Funny RPG Trait?

[ThisAdamGuy]

I'm playing around with some of the races in my litrpg WIP omg lgbt bbq. Each race has a unique bonus and penalty. One of those races are Caprids (basically, satyrs) and I thought it'd be fun if their bonus and penalty was the same thing: whenever they drink alcohol, they have a 50/50 chance of either permanently raising one of their stats (chosen randomly) by one, or instantly becoming "Caprid Drunk" (working name) where their brain is rendered unconscious but their body remains active, acting on its base instincts until the effect wears off. As you can probably guess, this usually ends in disaster, jail time, and maybe a few funny stories.

What do think? Would this work as an RPG-ish thing?

 

[Deleted member 206441]

Why is that a bonus?

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

Why is that a bonus?

they have a chance of permanently raising one of their stats

 

[Deleted member 206441]

Is stats important to the story?

Because if the penalty is not permanent, then the bonus should not be.

You can always make the penalties permanent too.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

Is stats important to the story?

Well, it's a litrpg, so...

You can always make the penalties permanent too.

You want them to be permanently drunk? Did you read my first post? That would more or less make them a zombie for the rest of their lives. This is supposed to be a little, small stakes gamble they can choose to do that'll either give them a small reward or a temporary consequence. Making it permanent would be like saying "Flip a coin! If it's heads you get to eat a single M&M, and if it's tails you have to shoot yourself in the head!"

 

[Anonjohn20]

Each race has a unique bonus and penalty.

penalties sound like a cool concept.

whenever they drink alcohol, they have a 50/50 chance of either permanently raising one of their stats (chosen randomly) by one, or instantly becoming "Caprid Drunk" (working name) where their brain is rendered unconscious but their body remains active, acting on its base instincts until the effect wears off.

You are a very sadistic author.

What do think? Would this work as an RPG-ish thing?

The bonus/penalty shouldn't rely on RNG. It should be more like getting a bonus that has a catch as opposed to a chance that you'll ruin your life.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

The bonus/penalty shouldn't rely on RNG.

Why not? 90% of what goes on in an RPG revolves around RNG.

 

[Deleted member 206441]

Idk, Getting perm stat increase seems op as hell, since the penalty can be mitigated with a bit of rope or a chain.

And there is no context to how important a stat point is. Or how long the penalty lasts.

Usually dnd cap the stats at 20.
Char average is 11 to 12
There are 6 stats types in dnd
So get drunk 48 to 60 times your character capped in almost all stats

That's why I asked, how important? Why is that good? How good?

But it's your story, so you do you.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

So get drunk 48 to 60 times your character capped in almost all stats

You're assuming that the odds will play out exactly according to the 50/50 chance. You can flip a coin 100 times, but the chances of it landing on heads and tails exactly fifty times each is practically zero.

And my stats don't follow DND rules. They don't get as crazy as some other litrpgs, but they're able to go way higher than twenty. So in the grand scheme, one point isn't going to make much of a difference. The idea is to entice them to keep going, adding point after point to their stats, until their luck runs out. Maybe they only get one point. Maybe they manage to get ten, but they're all in stats that don't benefit their class. Or maybe they take one drink and immediately go on a drunken rampage that ends with their friends having to break them out of jail once they sober up. There's no way to predict it, and that's why it's an RPG mechanic and not a business transaction.

 

[Deleted member 206441]

You're assuming

And my stats don't follow DND rules

I asked first.

Why is that a bonus?

Is stats important to the story?

But
You first answer was

Well, it's a litrpg, so...

Which offers zero info. Instead of:

So in the grand scheme, one point isn't going to make much of a difference.

so.

I dont care any more.

Like I said, you do you.

 

[Jerynboe]

Ngl this would logically result in crazy Caprid key parties where every caprid has a bunch of cages containing light beer in their house for stat grinding. One guy is sober and lets everyone out in the morning. Permanent buffs are THAT GOOD.

Idk how many stats your system has so I’ll assume 10. For easy math.
I will also assume none of them have intrinsic drawbacks to having them high.
Finally, I will assume every “class” has at least one stat they actively want and 3 more that they can meaningfully benefit from, with the rest being mediocre to negligible.

With a 50/50 chance for each drink (which is what your description implied from my reading) to either buff you or put you onto a bender, that’s about a 10% chance to buff one of your important stats every time, and unless there is a cooldown you can just keep drinking until the boozehound debuff kicks in. That’s an average one 1 point to a random stat every 2 days of downtime, even assuming a 24 hour cooldown. That’s a total of +182 stat points (on average) over the course of a single year if someone drank their daily multivitamin like a good goat boy. Some would be unlucky, but unless the average person has stat totals in the thousands that is HUGE over the course of a lifetime.

