The Fantasy Trip

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by JLV

It wasn't me, but I do know that they've used the "resistance table" (opposed abilities as a percentage outcome likely to result) for decades with both Runequest and Call of Cthulhu. It wasn't until 7th edition that they got rid of the Resistance Table for CoC, and I think it's still in there with the latest version of RQ. And yes, that works very well for its intended purpose -- and allows a much wider variety of attribute levels to compete on a reasonably logical basis; but such a table would be a complete revamp of TFT's underlying mechanics, I think, so I'm not sure how popular that concept would be in SJG-land! ;-)

And boy-howdy, are you right about the lethality of TFT without some kind of readily available healing -- lots and LOTS of healing potions (a la Diablo/Diablo II), or a simple (and not tremendously effective) healing spell help a lot, but with the healing spell, you're really just robbing Peter to pay Paul -- it costs ST to cast the spell, and is effectively just shifting a ST point or two to another character. It's a viable tactic, but it suffers from quickly diminishing returns. Especially if you want your Wizard to do anything else! ;-) Of course you could always take another leaf from Diablo, etc., and add in "fatigue recovery potions" (as opposed to Mana Potions) that allow "fatigue" ST to be recovered more quickly...

I did have a fatigue ST healing potion (called Gatorade). And I made healing potions much cheaper.

Regarding super high attribute characters, I don’t think that any game system will be ideal at every power level. So I’m comfortable leaving TFT more or less as is and accepting that at some point, characters will become too powerful for the system to easily handle.

[larsdangly]

My take on the attribute score issue:

DX: The only dilemma here is that an adjusted DX greater than 15 does not have any purpose when you are making 3d rolls; if you consider you might have to make some 4d rolls then perhaps you'd say 20 is the highest adjusted DX score you might want. But higher raw values are valuable because you trade them for armor protection and use DX to offset penalties for range, sweeping blows, etc. I think you would continue to benefit from increasing base DX up to around 25, and beyond that you are wasting your EXP. But every point between 15 and 20 is very valuable to you because you get to effectively trade it for protection (paying the DX penalty of armor).

IQ: There isn't really a problem at any score because IQ is just a measure of how good you are at the things IQ points buy you - talents, spells, etc. Whether you want to interpret it as a giant floating brain or as a cagey, seasoned veteran who has lots of skills and instincts, in the end it is just a resource that serves a purpose for your character. The value of additional points starts to diminish around 20 and becomes close to pointless around 30.

ST: Every point is valuable for every character type (though for different reasons), with diminishing returns starting to be noticed around 20 and becoming significant around 30. The only trouble for high ST scores is that the do mean something physical in the context of rules for encumbrance, HTH damage, lifting, wrestling, etc. So you end up creating characters who stomp around like Thor, regardless of what they started out like.

The only house rules Ive instituted in response to this are: introduction of a talent point statistic that advances independent of IQ and can be purchased separately from IQ (at a faster rate). And introduction of a talent ('Powers Beyond the Pale') that lets spell casters meditate, etc. to acquire a pool of ST points usable for spell casting (only), at a rate of 2 ST per day per talent point invested. These two changes seem to keep the game at something close to its intended balance until characters have point totals around 60-65.

[Rick_Smith]

Hi all,
On the Brainiac Site, I posted the following rules.

Links:

https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/title.html
https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/Sp...ellsInTFT.html

*****

I didn't like the D&D style fight & heal cycle. On the other hand, I kept coming across TFT campaigns where the GM added spells like "Spend 2 fST and get back 1d6 points of damage," which I thought were AWFUL. It gradually became obvious to me that some sort of healing spell was wanted by a lot of people.

Thinking about what I wanted in a healing spell, I decided that it sucked when the party was far from home (say in a jungle) and one character got wounded. The whole adventure stops while the party finds a semi-safe spot and then waits 3 weeks for the wounded player to heal up.

So my healing spells allow you to adventure when wounded, without slowing healing. Higher levels of spells cause you to heal faster. VERY high levels will heal 1 point of damage of the last wound taken in the last few minutes. (Much like physicking a recent wound.)

These spells didn't reduce the lethality of combat (or at least far less than a healing potion). But they allowed people with a couple points of damage to reasonably say, "let's get on with the adventure. I'll likely be healed up before the next fight.'

I've used these spells for real years of in my campaign, and they work well.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Bayarea]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

Hi all,
On the Brainiac Site, I posted the following rules.

Links:

https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/title.html
https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/Sp...ellsInTFT.html

*****

I didn't like the D&D style fight & heal cycle. On the other hand, I kept coming across TFT campaigns where the GM added spells like "Spend 2 fST and get back 1d6 points of damage," which I thought were AWFUL. It gradually became obvious to me that some sort of healing spell was wanted by a lot of people.

Thinking about what I wanted in a healing spell, I decided that it sucked when the party was far from home (say in a jungle) and one character got wounded. The whole adventure stops while the party finds a semi-safe spot and then waits 3 weeks for the wounded player to heal up.

