Defense and Dx

[Bestial Warlust]

I'm new to TFT and like the simplicity of it compared to GURPS. I plan on running a game of TFT in the future to see how my group likes it. On that note I won't be using any house rules at first I want to play the system as is first. One thing I'm considering is allowing AdjDX to have a small combat effect. My thought is that if you figure is attacking another and the target has a higher AdjDX was to apply a -1 penalty to the attacker "DX" without really adjusting it to represent the targets better AdjDX advantage. Has anyone done something similar?

[larsdangly]

I've toyed with a number of house rules in the past that are generally ways for high DX characters to have better defensive capacities. But, my advice is not to go down this road until you have at least a couple dozen sessions of play under your belt using RAW.

TFT is an exceptionally well balanced game when it comes to character design - some folks have fun dreaming up types that feel like they have some special edge in arena combat, but the great number and diversity of these sorts of 'optimal' designs is your clue that it really can't be done. There are some character types that are noticeably bad at straight-up fights, but none that you could say are ideal.

This is great because it means there are many, many character types who feel 'valid', even to the rules lawyers. When you introduce house rules to this sort of well balanced system, you have to be very careful not to increase value of one trait or talent or piece of equipment without a counter-balancing disadvantage (or similar advantage to all the others). The game is also simple, so it's easy to toss in one rule that instantly makes one character type obviously superior to all others (w/r to arena fighting, that is). This instantly narrows the game and sucks a lot of life out of it.

Experienced players have house rules, but they tend to be things that fill in little gaps, or add to the diversity of options without changing the basic balance of powers, or help those few previously deficient character types catch up with the pack a bit. It is easier to see how this should be done after you have a few hours of real play behind you.

[HeatDeath]

High adjDX is already the best defensive bonus: you hit them first. And you've got the wiggle room to wear armor. If you keep adding buffs based on DX, eventually you just get to the point where best adjDX just wins. And that's not how it's supposed to work - you can't win Car Wars in the garage, you can't win Battletech in the mech bay, and you shouldn't be able to win TFT in the character creation phase.

If anything, I would argue that DX is already too determinative of a win, and the weapons available at lower strengths should be nerfed a bit to compensate. But probably not - it is a sign of a very balanced system that you maximize mean damage per turn for a starting fighter with ST12 DX12 and a nice, simple 2d broadsword.

Everything really is a lot more carefully balanced than it might seem.

[hcobb]

You need to add a IQ 17 goblin sorceress with Alertness to your party so that you're not surprised at melee range and can instead pick off the natives with your adjDX 14 branded light crossbow shots that average nine points each to knock over the other side before they close the range.

[HeatDeath]

The more I think about it, the more curious I get about the shape of the graph of max mean dpt vs strength for starting characters. I know it hits a max at ST12, but I'm really curious about the slopes leading up to and away from that - are they symmetrical or skewed? I'll have to work that up sometime in the next day or three.

Is it weird to spend more time doing math about a game than playing it? :)

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

Is it weird to spend more time doing math about a game than playing it? :)

Uh ho, Baseball fan in the making.

[Bestial Warlust]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

High adjDX is already the best defensive bonus: you hit them first. And you've got the wiggle room to wear armor. If you keep adding buffs based on DX, eventually you just get to the point where best adjDX just wins. And that's not how it's supposed to work - you can't win Car Wars in the garage, you can't win Battletech in the mech bay, and you shouldn't be able to win TFT in the character creation phase.

If anything, I would argue that DX is already too determinative of a win, and the weapons available at lower strengths should be nerfed a bit to compensate. But probably not - it is a sign of a very balanced system that you maximize mean damage per turn for a starting fighter with ST12 DX12 and a nice, simple 2d broadsword.

Everything really is a lot more carefully balanced than it might seem.

This makes sense I never looked at it that way. Thanks.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Bestial Warlust

I'm new to TFT and like the simplicity of it compared to GURPS. I plan on running a game of TFT in the future to see how my group likes it. On that note I won't be using any house rules at first I want to play the system as is first. One thing I'm considering is allowing AdjDX to have a small combat effect. My thought is that if you figure is attacking another and the target has a higher AdjDX was to apply a -1 penalty to the attacker "DX" without really adjusting it to represent the targets better AdjDX advantage. Has anyone done something similar?

There were a number of previous discussions on this sort of thing. Here are a couple of links:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...47#post2184947

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=158107

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Bestial Warlust

I'm new to TFT and like the simplicity of it compared to GURPS. I plan on running a game of TFT in the future to see how my group likes it. On that note I won't be using any house rules at first I want to play the system as is first. One thing I'm considering is allowing AdjDX to have a small combat effect. My thought is that if you figure is attacking another and the target has a higher AdjDX was to apply a -1 penalty to the attacker "DX" without really adjusting it to represent the targets better AdjDX advantage. Has anyone done something similar?

Yes, various such house rules have been tried. They take some testing and tuning to taste, but different people have different tastes.

One thing some people dislike about it is the tendency to result in high-DX figures being even better fighters than they already are, since DX is already a very important attribute, and such effects tend to make it even more important.

A common version of it (over the years before re-release) has been to allow figures to say they are fighting more offensively or defensively than usual, and adjust both the adjDX of their attacks and people attacking them by the same amount. How much a figure can do that is usually limited in some way by their DX and/or talents.

Another approach is adding more talents which can give a penalty to be hit, though the Legacy ITL already did this, at least as part of the new weapon/shield expertise talents.

In recent months I've been testing and developing a version which Chris Rice first (AFAIK) suggested (see the second link in his post above this one), which is a bit different and less unbalanced, where the skill levels of two fighters relative to each other slides towards 10, so two high-DX figures end up still having chances of missing each other, and two low-DX figures have better chances of hitting each other. I'm still refining it, but I'm liking most of what I see.

[HeatDeath]

So it turns out that, as you go away from ST12/DX12, mean damage per turn (DPT) decreases, but it decreases faster as you increase DX than if you increase ST. [Also, it's non-linear - it decreases faster the farther you get away from 12 in either direction.]

Which stands to reason, if you think about it. If you increase ST, you can take a small amount more damage. But if you increase DX, you buy yourself more room to wear armor, which lets you take significantly more damage.

But the difference is subtle - I'm not sure if it's enough to counter the imbalance. Increased DX might not drop DPT fast enough to neutralize the increase in survivability relative to increasing ST by the same amount, which amounts to what I said earlier: DX seems more determinative of victory than ST. I proposed above nerfing the weapons available to low strength warriors. Nerfing shields and armor would have a similar effect. Tuning the nerfs precisely might be difficult or impossible though, given the subtlety of the effects and the coarsenees of the D6-based damage points range.

[Btw, the equivalent analysis for wizards is far more involved. Without even considering the role of defensive spells (spells that impede the opponent's ability to damage you, as opposed to damaging the opponent directly) or the combinatorial explosion of possible spell loadouts, wizards have 45 unique body types (combinations of combat stats), compared to a Melee warrior's 8. TFT:Wizard is, in every sense of the word, a /much/ more complex game.]