Price tag bowl rules

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Tripleskull
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Price tag bowl rules

Post by Tripleskull »

I have made this rule set for a one day event Im hosting in january in Copenhagen.

The aim is to make skill picking somewhat less monotone. I would like to see some unusual skills and skill combos. On the other hand I don't want to mess up balance to much. I normally consider specially WE and UD overpowered so I have tried to weaken them a bit. I have also given some help to lower tier teams. However some help has been given to team with passing and mutation access in the rules, so the tiers are a bit unusual.

A big flaw to me is a situation where the balance is totally upside down or a situation where a few team are very clearly better than any of the rest.

So can you find the Overpowered team(teams)? Are some teams unplayable - I have kind of given up on halflings?

Du you have ideas for simple changes to the rules that would make them better somehow? I generally prefer changes to the skill tags or the tiers.

How do you like the rule set and how do you like the idea behind?
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SillySod
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Re: Price tag bowl rules

Post by SillySod »

Had a quick browse....

Asterisks (*) - I wouldn't bother with this system. Some models will bypass it because they have the complimenting skill innately so you are mostly just ruling out unusual combos. e.g. I don't think that it should cost 140k to get a claw/MB chaos warrior but only 40k to put claw onto the minotaur. You might have to increase the cost of certain skills to compensate for removing the asterisks but mostly I think you are fine just removing them. Another good example is sure feet. Is there some sort of devastating sure feet combo? Nope, so there isn't much reason to discourage people from using the skill.

Prices - Block, Dodge and Guard could all be 50k. People will still buy them at 50k but at least they will have to think twice.
- Wrestle should be bumped up to 40k to retain parity with block.
- Strip Ball should be at least 40k.
- Tackle should be 30k (to compensate for loss of asterisk)
- Mighty Blow should cost 40k (to compensate for loss of asterisk but also to bring it in line with claw, which is a worse skill)
- Leader should cost more than 20k. 30k would still be a bit of a steal.
- Kick is also a steal. Make it cost 30k and suddenly people will need to make an actual choice rather than having it as an autoinclude.

Humans - feel like a tier 2 team. Just saying :)

Halflings - you are hammering these guys by cutting access to their standard array of inducements. I think there are three things you could do to make them more attractive: 1) allow inducements 2) let halflings to buy multiple chefs 3) make it possible to purchase stat increases. Really expensive stat increases would probably be out of reach for most teams but halflings love that kind of thing. Maybe +Av:30k, +Ma:40k, +Ag:80k, +St:100k?

The tiers, skill costs and skill money all seem to be relatively well balanced. I think you hit some good ratios there.

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Update: the Hartlepool family Glynn now has a virgin bath.

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Tripleskull
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Re: Price tag bowl rules

Post by Tripleskull »

SillySod wrote:Had a quick browse....

Asterisks (*) - I wouldn't bother with this system. Some models will bypass it because they have the complimenting skill innately so you are mostly just ruling out unusual combos. e.g. I don't think that it should cost 140k to get a claw/MB chaos warrior but only 40k to put claw onto the minotaur. You might have to increase the cost of certain skills to compensate for removing the asterisks but mostly I think you are fine just removing them. Another good example is sure feet. Is there some sort of devastating sure feet combo? Nope, so there isn't much reason to discourage people from using the skill.

Prices - Block, Dodge and Guard could all be 50k. People will still buy them at 50k but at least they will have to think twice.
- Wrestle should be bumped up to 40k to retain parity with block.
- Strip Ball should be at least 40k.
- Tackle should be 30k (to compensate for loss of asterisk)
- Mighty Blow should cost 40k (to compensate for loss of asterisk but also to bring it in line with claw, which is a worse skill)
- Leader should cost more than 20k. 30k would still be a bit of a steal.
- Kick is also a steal. Make it cost 30k and suddenly people will need to make an actual choice rather than having it as an autoinclude.

Humans - feel like a tier 2 team. Just saying :)

Halflings - you are hammering these guys by cutting access to their standard array of inducements. I think there are three things you could do to make them more attractive: 1) allow inducements 2) let halflings to buy multiple chefs 3) make it possible to purchase stat increases. Really expensive stat increases would probably be out of reach for most teams but halflings love that kind of thing. Maybe +Av:30k, +Ma:40k, +Ag:80k, +St:100k?

