T20 game a character who went academic all the way. And his character sucks in a fight, yeah, but... well, he can do damn near anything else. He's good at EVERYTHING. A level 7 Academic has a LOT of skill points to spread around. He can fix, dissasemble, hack, reprogram, repair, or reengineer damn near anything, and speaks about ten languages. He knows business, finance, government, law, history... anytime they have a question, he's the go-to guy. "Hey, there's this wall with strange writing on it.. might be alien.." "Oh, yeah. That's ancient Viland." "Can you read it?" "Kid, I can recite shakespear in it. Oh, and that looks like instructions for building an early jump drive. odd though, the gravitic equations are strange, almost as if compensating for jumping from inside a gravity well..." "What? You know gravitics too?!?"