Race Discussion

[Sam Coates]

The expansion that includes Classes will also include races.  For those of you who are interested, we will likely include the following:

Human: focusing on resourcefulness (such as switching dice, drawing one of two treasures, etc)

Elf: focused on asssiting others

Dwarf: focused on offence

Lizardman: focused on defense

 

We don't currently have a free game scheduled for "race" ideas, but based on the popularity of the class thread, I thought many of you would be interested in throwing around some ideas.

Are there races you woudl miss?  How does their classic flavor translate to Dungeon Dice?

[sd3693]

Hobling? Focused on evading peril and finding better treasure?

[griffinppatterson]

I think those are excellent races. Maybe the Lizardman would heal one health everytime he levels up. Or maybe the Elf could draw a potion everytime he assists? This would pair well with the thief allowing him to try and advance his potion to a treasure with the class ability (I like this because elf thieves are common in video games). Or the dwarf trades one of his die with a rage die that only has 3,4,5,5,6,6 (or 3,4,4,5,5,6)

[mrjhaugen]

I really like the idea of a 'rage' dice... a dice used by dwarfs and berzerkers (dwarf berzerker?  use two!)

While it makes sense, thematically for someone to gain a class during play... it's a little weird to gain a race.

Maybe the race/class expansion includes both sets of dice and a special bag that is only used at the beginning of the game.  You get the first race and first class dice that you pull from the bag (returning extras after you have your pair).  Those would be your starting dice, rather than a normal level dice.

[mrjhaugen]

I really wish I could edit my own posts... I keep having good ideas after I post :-)

The randomness of the system above would be fun.  Back in my days playing D&D, I always loved my 'bad' class/race combination characters.  Give me a halfling berzerker any day!

If the randomness is too much for a group (why are they playing a dice game?!?!) then they could just choose a class and race rather than draw.   

[griffinppatterson]

I agree that drawing races is a bad idea. I think everyone should have the opportunity to pick a race at the beginning of the game. Roll a die to figure out who goes first. First turn allows you to pick a class and begin play. That would work well for the Dwarf as he could make his first die a rage die.

[Michael]

How about designing the race dice with a net neutral impact.  So something like a Halfling might have three sides with positive effects and three sides with comparable negative effects, like:

1. Small Key

2. Scout

3. Secret Passage

4. -1 Attack

5. -1 Attack

6. -2 Attack

Not sure if those would be sufficiently balanced, but hopefully that illustrates my point.

[griffinppatterson]

I like the idea and that is exactly what playtesting is for :)

[matias.korman]

Attack seems a too "small" of a drawback, since you get to attack an extra monster, and a chance at a treasure!

Maybe we could make a "lose turn" (I don't wanna go adventuring) face :p

[Sam Coates]

Choosing race and class would make it feel more like D&D.  It would require much more intense balancing though.

 

If players can choose their dice, then there will be fights over the ones viewed as superior.

[kc2dpt]

If some races are going to be more powerful/desirable than others then I agree getting them randomly is good.

Alternatively, the race benefits could be minor and there primarily for added flavor.

[griffinppatterson]

I agree it would take some very intense playtesting, but I'd like to give it a whirl. As for the balancing, I think it will downscale the difficulty, but I'm curious what the run away rate is at this point now. Some of these monsters seem tuff.

[mrjhaugen]

I too, prefer the random draw. I was just mentioning possible house-rules (rather than game rules). Sorry for any confusion I caused.

[Lignum]

I agree. I prefer things to stay random. Although I don't want it too random. For example I wouldn't want the class dice to be in with the equipment dice. I would like getting a class to be the choice, but the actual class you get be by chance. The same goes for race. The problem is there's going to be like 12 bags by the end of this. lol. I know the complexity is optional for expansions, but I know I'm going to want them but I want it to be as portable as possible :P Each solution creates more problems. Is this what people who have the gumption to go somewhere with their ideas have to deal with? This is exhausting. Maybe I should stick to being unproductive *wipes sweat off of brow*

[Michael]

Nah, you wouldn't need an additional bag for the races (or classes if drawn randomly to start the game).  Once you dump all the dice out of the green bag to start the game, toss all the race dice in and everyone draws one -- repeat for class dice, etc.

[Lignum]

I was going to say something similar but after typing it up I started thinking up other problems. I was overcomplicating things in my head I think . heh

[griffinppatterson]

Why is everyone so against drawing classes from treasures? I'm sorry, but the idea of changing the game from starting with one die and a treasure to three dice and a treasure seems way too overpowered. I guess I might be able to go along with starting with a race, a die and the option of choosing a treasure or a class. Any classes that aren't picked up are thrown into the treasure bag.

