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Level Up System

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Mon, 07/07/2014 - 11:13
Toa Lewa
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I'm working on a dungeon crawler board game (not an RPG). One player is a dwarf navigating a maze, and the other player spawns monsters from his or her hand to try and kill the dwarf. In the game, the dwarf can gain experience and loot by defeating enemies. As the game progresses, the dwarf can also add armor and other weapons to be better in battle.

I'm wanting to create a level up system for the creature player as well, but I'm stuck. Currently, the creature player has a spawn point limit and each creature costs a certain amount of spawn points. I would like to increase the spawn point limit as the game progresses, to make it more challenging for the dwarf player. My first idea was to have the amount of spawn points equal to the value of the dwarf's armor and attack value. However, I don't like this because the creature player's strength is passively determined by the other player. I'm trying to think of some system that allows the creature player actively strengthen his spawn limit; however, I want it to be loosely tied to the dwarf, to make sure that the dwarf doesn't get too much of an advantage.

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Mon, 07/07/2014 - 15:55
#1
X3M
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just an idea

Well, you could apply some sort of an average of the dwarfs that count towards the monsters.
But how about giving the weaker dwarfs an extra advantage against stronger monsters? Thus defeating one results in not just getting some XP, the difference in strength compared to the dwarfs gives extra XP.

Let's say that the dwarfs have a level of 5, 7 and 9.
The monsters spawn with level 7.
The level 9 dwarf can defeat the monster with ease and gets 7 XP, although, this dwarf needs more XP for levelling up.
The level 7 dwarf gets 7 XP and this is just perfect for levelling up.
The level 5 dwarf gets 7 XP, this is already more then enough to level up. But he also gets a bonus of 7-5 = 2 XP. Thus getting a total of 9 XP.

Just an idea.

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Mon, 07/07/2014 - 21:49
#2
DifferentName
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Similar issue

I've had a similar issue recently, coming up with ways for two sides to get more powerful over the game. You could just have the villain get a little tougher every turn (Or every few turns, by getting exp each turn until it has enough to level up). Or maybe getting exp each time it summons something. Or it could get tougher as the dwarf kills things, like a balancing mechanic if the dwarf kills a large amount of creatures quickly. You can also look at whatever else you've got in the game, to see if you can fit leveling up with those.

Maybe the villain has a small number of cards in his deck, and levels up when the deck runs out, maybe adding more cards to the deck at this time. I considered something similar recently, like a hint of deck building added to the game. Something like this might add interesting strategy to the game if the villain has some options with their cards that might lead to more or less leveling.

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Tue, 07/08/2014 - 04:38
#3
Skritchett
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Joined: 07/06/2014
Level up cards

You could add level up cards to your monster deck that are tied in some way to your hero character (Dwarf) for example the card may state "if he hero has armour X then all monsters gain 1 level or some other ability eg. fire breathing that gives them an advantage.
These level up cards could be played to a separate area to the monster cards with only the top card in play or you may want to have more than one in play at once. Or you could just use then as simple level up cards and use the pile of cards as the level up count
The level up cards could refer to a current monster in play all monsters in play or a certain type of monster the system would be pretty flexible.
Hope that helps
Skrit

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Tue, 07/08/2014 - 05:36
#4
PenteVPM
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Spawn-points generating monsters

This approach doesn't fulfill all of your design goals but could be part of the solution: maybe the monster-controlling player could spawn monsters, that themselves somehow generate spawn points or experience points to the player on an on-going basis. These monsters could be weak otherwise and give significant XP to the dwarf, making neutralizing them top priority for the dwarf player. This would add a layer of strategy also: would the monster player spawn many of these monsters to enable more monsters in the future, at the same time risking significant XP gain by the dwarf player? Or how many stronger monsters should he spawn to protect these vulnerable "support monsters"?

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Tue, 07/08/2014 - 06:21
#5
Jarec
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I generally frown upon

I generally frown upon systems that balance enemies to player's level. It can feel really frustrating to the player when there's no advantage to gain more power. Though this can be overlooked if there's a solid end goal in sight (as opposed of just aimless exploration) for the players to slog through the enemies.

Picking up where PenteVPM left it; the enemy player need to spawn "quests" to gain more power, and tries to make them, naturally, as hard as possible for the dwarf with his limited resources.
For example if the enemy player only has a bunch of shitty goblins (is there even any randomization in your spawnings?), he needs to make the most of them, and decides put them in a "graveyard quest" that'll reanimate any killed living enemies as zombies to be fought again.

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Tue, 07/08/2014 - 20:35
#6
Zag24
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Magic gets easier

What about that the concept that the summoner gets better at casting his spell, so he can cast them more cheaply. You track how many of each type of creature he has summoned, and at certain thresholds, that creature gets cheaper to summon.

This allows for an interesting bit of strategy. If, as summoner, I focus purely on summoning one type of creature, then I get REALLY good at it. However, the hero now can anticipate what I will summon so he can gear up on whatever that creature's weakness is. I make a lot of fire creatures, he bulks up on water spells. Etc. On the other hand, if I spread around my summoning, then he won't know what to expect and I can end-game him with whatever he is not good at fighting. Of course, I'm not as good at summoning those as a specialist would be, so it's a good bit of decision tension for both players.