The tiers, skill costs and skill money all seem to be relatively well balanced. I think you hit some good ratios there.
You have some valid points but I find that a quick browse is not enough. There are many interdependent and complicated mechanics to consider if you go down this road. However I appreciate your comments and hope I can trigger you to give it a more thorough look at some point. :)

Asterisks first. I really find that this system or en equivalent is absolutely necessary if you want to allow stacking. Especially in this way with multiple doubles etc. It allows me to price some skills cheap but make combos expensive. Sure feet is not a problem in itself, but a side step, sure feet, (leap) WE catcher is, if the price is 30-40k. And making the skills more expensive is just going to keep people from taking them at all. Same kind of reason makes NOS unreasonably expensive because it combines to well with Dump off etc. Claw/MB is the kind of combo I don't care for. On the minotaur its fine by me, but if you want to go down that road its gonna cost. like 200k for a MB wolf for example.

I have thought of bumping the top skills to 50k as you suggest. I think Il do that in the next tournament if I find there are still to many block, dodge and guard players around.

About the value of skills. I find that the values of skills are very interdependent. Strip ball is worth a lot less when sure hands is cheap. Same logic applies to kick and KoR. I agree kick looks like a steal, but I still don't find its an obvious choice for many races - you have lots of other viable choices. Strip ball could cost 40k, but I really want it to be cheaper than block and I don't want to allow WDs to get strip ball and another good skill at a low cost. So again I need the asterisks.

Passing skills are cheap to bring them into play and a little bit to hurt undead - not least of them leader.

Sure hands, Tackle, KoR and mighty blow are cheap to hurt WEs. The question is if they will utilize to much from the oppositions lack of guard?

I had the Humans in tier 2, but they still seemed weak and I would like to see them being competitive. I'm thinking they are not put over the top by the extra 40k?

I like the idea of a stats fix to halflings. But Il be considering that for future tournament as well because I need to think over the balance of that regarding other teams. And I need to finalize the rules very shortly and I would prefer not to make special rules for halflings.

As I said you have valid points about various skills etc, but the real question is. Can you make a team that abuses the rules? I have been making lots of rosters and I find just about all races reasonably playable and none of them clearly over powered. (I would consider an expected win% of more than 55% to be clearly over powered in case you are wondering)

The other question is am I going to meet the goal of getting greater variety of skills. This rules could give rise to some skills being auto picked on all or most teams to the extend that it gets boring in a new way. Is there such skills? I think sure hand and leader are such skills and I might dislike that to some extend, but that's kind of by design and I think it serves a purpose of hurting WEs and UD. I am however wondering if I really like this. :-? How many races would you pick kick or tackle or strip ball on and would it be problematic in some way? Are there other problems?

I hope I don't sound like I'm not listening. I am capable of movement as long as the pace is slow. :)

Last but not least Im sorry for the giant post... :o

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SillySod
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Re: Price tag bowl rules

Post by SillySod »

Tripleskull wrote:You have some valid points but I find that a quick browse is not enough. There are many interdependent and complicated mechanics to consider if you go down this road. However I appreciate your comments and hope I can trigger you to give it a more thorough look at some point. :)
Figure of speech :)

I don't type particularly quickly and tend to mull things over as I go along so you can rest assured I gave it some time. This sort of tournament is popular (not prevalent) in the UK so I've played in at least seven events that use this kind of costing system plus I played a ton of fumbbl when TS was important in blackbox. Thus I'm relatively familiar with alot of the intricacies and potential break points.

(on the flip side I am an out of practice has been ^^)

Asterisks are an interesting topic. I'll try address this sometime later in the week because combo costings are complex and therefore a tricky thing to debate.

If I were to try and break your current system I would probably start with humans. You have generally under-valued some of the more traditional skills (relative to the weird/crap ones) and humans are in a good place to abuse that. Humans are also getting a stack of bonus skills which is what raised a red flag in the first place. So...

Standard 110k Human Roster:
Ogre - 140
4 Blitzers - 360k
Thrower - 70k
Catcher - 70k
6 Linemen - 300k
2 Re-Rolls - 100k (personal preference)
Apothecary - 50k
10k spare

Skills:
Leader - 20k (super super super ridiculously cheap, although it costs skill points I guess)
4 x Guard - 160k (guard is very reasonably priced and four will put you at least one ahead of any other team in the tournament)
1 x Tackle - 20k (on a blitzer, guard sits on three blitzers and the ogre)
1 x Kick - 20k
2 x Wrestle - 60k (redundancy vs blodge, possibly worth turning one of these into SF on the ogre)

That feels like a very well kitted out team. Compare it to, for example, dwarfs who get maybe 3 x guard and a block runner? I'd definitely feel confident with that team given that a) the top tier teams can't get many skills and b) the lower tier teams are mostly shafted by the restriction on star players (notably underworld and halflings). Humans are already kitted out to deal with most styles and the format pretty much guarantees that they aren't going to get surprised. That's my main problem with the format as it stands actually - the asterisk system completely kills a bunch of interesting options and the "standard" skills aren't expensive enough to really justify diversification. It all feels a bit too "safe" so you end up with lowest common denominator teams (humans with guardspam + cheap tech) performing very well.