At minimum, I’d expect Caprids to have the weirdest builds, since they’d have the weirdly contoured stat lines to allow them to have multi-attribute dependent builds no one else would touch. The wizard who pivots to being a mage-knight because his evening drinks bestowed him with a disproportionately high strength he didn’t want to waste. The rogue who picked up a little bit of cross class spellcasting because he’s now smart enough to learn baby’s first illusion spell in a single night of study. That kind of thing.

Maybe don’t have them be permanent buffs, or have the permanent buff be one of several possible outcomes? Maybe instead they always get a random, generally more impactful buff which lasts 24 hours, except when it’s instead the +1 permabuff. You still have a 50% chance of being caprid drunk, and a lucky guy could still get some serious value out of permanent buffs, but most wouldn’t be as likely to have a dedicated childproofed room to keep their own drunk ass in every night. Only get drunk the day before you expect to need every edge you can get.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I once played in a modified Boot Hill game at a convention. My character was the "Drunken Doctor"
It's been a few years, but if I recall the progression, for normal characters you have:

1. Sober (no special modifiers)
2. Tipsy (Slight penalty to skills, especially ones requiring motor control, bonus to resist fear effects and external control)
3. Drunk (Sizeable penalty to all skills, immune to fear effects, same bonus against outside control as with Tipsy)
4. Wasted (Skills nearly unusable, stats penalized, still immune to fear, but no resistance to outside control)
5. Comatose (unconscious with a slight chance of death from alcohol poisoning)

This doctor did not have two states and replaced one, so his conditions were "DTs" (same as Tipsy except a penalty to resist fear), Tipsy (No penalties at all and a bonus against fear), Drunk (standard modifiers as above), and Comatose (if he passed the drunk stage, he automatically went unconscious). In other words, he was at his best after a drink or two - but likely to lose consciousness after four....
I could see something like that working for these guys - they are hard to deal with when sober, decent sorts when a little drunk, but don't let them drink too much...

 

[Anonjohn20]

90% of what goes on in an RPG revolves around RNG.

I'll have you know that there was 0 RNG on me clicking trees in Runescape, crouching everywhere to level sneak in Skyrim, etc. What you're describing sounds more like a LitGacha than a LitRPG.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

I'll have you know that there was 0 RNG on me clicking trees in Runescape, crouching everywhere to level sneak in Skyrim, etc. What you're describing sounds more like a LitGacha than a LitRPG.

You're aware that roleplaying games are usually played by rolling dice, right? A literal random number generator?

 

[LiteraryWho]

If an IRL RPG had the uncapped ability to permanently raise stats, players *would* find a way to exploit it, especially if the downside was as easy to mitigate as a time-locked room.

The chief readers of LitRPG's are players of IRL RPG's. They will notice the exploit, and they will wonder why all satyr's aren't ridiculously overstatted. There's a reason real games tend to be incredibly stingy with permanent stat boosts. Even a really generous one like FFVIII still made you jump through hoops to get crazy natural stats, and all that really did for you was free up some of the good magic for junctioning in other attributes/actually casting.

I'm not sure how much IRL RPG playing or game-dev experience you have, but like that guy said in the other post, unless the average (core) stat of a character is in the thousands (and possibly even then), a free permanent stat up is pretty op. Hell, I've literally spent hours cycling through menus to get boosts like that. Unless the story you're writing is, "I have unlimited stats, but occastionally grape a city to death/I have liver cancer", this is probably not a good idea.

I'm also not sure its particularly funny, except perhaps in the "huh" sense.

 

[Arkus86]

Pernament stat boost - or any reliable pernament boost - is a bad idea. All it would do is create a joke race full of people who are drunk all year round from the moment they are able to drink until they max out their stats (unless, as others said, a single point is meaningless in the grand scheme of things... by which point it's not an incentive either). Even the drawback, their society would quickly adapt around it to mitigate the negative impact.

In a story, I suppose you could insert it in the form of a comedic-relief character somewhere where they are not used to this race, perhaps even a full chapter where the MC is introduced to their culture inside their homeland, but that's about all the potential they have. It's a gimmick that is likely to get stale quickly with repeated use.

 

[Tempokai]

This could be abused. The reward is too much desirable for the apparent cost, and that cost could be mitigated for lesser cost than the reward, there's a lot of advantage to use it. Hell, you could make super rookies out of that abuse.

You didn't specify how much alcohol you've need to drink to activate that trait, smart ones could find the least amount alcohol needed to get that working. Logically, the debuff would last as long someone is drunk, the least drunk you are the faster it disappears. The faster it disappears, the more you could do that in a least amount of time.

Imagine this: rows and rows of low leveled schmucks ready to level up their base level stats. They're willingly chained, and specialized technician goes and gives out distilled alcohol. The best would be a vodka. They drink whatever amount that makes them drunk (50ml of 80% probably, given their youth and low level and ratio of mass to ethanol bla bla bla), and earn 1 stat or become mindless. If that youngling has that 1 stat, he drinks again, because you didn’t specify the cooldown of that trait, so they could drink again after achieving the stat bonus until they become mindless too. Because they can't do anything, mindless only can talk, so muffling them or having earphones is advised.