[matias.korman]

Well, if we add the classes into the bag we have the same problem,

After a few combats a player can only use 2 weapons (or a 2-handed)+ armor. Instead, if they come in the bag a player may have a race and a class, while another has had bad luck and owns 4 weapons. More weapons gives more choice, but you cannot use many weapons at once

[griffinppatterson]

How is that any different from munchkin? I know it's a problem, but at least these people earn their extra die instead of having it handed to them on a silver platter :P

[matias.korman]

Well, if I understood correctly this is thought as an expansion. That is, players should be able to defeat easy creatures on their own, and larger ones by teaming. 

Now add an expansion that gives them a race and a class (with probably advantages) and they will become stronger...maybe up to the point that they can beat the creatures from the base game without teaming. Munchkin had classes/races from the very beggining...and was "balanced" to that purpose.  

[griffinppatterson]

I understand that it's an expansion and not necessary for the base game, however if people can easily take down weak monsters and need to team up to take down bigger monsters without the expansion, adding the expansion would make the game dead easy. it goes from being a 2v2 dice or a 2v3 dice to a 2v5 dice. I know the races and the classes are only 33% positive, but giving people that advantage is going to make things really easy.

As for munchkin, I know that classes and races are part of the base game, but you don't go through the deck at the beginning of the game and pick out which race and class you want. You have to hope to draw them. My first few playthroughs of munchkin got me way too many classes and no weapons, but I still loved it. If you add classes to the treasure bag, there is a chance that someone will keep drawing weapons and no classes or vice versa, but without them in there, you're pretty much guaranteeing that they'll draw too many weapons. At least this way, they have the excitement of drawing a different usable die instead of just hoping for a slightly better weapon.

I just don't see the real downside of having people need to come across classes. Races should be given out at the beginning. You don't find a race. That's completely right. But giving two dice to each player at the beginning seems mega OP.

[Sam Coates]

There could be new monsters whose reward is a class die.  That way the monsters could be scaled in difficulty to reflect the added benefit.

[kc2dpt]

> There could be new monsters whose reward is a class die. 

That is VERY interesting. From a flavor perspective, you are defeating a monster and not just gaining generic experience but rather gaining SPECIFIC experience. I like that.

[seb.borchert]

I´m with griffin, drawing class dice from treasure bag, also make them tradable! So at the moment you can also draw five weapons without an armor, so your going to trade for it... why this should be handled an other way for classes? And it doesn´t impact the monster strength so much, I think...

[seb.borchert]

So back to topic... I would rather change your first Level die to a race die... so the race have to be a good exchange of it! And I would give the race by random, either by drawing from the green bag at the beginning or ba an extra dice with the races on it (May be with halfling and orc as additional races). if two players got the same race, rolloff or make a deal...

 

This would make races also tradable in my opinion... Am I right? 

[griffinppatterson]

I'm with Seb on most aspects. Putting classes in with treasures would make them tradeable. If a person gets two classes out of the bag. They can equip whichever one they think will be most suitable and the other one can idle. This way, if they are chock full of classes with no weapons, they can trade with someone who is chock full of weapons with no classes (a person trading his gear to be taught the skills of a master)

As for races. I completely agree that the first die could be a race die. This would go along well with my die idea: Feral Rage (Maybe Orc die?). It's a die that only has 344556 (or 445566). All dice with races should have wholly beneficial rolls. Maybe 12345(ability) or something like that. However, I don't think races should be tradeable as this doesn't make sense from a non-game standpoint. It is completely unjustifiable... That doesn't mean that two races can't be in the same game. Have two of each race die to be drawn (oh yeah, I think race dice should be drawn randomly in the beginning from a bag). Maybe have a monster who's victory upon defeat or spell ability is to make you or allow you to change race (god damned magic...) Maybe throw a shit class in there as well (like chicken) that has extremely low rolls but absolutely boss man ability on it. Also, I think there should be more than 5 classes. This would greatly benefit replayability.

I should preface that these would all be expansions. Otherwise, this would pretty heavily beef up the production cost of the base game.

[mrjhaugen]

I too, like the idea of your first level dice being a race dice.  The only problem is making them flavorful, interesting, and readily apparent when a person rolls; I'm a bit concerned that this is too big of a challenge for right now (good thing it's an expansion problem). Would the race dice look more like the monster dice, with a symbol with a number or symbol in the center?
Are we risking "symbol explosion"? A situation where we are interpreting the dice more than playing with the dice?

[griffinppatterson]

I would hope that the dice make it visually clear what the race is. How that is done is a question for the designers. I'm too shit at art to figure it out. Creativity could make it fun though. I don't see how they would get mixed up with monsters if they are different colors. and what is symbol explosion?

[seb.borchert]

If we replace the first level die with the race die, it have to contain almost the same strength in combat as the lvl die. So the numbers stay almost same, just add two special abilities, and we have to try to use already existing symbols... this prevent symbol explosion ;-)

[Devaliant]

I would like to try a game with every player pulling a race, then having to stick with it the entire game.

