01-08-2018, 09:36 PM | #201 | |
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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It would be nice to get some better guidance in the rules about things like the level of difficulty for different Attribute tests, though. I mean the whole DX thing is pretty intensively covered (for obvious reasons), but it might be nice to get some kind of brief continuum for IQ and ST rolls too. |
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01-08-2018, 10:03 PM | #202 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
There are ways to introduce a defensive capacity that retains game balance and doesn't slow play, but you have to be very, very careful. The arithmetic that is cooked into the game lets you trade something like 1 talent point per situational DX bonus (i.e., something that applies for only a certain weapon or situation), or 1 talent point per point of situational DX penalty to your foe, or 2 talent points per point of damage resistance or extra damage done. This trade off appears in different forms for different talents and weapons but something close to it applies in all cases I can think of. So, cook up any set of talents you want, but make sure it fits with the structure of the rest of the game. If you introduce some sort of 'grade inflation' when it comes to defense, you'll find that even a small imbalance has a big effect on the duration of combat and the match-ups between otherwise equal foes.
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01-08-2018, 10:06 PM | #203 | |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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01-08-2018, 10:43 PM | #204 | |||
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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Other interesting bits from our discussion, IIRC, were that it rather mattered what the assumptions of the simulation were, such as assuming there will be a spear charge attack, which damage stats you use for weapons and armor (because various editions of Melee are not all identical, of particular relevance, with spear damage), whether a charge attack does double damage or +1d6 damage, whether you calculate double damage by rolling twice as many dice, or by multiplying the normal roll by 2, what the shape of the arena is and whether that means there is an opportunity to engage a spearman by running around to his side to engage him or not to avoid a charge attack, etc. Quote:
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But yeah, there is a limit to how much tweaking can be done without making the game different in a way that some players may not like. I think there may be a few really smart adjustments that might be possible that don't really add complexity or mess with balance or feel. I think it would make sense for those to be the core rules, and then offer some advanced or optional rules as well. Figuring out what exactly they should be and where the lines are will take some careful thought. Last edited by Skarg; 01-08-2018 at 10:56 PM. Reason: combining three posts |
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01-08-2018, 11:19 PM | #205 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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All of which, frankly, I also saw as a positive effect of the change -- the players now had to make more complex "life-and-death" decisions instead of merely "which attribute do I advance." So, while I can definitely see your point, in my experience it simply wasn't a problem. As far as worrying about the "challenge level" of their encounters, well, there's always some leeway there anyway, because a) they ought to sometimes face challenges where the best answer possible is "run away;" and b) the luck of the die roll can materially affect the outcome in unexpected ways regardless of how carefully the GM matches the threat to the players' capabilities. So the easiest answer for that sort of issue, for me, was to simply total up player attributes, and put the bad guys within a few total attribute points (give or take; say, one or two points per player character) of the players, and let the dice fall where they may. It always seemed to work out. (And besides, the bad guys have talents too!) Now, while I see this as the "easiest" answer to attribute point bloat, I also recognize that a lot of people here seem to hate the idea, and, since I have no idea how Steve feels about any of this (and that's a good deal more important, frankly, than my personal opinion is), I will simply defer to whatever (if any) "solution" Steve comes up with. Oh, one other point, that is sort of off to the side on this. I know a lot of folks have revamped the NUMBER of XP a player gets from the game (Dark City Games, for instance, basically just divided everything by 10 and then removed the XP for "hits/DX of thing killed" entirely -- just giving one point for each enemy killed to each PC involved.) I've seen comments on various boards about similar things other people have done. Personally, I want to put in a vote to keep the XP accrual system pretty much exactly as it currently is in ITL -- it's always "felt" about right to me, and it allows for much finer gradations in XP awards for various things if you can expect to get roughly 100 XP for an average starting adventure, as opposed to 3-5 XP. In the first case, if I award someone 5 or 10 XP for something special they've done, I haven't skewed the XP flow too badly, and I've encouraged good play by awarding 5% to 10% of the "normal" XP award. In the second, if I award a single XP for the same "good thing" I have dramatically affected the XP curve for that player by awarding anywhere from 20% to 33% of the XP "normally" awarded -- which should be enough to provoke an outcry from the other players. Last edited by JLV; 01-08-2018 at 11:38 PM. |
