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Old 01-15-2018, 09:59 PM   #311
Steve Jackson
President and EIC
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip

I was never a smith, but a good SCA friend was.

If you have a hammer, an anvil, a forge, and a grinder - all of which are required to make a farming tool like a scythe - then you can also make heavy metal hitting-sticks and give them a sort of an edge. Balance? What is balance?

It's a long way from there to a "real" sword, and a long way from THERE to the finest products of the swordsmith's art. But at the bottom end of the weapons market, the crudest heavy metal hitting-stick beats the heck (literally) out of an improvised wooden hitting-stick, let alone no hitting-stick at all.

Digression: I had one rattan sword, once, that was so nicely balanced for my arm that it made me believe in dexterity bonuses. Reading about fine weapons is all very well, but experiencing one is neat.
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Old 01-15-2018, 10:35 PM   #312
bookworm562
 
Join Date: Jan 2018
Default Re: Melichor's new weapon talents.

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Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
Hi bookworm, everyone.
I've made lots of changes to TFT, but I've not lowered the min ST for those talents. There are so many perks for fast, high DX figures, that I've never felt the need to maker it easier for a slim fast guy to be a tank.

Warm regards, Rick.
Interesting. I was thinking about it in combination with low experience points awarded as a means of increasing survival rates while reducing any attribute bloat.

Also, I was considering a revival roll for physickers on dead characters. Something similar to roll the body in Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, i.e. you've been bashed to 0 or less. The physicker rolls 4 dice vs. IQ to try to revive you (similar to drowning.) The character would accept a loss of attribute on success.

Any critiques? I've always liked the dead is dead in TFT, but the roll the body mechanic might work for it. Plus the howls of victory and lamentations of failed rolls seems to be the heart of role playing.
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:02 AM   #313
GlennDoren
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip

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Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
I hope everyone will be good with a LITTLE blasphemy as we edit the Holy Books . . .

/s/ the prophet
HA! Seriously, now is the ideal time to learn from all of these years of playtest. I'd be open to almost any changes as long as it improves play without destroying the "feel" of TFT: simple but complete, realistic without being too complicated or slow.

One of my biggest issues with TFT, as much as I loved it, was the lack of a defensive rating based upon the target's skill and speed. It's been years since I've played GURPS, but I recall GURPS (and I got in when Man To Man was first released) felt a bit "too much" for me compared to TFT. But I DID like the Defensive Rating. This is just one example of something that could really use a tune-up in the system.

I supported the Dungeon Fantasy kickstarter, but have not read through it yet. The resurgence of TFT is a good motivator to re-introduce myself to GURPS and see what I think after all of these years. It'll be interesting to review how GURPS and TFT differ. Glad I got that copy of Dungeon Fantasy :)

Also, being an AI junky by trade, it would be very cool to introduce one (or both) of the following: (1) a tablet/ipad app for running the AI; (2) an analog (cards? table/dice?) system for managing enemies (ala Kingdom Death: Monster, Gloomhaven, etc.) in programmed/solo adventures. If TFT became known as an ideal solo-play system (or co-op play) that had a "best of breed" AI system, I think that could be a major differentiator.
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Old 01-16-2018, 08:49 AM   #314
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Dying in TFT - Revivals and When do you die.

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Originally Posted by bookworm562 View Post
Interesting. I was thinking about it in combination with low experience points awarded as a means of increasing survival rates while reducing any attribute bloat.

Also, I was considering a revival roll for physickers on dead characters. Something similar to roll the body in Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, i.e. you've been bashed to 0 or less. The physicker rolls 4 dice vs. IQ to try to revive you (similar to drowning.) The character would accept a loss of attribute on success.

Any critiques? I've always liked the dead is dead in TFT, but the roll the body mechanic might work for it. Plus the howls of victory and lamentations of failed rolls seems to be the heart of role playing.
Hi Bookworm, everyone.
I'm not quite sure what you are saying in the first paragraph. Expand?

As for revival rolls, my thoughts on death and dying in TFT ran along these lines. In real life it is pretty easy to be knocked unconscious and live. But in TFT it is a knife edge. A person knocked out is on the ragged edge of death.

Also in TFT, there are no mortal wounds and you never see people who are dying, and give out some final bit of wisdom before they pass.

So in my rules, people at 1 or 0 ST may pass out. People who are at negative ST are mortally wounded. They slowly take damage until they die.

So my rules allow people to be hurt so bad that they are:
-- down helpless and unconscious.
-- down helpless and conscious.
-- down helpless, mortally wounded, and unconscious.
-- down helpless, mortally wounded, and conscious.

People who are morally wounded can be stabilized. If you make the roll, the person stays at negative health, but are stable and don't lose more hit points over time.

These rules are more realistic, are more dramatically interesting and reduce the mortality rate of my PC's. I thought all those things were good. That said, I'm not 100% happy with my rules, they are a bit more complex than I would like. But they don't come up that often, so I'm worried less about them than something that slows the core combat game flow.

