8d6 and high attribute characters

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by JimmyPlenty

Thanks for the replies. Basically, I just see TFT as too deadly for anyone to get very high attribute wise. To get any stat to those levels...I mean...how many sessions do you have to play to get a person to that level (unless of course you started there).

I am generally always playing with 32 point charcters, so I guess my experience with much higher figures is clouded.

First I'd say that it sounds like you may be bringing in expectations from D&D or computer RPGs where characters start out lame and the goal and expectation is to get them to be super-human and max out their potential abilities, and I would say that is not really what TFT is like. Legacy edition ITL in particular effectively caps attribute totals at about 40, maybe more by exploiting greater wishes. In any edition, I don't really recommend rushing to higher power levels. I think the sweet spot of fun and interesting gameplay is with PCs in the 32 to 38 point range facing a world with most NPCs in the 28 to 36 range with some exceptions.

Most importantly, TFT is a game about facing dangerous situations and applying tactics and cunning to find ways to overcome them, or die trying. It is not so much (like many other games) about slowly safely levelling your PCs to uberness.

The game system itself is not too deadly to get experienced characters.

It does take situations that are survivable. Whether each situation is survivable depends on the game situation, the way the GM runs it, and the ways the players approach it (and/or avoid it).

But in my experience, if players develop some skill in playing, and exercise caution, and the GM runs a game in such a way as to give players chances to assess situations before they are in combat, and to avoid combat and/or act so as to not expose themselves to too many risks, the PC death rate can be quite low, and PCs can survive to become quite powerful, eventually.

In our original games using the original XP system and rules (where it was actually easier to die than in Legacy, and the main source of XP was combat, and we had LOTS of combat), it took PCs a few adventures to get to be 34-36 points and therefore better than most people, and maybe 2 years of play to get up to about 38 points IIRC, and the most experienced characters (with the old XP rules) got up to beyond what's feasible in the current system, 42-46 points, after about 3-5 years of play. Add in magic items, and experienced allies using tactics, and they were very powerful.

[larsdangly]

Well put.

In any event, TFT is a blast to play when PC's are in the zone of stat scores around which the main rules were crafted, and quickly gets boring or stupid as you raise stats above that zone. Even with the restrictions imposed in the Legacy Edition, it is imaginable, at least as a white-room exercise, to have a PC with somewhere around 52 stat points (start at 8, 8, 16; go to 8, 8, 24 using XP, then to 14, 14, 24 using wishes). But I don't think you will have any more fun than you would have had writing up a scrappy norm-core 32 point PC and just seeing where your adventures lead you.

[larsdangly]

Also: with the current rules, you can create highly survivable characters without magic items (e.g., fine plate + Toughness, + shield expertise and a shield = anywhere from 9 to 12 armor points - effectively immune to most physical threats). If you want to go up, up and away from that base, magic items will definitely get you there. A character with +5 fine plate and a top-end magic weapon is both nearly invulnerable and able to kill or incapacitate most things in 1-2 turns. It is hard to know what you would want beyond that.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Also: with the current rules, you can create highly survivable characters without magic items (e.g., fine plate + Toughness, + shield expertise and a shield = anywhere from 9 to 12 armor points - effectively immune to most physical threats). If you want to go up, up and away from that base, magic items will definitely get you there. A character with +5 fine plate and a top-end magic weapon is both nearly invulnerable and able to kill or incapacitate most things in 1-2 turns. It is hard to know what you would want beyond that.

This is where HTH is an equalizer. Lesser foes can get this character into HTH, then grapple while friends then are free to dispatch the helpless "invulnerable" hero in any way they please.

[hcobb]

Get yon rondel dagger into HTH and make an aimed shot for the eyes (+4 DX for HTH, -6 DX for the head shot) and see how tough Sir Shugsitoff's eyeballs are.

Note that Dagger expertise works in HTH...

[TippetsTX]

TBH, I think the auto-fail threshold on 8d6 is way too high to be useful in real gameplay (28 or higher). As others have pointed out, it would be simpler to flip a coin, though certainly less satisfying.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

TBH, I think the auto-fail threshold on 8d6 is way too high to be useful in real gameplay (28 or higher). As others have pointed out, it would be simpler to flip a coin, though certainly less satisfying.

An 8d6 roll with a 99 adjusted stat is less likely to succeed than a coin flip.

Hence my house Health rules that give big figures cheap ST at the same time as they roll more dice on health saves does them no favor.

[Skarg]

Generic auto-success and auto-failure often don't seem appropriate to me for unusual numbers of dice. ITL already mentions the GM may want to ignore them in some cases.

Ideally the GM would consider what they actually feel the auto success/fail chances ought to be and adjust accordingly.

For example, some 8-die tasks might indeed be unlikely to succeed very often no matter how good the person attempting it is, because there are factors other than skill/DX/IQ/ST/whatever that may result in failure a certain amount of the time anyway, in which case the auto-fail number can be set appropriately.

For others, maybe it is mostly or all about ability, and the auto-success/fail chances should not slide, or should even not be used at all. The clearest case might be simple tests of ST, or maybe some spot rolls or anything very unlikely but only doable (or failable) by ability and not by luck.

[hcobb]

How do you apply critical/auto failure and success in contested rolls?

The big chances of failure for several dice rolls are there partially to defend the niches for two kinds of characters:

Type A: Spent the XP points for the talents
and
Type B: Spent the cash for the Wizard's Chest and Big Book of Spells.

[larsdangly]

I'm cool with wrestling and HTH dagger pokes as ways to crack open a heavily armored opponent. That is completely realistic.

One of the things I love about TFT is that its simple rules might not be perfect models of reality but they drive you to make realistic tactical approaches, so the end result is actually better than more complex games that try to 'brute force' their realism with a huge pile of modifiers and die rolls.

That said, a heavily armored fighter is a very valid 'build' for tactical combat in TFT. There is a big range of of attacks that simply won't work against them, meaning the foe is forced to do just a few predictable things. In a game that is basically balanced, the best you can ask for is a tactical edge that lets you guess what your foe will try. Combatants with ST 6 and no obvious defenses don't have this luxury - basically any valid form of attack at any range could drop them.