04-23-2008, 11:43 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
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It's worth noting that magic is not the source for all supernatural abilities in Banestorm; the presence of Mystics (with Pact-based abilities) is canonical. That allows for the possibility of other power sources too, I suppose, though such should be decidedly rare. |
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04-23-2008, 11:59 AM | #12 | ||
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Brescia, Italy
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
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Mages also have a lot of ways to immobilize a martial artist or otherwise make him unable to get into close combat.
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04-23-2008, 12:19 PM | #13 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
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Even if he was, both Pressure Points and Pressure Secrets have no time to use and no FP cost, but both are cinematic chi skills restricted to TBAM that are directly related to combat, and kick ass I might add. Chi skills aside, Being able to Rapid Strike three or four times in a turn with the kinds of penalties normal characters normally face on two Rapid Strikes is just a basic, but extremely powerful, example. Martial Arts opened up a LOT of options for cinematic martial artists to kick ass. Quote:
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04-23-2008, 12:45 PM | #14 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
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04-23-2008, 01:27 PM | #16 | ||||
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
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I can't see the no mana holding much sway either. If there are mages, they aren't going to face too many areas with no mana. Sending a party with mages into a territory with no mana would pretty much be a campaign killer. I can see being in a room or corridor with no mana (or more frequently low mana). I've done Aspected Mana a bit also (helps deal with One College mages, mages who concentrate on fire spells, earth magic, etc.). What it amounts to is "What do you want to be good at?" Fighting? Endurance? Flashy, save-the-day moments? Functioning anywhere? Quote:
Invisibility Art (IA) isn't at all impressive (especially when compared to wizards use of Invisible spell). Invisibility Art will only be useful for that first second, than you'd better get out of site. This is the problem I have with many of the martial arts capabilities. They are so limited and require checks every second. Lizard Climb for instance is DX/Hard and has pre-requisites TBaM and Acrobatics and Climbing at 14+. Then you still have to make a roll once per second of climbing. Insult is added to injury because if you fall, you only get one chance to stop your fall. Scaling a sheer 100 foot wall without equipment really isn't likely to happen, even for an cinematic ninja. Adding neko-de makes it far more likely, but then it's a bit less cinematic. Quote:
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04-23-2008, 01:34 PM | #17 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
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04-23-2008, 01:49 PM | #18 |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
@griffin: If you're going to cock your campaign so that a wizard can always do his stuff and a martial artist can rarely do his, then of course the wizard will seem unduly powerful. Frankly, making calls like "few fights in a day" (which downplays the abilities of martial artists) alongside ones like "not many areas with no mana" (which downplays the limitations on wizards) is constructing a situation that inherently favors wizards. Letting wizards prepare their most potent defensive spells (Invisibility, Reverse Missiles, etc.) ahead of time but not letting martial artists use their preemptive-strike abilities to kill wizards before this happens (Invisibility Art and Lizard Walk only need a few seconds to get a ninja behind a wizard for a fatal backstab to the brain) is similarly lopsided.
The problem here is identical to that in the "wizards vs. ultra-tech" thread we had recently: you're just chucking everyone into a crucible and using frontal give-and-take-damage potential as the sole yardstick of effectiveness. You're not looking at subtlety, situational factors, or intelligent applications of abilities by the player. As for the price of mages . . . let me clarify that I don't think it's Magery and spells that are cheap. In point of fact, since it takes five levels in a spell to see a cost or time reduction, magical power effectively comes in 50-point chunks (+5 to Magery), which appears fair given that spells have time and energy requirements, and rely on an energy field to work. What I think is cheap is the bottomless pool of FP that many GMs allow in the form of Powerstones. You'll note that (1) there's no Powerstone spell in the Basic Set, and (2) DF limits wizards to one power item that can't recharge on an adventure. That's my way of balancing wizards. In my current game -- which has lots of powers -- there have been many situations where PC wizards have had to fight 8-10 battles in a few hours (in enemy strongholds, on raids, etc.) with no rests in between. There are no Powerstones in my campaign. The upshot is that wizards can make themselves very, very handy once or twice, or kinda-sorta useful lots of times, but not dominant all the time. Whereas the guys with Weapon Master and Extra Attack, and things like Heroic Archer, can just keep cranking it out. And yes, I do hit the party with no-mana areas, cosmic Neutralize effects that instantly take down spells, and the like; those who march into enemy territory, as PCs do, have to face the land mines and enemies with the home-field advantage.
