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Old 10-16-2018, 12:44 AM   #11
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

That works!
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Old 10-16-2018, 09:09 AM   #12
DrewAstolfi67
 
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

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Thundarr's Sun Sword! Actually, given Cidri's history, this kind of high-tech item masquerading as magical wouldn't be out-of-scope for a clever GM.
I like that a lot!
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Old 10-16-2018, 09:17 AM   #13
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

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3. I would theoretically allow an AP weapon enchantment, and I'd make it just a slightly easier version of Weapon/Armor Enchantment (that doesn't stack with it).
I.e. no warrior should be able to match the Staff of Striking?
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Old 10-16-2018, 10:09 AM   #14
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

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3. I would theoretically allow an AP weapon enchantment, and I'd make it just a slightly easier version of Weapon/Armor Enchantment (that doesn't stack with it).
I.e. no warrior should be able to match the Staff of Striking?
No, i.e. Weapon Enchantment is already one of the most useful and common enchantments, and it seems to me the balance of toys does not need to have an even cheaper version available that's nearly as good.

I'm not a big fan of the new staff zap attacks, and certainly don't think there's any reason to give them "niche protection"! However, I also don't think the Armor Bypassing ability of Staff of Striking needs to be made available in other ways... though it could be - just make another weapon enchantment that bypasses all armor (it'd be expensive though to be balanced - from a balance perspective it should be more expensive than a +5 AP weapon enchantment since it's a more powerful effect).

What I would rather see than any of those effects, however, is a spell and/or enchantment that counters/bypasses Stone/Iron/Diamond Flesh spells, because those things end up being really powerful, especially when made into self-powering magic items and stacked with armor and toughness on a good warrior.
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Old 10-16-2018, 10:14 AM   #15
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

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What I would rather see than any of those effects, however, is a spell and/or enchantment that counters/bypasses Stone/Iron/Diamond Flesh spells, because those things end up being really powerful, especially when made into self-powering magic items and stacked with armor and toughness on a good warrior.
Lightning Rod or Remove Thrown Spell.
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Old 10-16-2018, 10:46 AM   #16
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

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Lightning Rod or Remove Thrown Spell.
Remove Thrown Spell won't help against someone with the enchanted item, will it?

(Lightning will, thankfully.)

In any case, I'd welcome a weapon enchantment that's the opposite of the staff AP effect - it would bypass flesh spells but not actual armor.
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Old 10-18-2018, 12:17 PM   #17
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

Seems to me that's not so much about firearms as it is about hit location and the bell-curve and +adds on damage for weapons, and adding up injury and comparing to 1 x ST to see if someone is out of combat.

That is, for all the bullet examples, I imagine the same thing could happen with an arrow or most other medieval weapon hits.

I also think it has a lot to do with where the person gets hit, as I think both guns and medieval weapons both also can take people down in one hit.

Lowering the damage too much can make it impossible or too unlikely that anyone will be taken out by one hit.

But if damage is on a bell curve with a fairly high minimum and has a significant chance of taking someone out in one hit, then adding wounds means that two or three hits will tend to be extremely likely to take them out.

That is, I think you need to change the damage system to get away from those issues.

But I don't disagree that some more AP effects might help.
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Old 10-18-2018, 12:18 PM   #18
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

I've toyed with the idea of armor piercing qualities to various sorts of weapons in TFT. It is easy to make an argument in favor, as the 'arms race' between weapons and armors is why there is such diversity in both. And it adds an element of interest for the gear heads. But there are only so may layers of complexity the game can take before it slows down. Hard to say if it would be worth it. I certainly am not pursuing the idea at present, and won't include anything like this in the 'Equipment' expansion module I'm drawing up for submission to W21. Basically, I doubt it would be easy to reach consensus about the details of such rules, so anything in this direction that got folded into a supplement would likely go unused by the majority of its possible audience.
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Old 10-18-2018, 01:48 PM   #19
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

I would love for firearms to deal less damage but ignore some degree of armor. That's a perfect example.

[Apropos of nothing, one of my favorite firearms rules I've ever seen was in the venerable Lords of Creation. Ammunition amounts were given in terms of how many attacks you could make, which were assumed to consist of multiple rounds fired. So a modern pistol might only contain two or three attacks worth of bullets, because you were presumed to be firing two or more at a time. I think I would probably include that as an element if I were writing TFT modern.]
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Old 10-18-2018, 06:36 PM   #20
Skarg
 
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Default Re: Silver Weapons, Weird Things That Aren't Enchantments, Armor Piercing

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Mix of right and wrong here. You are quite correct in pointing out that both bullets and medieval weapons can in fact on occasion merely wound. That is not news, BTW. But you are missing the point: in order to even remotely model modern weapons, given the limitations imposed by the crude Melee rules, you have to up the damage to such a degree to overcome armor that you end up grossly exaggerating the damage potential.
I understand, and basically agree with your suggestion. I just think the problem isn't limited to guns, and I'm not sure I see a great solution without reworking the whole damage system for all weapons.


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For example, the aforementioned 5.56 NATO rounds would have to do damage on the order of 3 dice/hit to reflect their AP capability. Even if MINIMUM damage were rolled ON EACH HIT, above, that's 12 points right there... and I would hardly consider solid torso and head hits to reflect minimum damage hits, do you?
I'm with you on this. Again though, not seeing a solution I'm happy with.


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Even ignoring firearms altogether and simply focusing on bows and crossbows one finds a very similar problem. From the perspective of an unarmored person, getting hit by a real life heavy crossbow (i.e. windlass or cranequin spanned in the several 100 - 1000+ draw weight range) is only moderately more severe than getting hit by a light hunting bow (small or horse bow, in TFT terms). The difference is really in the ability to overcome armor - a light bow is quite useless, but a heavy crossbow can largely ignore mail and even to a degree threaten plate. But TFT's solution of assigning 3 dice damage to the latter grossly overstates its lethality (even though they can, of course, be quite lethal - just not on average kill a normal person with one shot)
Yep, I see what you mean.


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As for this: "Lowering the damage too much can make it impossible or too unlikely that anyone will be taken out by one hit." Why would you consider that terribly important? Whilst it certainly does happen, that is already covered by the double and triple damage rules in Melee - no need to inflate the basic weapon damage.
I think this is the other point where our ideas differ, I expect in two ways:

1) I don't know what the statistics are, but it seems to me that a lot of people run right through the torso with a bullet, arrow, etc., have more of a chance of stopping fighting than rolling a 3 or 4 on 3d6 (1.85%).

2) I like effects of injury, and TFT is a bit light on them (especially with it becoming clear in the new rules that the -2 shock penalty doesn't apply to your opponent's next attack if they have a lower DX than you do). I also know for many years of play, that skillful play can result in not getting wounded very often, IF you can arrange to mostly take out enemies before they can hit you. And (since TFT has limited defense options) that depends on being able to do enough damage to them to prevent that. If you have a lot of weapons being nerfed down to the point where hitting opponents doesn't take them out or impair them very often, then I start to worry combat may tend to become more of a hitpoint whittle fest as in other games.

All that said, I still really do see your point and think it makes sense. I just think I might prefer to do a larger rewrite if I were to go that route.
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