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01-08-2018, 11:36 PM | #206 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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A few years ago, I played in a campaign run by Rick Smith using house rules which instead offered weapon mastery talents that were considerably more accessible and more common, but which sort of did the same thing. (He also had an automatic active defense calculation for everyone, which I liked a lot in my limited experience as a player.) But it was clear that his rules, which also added +1 (or +2 for level 2) dice to be hit, created a kind of stratified tier situation, where pretty much everyone with mastery was clearly superior to non-masters, and people with mastery II were a serious cut above those with level 1, well it was clear that was the path to mastery, all right. That part reminded me of martial arts films and D&D, where there are distinct levels that trump lower levels, which I didn't really like). I ran and played in four TFT campaigns before GURPS, two of which ran from about 1980 to 1986 (and one continued as a GURPS campaign) and after those years of fairly frequent play with quite frequent combat, using the Codex experience table and adjustments for opponent difficulty, even the one PC who survived that whole span only reached 46 points, and was a fighter who did not get this talent and was 2-3 points away from being able to get the first one even if he focused on that next. Of the hundreds and hundreds of TFT NPCs I made, there were not very many fighters with IQ 14, very few with DX 16 too, and only a handful with even Defensive Quickness I. If I gave anyone Defensive Quickness II, it was probably as an experiment or to define the best fighter in all of Elyntia, or something, and no doubt I thought the IQ of 18 was weird, also because he was IQ 18 but probably had a peculiarly low level of mental talents with all those memory points used up by fighting talents (i.e. a good example of why buying talents with experience without increasing IQ and without having high IQ prereqs for physical talents could be good). |
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01-08-2018, 11:50 PM | #207 | |
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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Also, the obverse of the coin is that I've known some quite stupid people who could fight very well (I spent decades in the military, you know), and somehow the whole IQ thing never really satisfied me with regard to physical skill learning... Maybe that's the answer; physical talents aren't limited by IQ, but "mental" talents (things like Priest, or Accountant, or Navigator, or even Courtly Graces) are. And maybe that's the real difference between Warriors and Wizards too -- Warriors do physical talents easier, and Wizards do mental talents easier. But there I go again -- adding complexity. Last edited by JLV; 01-08-2018 at 11:57 PM. |
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01-09-2018, 12:03 AM | #208 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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1. I'd use some version of the ITL/Codex curve, perhaps with higher costs for attributes rather than buying talents. 2. For several reasons, I think if you let people buy talents with EP above their IQ, I'd base the cost on their point total, taking into account any such extra talents. (Otherwise some issues happen.) 3. I wasn't talking about balancing what people meet in encounters, and yes I'd play out whatever they meet without tipping scales for balance. 4. What I was talking about, was assessing EP awards for combat based on how strong the opponents were compared to how strong you were. Combat talents would count for that. It's a significant thing when you realize that fighting and defeating someone with ST 20 DX 20 IQ 14, magic weapons and armor, combat talents, etc., only gives you as much EP as defeating a couple of ST 10 DX 10 IQ 7 hobgoblins with copper -1 cutlasses, or even ST 10 DX 10 IQ 6 Prootwaddles with clubs, even if you fight them one at a time, and it doesn't matter at all what your attribute totals or equipment are like, despite the fact that the difficulty is all about the differences in all those things. Last edited by Skarg; 01-09-2018 at 12:09 AM. |
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01-09-2018, 12:42 AM | #209 | |
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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I did like the presentation of a beginner box in the from of Dragons of Underearth was a great thing, but too little, too late. |
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01-09-2018, 01:05 AM | #210 | |
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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Attacking a defending target with melee weapons or dodging with missile (AM 18, Melee 17), 4 vs AdjDX. In AM, it's used for a number of things. Disengaging (AM 18), 4 dice vs AdjDX. (In melee, it's a 1d for ≤3 if DX is better, for ≤1 if not. See Melee 17.) Climbing (AM 19) uses 3D for typical rock, 2D for soft, 4D for hard rocks. Free-hanging ropes are automatic if talented, 2D vs DX if not. I could go on, but it's part of the core from the beginning. And it's the biggest difference from GURPS. Almost the definitional one, IIRC Steve's comments in Roleplayer (I think issue #1) in his Designer's Notes. |
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in the labyrinth, melee, roleplaying, the fantasy trip, wizard |
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