Quote:
Originally Posted by Kalzazz
As a DM I would probably cringe a bit seeing these characters, Kendra in particular would be sent back to the player with a 'you should raise IQ, drop the +1 Per and drop IQ skills by 1 or give me a very compelling reason why not'
Dun . . . well, skill 14 in his main weapon, judo with him being encumbered by his armor . . . well, uhm.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kalzazz
Also not sure where Kendra's cost of 5 for her Speed 6 comes from. I suspect buried somewhere in her race (I really dislike seeing races or other bundled things on character sheets, I much prefer seeing the atomic elements)
Wouldn't Kendra also have -1 Dex from her layered armor? Or is this something where such penalties won't happen?
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When I work on a campaign setting myself, I tinker with rules and templates and then quickly make a decision, as I'm sure most creators do, and you don't see the thought process behind why I made those choices. Part of the point of Psi Wars is to show you that thought process. Normally, I would have tinkered with these templates, said "Wow, these need work" and done the work. Now, you get to see me tinkering with the templates and you're saying "Wow, these need work."
Yes, yes they do. They offer very limited choices (or none at all: Most of the skills for the templates are simply a list of "Take these skills!" with no choice of specialization or focus) and they're not particularly optimized. They'll do, I suppose, as I show in the playtest coming Friday, but it could be much better. Space was written in a much older era of GURPS, long before DF and Action gave us more streamlined templates.
Iteration two will revisit templates.
As for the rest: Dun "only" has light encumbrance. Wrestling might arguably be better, but it wasn't an option. Karate was an even worse option for him, and I considered but discarded Pilot (it wasn't going to come up in the playtest). Frankly, I didn't give it much thought because his force sword and blaster are so much more important than how well he can grapple with someone, not that it makes that limited option much better. What really kills me is the lack of Weapon Master (Does "knightly weapons" apply to force swords? Why not an option for just a force sword?) and why no Fast-Draw? Do you know how long it takes to get a force sword up and running without fast-draw? You have to draw it, you have to then turn it on, and then it won't materialize until the end of your turn!
And as for the layering of armor... I'm not really sure how that's supposed to work in Ultra-Tech. Biosuits can explicitly be worn under other forms of armor, so I get the impression that it layers "for free," the same way clothes can. As for Kendra's template, it's the Felinoid template in Basic, so you can look at it yourself. It too has... problems. She doesn't have Night Vision (?) or Fur (??) and she has DR of 1 (???) which I'm always forgetting, because who would guess that a cat girl would have a DR of 1?
EDIT: And for clarity, I work ahead so I know that my posting schedule will keep up. I'm actually rounding up Iteration 3 this week, so I've already moved far past this version of Kendra. Thus, if I seem a little dazed as to why I made what choices I did at the time, that may be why.