I don't penalize attributes as the person was really not dead. If they WERE dead, they lose 5 attributes like a Revival Potion.

I think that a 4vsDX roll to revive someone is too easy. My rules are more complex: you take how far you are into the negatives, and double it. That is the number of dice you roll. So if you are at -4 ST, the physicker needs to make an 8 die roll (verses victim's basic ST + physicker's DX). But expert care can reduce this a bit. The upshot is that saving someone is easy if they are at -1 to -3 ST, but gets very hard, very quickly.

Did this answer your question?

Warm regards, Rick.

Last edited by Rick_Smith; 01-16-2018 at 08:52 AM. Reason: Added more detail to saving throw example.
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Old 01-16-2018, 10:49 AM   #315
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip

I think 'dead is dead' is a pretty essential part of TFT. Nerfing the injury rules and putting in free healing would put the game on the same trajectory D&D followed in 4E and 5E, to its detriment.
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Old 01-16-2018, 10:56 AM   #316
Rick_Smith
 
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
Default Dead is Dead?

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Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
I think 'dead is dead' is a pretty essential part of TFT. Nerfing the injury rules and putting in free healing would put the game on the same trajectory D&D followed in 4E and 5E, to its detriment.
You may wish to look up the 'Revival Potion' in the TFT supplement, 'Advanced Wizard'.

;-)

More seriously, I'm not sure what you mean by 'free healing'.

Warm regards, Rick.
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:02 PM   #317
JLV
 
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Location: Arizona
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip

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Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
I think 'dead is dead' is a pretty essential part of TFT. Nerfing the injury rules and putting in free healing would put the game on the same trajectory D&D followed in 4E and 5E, to its detriment.
Well, yes and no. "Dead is dead" is a pretty fundamental part of TFT as written; and that's fairly key to the feel of it. But it's rare enough that a character winds up with EXACTLY zero hit points after a hit, that I feel like there might be some sort of exception for that kind of "edge" case -- that allows extraordinary methods, whether medical or magical -- to prevent that character from dying. Someone whose final "hit" took them below zero hit points, into the negative numbers, that character should be dead in my estimation.

So maybe, if you wind up at "0" hit points exactly as a result of the enemy's attack, you are knocked out and in the process of dying -- if someone doesn't "stabilize" you within, say, half an hour, 15 minutes, something like that, you die. if they DO stabilize you, you can undergo healing at normal rates once you're someplace where healing can take place. But, in order to "stabilize" you, THAT'S when the Physicker has to roll 4/IQ (or whatever is appropriate) to make the "save." And maybe a Wizard can use a healing spell to do the same thing, but instead of actually restoring hit points to the "0 hit point" guy, it only prevents him from dying. And maybe the same with a healing potion -- instead of restoring hit points, it only prevents a guy with 0 hit points from dying...

None of this is a "recommendation," but instead just thinking my way through a possible "compromise" on this issue, since a lot of people DO feel strongly that there ought to be some chance to "save" a dying character...

(Edited to add: I've always wondered, as people came up with ways to heal others, whether or not there ought to be some kind of "limit" on "extraordinary" healing -- like with magic or potions -- so that an injured guy can only benefit from them once, and then after that has to heal normally. But I'm not clever enough to figure out a simple way of doing that, and to be part of TFT it should be a simple, straightforward rule with universal application and which DOESN'T add a ton of record keeping to the game...)

Last edited by JLV; 01-16-2018 at 12:06 PM.
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:51 PM   #318
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip

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Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
There was recently a discussion on another forum regarding the economics of medieval european settings, and their representation in the game 'Lion and Dragon'. The issue in that case was that swords were very cheap - seemingly insanely less expensive than a normal wooden shield. The author defended the position using data for prices of various items in late medieval and renaissance records. These data are hard to parse because of the large variance in value of currency with time and location. But it seems pretty clear that a common sword was a relatively inexpensive item - many, many times less expensive than even simple armor and not dissimilar in cost from farm implements.
In a fantasy setting there may be other means of making swords; dwarves may be able to mass produce them for example, so I don't think a direct comparison to our mediaeval past is necessarily required or even useful.
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:57 PM   #319
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip

There is already a provision for being incapacitated but not killed. And the damage rules provide for effects that occur before death (knock down and various penalties). So, I don't think the game would be structurally changed by adding a 'stay alive at 0' rule - it would just constitute a kind of grade inflation, where the robustness to damage increases simply because we want characters to survive longer.
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Old 01-16-2018, 12:58 PM   #320
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Rick's healing spells

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Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
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.
As far as healing is concerned I looked at things in a different way; as the rules stand, until a character is reduced to ST3 they suffer no lasting effect, therefore I considered any other sort of damage only temporary knocks, shocks or morale loss. This was recovered quickly between encounters. That's not strictly the way the rules worked but it seemed logical and allowed more extended play without everyone being wounded all the time.
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