Some friends of mine asked me to GM a game in the near future. A couple of years ago I ran a short Call of Cthulhu campaign where everyone miraculously survived and retained their sanity until the second-to-last episode (when everyone died and New England was obliterated in a supernatural blizzard). This was a miracle because Call of Cthulhu is extremely deadly and I did not fudge dice rolls one bit, they were very lucky. Anyway, they suggested Call of Cthulhu again, but are open to other ideas.
Now, this reminded me of a campaign setting I made up for 3E Dungeons and Dragons, but never used. I had been considering reworking it with a modifed version of the 5th Edition Call of Cthulhu rules, but adding stuff like race-based abilities, additional hit points as you advance in level, and a simplified skill system (instead of percentile skills it will be 1 to 20).
All I have to do now is type out a page or two on how to create characters in my setting, with some background info on the various races (which I think I still have on my HDD somewhere). My problem here is balance.
I know I don’t have to worry about making the game perfectly balanced, since it’s not like I am building a new game system for public use, but I wanted to do some interesting things with the classic D&D races, powers that are kinda tricky to throw around at low-level characters. Here’s what I had in mind for the various races.
Humans, as usual, would be middle of the road-type characters. They have an interesting background in my game setting (they are not native to the world they live on) but I feel like I should give them some kind of bonus, in part because they are disliked by a lot of other beings. Maybe 10 or 20 bonus to the points they can spend on ‘hobby’ skills (skills not related to your character’s profession).
It’s going to be difficult to balance elves in my setting. They are quite physically weak and vulnerable to a certain common form of damage. See, I wanted to incorporate some of the older myths about fey creatures and give them a vulnerability to iron, but I put a twist on it - any metal burns elves if it has been hot any time in the last 1000 years, due to elves being temporally out of tune with the material world (this made gold more valuable, it can be worked cold so it can be worn by elves). I was going to balance these weaknesses by giving them the ability to regenerate Power points (what you use to cast spells in CoC) much faster than other races, the ability to regenerate from most wounds (but not burns), and giving them extra Fate points - I’ve decided to give characters a limited number of re-rolls they can use when things go really bad for them, so I can keep combat deadly without the characters dying too quick if the dice go against them. The reasoning behind giving them to elves would be that they have the inherent ability to see a few fractions of a second into the future, and this gives them the occasional ability to avoid a threat. I would only allow them to use the bonus re-rolls on actions the character made in response to circumstances they are aware of (while the normal Fate points that everyone gets can be used on any die roll). I have no idea if this is enough to make up for the extra damage and weakness yet.
Halflings are your typical halflings physically, though in CoC this means they will have a lot less hit points because of their low size. Halflings are extra-planar in my campaign setting, their race migrating as a whole from dimension to dimension. They have the natural ability to teleport short distances - less than 5 feet except for the most powerful and skilled. This takes a lot out of them, can’t be done very often, and if you are low level it can be very risky, but I haven’t yet decided how to implement the rules for it, or how often to allow them to do it. At higher levels I’m considering giving them the ability to communicate with beings on other planes.
Gnomes. Gnomes! Glorious gnomes! Ancestors of the dwarves (and all the goblinoid races), builders of vast underground cities, foes of dragons! Extinct.
Dwarves are not too different from your basic Tolkienesque gold-loving, ale-swilling midget with an attitude. Their background is a bit different - created as a servitor race by the gnomes thousands of years before to fight the dragons and the goblinoids, who were their first attempt at a servitor race. They are a bit more magically inclined than in D&D, like to combine elemental magic with technology (i.e. the fuelless steam engine, powered by bound fire and water elementals). I don’t want to handicap them too much as they are the most common race in my campaign setting, so players should want to play them. I think I’ll give them strength and constitution bonuses, and make them too dense to swim.
Orcs are a playable race, and pretty different from how they are portrayed in most games. They were created by elves many thousands of years ago when they were forced to leave the sea (by elf/shark hybrids created by the dragons in an attempt to conquer the oceans). The elves were still not very well adapted to terrestrial life and created elf/animal hybrids to serve them. Orcs are long-limbed humanoids that stand app. 7 feet tall. They are lean but muscular, their faces are like those of elves, but with bestial features (muzzle, oversized canines). They are covered in fur, which is usually similar to that of wild animals but sometimes has colors in it that are usually only seen in elven hair - silver, blue, green. Personality-wise, they are very honorable and place great value on physical skill, but not very violent. I decided to give them fairly weak special abilities, as the bonuses to size, strength, and agility I planned to give them would make them easy to play. Decided orcs have no spoken language of their own, and communicate among their own kind with a telepathy that only works when they are making eye contact. They can communicate basic concepts to mammals this way but the communication is strictly one-way.
Kobolds are tricky, because some of the ideas I had for them when I was planning this for D&D won’t work the same in the CoC rule system. Kobolds are gnome/dragon hybrids created by the dragons in the distant past during one of their wars with the gnomes, but the war ended before the first kobolds could enter battle and the dragons abandoned the project. Some kobolds managed to find their way to a large island far from civilization and were forgotten about until they were ‘discovered’ a couple of hundred years ago by dwarven sailors. The kobolds were still technically bronze-age but built giant cities and monuments of stone, and used magic more in everyday life than any other race. Kobolds by the time my campaign will be set are rapidly becoming more common on the mainland, as young kobolds set out to earn their fortune and learn things about the outside world to take back to their home island. They are friendly and liked by most races, except elves. The appearance of kobolds sets off the instinctual elven hatred of dragons, and even though any elf would realize that kobolds have little in common with dragons they have a hard time suppressing their unease in their presence. Kobolds will also have low hit points because of their small size, but I may give them a small amount of natural armor to represent their scaly hide. I originally planned giving all elves access to some low-level sorcery when I originally planned the setting, but that was in a game where spells were handed out on a day-to-day basis, while CoC has a point-based system that can be recharged, and I don’t want every kobold casting spells left and right.
Well, I don’t think I’m leaving any of them out…anyway, does anyone have any suggestions, I’ll be glad to have some input. You don’t need to know anything about Call of Cthulhu or D&D, but if anyone does know those rulesets some specific numbers could be handy too. I need to get myself motivated to do this.