So my healing spells allow you to adventure when wounded, without slowing healing. Higher levels of spells cause you to heal faster. VERY high levels will heal 1 point of damage of the last wound taken in the last few minutes. (Much like physicking a recent wound.)

These spells didn't reduce the lethality of combat (or at least far less than a healing potion). But they allowed people with a couple points of damage to reasonably say, "let's get on with the adventure. I'll likely be healed up before the next fight.'

I've used these spells for real years of in my campaign, and they work well.

Warm regards, Rick.

Yes I like your rules but one thing I added was on the Physicker side. A physicker could heal 2 hit/wound not just per combat. So if Joe got hit by 3 different attacks say an arrow for 3, sword hit for 5 and spear for 3 the physicker could treat all 3 wounds separately for 6 points of healing after the fighting was over and assuming there was time. A Master Physicker would heal 9. This kept parties going instead of being killed by a thousand pin pricks.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Rick_Smith

Hi all,
On the Brainiac Site, I posted the following rules.

Links:

https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/title.html
https://tft.brainiac.com/RicksTFT/Sp...ellsInTFT.html

*****

I didn't like the D&D style fight & heal cycle. On the other hand, I kept coming across TFT campaigns where the GM added spells like "Spend 2 fST and get back 1d6 points of damage," which I thought were AWFUL. It gradually became obvious to me that some sort of healing spell was wanted by a lot of people.

Thinking about what I wanted in a healing spell, I decided that it sucked when the party was far from home (say in a jungle) and one character got wounded. The whole adventure stops while the party finds a semi-safe spot and then waits 3 weeks for the wounded player to heal up.

So my healing spells allow you to adventure when wounded, without slowing healing. Higher levels of spells cause you to heal faster. VERY high levels will heal 1 point of damage of the last wound taken in the last few minutes. (Much like physicking a recent wound.)

These spells didn't reduce the lethality of combat (or at least far less than a healing potion). But they allowed people with a couple points of damage to reasonably say, "let's get on with the adventure. I'll likely be healed up before the next fight.'

I've used these spells for real years of in my campaign, and they work well.

Warm regards, Rick.

I like these spells, especially for an extended, overland adventure. Well done sir.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Bayarea

Okay sorry for saying argument, I am just trying to have an civilized discussion here. Still to your point at 1000 EP/week still breaks down 56-60 takes a year, 61-65 takes 2 years, 66-70 takes 4 years, 71-75 takes 8, 76-80 takes 16 years. Or 31 years to get to 80 if you play the same character each and every adventure. If you have someone who put that kind of time in then as long as they still fit in the campaign then great.

So what? As I've repeatedly pointed out, the effects of attribute bloat are already felt long before then. It doesn't take a 90-point wonder to skew the system outside of its intended area of functionality. Unless we completely change the game, the system starts to twist at about the time people reach 18 across the board in attributes -- an attribute total of a mere 54, which takes about a year to reach in a frequently played campaign. At that point, DX no longer is as appealing an attribute to take (you effectively maxed out at 15, given that 16, 17, and 18 are automatic misses regardless of what your DX is, and adding DX is useful primarily for the purpose of offsetting armor DX penalties; even thrown and missile weapons/spells are only benefiting marginally by increases in DX, because ability to see the target becomes just as important as whether or not you can actually hit it at the longer ranges). As for IQ, according to ITL, an IQ of 16 is "genius level." Which is where one of the more insidious issues starts to crop up in the game -- if 16 is genius, an IQ of 18 is far above that, and an IQ of 20 or 21 is inhuman. At this point the players (at least mine) have a hard time suspending disbelief, and the "rules lawyers" among them want to start "rolling versus IQ" to solve mysteries, puzzles or figure out plot points instead of role-playing the game. Their contention; "I'm not a super-genius, so how do I role-play being one? Let's just roll versus IQ to see if I figure it out," is not easily counter-argued against, either. So role-playing begins to decline (almost as a necessity) in favor of roll-playing, and the game becomes much more mechanistic and more a series of recurring "arena" battles (in whatever setting I've placed them) where the only way to even the odds is to throw endless waves of attacking enemies against them and hope one of the attackers gets lucky and actually hits one of them before being toasted or spitted on the spot. In effect, the game begins to become boring.

Similarly ST is an issue in that large amounts of it are required to do things like cast spells and take wounds. To play Conan or Gandalf means that your character needs to have enormous ST totals in order to equal their capabilities. But again, according to ITL, a ST of 9-11 is pretty much standard for human beings (depending on the sex of the character). A ST of 18 might be considered, based on that scale, to be something along the lines of what Conan, or even Gandalf had (though remember, Gandalf wasn't human -- he was a Maiar; a form of "angelic being" in Tolkien's universe). But in the game, a ST of 18 is not sufficient to enable the kinds of acts that Conan undertook in his books -- he really needs to be something on the order of 24 or 25, and the sheer physics of human anatomy actually dictate against people reaching those levels of ST in the vast majority of cases. (And yes, I know, characters are, by definition, exceptional; but the players aren't, and thus have a hard time relating to their own characters once they push them beyond a certain level in the game -- which kills role-playing.) So again, we have a "suspension of disbelief" problem that tends to push the game out of the realm of imagination and turn it back into a series of repetitious arena battles with special effects added...

