Friends, Hirelings, and Side-Kicks

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by restlessgriffin

12 is competent. It'll fail if they get overly complicated in the directions.

It'll fail just under 40% of the time just being rolled, without penalties for low Loyalty or morale shattering events (like surprise attacks, half the Hirelings already being dead, etc).

Tactics sounds like pretty much RAW. Anyway, that's the way I've always viewed it.

I added more to what Tactics does (trying different things over time), and give Strategy actual uses (mostly in the planning stage) as I've found if you hew to what little they do "by RAW" eventually Players realize just ignoring those skills and pumping the primary "dungeon delving skills" is more valuable.

It's the 'ye olde Thief' problem, the problem being Thief as a profession template is terrible and superfluous. So you either need to build your adventures around making the Thief uniquely useful* (mildly difficult and annoying) or accept that no one will want to play a Thief* (which is what I've done, and then toss int he stuff I normally would and let the PCs suffer for not having a Thief).


* The parallel here being either you need to make non-combat skills more broadly useful (more applications and more opportunities to use them) or accept that the PCs will prefer minor inconveniences for not having them as they focus more solely on the core delving skills for their professions.

Yes, to START.

I've found it isn't just "to start'. If you run DFRPG "as it's meant", or even close to it, you'll find that combat and magic skills (and to a slightly lesser extent the physical delving skills) are the primary skills PCs will care about.

The "succeed or die" skills.

They will absolutely preference those skills as failing those skills means death, where failing a Social Skill rarely does.

So, as I've found, if you want them to respect Social Skills the stakes need to be a bit higher... which means if they're failing them all the time (12s really do suck), Players will feel as though they're being punished for making Characters by the book. It's something to think about and why I give out slightly more points so PCs can get to 13-14s in a few social and other Background skills. Because while those skills are rarely "succeed or die" skills, they come close.

Also it is good that Bard actually has SOMETHING to be good at.

They aren't just 'good' at Social. They will wreck your attempt to make Social Skills broadly useful if there is a Bard in the party. They are so much better... it's like if you have a Knight and a party full of Wizards in a No Mana Zone. The Knight will rock, the Wizards will feel useless. The Bard is so good at social they will dominate any normal social encounter or test you face the group with, unless it's very penalized in which case no one but the Bard will even have a shot.

Bards completely wreck normal Social party dynamics.

Okay, at least that's been my experiences with Players making Very Handsome, very Charismatic Bards. If they go the high Bard Song, Luck, or Wealth route, your experience will likely differ.

And if a Player tries to get you to allow them to play a Bard of the Nymph race from DF 3 The Next Level, just say no.

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Diplomacy is different from other influence rolls (Exploits pg 10) in that "Exception: If you used Diplomacy, the GM will also make a regular reaction roll and use the better of the two reactions."

Huh. I'm so used to regular GURPS I didn't notice the shift to not making Reaction Rolls first, Influence rolls second. Hah, I still do it the old way, but yeah, I can see this being a strong shift to reduce rolls and preference PC skills...

Anyway, in this case if the PC has both Leadership and Born War Leader I treat Leadership the way Diplomacy works This makes the Knight and Holy Warrior able to give commands as well as the Wizard...

(Leadership is an IQ skill, Wizards tend to easily have very good Social Skills just by putting a point or two into those skills and thus are better than other templates that have to put in twice or more points to be as good. Wizards tend to be the biggest problems in my games with the "stepping on other's roles", both with Social skills and helping make Thief completely unnecessary.)