If every stat can be upgraded, it is beneficial for low levels, because being a super rookie means you could specialize faster due to having enough stats for whatever unique classes you want have. More stats you have as a low level, the more paths to go to you have. Hell, even if faith can be added as a point, it will make them better god channelers than the other races lmao.

So, if alcohol lasts for 6 hours in a youngling after getting mindless, give or take, you could have up to 0-24+++ stats getting upgraded each day. Make it last a year, and you have at least 365 stats that could be never removed. Even if they're non combatants, it makes them a lot stronger than other race peasants. The better is the populace, the better is the society they live in, and therefore it's advantageous to the ruler to make such mandatory level upping camps.

And if that 1 stat upping is really that meaningless, then why add it? The more disadvantages something has, lesser the action that makes that disadvantage activate will happen. Your satyrs will be sober as fuck, because being mindless is dumb. You now either now need to write a giant system framework just to make it coherent, or you just don't include it at all. Even as a gag, it will be tiresome after 3rd repetition of it.

 

[JayMark]

The consensus seems to be either nerf the permanent stat boost, make the negative consequence higher, or both.

I think the basic idea is solid, the math needs work.

Numbers can always be manipulated so that they work in favor of your narrative. You can play with the number slider while brainstorming to get a result that fits the story you want to tell. And the choice doesn't have to be binary, any action can have a multitude of probabilities.

I wouldn't use the word 'permanent' because it is highly limiting and lots of readers will hold you to literal permanence. Unless it's a character who speaks that way in explaining it.

What if the stat boost was ten percent or less chance? Then a forty percent probability of being regular smashed. Then a fifty percent probability of going mindlessly drunk? You can even add a miniscule chance of going into prolonged mindless if one become mindless drunk multiple times in a given time period. What if going mindless also came with a miniscule chance of a stat lowering as well.

You can tweak your system so it's not easy for your characters to abuse, unless of course you want them to abuse it.

My story notes are full of crap like this that I don't even share with the readers until it is relevant

 

[triflight]

Hello! Going to start off by echoing what a lot of people are saying here that the permanent stat buff seems too strong of a boon for a racial passive. People already go insane for permanent stat buffs in games IRL, I can't even imagine what type of society this would create where stats are real life.

I would instead suggest something more similar to the D&D wild magic table. As a Caprid drinks, they roll on a table with a wide variety of buffs with a small chance of rolling to become Caprid drunk. As they continue to drink, they can accumulate more buffs but the chance of becoming Caprid drunk increases.

I think this is a more fair racial passive compared to pretty much guaranteed permanent stats. Depending on the balance of other racial passives, the buffs that Caprids roll can be changed. For example, if other racial passives are generally weaker then maybe a caprid's drinking table would be a bunch of completely random and semi-useless effects like being better at woodcarving for a day, prettier eyelashes for a month, instant self cleaning, etc. If other racial passives are on the stronger end then buffs could become stronger as well. Maybe the traditional RPG buffs, increased damage, bonus health, etc or maybe buffs could be tied to each individual's class. Rogues could get better sneak or mages better mana regen. You could even bring back the permanent stat bonus if it's a rare option.

I think this will create more of the fun and zany antics that you were looking for. First, it pretty much guarantees that most caprids will be a couple drinks in at all times. After all, at 1 or 2 drinks the chance of becoming Caprid drunk is so low that it's pretty much free buffs! A more daring Caprid might go a couple more drinks in to get some more interesting buffs and there'll definitely be some that push the limit. Second, the option of random buffs means that characters that are specialized in something will get exposure outside of their specialty. Meaning, maybe the strong warrior Caprid got a 24 hour painting buff and he's outside doing portraits for free or maybe the Caprid blacksmith took up basket weaving for a month and found out that she actually likes it.

I would also workshop the Caprid drunkenness a little bit. One thing I've noticed is that readers typically despise characters losing mental agency so the instantly shutting down and acting on instincts might not be well received. I do see where you were going with this with the satyrs being worshippers of Dionysus but I feel the consequences of a bad night of Caprid drunkenness could be really really really bad. One simple change could be making so that your subconscious is in control or that Caprids lose some of their inhibitions. That way it's still *you* at the wheel, just a little different. That's pretty similar to normal drunkenness but it could just be more pronounced.

 

[laccoff_mawning]

Because if the penalty is not permanent, then the bonus should not be.

I second this.

The obvious solution would be to make the stat boost temporary, instead of having the drunk be permanent.

Or maybe if we want to be boring, just give them a stat boost as long as their drunk. The more drunk they are, the higher the stat boost.