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Tue, 07/08/2014 - 22:33
#7
Toa Lewa
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Combining Ideas

You guys have had many great ideas! To clarify on what I'm looking for, I'm trying to make it where the bad guy player can increase the deadliness of his or her monsters through strategic decisions. I don't want the monsters to get harder automatically. So, gaining a certain amount of XP each turn is not exactly what I'm looking for.

I really like the deck building idea, the idea where more monsters generate more spawn points, and the idea where specializing in specific monsters makes it easier to spawn them. I'm not sure if I'll be able to combine these ideas, but I'll try. Would you guys give me some suggestions in this area?

Let me give you some more information about what I was initially thinking for the game. The game contains a shuffled monster deck. Each turn, the monster player can draw some cards from this deck. Each monster card has a spawn point cost, attack value, defense value, HP value, damage value, and a special ability when played. In addition to monster cards, there are also upgrade cards that can be used to strengthen monsters (e.g. armor, weapons, level ups). Each turn, the player can play a certain amount of cards with a total spawn point cost equal to the spawn point limit. The player may choose to spawn the monsters on the board (blocking passages until the dwarf battles them) or play the creature's special ability and discard the card. Monsters on the board do not move and only fight when the dwarf attacks them. To directly attack the dwarf, the monster player usually has to play the creature's special ability.

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Wed, 07/09/2014 - 04:30
#8
Skritchett
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A couple of questions

How do you generate your spawn points value
Are the cards played to a fixed game board or just played to zones on a table (ala magic the gathering)

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Fri, 07/11/2014 - 04:54
#9
dnlmackay
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Joined: 07/10/2014
Toa Lewa wrote:You guys have

Toa Lewa wrote:
You guys have had many great ideas! To clarify on what I'm looking for, I'm trying to make it where the bad guy player can increase the deadliness of his or her monsters through strategic decisions. I don't want the monsters to get harder automatically. So, gaining a certain amount of XP each turn is not exactly what I'm looking for.

I really like the deck building idea, the idea where more monsters generate more spawn points, and the idea where specializing in specific monsters makes it easier to spawn them. I'm not sure if I'll be able to combine these ideas, but I'll try. Would you guys give me some suggestions in this area?

Let me give you some more information about what I was initially thinking for the game. The game contains a shuffled monster deck. Each turn, the monster player can draw some cards from this deck. Each monster card has a spawn point cost, attack value, defense value, HP value, damage value, and a special ability when played. In addition to monster cards, there are also upgrade cards that can be used to strengthen monsters (e.g. armor, weapons, level ups). Each turn, the player can play a certain amount of cards with a total spawn point cost equal to the spawn point limit. The player may choose to spawn the monsters on the board (blocking passages until the dwarf battles them) or play the creature's special ability and discard the card. Monsters on the board do not move and only fight when the dwarf attacks them. To directly attack the dwarf, the monster player usually has to play the creature's special ability.

RE: Generation of spawn points as above, you could consider something along the lines of - for each X worth of points the dwarf has defeated, the summoner gains that many spawn points per turn. Or if that would ramp the difficulty too quickly X-2 spawn points.

Obviously making monsters worth different points, with the dwarf gaining these to spend on items / abilities / extra rolls would be the easiest way to balance it for the dwarf, so long as the points match what is required on the spawn side.

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Fri, 07/11/2014 - 15:47
#10
Toa Lewa
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Rage and Fear - A Double Edged Sword

Quote:
I generally frown upon systems that balance enemies to player's level. It can feel really frustrating to the player when there's no advantage to gain more power.

I have been thinking about what you have said, and I agree. I think systems that try to balance players can be frustrating. However, I do think they can have advantages as well. As such, I have been working on creating a balancing system that players can alter based on their strategic choices. I call it the Rage/Fear system.

In the system, each monster species (I'll use goblins as an example) has a Rage/Fear track. The track starts out with 10 rage spaces with each space increasing in power. After the 10 rage spaces, there are 10 fear spaces that increase in power. As a dwarf continues to kill goblins, the monster player will move the goblin's Rage/Fear token up the Rage/Fear track. Initially, as the dwarf kills goblins, the goblins want vengeance and begin to get enraged. For each level of enragement, the goblin spawn cost decreases (making the species more affordable). So initially, as the dwarf kills more members of the goblins, it can be a disadvantage to the dwarf player. However, after a certain amount of kills, the goblins will begin to get fearful of the dwarf (since they have been getting slaughtered). As the fear increases, the goblin spawn cost increases.

This system will offer many strategic choices for a player to consider. The dwarf player will have to consider how many members of a species it should attack, because attacking a species can make more of them pop up in the short run. However, specializing in attacking a certain species will eventually make that species weaker. The monster player will have to consider how many of a certain species it spawns, and determine how much it wants to risk weakening a specific species. If the monster player keeps spawning a fully enraged species, maybe the monster player should consider upgrading them with armor to protect them from getting more expensive.

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