This would force trading and selective classes, as races and classes inevitably will have synergy effects.

I take it classes will be only one of each aswell, so you won´t have two, or five, knights? Otherwise you´ll have people cooking up the "best build" and you´ll have to manufacture 4-5 of each class die.

Dev

[Sam Coates]

Originally I was thinking it would be fun if you could only have one class, but you could have more than one of that die.  For example, if you managed to find/trade you could have TWO knight dice but not a knight and a mage.

 

Really, it does mean that you would need at least two of each, and I decided it would be more fun to include more spells and monsters instead.

 

Set races will be nice, and I agree that classes will inspire more trading.

[Devaliant]

I like that we agree a lot ;)

An idea occured: how about being able to also reset your class progression in order to pull a new class die? This way, if you get an artifact that doesn´t fit well with your class you´re able to bite the sour apple and remake yourself?

Dev

[seb.borchert]

Nice idea, but at the moment we have no class progression within the meaning of class experience...

[griffinppatterson]

I really like the idea of being able to get multiple class dice so long as they are of a single class. This alone would help trading. Additionally, class only weapons or weapon limited classes (i.e. mage cannot use 2 handed weapons) would be good for trading. I don't see a lot of trading but that's not because of hoarding for an artifact, it's just out of laziness and lack of benefit.

[seb.borchert]

That´s why I like the idea of Sam with to additive class dice of the same... would work without class experience... so simple & easy! 

[griffinppatterson]

What if class leveling didn't use experience at all? What if, instead of leveling your hero, you could pick another class from the dice bag. The upside of it is that you are now a level two class (opening up the use of the level 2 dice face) and you have a second class level that you could throw. The downside is that you can only be one class. If you start with a barbarian class and draw a knight class, you are level two but you can't be both a barbarian and a knight. This would up trading and it would still be relatively balanced because you are sacrificing a treasure and an experience point for a class die.

For Example:

You just beat a level 2 Ghoul as a level 2 [race] with five experience. You can either A) pick a treasure and go up to level 3 (with six experience) or B) pick another class die from the class bag and stay at level 2 (with five experience). You are currently a level 1 Knight and you decide to go with option B. You, unfortunately draw a mage class. You are know a level 2 Knight or Level 2 Mage, but you may only roll one of these classes in your next combat. It seems, however that player 2 is a level one Mage with a shiny artifact that he can't really use since he can't use two handed weapons. You can offer to trade him your Mage die for his weapon. In this case, you would remain a level 1 Knight, making him a level 2 Mage. Or, he could also trade you his mage die for your knight die (allowing him to use the two handed weapon). This would make you a level 2 Mage and him a Level 1 Knight.

Additionally, with this system, the dice could technically be different. Some mage dice may have a variety of spells on them. The only solid is that each dice has faces that contain levels. What is on each level might be different. It might be possible to have a die that is moderately weak, but has a different color images, meaning that by having that class die, you get +1 Fame.

The only thing this leaves to want is the question of what to do with Races.

[seb.borchert]

Hmhmhm, that would lead to the situation: Everybody would pick the second class die on first won battle, or am I wrong?

 

why we doesn´t throw the class dice into the treasure bag? A sipmple rule: No more class dice than shown on expierence tracker and you can just equip class dice from one sort...

 

So you can get up to three class dice, which would make it possible to introduce more class dice in the future and even "epic" class dice within the artifact bag...

[griffinppatterson]

I was thinking that the fact that you have to give up a treasure for the class die would mitigate that. You're a level 1 newb with two treasures and you manage to take down the big bad monster to get you a treasure. You could choose to take the experience point and the treasure or you could cast them all aside and say "you know what? I have all the treasures I need... I'm going to draw a class die instead" You could have pulled out another 1 handed weapon to be fully decked out, but instead you grabbed a class that doesnt fit yours. In this case, it's a pretty negative trade off. I just know that sometimes, I think that another treasure will only lead me a little closer to trading in for an artifact and I will likely never use the item. With this, I have another choice.

you can't choose a class die instead of a potion, you must take the 1 use die. If you dont have a key for an artifact, you may choose a class die instead of the normal treasure. It is unlikely that a single player will be able to take down a treasure weilding monster at the first battle. You can, however say to the person helping "We'll pick a class upon victory and if it's the same class as one either of us owns, that player can take it. Otherwise, we roll for it"

[seb.borchert]

Ok, got it, just on won treasure. But this would made experience tradeable -> won treasure + 1xp = 1 class die (which would be tradeable).

 

And this option would lead to end game situation "can´t get more expierence, i´ll take a class die instead..." or? 

 

Should we discuss this topic in the class thread? ;-)

[griffinppatterson]

No!

...okay... fine...