Sorry if that feels a bit aggressive. I have some rather particular opinions :P

I get the impression that you want to shake things up and in my experience you will have more fun accidentally discovering broken things than if you create a conservative system that encourages more traditional skill choices. White Isle Star Bowl II was completely and utterly broken but, iirc, most people loved the crazy novelty even if they didn't necessarily want to play the same format again (the ruleset had been solved by the end of the tournament, but not the start).

Interesting point about strip ball and sure hands. I mostly play teams that don't care about sure hands so didn't think about it too much. Cheap strip ball plus cheap sure hands is definitely a good way to go.

If you are concerned about costing stat increases then try them out on wood elves, halflings and slaan. Wardancers, stunties and slaan are the most abusive pieces that you can attach +Str or +Ag to and gutter runners, catchers and treemen make the best use of +Ma. I guess vampires might be worth a glance too because of the skill stacking.

It may also be worth taking a closer look at two heads. IMO you will get some more interesting teams if you keep it cheap but two heads is probably undercosted as it stands, relative to other mutations.

Other team builds that I looked at were underworld and vampires. Underworld make great use of the cheaper mutations and utility skills but shy away from being a powerhouse because they can't take skitter. Vampires feel solid but not outstanding. Much like most of tier 2 they are well pitched but kind of sad standing next to tier 3 humans. I'd be pretty comfortable playing the following:

4 x Vampires (block, dodge, dodge, pro) - 440k (140k)
10 x Thralls (wrestle, frenzy, kick) - 400k (100k)
4 Re-Rolls - 280k (20k spent from skill money)

Stacking blodge on the vampires might not be a bad way to go either. Ditching wrestle and frenzy gives you 60k to play around with chucking dodge and sure hands onto the block vampire. Maybe slap on tackle or frenzy for a mean ass vampire backed by some pro vamps and a kicker.

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Victim of the Colonel's car boot smash. First person to use Glynn's bath.
Update: the Hartlepool family Glynn now has a virgin bath.

Barney is a clever dog.
Tripleskull
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Re: Price tag bowl rules

Post by Tripleskull »

Could you give me examples of similar rules? The only ones I know of is the monkey bowl rules and I find them a lot different since stacking is not allowed. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by popular (not prevalent)?

Am I correct in assuming that in fumbbl context all skills have always been priced the same? I tend to agree with you that I need to widen the gap in prices even more, but have this been done with success somewhere?

I don't find you aggressive. I like your take on it and I find your approach constructive and to the point. So I appreciate your advice and opinions. For example you have quickly moved away from making absolute comparisons between skills which is really a barrier in trying to make this work. :)

Specifically the human roster was exactly what I asked for. Namely the claim that some race is overpowered. I'm still not sure its over the top but I did have it flagged and I agree its a strong roster. You compare them to dwarfs which seems fair but dwarfs are tough to place. The block skills of dwarfs should put them at a big edge against some opponents but they seem a lot weaker against others. From the get go of this format people have been arguing it would put the block/dodge heavy teams far ahead so I think dwarfs should be able to manage with four guards or so. But maybe dwarfs actually need to go to tier 1? Compared to Norse or Undead I don't find the human roster as strong. But in the end I Think I'm going to move the humans to tier 2 to be on the safe side.

What would 50k block, dodge, Guard change? Should there be a 40k group then?

Should I put a cap on spamming? Maybe a bonus for not spamming? 20k for not having three of a kind/40k for not having two of a kind or something? Might be problematic because UD and WEs can utilize.

I would like to shake things up but I'm trying not to risk accidentally discovering broken things. I know its ambitious but I'm trying to walk the line not making another WISB II. :wink:

I might move extra arms to 10k and ad *. I would like to keep two heads cheap. I'm struggling with making the other mutations attractive so I welcome ideas.

What do you think of four dodge, pro vampires? Maybe one block, pro or blodge. But tourach would prefer dodge, pro so I'm thinking that's best?

About the *-system
The idea of cause is to make a simple system that puts the best prices at individual skills and combos. That is most likely not possible with a simple system without ruling out a bunch of combos so that cost I´m willing to pay.
I am currently thinking of making both * (times 1,5 if stacked) and ** (times 2 if stacked) but generally Im trying to avoid complicating things.

Il take a break now. :)

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