Manifest: Tiers

Originally, Tier was a kind of “level” mechanic. It evolved into a counterbalance to Bond, so that you could either have a controlled, stable, and crafty Manifestation, or a high-Tier rampaging monster, uncontrolled and high-damaging. It was a nod to the basic trope of “strong or smart.”

That’s been simplified with the single-number stat mechanic we have now, so what use is Tier? Well, “level” wasn’t the only way all the monster-collector games ranked their different mons. A lot of them also had “evolutions.”

Time to bring that back, I think.

Pokémon had, at best, 3 stages per mon. A lot had fewer, but no one had more.¹ Digimon has anywhere from 5 to 7, depending on how you count them, so I think having 5 “tiers” of Manifestations works well.

So what does Tier do? Why have a higher Tier than 1? At the moment, Ability Rolls are influenced entirely by stats; if a Manifestation is Tier 1 or Tier 5 doesn’t make a systematic difference.

We should change that.

We already have LP as a Tier-related stat: every Tier-up gives 2 more LP to the Manifestation, and Manifesting higher-tier Manifestations takes longer; what other places could we work Tier into the math?

The idea of Tier raising the limit on dice is not a bad one, but it is limited at lower Tiers. If I go with the idea of shifting POWER or CONTROL back and forth with extra dice, a Tier 1 Manifestation’s ability can be dictated with 2 dice. 1 to roll, and the other to move the +1 if it’s not what the Agent wants.

At Tier 2, to be able to dictate an ability takes 4 dice, which is much more prohibitive, and from Tier 3 onward we’re fine, but I’m still uncertain about limiting a Manifestation’s abilities to only 1 die at Tier 1.

The problem here is one of logarithms. Currently, if Tier raises from 1 to 2, that’s a doubling of effectiveness. If I use Tier as a flat bonus or as a limit, the differences between the Tiers will either be insignificant, or the difference between Tier 1 and 5 will be absurd.

What if we divided Tier in two? Now abilities get a flat bonus of 0 for Tier 1, 1 for Tiers 2 and 3, and 2 for 4 and 5. That’s much more manageable and doesn’t overshadow the value of individual dice. That said, it is more complex than a simple number.

One of the big changes suggested by my play-testers was to have POWER and CONTROL give bonuses rather than carry the entire ability. Tier could play into that, with an attack doing Tier + POWER damage…but that could cause scaling problems. Remember that each invested die is a chance at +1 POWER or CONTROL, not a certainty. Investing 4 dice gets you, with average stats and average rolling, a +2 to both POWER and CONTROL. That doesn’t compare well to a flat Tier bonus. Especially if my goal is for each +1 to matter, a flat bonus would make a Tier 5 ability unnecessarily powerful even before investing dice.

But Tier could still be involved in other ways. Consider the absolute most basic melee attack: Deal 1 damage to 1 target at range 1. That’s three possible variables, and we have three possible replacements in POWER, CONTROL, and Tier.

We could, therefore, have an ability like:

PUNCH
Deal POWER damage to Tier targets at range CONTROL

Or:

WAIL
Deal CONTROL damage to POWER targets at range Tier

Or even:

SMASH
Deal Tier damage to CONTROL targets at range POWER

Each of these abilities has a single linear growth point through the Manifestation’s Tier. Compare a Tier 1 Manifestation with a Tier 5: Their PUNCHes will deal a lot of damage at close rage, or less damage at longer range, depending on the emotional stat, but the Tier 5 will be able to hit more targets. Their WAILs will deal a lot of damage to a few targets, or little damage to many, but the higher Tiered Manifestations will be able to reach further away. The SMASHing will hit a lot of targets close by or one far away, but the higher the Tier, the more damage.

I like this dynamic: it makes for some interesting choices when it comes to Ability design. Consider too that this is ignoring multiple effect abilities. Consider this little option:

RAGING CHARGE
Move POWER spaces, then deal CONTROL Damage to 1 target in range 1, Push Tier

This is a damaging ability: You might move far and deal little damage, or move only a bit and deal more damage, but the higher Tier you are, the further you push the target. Compare that with this:

RAGING CHARGE
Move POWER spaces, then deal Tier Damage to 1 target in range 1, Push CONTROL

With Tier impacting the amount of damage done, players can use dice to influence how far they’re moving and pushing. That makes this a pushing ability more than a damage ability.

With Tier as a third variable, the abilities of each Manifestation can be made balanced with each other, while giving higher Tier Manifestations clear benefits and improvements, so long as Tier is never directly connected to damage. I might have to make multiple sets of abilities for my next playtest and see which ones work best.

Okay, but if we stop there, Tier only affects LP, Manifesting time, and one variable in their only ability. A Tier 5 Manifestation also needs more complexity than a Tier 1 Manifestation, especially if we’re expecting swarms of Tier 1s versus a small number of Tier 5s.

Next time, I want to take a quick look at what “leveling up” means in the MANIFEST RPG context.