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I don’t think there’s a single general take on complexity in RPGs that’s the correct take. There are lots of complex games that are awesome. There are lots of simpler games that are awesome. There are lots of games of both types that are lackluster.
What I think instead is that the most important part of any complexity discussion in RPGs is the question of whether you get to choose how much complexity you want in your own version of the game — versus whether a game is complex on a level that you can’t ignore even if you want to.
So Many Options
The CORE20 RPG, as you know if you’ve checked it out already, is a hefty game. The Playtest Player’s Guide is a heckin’ chonky boi, as the kids say. But even though there are plenty of complex options within those Player’s Guidepages, the freeform nature of character building in the game means that you only need to grab onto as much complexity as you want to. And that’s a big part of the philosophy behind CORE20.
The decision about what kinds of feats you want to take sets the baseline complexity for your character. Not just in the sense of what you want your character to do, but in how you want to do it. For example, being good in combat can be a solid baseline goal for any warrior-type character. But one warrior accomplishes that by focusing on the Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and Weapon Prowess feats, banking the best possible bonuses to attack and damage rolls to create a straightforward bruiser. Another character accomplishes that by taking Ruthless Attack, Deadly Critical, and Lunging Strike, creating a fighting style that relies on always seeking advantage on attack rolls, hoping to score critical hits at every opportunity, and using a minor action to target foes beyond their reach.
Both characters are equally effective in combat, but they’re effective in different ways. More importantly to the players creating them, one character requires a certain amount of focus in combat, always watching the battlefield for positioning options and thinking about whether a minor action is best used for seeking advantage or striking at a distance. The other character just gets to beat down whoever they want, over and over again.
The Range of Complexity
The CORE20 ruleset has a very specific focus on creating fun games that turn away from the traditional hack-and-slash nature of d20 fantasy. But because combat is in and of itself a pretty complicated part of the game (and because like many other players, I myself find fighting monsters a lot of fun), let’s look at some combat feats that do a pretty good job showing the scale of complexity available for a combat-focused character.
Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and Weapon Prowess
Mentioned above (and part of “Attack Feats” on page 268 of the Playtest Player’s Guide and “Damage Feats” on page 272), these are the baseline feats for weapon combat. Granting a bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls, they represent the most straightforward approach to fighting, letting you hit more often and more effectively each and every time. These feats are the simplest choice for combat feats because… well, they involve no choice. You select these feats, and they just work.
Sneak Attack and Ruthless Attack
Representing a slight increase in complexity, these two feats (part of “Damage Feats” on page 272) boost your damage output when you have advantage on your attack roll. Both feats are straightforward in their mechanics, but their increased complexity comes from how a character using them has to think a little bit tactically to gain their benefit. The choice you make when taking these feats is whether you prefer a larger damage bonus some of the time, as opposed to a character who trusts to Weapon Prowess to deal solid damage all of the time.
Rapid Attack and Rapid Shot
For most combat-focused characters, being able to attack multiple times with a standard action makes great sense. But taking either of these feats (part of “Multiple Attack Feats” on page 297) adds a degree of complexity by introducing a bane on attack rolls — a d4, a d6, or a d8 that you roll and subtract from your attack roll, depending on whether your weapon is light, one-handed, or two-handed. The bane represents the idea that by making multiple attacks, you sacrifice some of the accuracy that comes with a single focused attack in the same length of time. It introduces the complexity of deciding whether it’s better under certain circumstances to focus on just one attack with a better chance of hitting, as well as the complexity that making multiple attacks limits how far you can move on the same turn. (“Multiple Attacks” on page 296 talks about how all that works in CORE20.)
All that said, characters who fight with light melee weapons have an option to get rid of some of the complexity of multiple attacks by taking the Two-Weapon Attack feat. Doing so reduces the size of the bane die for your multiple attacks — or in the case of light weapons, eliminates the bane entirely. (Choosing an option that increases the complexity of your character, then being able to invest feat slots to decrease that complexity, is a thing that crops up a lot in CORE20.)
Potent Shot, Power Attack, and Raging Attack
These three options (all part of “Combat Style Feats” on page 304 of the Playtest Player’s Guide) represent the higher end of complexity for combat feats. Potent Shot and Power Attack both use the same model of imposing a d4 bane on your attack rolls in order to have your attacks deal favored damage — rolling the damage die twice and using the best roll. Raging Attack follows a similar model by granting you a d4 boon on attack rolls and favored damage on weapon attacks, but imposing a d4 bane on defense rolls — making you hit harder in combat at the expense of becoming easier to hit. The complexity in all three of these feats comes from needing to think round-to-round about whether their benefit is worth using, based on your sense of how easy your foes are to hit or how difficult a time they’ll have hitting you.
Starting Simple
The examples above demonstrate one of the baseline paradigms of CORE20. Just like you get to decide exactly who your character wants to be without any restrictions imposed by class mechanics, you — not the game — get to decide how mechanically complex you want your character to be. And unlike with class-based d20 games, starting with a simpler character concept when you’re playing your first CORE20 sessions doesn’t necessarily lock you into a simple concept forever. As you get more comfortable with the rules and options of CORE20, you get to decide if and how you want to increase the complexity of your character, to best fit the way you want to play the game.
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Questions about character building or anything else in CORE20? Email core20@insaneangel.com or join us on the CORE20 Discord server and ask away!
(Art by Dean Spencer)
