Prestige positions

[Mestari]

Many people would like to see human blockers, kickers in every team, and who knows what.

I think many of these positions, for example human blockers, are positions that are something that a rookie cannot reach. There simply are no rookie human blockers. When someone is already a human blocker, it takes more than just 6SPP's to gain something more.
Having looked at the D&D rules yesterday, an idea came to my mind:

Why not introduce the term of Prestige Positions:

For each race, there are certain prestige positions.

The prestige position simply changes the player position, although he still takes up the slot of his original position (Dwarven blitzer becomes a prestige position player, he still takes up one blitzer slot).

For every prestige position, there are certain requirements that need to be met. For example, a human lineman needs ST4+Block or Block/Tackle/MB to become a human blocker.

Then:

version 1) There is no additional benefit from becoming a member of a prestige position. Except getting an official recognition of your players high abilities

version 2) There are some small benefits from becoming a member of a prestige position. It could be access to an additional skill category (human blockers receive ST skill access), or maybe even an additional skill or a skill roll, but I don't like the idea of giving them skills/skill rolls. Giving them a magic helmet might be another idea.
In this case the player price should be increased to reflect his new position (he still takes up the slot of his original position).

What do you think? Of the versions above, I'd prefer it so that some prestige positions give access to skill categories, some might give magic helmets, and only a very small, selected group of prestige positions give skills/skill rolls/traits/physical abilities.

IMO this is a much better idea than giving additional positions to the teams. Now there's an easy way of introducing halfling catchers, runners etc. without adding them to the team list.
Also it gives a bit more depth to the players and creates a bit of a role-playing feel.

Now we'll just have to start devising a list of prestige positions for each race and position...

Format:

Race Position
Upgrades into Prestige Position
Requirements
(Benefits + new cost)

Note that a position could have more than one prestige position to develop into: human linemen could become blockers or backfielders(devise a better term, please) who needs Tackle+Strip ball, for example.

[Malkefar]

That's an interesting concept, though i think skill access should be the only advantage. I think rewarding certain combo's with stat increases or skill rolls is unrealistic, and mostly likely hard to balance.
Here's my suggestion for a way to make it work:
A players position is determined by the skills he has access to. Once a player has 2 skills (bonus stats should count as well, ST and AG are obvious, don't know about MA or AV) in a category normally unavailable to his position he may change to a suitable position (blocker, kicker, etc.), and gain permanent access to that skill-category. No player may have access to more than two categories however. When gaining the new category he must decide whether to keep any of his currently allowed ones. This would also increase the cost of the player, depending on whether he chose to add or switch to the new category.
For example:
My lineman who already has +1 ST, get's a second skill-roll. This time he rolls a double 3, so i decide to give him mighty blow. Now that he has two strength related upgrades, I decide he should have permanent access to strength skill. Now i can either let him keep access to general skills, in which case he would become a blitzer, or let him loose it, making him a.... blocker?
This way you could actually train your own blitzers, catchers, kickers, etc. The biggest problem here is deciding which position your player is, a blocker wouldn't have access to skills like block and tackle which seems a little stupid. And what's a player who has access to strength and agility?

Anyway, just a thought. Might be a cool way to customize your team.

[Mestari]

After thinking about it for a while, giving skills or traits should definitely be a very rare thing to happen when becoming a player of a prestige position. And some of them could give nothing except the new position name.
I'll try to put up a list of p.positions tomorrow, if I have enough time.

[sean newboy]

How about a point of ff for every prestige player, with the +/- modifiers for every 10 and the difficulty of getting them i dont think it should be a problem.

[Thadrin]

I think a better way of doing this would be to say something along the lines of "if a LINEMAN reaches the point where he has recieved two skills of a type he would otherwise not have been able to take he may then take from that skill group as normal skills from then on."

ie two doubles rolls on a lineman, he takes two strength skills, he may then always take strength skills.

Not sure how this would affect balance...but the idea could be fun, and would have to balance off against things like traits in skill choice, so wouldn't be an enormously common event.

