Sunday, March 26, 2017

ICONS as you go

System: ICONS

Had a weird idea yesterday. What if you created your pseudo-random ICONS character as you played the game? Like, the first time you needed to punch someone, you rolled to see what your Prowess and Strength were for the rest of the game?

Here's how I imagine it would work. Until the character is created, you can't swap specific powers for generic ones.
  1. Pick your origin. You could roll it, too, but this is still going to have lots of randomness and less chance to fix it.
  2. As you need an ability, such as Strength or Coordination, you roll for it using the levels chart. (When you get hit, you have to roll Strength and Willpower if they don't exist yet, because those determine your Stamina.)
  3. When you need a power, you roll for it. You don't roll the type of power; that's decided by the situation. "I'm about to be hit; I need something defensive" or "Can I change form?"
  4. Instead of the Number of Powers table, you have a Number of Powers target number. When you roll over that in rolling for the type of power, then you have no more powers. The Number of Powers target number starts at 14, and drops by three every time you roll for a power. Your origin modifies the number, not the number of powers you have, so Birthright adds 3 to the target number. So the first power has a TN of 14, then 11, then 8, then 5, and then 2. So you're almost guaranteed two powers, but have to be lucky to get six.
  5. You get 2 Specialties  by choice, but you can trade a lower Target Number for 2 specialties.
  6. Qualities are created as-needed or at the end of character creation.
  7. You get to trade one power for a more generic power.
  8. You can trade a power for an extra when you roll the power.
How does that look?

No comments:

Post a Comment