baldrick0712
Topic Author
Posts: 672
Joined: Fri 28 May 2021, 12:29

Life Path Customisation

Mon 21 Jun 2021, 09:15

I think there is quite a bit of room for customisation of the Life Path character generation procedure in terms of House Rules as it can produce some fairly odd results. Here are my suggestions.

  • Number of years per term. Instead of rolling a d6, roll a d12 and apply the result as follows: 1-2 = 1 year, 3-5 = 2 years, 6-8 = 3 years, 9-10 = 4 years, 11 = 5 years, 12 = 6 years.
  • At War check: Instead of rolling a d8, roll a d6.

These two tweaks tend to cause Life Path to generate characters in their mid-20s to early 30s with 3 or 4 terms and decent stats, skills and specialties, whereas the unmodified Life Path procedure can result in very old characters quite frequently. The d12 for number of terms gives a bell curve skewed towards the lower end and tailing off and flattening out towards the high end as shown below.
d12-skewed-bell-curve.jpg
d12-skewed-bell-curve.jpg (18.31 KiB) Viewed 1087 times

Example: A very accomplished individual generated using my application and these tweaks who is still only 36 (see below). By the way - this output shows a bug in the app (misspelling of Stamina resulted in it being selected as a separate skill. I will fix this. It should be Stamina: C and Stamnina removed).

Tweaked-Life-Path-Output.JPG
Tweaked-Life-Path-Output.JPG (237.8 KiB) Viewed 1085 times
Last edited by baldrick0712 on Mon 21 Jun 2021, 17:42, edited 1 time in total.
 
leonpoi
Posts: 137
Joined: Fri 08 Jan 2021, 05:10

Re: Life Path Customisation

Mon 21 Jun 2021, 16:22

Yeah. I agree on both points. Old characters are common and ages can be skewed. Some kind of skewed bell curve would work done - which is what the d12 range does as you have suggested.

I’m also thinking some house rule that has a fixed number of terms before war breaks out would work. Say a set 4 with age being 30 with a modifier based on d6 - d6 (ie roll 2d6 and subtract the latter from the former to generate a range -5 to +5 from a base of 30). Maybe then don’t roll for attribute ranges either and have a set number of advances +4/5 ; what you’d end up with is a more constrained life path system but without the risk of old characters with degraded attributes
 
baldrick0712
Topic Author
Posts: 672
Joined: Fri 28 May 2021, 12:29

Re: Life Path Customisation

Mon 21 Jun 2021, 17:44

I suppose a simpler mechanic for a term length variant would be to roll 2d6 and pick the lower one but I don't know what sort of probability distribution that would give.
 
cheeplives
Posts: 107
Joined: Sat 28 Nov 2020, 09:39

Re: Life Path Customisation

Mon 21 Jun 2021, 19:44

I suppose a simpler mechanic for a term length variant would be to roll 2d6 and pick the lower one but I don't know what sort of probability distribution that would give.
https://anydice.com/program/c91


1: 30.556%
2: 25.000%
3: 19.444%
4: 13.889%
5: 8.3333%
6: 2.7778%

Mean: 2.53
Deviation: 1.40
 
paladin2019
Posts: 432
Joined: Mon 07 Dec 2020, 09:16

Re: Life Path Customisation

Mon 21 Jun 2021, 20:32

The problem with skewing the duration of a term is accelerated decrepitude. Younger characters are reducing attributes.

The better fix is just allowing one to declare the war starts at the end of this term as the "zeroth" step, negating a roll at the end of the term.
 
baldrick0712
Topic Author
Posts: 672
Joined: Fri 28 May 2021, 12:29

Re: Life Path Customisation

Tue 22 Jun 2021, 11:52

The problem with skewing the duration of a term is accelerated decrepitude. Younger characters are reducing attributes.

The better fix is just allowing one to declare the war starts at the end of this term as the "zeroth" step, negating a roll at the end of the term.
They might have more chances of aging effects over the same period in years but they also have more opportunities for promotion and gaining specialties. "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly Roy" (Bladerunner)

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