Perihelion
Sponsor
Customization is generally considered A Good Thing in this community. Too much so, in fact, because many people just stop at the idea that it's A Good Thing and don't bother dealing with all of the complications and pitfalls that arise from character customization. I find that most of the time in RM games, stat distribution or whatever feels like an afterthought, something you added in because you could and you thought it would "add something" to the game. But if you don't balance it and don't set it up right, it can just be frustrating.
Do not give the player options to do things you cannot balance.
This means don't start all of your stats at 1 and give your player 90 points to distribute. A character with 91 strength and 1 everything else is going to play MUCH differently from a character with 31 strength, 31 HP, and 31 defense, and I guarantee you that your game is either really easy or only one of those builds actually works. The more variables you add, and the wider the range of possibilities, the harder it is to plan for all eventualities and design encounters so that characters with a wide range of abilities can succeed. Instead, have a small amount of variance (say, base stats that you can add a little to), and playtest both the most extreme and most general distributions to make sure they work.
When you set out to decide how much influence the player can have over his stats, ask yourself what the most extreme case possible should be by the end of a normal playthrough and scale everything based on that.
Do not force the player to make uninformed decisions.
As someone who enjoys making good character builds, I hate this more than anything. I was playing an RM game recently, and when I went to level up my character for the first time, I was given a ton of points to distribute to different stats and abilities. I had no idea what any of them did, and I didn't even know what abilities I had or would get, so I didn't know which stats to focus on. I pretty much had to pick them randomly and pray I wasn't going to be screwed over.
A good way to avoid this pitfall is to have players select abilities BEFORE distributing stats, and in the ability descriptions, describe the effect stats have on them. That way I know what my character can do and what it needs to succeed before I distribute my stat points.
Do not force the player to live with his mistakes.
Even skill descriptions and whatnot can fail to live up to the player's expectations, and what sounded like an awesome strategy might end up sucking in practice, or he may be unable to get past a part because of the way he built his party. The easiest way to avoid this is to add in an option to do all of your stats and abilities over again. This shouldn't be trivial to obtain, but it shouldn't be very hard either. For example, have semi-frequent merchants sell a respec item with a reasonably expensive cost that scales with level.
If your player ever finds himself in a position where his build makes the game too difficult or just not fun, I promise you he's almost definitely going to quit rather than start over. Don't let this happen!
Customization can add a lot to the game, but make sure it actually adds something before just tossing it in. Consider your reasons for adding it. Do you just think it's "cool," or does it fit thematically? If your character already has a personality and isn't designed as a player self-insert, does it really make sense for you to be able to tailor every aspect of his mechanics to your whim? Moreover, are you actually willing to put in the huge amount of work to balance it? Balancing a straight RPG is hard enough already. Also, is your customization novel and interesting? Moving stat points not only isn't that fun, it also causes anxiety in the players that they're doing it wrong and dumps a whole bunch of balance problems on you. If customization isn't a huge focus of your game, consider letting the player pick abilities or classes instead of distributing stat points. These feel much more like a fun toy than a number and are easier to balance besides.
I would much, much, much rather play a game that has NO customization at all than play a broken, unbalanced, unclear mess that lets me put my points wherever I want.
Do not give the player options to do things you cannot balance.
This means don't start all of your stats at 1 and give your player 90 points to distribute. A character with 91 strength and 1 everything else is going to play MUCH differently from a character with 31 strength, 31 HP, and 31 defense, and I guarantee you that your game is either really easy or only one of those builds actually works. The more variables you add, and the wider the range of possibilities, the harder it is to plan for all eventualities and design encounters so that characters with a wide range of abilities can succeed. Instead, have a small amount of variance (say, base stats that you can add a little to), and playtest both the most extreme and most general distributions to make sure they work.
When you set out to decide how much influence the player can have over his stats, ask yourself what the most extreme case possible should be by the end of a normal playthrough and scale everything based on that.
Do not force the player to make uninformed decisions.
As someone who enjoys making good character builds, I hate this more than anything. I was playing an RM game recently, and when I went to level up my character for the first time, I was given a ton of points to distribute to different stats and abilities. I had no idea what any of them did, and I didn't even know what abilities I had or would get, so I didn't know which stats to focus on. I pretty much had to pick them randomly and pray I wasn't going to be screwed over.
A good way to avoid this pitfall is to have players select abilities BEFORE distributing stats, and in the ability descriptions, describe the effect stats have on them. That way I know what my character can do and what it needs to succeed before I distribute my stat points.
Do not force the player to live with his mistakes.
Even skill descriptions and whatnot can fail to live up to the player's expectations, and what sounded like an awesome strategy might end up sucking in practice, or he may be unable to get past a part because of the way he built his party. The easiest way to avoid this is to add in an option to do all of your stats and abilities over again. This shouldn't be trivial to obtain, but it shouldn't be very hard either. For example, have semi-frequent merchants sell a respec item with a reasonably expensive cost that scales with level.
If your player ever finds himself in a position where his build makes the game too difficult or just not fun, I promise you he's almost definitely going to quit rather than start over. Don't let this happen!
Customization can add a lot to the game, but make sure it actually adds something before just tossing it in. Consider your reasons for adding it. Do you just think it's "cool," or does it fit thematically? If your character already has a personality and isn't designed as a player self-insert, does it really make sense for you to be able to tailor every aspect of his mechanics to your whim? Moreover, are you actually willing to put in the huge amount of work to balance it? Balancing a straight RPG is hard enough already. Also, is your customization novel and interesting? Moving stat points not only isn't that fun, it also causes anxiety in the players that they're doing it wrong and dumps a whole bunch of balance problems on you. If customization isn't a huge focus of your game, consider letting the player pick abilities or classes instead of distributing stat points. These feel much more like a fun toy than a number and are easier to balance besides.
I would much, much, much rather play a game that has NO customization at all than play a broken, unbalanced, unclear mess that lets me put my points wherever I want.