[Mestari]

"if a LINEMAN reaches the point where he has recieved two skills of a type he would otherwise not have been able to take he may then take from that skill group as normal skills from then on."

Could be, but IMO the main point of this is not to give the players something extra, like skill access, but to define situations where a player is allowed to be called with a more revered position name.

Although I admit that the '2-skills from category to get access to that category' is a simpler solution (although a very rare thing to occur), I prefer the fluff-effect that my suggestions brings.
For example that human lineman that has +1ST and block: wouldn't it be much nicer to be officially able to call him blocker.

The suggestion that for every player achieving a prestige position the team gets a point of FF is a good one also.

[Furelli]

If you increase the players worth by 20,000 this would give you a team rating increase. However all of this feels like something for nothing so how about:

If a player gains two advances from categories that he does not have normal skill access for then as his next star-player roll he may instead of rolling gain the prestige position.

Agility skills and Agility stat increase - Gives full access to Agility skill and the presitge position of Runner/Catcher

Strength skills and Strength stat increase - Gives full access to Strength skill and the prestige position of Blocker/Blitzer

Passing skills and Agility stat increase - Gives full access to Passing skill and the prestige position of Thrower

General skills - Gives full access to General skill and the prestige position of Lucky Git.

Furelli.

[Longshot]

I prefer to create position player profile.
Not that i dont like your idea but i think it is 'heavy' to do with.

[DaFrenchCoach]

I asked some times ago for a conversion of 2nd edition team rosters, because I think it should be a great idea, maybe better than looking for alternate races (but it will need a lot of testing: I'm not sure there will be so many changes in way of playing). Any feedback about it ?

[Trambi]

I'm sorry but if one of linemen has ST4 and Block I write blocker in the team roster and that's all.

With my ogre team I change the "position" of my players according to their backgrounds and their skill rolls. I even change ligthly their names sometime.

No need to make a rule for me. But you are free ...

[Mestari]

if one of linemen has ST4 and Block I write blocker in the team roster and that's all.

With my ogre team I change the "position" of my players according to their backgrounds and their skill rolls. I even change ligthly their names sometime.

No need to make a rule for me. But you are free ...

Originally I thought there'd be no rewards for reaching such a position, as he already has become quite a player. The skill access things and stuff came as an afterthought.

The main point was and still is to define a unified system for determining when a certain player has become sufficiently advanced to be called something else.
Now a human blitzer is the same everywhere. But a human blocker isn't. Determining the minimum requirements for being a human blocker would cause a situation where everywhere (where the rule is being used) every player that is called a human blocker has at least those skills and attribute increases.

An excellent example would be a dwarf Troll Slayer. When is he experienced enough to be called a Giant Slayer? a Dragon Slayer? A Daemon Slayer? With "official" requirements for those position names coaches would have "official" recognition of their players abilities.

[Trambi]

It could be a good optionnal rule.
If there is no benefits no need to make a rule cos coach are free to write human blocker in the team roster.
You can define requirements.
But what about something like that if you have 4 or more in Strength you can access to strength skills ? If you have 4 or more in Agility you can access to agility skills ?

[Mestari]

Now that we started using kicking rules also, kicker seems to me as a natural choice to be a prestige position player.

For example:
Human lineman -> human kicker
Needs: Kick
Gives: Kicking skill access, price = 70K


One problem with new teams has been that people have an idea of a great position which needs certain skills, but if the position would have them, it'd be grossly overpowered.
Prestige positions would give you the opportunity to define the limits of such position, but such players can be achieved only by developing one.

As soon as I'll get enough time, I sketch up a draft list of prestige positions and send it here...

[Furelli]

Once again we are running into the teritory of Summit for Nowt. Getting lucky on a roll and thus gaining extra skill access and team rating is too easy. What are we paying for these positions?

Furelli

[Trambi]

It could be a good optionnal rule.
(...)
But what about something like that if you have 4 or more in Strength you can access to strength skills ? If you have 4 or more in Agility you can access to agility skills ?

What do you thing of that :
- if you have 4 or more in strength you have an automatic access to strength skills.
- if you have 4 or more in agility you have automatic access to agility skills.