01-20-2018, 03:05 PM | #371 | |||
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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I wasn't seeing the rolls of course, and I'm not sure that rule is the best one, but I did see that it could do something I really enjoyed - being able to play a good light fighter who can fight effectively offensively and defensively and not get ground down as he would in TFT, with what seemed like pretty light rules (at least as a player with the GM resolving the attacks). Quote:
As much as I would love to be able to play skilled fighters with defense abilities in TFT, I am also leery of the balance issue that they may overbalance the alternative option of the strong attacker with a big weapon unless something is done to validate that sort of fighter, too. |
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01-20-2018, 03:52 PM | #372 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
I think TFT and GURPS played in its most basic mode (core book; no automatic weapons, etc.) are so similar for small tactical combats that you can freely port rules back and forth between them with little risk of messing up the resulting hybrid. It is also worth noting that TFT is superior to GURPS when it comes to the narrow question of how spell casting acts in small, close fights (because the spell casting rules are so explicitly tactical and balanced against non-spell casting powers). So, if Steve draws on ideas from GURPS when revising TFT the result will probably be at least as good as either as a fast, fun table-top combat engine, and probably better than both.
Where the games differ a lot is in the complexity and 'trade space' of character creation and experience. TFT has both a much smaller family of options. The simplest difference is that a typical stat block for a GURPS character, NPC or monster, assuming moderate experience, is usually pretty complicated, sometimes having 20 or more skills, advantages and disadvantages to deal with. The same character in TFT will usually have 4-8 talents, only 2-3 of which involve any subtlety or thought to use. More importantly, TFT trades off strengths in various attributes and talents under a lot of constraints with balanced exchanges. GURPS opens this up by making everything fungible with everything else, in a trade space so diverse and complex that it is pretty easy to figure out how to create a monstrous murder machine, tougher than Conan or any other NPC you will find in a source book, through a bunch of goofy exchanges ('if I have acne and hate my mother I'll be able to afford Sword skill at DX +4!!!'). GURPS is a great game, but this aspect of it gives rise to a lot of character design head games and complexity. Sometimes I'm in the mood for that, but usually I'd rather skip it. |
01-20-2018, 04:30 PM | #373 | |
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Arizona
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
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01-20-2018, 05:53 PM | #374 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: The Fantasy Trip
Because of the constraints on character generation and the pretty consistent implicit rules of trade offs, you actually have to work to create a TFT character who is uncompetitive in close combat with another of the same point value.
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01-20-2018, 10:06 PM | #375 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Re: Rick's Thoughts on Weapon Damage - Bows:
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Here I can agree with you. I could 'bake in' a bunch of rules and ideas in the game tables if I was willing to use polyhedrals. I've stuck with d6 in TFT out of respect for tradition. Warm regards, Rick. |
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01-22-2018, 06:54 PM | #376 |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Rick's thoughts on Talents & Wiz / Hero balance.
Hi all,
I found that wizards and heroes were very nicely balanced at low levels, but as the two gained attributes, wizards became much more powerful. Both made to-hit and saving throws better at the same rate, but the effectiveness of the spells went up fast. This makes sense, you want to have some really cool spells to aspire to, but other than the talent Unarmed Combat V, what really super cool ability could heroes work towards? I balanced heroes and wizards in my campaign in two ways. First I made talents cheaper. (Including 1/2 memory point talents.) It always felt unfair that an IQ 10 wizard could have 10, reality warping spells, where as a hero at IQ 10 might only be able to fit in 6 talents. (I also said that some spells that I didn't like the dynamic of {looking at you Insubstantiality}, cost 2 memory to learn.) Second I made several more higher IQ, cool talents for all character classes. So Thieves got Thief Lord. Climbers got Mountain Climbing talent. Woodsmen got Greenwalking talent. Fighters got Dance of Death. Diplomatic types got Magnetic Personality. I ended up with so many talents it got a bit tricky to find them all. So I said that all talents in a series are in increments of 2 IQ. So my UC talents are at IQ 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 respectively. I'm not claiming that is is realistic, but it worked. Talents were much easier to find. I also included an index that listed: Talent name, memory cost, prerequisites, IQ requirement and page number. About 80% of the time, people could look at the index and find the information they needed right there. I STRONGLY recommend that the new TFT makes talents both cheaper, and adds some very cool higher level talents. Warm regards, Rick. |
01-22-2018, 07:31 PM | #377 | |
Join Date: Jan 2018
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Re: Rick's thoughts on Talents & Wiz / Hero balance.
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01-22-2018, 11:18 PM | #378 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
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Re: Rick's thoughts on Talents & Wiz / Hero balance.
Wizards weren't fuelling spells with ST in my game so didn't get strong in the way that warriors did. That helped restrict their power a bit.
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01-23-2018, 02:48 PM | #379 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Re: Rick's thoughts on Talents & Wiz / Hero balance.
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It was power inflation for all characters, except those who took very few talents (i.e. wizards), so the net effect that was non-wizards became more powerful. Warm regards, Rick. |
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01-23-2018, 02:52 PM | #380 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Re: Rick's thoughts on Talents & Wiz / Hero balance.
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So you didn't use the "Recovery From Exhaustion" rules on page 39 of Adv. Wizard? Did your wizards power their spells with damage (like in the microgames) or from some other system? Warm regards, Rick. |
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in the labyrinth, melee, roleplaying, the fantasy trip, wizard |
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