It's much more exciting when there is real risk in doing something, even if you are a very experienced character; and the best and easiest way I know to correct the issues above is to let the players spend XP on something besides plussing up attributes. That's my experience with the game, and that's the solution I came up with as being the "least disruptive" to the underlying rules of the game. You are certainly entitled to your own opinion on this, but so am I, and my opinion, based on my personal experience, remains my opinion. I'm glad it hasn't worked out like that for you, but it has for me, and you aren't really succeeding in persuading me that I've just been "looking at it wrong" all these years. - fin -

[Steve Jackson]

"Tracian Plant" - hah. Very dangerous plant.

In the SCA, I experimented for a while with a two-weapon combo of short spear and short mace. At distance, I held the spear in two hands and jabbed. If rushed, I would shift the spear to one-handed and block with it, rushing back, so as to get inside the other guy's attack - and then use the little mace to knock-knock-knock on his head. It worked often enough to be interesting. Anyway, a spear is definitely a good temporary blocking weapon against someone not practiced against it.

[JLV]

I think I just want to say that I'm resigning from the rules specific discussions for a while. Everyone has great ideas, and everyone feels very strongly about their positions, and I feel my participation is not helping that discussion any more at this point in time. We've been focused on the rules because we know there are going to be some re-writes of some parts of the game, but I think we have a real opportunity to better affect the future of the game by addressing different topics.

Steve asked us for issues that we thought needed addressing in any re-written version of the rules, and all of us provided our opinions on those issues to him. However, Steve's da man, and he'll make changes as he sees fit in those areas that he feels actually need to be addressed rules-wise. My experience with Steve's rules writing does not lead me to believe that he really needs my direct input (unless and until he asks for it, anyway), and that I can very safely leave the matter in his extremely capable hands. Whatever Steve and the folks at SJG come up with will be just fine by me.

What, instead, I'd like to hear more about, are things like background, and Cidri, and what kinds of adventures people have tried and had the most fun with. As stated on the other thread -- it's really the content that makes a game a winner -- let's face it, D&D as written originally was a mess, and the later versions didn't do too great a job of improving things, but the CONTENT available has remained amazingly good throughout most iterations of the game (though sometimes the rules forced that content to be amazingly opaque -- D&D 4.0, I'm looking at you...). The one thing that TFT never got was a lot of content, probably because it died so young. So what kind of content would people like to see? Adventures? Programmed adventures? Region books in Cidri? New Spell grimoires? Magical "schools" (both in terms of magical groups that practice and use specific spells, and actual "schools" where magic is taught)? Starting sandboxes like Keep on the Borderlands was for D&D? Big sandboxes like Wilderlands of High Fantasy? Citybooks? NPC collections? I'm fascinated to hear other people's "war stories" about campaigns, and adventures and whatnot, and what they and their players enjoyed the most...

I think by discussing those things we might have a real opportunity to give SJG some ideas for future TFT products, so I'd like to personally focus on that for a while. We already know that larsdangly is working on a "big, cool, TFT dungeon," and that Steve strongly encouraged him to do so; what other kinds of things would people like to see done? Personally, I think one of the great innovations in early TFT was the "crossroads inns" introduced by Guy McLimore in Grailquest -- something I've adapted to a lot of my campaigns ever since. To that end, to this day, I collect maps and drawings of inns whenever I can find them, games that get played in inns, events possible in inns, food and drink lists, etc. I like inns, and use them a lot to help push a campaign along. What things do you like to use?

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

"Tracian Plant" - hah. Very dangerous plant.

Idea for a new monster? ;-)

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

In the SCA, I experimented for a while with a two-weapon combo of short spear and short mace. At distance, I held the spear in two hands and jabbed. If rushed, I would shift the spear to one-handed and block with it, rushing back, so as to get inside the other guy's attack - and then use the little mace to knock-knock-knock on his head. It worked often enough to be interesting. Anyway, a spear is definitely a good temporary blocking weapon against someone not practiced against it.

That's fascinating! I have no personal experience using a spear per se -- other than a very flamboyant "form" used in t'ai chi (which really I never practiced enough to start seeing the utility of the weapon beyond the movements prescribed in the form); and bayonet fighting in the Army -- which is slightly different, but still shows the possibilities of a short spear... But I always figured the Zulu weren't idiots, and picked the Assegai as their favorite weapon for good reasons... And, as I recall, the movie Troy showed some interesting elements of more standard-length spear fighting -- while I have no idea how accurate they were in historical terms, they certainly showcased some of the possibilities inherent in such a weapon.

[Chris Goodwin]

Whatever changes are eventually made, I hope there will be at least a "classic" version released, as close as is practical to the originals. I think everyone already has their own house rules and rules changes and so on, that they can keep using and sharing as they always have.