Is the system flawed\broken?

[Charles X.]

I've no idea if this question has been asked before (probably), or whether its dumb\naive but I'm going to ask anyway.

   It seems to me like it's far too easy for characters to become super-advanced (particularly at one skill) really quickly. You fight a few games, you develop from someone with Weapon Skill Sword (I forget the exact terminology) 8 up to 12, you play a few more, you are up there with dragons and demons. Because it only costs one experience per increase.

   Is it just me or does that seem a bit flawed? If so, is there a fix? Possibly make the experience cost exponential, or maybe 2 points for the 2nd increase, and 5 points thereafter? I am basing this on the original Dungeoneer Blacksand Allansia rules, I don't think there have been any developments since those.

[sylas]

The advanced rules literally got a makeover in the new releases quite some time ago.

[Charles X.]

The original 3 books had pretty interesting adventures but they appeared circa 1990s (Dungeoneer in the eighties) so I'm not surprised they overhauled the rubbish rules. I lost interest in Advanced Fighting Fantasy after Graham Bottley produced an underwhelming edition about 10 years ago.

[sylas]

I think the problem with the Advanced rules (both versions) is that they went with the trend in all RPG books: include rules for absolutely everything. The beauty of FF is its simplistic approach that leaves a lot of situations open to your imagination. When those situations become fixed rules, there's little room left for creativity and it becomes just another typical RPG.
This is not really a bash on the Advanced system as there are some aspects of it that I like and the Graham Bottley rules do work to an extent. But I prefer the more basic rules provided by Steve Jackson in the original Fighting Fantasy rpg (with the Weretiger) and the Riddling Reaver. It gives a unique experience that while simple, has everything you need to run an adventure and encourages you to make your own rule sets for events unaccounted for. And that's all I wanted really.

[zxknight]

Funnily enough this is exactly why I've sought out a FF forum to see what other people think. A bunch of us started playing FF just for a laugh and have been working our way through the books. As we've gone on I've been reading through Dungeoneer to see which rules we fancy incorporating, and the Special Skill section just seems to super overpower the hero, as it's unlikely any hero will have a fighting skill of less than 12.

The only thing I could think of that would balance it out is the idea that you create scenarios where they frequently fight multiple weaker opponents, triggering the -1 SKILL modifier for each additional opponent. Otherwise the only enemies worth fighting for them will be 'boss' fights and all other fights will be too easy.

We're going to give it a go I think but I agree with Sylas that the simplicity of FF can work to its advantage as its simpler for the DM to simply say 'test of Skill for that idea' and leave it at that.

[sylas]

I usually go with: SKILL for dexterous and finesse actions; STAMINA for strength and endurance actions; LUCK for avoiding harm and chance opportunities. Other areas like Awareness, as the DM, I go with common sense in what I believe the players can see giving extra information to perceptive builds such as thieves and rangers. Same with Knowledge, giving extra details to studious builds such as wizards and priests. This covers more or less everything without having to write a book about it.

[zxknight]

Pretty much same here though if it's super dextrous I might make it two or three rolls, or if its pretty spectcular a mix of SKILL and LUCK tests. I don't mind the principle of Special Skills, but on first reading it just seems to completely overpower the heroes.

[sylas]

In the newer version your Skill only begins at 4 and your Stamina 8. These remain pretty low initially until you allocate more points into them over time. It's a better balance overall. The problem for both version of AFF comes when players start putting most of their earned points into Weapon Skills since fighting is the most common kind of event. Increasing your Weapon Skill happens too fast so you always end up overtaking the attack Skill of the majority of opponents. The imbalance is right there and becomes too obvious too quickly.

The better way forward might have been to keep Special Skills and Magic Spells as they are and completely do away with Weapon Skills. That way, players would be more inclined to gain more Gold to buy or earn better equipment that will increase their Attack Strength or reduce damage taken and not focus so much on relatively easily upgrading their Skill score. Special Skills/Magic, collected resources and heroic/villainous deeds define a character much better than one focused only on successfully hitting things all the time.

[slloyd14]

The Combat Companion has options for starting as a civilian with a max skill of 4 and a max stamina of 10. You can start right at the bottom.

[Lord Arioch]

I use "half-increments" for skills:

Instead of SKILL RANK {1, 2, 3, 4} I use {1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4}. E.g. the first use of a "1.5" skill is at 1, while the second use is at 2, and thereafter in alternation. A character sheet can have rows and columns of little boxes to track this without any confusion.

I've used this with Classic Traveller for some years with little difficulty.