Advantages of Great Strength

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

We came to that same conclusion way back in the day. Does it work? Yes. Is it a nightmare when *all* your players take ST inappropriate weapons? Yes.

It got to the point where I just threw up my arms and decried: "That's it, enough is enough, everyone takes the proper weapon for your ST in accordance with the chart; or, you can go back down there naked with a toy sling-shot - your choice!"

And that ended that rules variation exploration for us.

Really? Why were they choosing to do it frequently? How specifically was it a nightmare? (Were they confused and bad at math and so talking about it and mis-calculating it all the time?)

(Seems to me like it's not really an advantage to take an off-ST weapon except for people with great strength there are no weapons for, and the math is simple and the result just gets written on the sheet so it wouldn't be harder than someone having a fine weapon or any other DX/damage adjustment.)

[Nils_Lindeberg]

My experience is that people start to fiddle around with custom armors and custom weapons when they can exchange money for better performance or get more of an attribute at the expense of another they don't care about as much. This do lead to a lot of fiddling. Mostly in between sessions but still fiddly and not really TFTish.

The solution is of course to balance customization or make it so simple so that most people can't find optimization opportunities in it. So left are the guys that want to do it for looks and roleplay reasons. And they shouldn't be penalized too much for their choices. So the rules should be fairly simple, not exploitable or OP, lead to greater variety but be less than optimal so most players stay away from them. Error or the careful side so to speak.

And about the +5 ST or +3 ST, is a pure balancing thing. If there are rules to get more damage out of Great ST by wielding lighter weapons then this rule should be on par with them. If this is the only way of increasing base damage, then the price could be anything and some players would still go for it.

Realism is the least of my concerns since a very strong person historically speaking would just have had a bigger 1 handed weapon made.

[RobW]

Originally Posted by Kirk

NRBAH, but can't a person with two-weapons talent (at a minimum and maybe just in general without the talent, can't remember) use two weapons with a -4 to the second attack?

So, really, two 3d attacks each turn at a ST of 18? Wow...seems too powerful.

Good point -- Trying some 40 pt "two-weapon" builds (second attack is -4DX) gives me some faith that SJ's judgement for +3 ST to use a 2-handed weapon with one-hand (rather than +5) is not game-breaking.

ST17 DX13 IQ10, using a two-handed sword in each hand. Give him Sword Expertise and Two-Weapons. Expertise gives him +1 damage so he would get an initial 3d+0 attack at DX13 and a second one at DX9. This is definitely scary!

But so are other Weapon Experts. I think I would be more scared of an expert going the "normal" route: a ST13 DX17 IQ10 Sword expert with two bastard swords, each striking for 2d+2, first attack at DX17 and second at DX13. SUPER SCARY

So, looks to me like going for excess ST -- even just 3 extra -- might be cool and fun, but not broken.

[Kirk]

This thread has wandered a little bit so that I'm not sure where it was or is headed, so I guess my advice is, whatever the rule change, make sure that using an appropriate sized weapon is the most efficient.

If players can game something they will, and if they quickly discover that a ST 16 fighter armed with a rapier does more damage than with a great sword, they'll do it and the game experience will suffer.

There are limits to what a weapon can do, regardless of someone's strength. Conan inflicting blows with a wet noodle may not be substantially worse than my 80 year old mother.

Using off-strength weaponry is a pain, I would prefer that the rules themselves reward properly matched ones.

Most of the time battlefield or adventuring necessity require that you pick up your dead friend's shortsword when your bastard sword just broke and fell into a pit, or when you've escaped an orc hold and everyone is armed with a scimitar, regardless of strength. Then rules are necessary to facilitate what damage it does.

[Wayne]

I like the simplicity of +3 ST (or +5 ST) to wield one handed. Simple easy to remember.
I'm not so keen on adding extra damage for having extra ST (especially if it involves a table lookup).

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Changed to remove the ability to wear armor lightly at great strength. Largely a balance issue, backed up by comments from big guys in armor - "it's still a pain."

More important to te everyday character - the threshold for using a 2-handed weapon 1-handed has been changed from the unattainable 10 to 3 (which may be a bit low, but looking at the Weapon Table, maybe not).

In the old TFT the Advantages of Great Strength section created a ladder, with combat benefits at ST 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 28. This gave fighters a place to put attribute increases: the payoffs weren't always large but they were there.

In this new TFT increases above ST 19 are pretty much useless. This fits OK with the new TFT philosophy that, sans magic, characters max out at low attribute totals. But for any campaign which isn't using that paradigm, and wants to allow characters to rise to epic levels by experience alone, eliminating this upgrade path is a big issue.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

In the old TFT the Advantages of Great Strength section created a ladder, with combat benefits at ST 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 28. This gave fighters a place to put attribute increases: the payoffs weren't always large but they were there.

In this new TFT increases above ST 19 are pretty much useless. This fits OK with the new TFT philosophy that, sans magic, characters max out at low attribute totals. But for any campaign which isn't using that paradigm, and wants to allow characters to rise to epic levels by experience alone, eliminating this upgrade path is a big issue.

I think SJ is eliminating the MA benefits granted the old Advantage of Great Strength because Changed to remove the ability to wear armor lightly at great strength. Largely a balance issue, backed up by comments from big guys in armor - "it's still a pain."

Though I liked that MA Adjustment, my interpretation is real world sources said
it wasn't real. As far as AdjDX, if it doesn't revert, just house-rule it the old way. That's what I'll be doing for the 40pt attribute cap.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Really? Why were they choosing to do it frequently? How specifically was it a nightmare?

When you regularly have six players and *everyone* has essentially the equivalent of custom hand-weapon damage, as the GM, I would have to constantly refer to my copy (or ask them directly) how much damage their _______ did (versus the player to his left with the same weapon, versus the NPC Orc with the same weapon).

One the most elegant things about the TFT weapon damage rules-set is how it very quickly fades into the background and let's you play - without constantly confirming figures and stats - and having to go through the confirmation exercise repeatedly would break down the spell, and gave me extra headaches.

JK

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

When you regularly have six players and *everyone* has essentially the equivalent of custom hand-weapon damage, as the GM, I would have to constantly refer to my copy (or ask them directly) how much damage their _______ did (versus the player to his left with the same weapon, versus the NPC Orc with the same weapon).

One the most elegant things about the TFT weapon damage rules-set is how it very quickly fades into the background and let's you play - without constantly confirming figures and stats - and having to go through the confirmation exercise repeatedly would break down the spell, and gave me extra headaches.

Ok, thanks for elaborating, Jim. It just seems like an odd thing to be so common since it's generally not a great idea to use an off-ST weapon. Also It seems to me a lot of my PCs ended up having fine or magic or whatever weapons. (But also it's probably even harder for me to relate since I've been playing GURPS for decades (where everyone does different damage and has multiple attack methods etc.))

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

I would have to constantly refer to my copy (or ask them directly) how much damage their _______ did

I'm accustomed to having players roll their own attacks and damages. I think having the GM roll everything is quite unusual.