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04-23-2008, 04:22 PM | #19 | ||||
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
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I once had an adventure where it was mostly a low mana zone along with an no mana area. My players were not happy, and that included the ones with non-mages (who were used to magic healing be available). It cut almost half the party (mages) to having very little utility. It wasn't fun for the players and I don't find that acceptable. As for having few fights in a day, that has more to do with mechanically running combat under GURPS and the time it takes to play them out more than any structure I give to a campaign. It's the reason GURPS Action! is at the top of my wish list. I'm currently working on an demo game Assault on the Lair of the Red Dragon that will be mainly a hack and slash event dungeon crawl event. The PCs will out class many of the enemies encountered and I plan on using options which will drop the NPC enemies when they hit HP 0. I'm designing pre-gen characters. While I have no problem generating any number of other character types - mages, swordsman, thieves, archers, etc. - the cinematic martial artists are coming up well above the point budget of 250 points. It's pretty trivial building a killer mage with those points and they have quite a few options. Building an effective ninja is proving much more difficult. Fitting such a character among the others in this fantasy special ops team is especially difficult. They have less options than other characters. In order to be effective the ninja really needs very high scores on a few skills. Quote:
The aspected areas will greatly limit certain mages as will the low-mana area. The conditional no mana area is a corridor which can have the mana turned off or on via a pair of linked toggle switches. They'll need to fight their way through orcs and reptilemen (I'm assuming there's nothing inherently mana dependent for either of these species). There will be traps to spring, locks to pick, and NPCs to kill off silently. There will be vampires that need to be taken out by stakes to the heart, fire, or decapitation. Weres which need to be killed with silver weapons. The ninja character in order needs to sink lots of points in a few areas. I'd like balance so he has Karate and Judo. Trained by a Master is needed. Weapon Master might be useful, but the points start to add up. Using the templates for a Martial Artist, I get a rather unimpressive ninja at 250 points when compared to the other characters, especially the mages. Quote:
The demo will be using Banestorm as the setting (although this isn't entirely necessary, but it made choices for languages and such easier). Quote:
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James (aka griffin) Stuff I'd like to see in Pyramid Griffin's Claw - fantasy Special Ops team Last edited by griffin; 04-23-2008 at 04:26 PM. Reason: add link to Red Dragon demo game thread |
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04-23-2008, 04:45 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Cinematic Martial Artist too expensive?
This has been a battle of balance that has raged on for many an hour in my gaming group, why are wizards and sorcerors (we play D&D3.5, mostly) so powerful compared to fighters, monks, or rogues. And the debate has always come down to the circumstances of the fight. Wizards (in GURPS, most characters actually) can be built to have good capabilities against any type of threat, but not necessarily every type of threat. In D&D3.5, the issue is always "Does the Wizard have extended defensive spells up, how far away is the fighter, and do I have spell X, Y, or Z, and who won initiative?" Under the ideal conditions, or semi-ideal, the fighter usually is thought to have wound up a pile of ash or dust before even reaching the wizard (in some cases, even taking an action). If the wizard doesn't have a situation that plays into his advantages, then the battle usually ends in one round with the fighter killing the wizard in one hit. I have hated this arms race mentality among my fellow players, because it has too much of a video-gamesque taste to it. Why don't the bland, flavorless numbers, support a balance of Wizard vs. Fighter where there will mathematically be always a 50% chance of either achieving victory on a flat, featureless landscape? Once you start looking at, and including variables of story and setting, then the balance becomes quite apparent.
The wizard, targeted by a ninja clan for death, is walking down the crowded streets of a market city. He's doing his best to keep an eye out for danger. He does his best, but having spent a ton of his points on IQ and Magery and a book full of spells, he's not doing a very good job noticing whats out of place. He kind of wishes that he's brought along the battle-scarred veteran who's seen the world and could have noticed that fellow with the yellow cap and foreign features didn't belong. The battle-scarred veteran might have noticed this man was coming too close, purposefully. Now the mage feels a sudden pang of pain in his back, nothing fatal, but the burning sensation of the deadly poison entering his veins makes him wish he'd spent some points on healing poison and instead of being a combat machine. I played in a game where I often wondered "Why am I playing a rogue?" because the DM would never allow me to use any stealth skills and the fighters always kicked down the doors and started fights. All those points in hide, move silently, and the sneaky attacks were all useless and I was just a fighter that did half the damage of the other fighters.
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