If this forum thingy is working correctly, attached should be a draft of the first 2 chapters of EABA v2, showing some of the new look and formatting. Not much new information here, but enough to get the ball rolling.

Edit 7/29/2011: Below is the updated version of the chapter. Some small formatting changes and some column changes on the Universal Chart.

I Judge it to be a very aussspicciouss ssstart.

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Looks good, certainly hints at things to come that look interesting.
On page 1.4 it talks about "you can count any full die as +2", as written that tends to imply you can do this with multiple dice, rather than just 1 - e.g. 4d+1 could be rolled as 3d+3, 2d+5, 1d+7 or 0d+9, however the example implies that you only do it for one die (as per EABA v1). I know you later take about taking 2's, which states that you can take all the dice as 2's.

Taking 2's looks intriguing, I'll have to try it out with my group. My first thought is that it will make high skill levels more powerful as after a certain level of skill you will (on average) do better by just taking 2's. This does take away from the nice non-linearity of the current dice system, which I like.

The kind of issue I could foresee is someone with a skill of 7d+2 and a large shield taking 2's on a parry which means they are impossible to hit (unless the attacker has skill of 10d+1 and takes 2's).

Not sure I see the point of keeping points in the universal chart for backwards compatibility. I am interested to know how character generation is going to work though!

page 2.3 has a spelling mistake (dependent)

page 2.5 combined endeavours: what do you do if the multiple people have different strengths? - I would take the lift capacity of each strength on the universal chart, add the lift capacities together and then convert back to an effective strength - but I can see some might regard that as overly complicated.

I notice you have reversed to direction on the size chart (big things = negative mod) so it matches the to hit mod for that size - I like this.

Overall the presentation looks good - nice and clean.

Hmm, I'm not sure an opposed roll would be allowed to do a take 2. Under d20's "take 10" you can't opt to take 10 under a combat situation, and I assume the same rationale applies here. It's just for routine, not opposed, non combat rolls.

Having a look and it looks clear so far

You have got the taking 2's / the max modofier as +2 + extra dice as mod /3 round down

I'm not sure about the size part of the universal chart going in the other direction. Mainly becuase when you start doing stuff! you are going to need the bigger numbers - and if you put the chart in it will be longer. Also intutivly I'm having issues with it...
Also when you have "values in you favour subract from your difficulty. Values against your favour add to the difficulty" it becomes easier to hit smaller targets.

One thing I'm not sure about is the new formula for calculating characteristic point costs. I mean, one thing you bragged about in EABA and Stuff! was that there was no need for a calculator or any advanced math. The old way of doing points costs seemed to work, I'm not sure I see the need for a new, complex, calculator demanding one. May one ask your reasoning here?

Also, if you need a formula like this to calculate basic characteristic costs I shudder to think what the calculations for determining superpowers costs might look like...

Judge Death wrote:


Indeed, however, this eldritch formula produces results suspiciously close to EABA v1 point values. I believe you may - if you are not what one might call an "early adopter" or otherwise cutting edge type - simply use the old scale, and be happy. After all, Mr. Porter has promised us backwards compatibility.

-Santtu

Sande wrote:


Yes, that makes it all the more bewildering that Greg would create an arcane equation to generate values so close to the original version's values. I'm sure he has a good reason, but I confess I can't grasp it.

The EABA v1 point system was based on that formula, or the formula is the representation of how it worked. One or the other. Anyway, the EABA v2 system is going to use a point system that should be a lot simpler and have less chance of spare points lying around when you are done.

Hmmm,I was hoping that v2 would deal with spare points by having a large list of low points cost options you could use to spend them on, like 1,2 and 3 point quirks, knacks, or whatever you want to call minor advantages.

One idea I had was to be able to buy a knack for something that added maybe +1 to something instead of a full die for maybe 1 point, with the option to later buy it up +2 and finally a full die later with XP.