D20 Modern or Spycraft II?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think you are mischaracterising this thread. I don't see 'Haters' of either system here - I just see people presenting the best aspects of the system they prefer (and in a way which was evidently of great help to the original poster).

I though he talked more about general "haters", like they might be found in other threads or boards(, not people of this thread).

I like non-inflammatory threads, it makes moderating much more pleasurable!

Cheers

But what about agressive posters that just want to vent a bit? These poor people have no place here - That's discriminating!

 

[Henry]

And just to totally stir the pot a bit, one game that has increasingly interested me for the past two years has been Grim Tales -- which meshes both d20 Modern and Spycraft to create a fascinating union of grit and fantasy that appeals to me greatly. To me, if Spycraft were "high fantastic" modern and d20M were "low fantastic" modern, Grim Tales would fall somewhere in the middle.

I'll stop the confusing there. Lhorgrim, I think you'll be pretty pleased with your choices.

 

[The Shaman]

The flavor-named feats are a pretty small number of the feats in the book.

And yet they seem to be the ones most often cited as examples of what makes chargen in Spycraft "better" (= preferable or more enjoyable to a particular gamer, as opposed to objectively superior) than d20 Modern.

Re-read the thread, buzz - the difference in feat styles ("boring +2 to two abilities" v. "cool and flavorful") is mentioned repeatedly as a distinction between the two games.

I agree with those posters who suggest that this is a significant difference between the systems - as I said, it's one of the reasons that my personal preference is for d20 Modern.

 

[buzz]

I agree with those posters who suggest that this is a significant difference between the systems - as I said, it's one of the reasons that my personal preference is for d20 Modern.

Okey-doke. My point was simply that, flavorful as the game is, it's not like every other feat has a whimsical, wacky name.

I'd be curious to go through my d20M supplements and see if there are any similarly flavorful names.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

D20 Modern took a page from D&D and stuck with terse and descriptive names. Originally, D&D was going to go the route of the creative names (There was a "Too Ugly To Die" in there, IIRC.) but it seems like perhaps a distinct design choice was made to go another way.

A big difference I've noticed is Spycraft "feats" are usually about 2x-3x more powerful than a d20 feat. "This Is My Boom Stick", for instance, lets you: Use the shotgun as a heavy club, use a shotgun one-handed at half penalty, ups all saves vs. the shotgun by four points, and every time you shoot somebody they fly back 5'.

That's quite a bit of additional material. Great Fortitude bundles together Toughness AND nets a +3 save bonus on top. Etc.

I was going through Spycraft last night and converting a few feats, and I found myself stripping about half their benefits to make them suitable for Modern.

The work goes on.

--fje

 

[Armistice]

I though he talked more about general "haters", like they might be found in other threads or boards(, not people of this thread).

Yep. Got it in one. I wasn't calling out anyone from this thread, which has been remarkably civil.

Okey-doke. My point was simply that, flavorful as the game is, it's not like every other feat has a whimsical, wacky name.

I checked the Spycraft book and the feat names are remarkably standardized and follow that standard pretty closely. The 'flavorful' ones are usually Legacy from 1.0 and will mostly be descriptive of the feat or a shout-out to the movies. Aside from the often mentioned, "This...is My Boomstick", phrase type feat names are only found in the Chase and Chance feat trees (frex: One Hand on the Wheel..., ...A Gun In The Other and The Dice are Hot). Other than that, all the other trees are pedestrian. Not really sure how this is an issue. Even a mild familiarity with pop culture makes even the short phrase (a tiny percentage of the total feats in the book) feats pretty self-explanatory.

The above concern is on the order of complaining that the D20 Modern classes are generically 'named'. I could care less what they're called, my concern is how they work mechanically and the style of play those mechanics most easily represent.

 

[buzz]

A big difference I've noticed is Spycraft "feats" are usually about 2x-3x more powerful than a d20 feat. "This Is My Boom Stick", for instance, lets you: Use the shotgun as a heavy club, use a shotgun one-handed at half penalty, ups all saves vs. the shotgun by four points, and every time you shoot somebody they fly back 5'.

That's quite a bit of additional material. Great Fortitude bundles together Toughness AND nets a +3 save bonus on top. Etc.

You have to keep in mind SC2.0's use of VP/WP, fwiw, which makes things work a little differently.

Also, any judgement of feats needs to keep in mind prerequisites. d20M's selection is probably not as broad yet, but in D&D we see very powerful feats all the time... coupled with stiff prereqs that keep them in line with PC level. There a lot more feats, most with prereq trees, in SC2.0 than in d20M core.

That said, yeah, SC2.0 PCs have a bit more "oomph". Of course, they also have to deal with error ranges (i.e., fumbles) and a GM with his own pool of action dice. And when a scene is shifted to "dramatic" (an actual scene mode in SC2.0 that makes everything more deadly and challenging), the odds become deliberately stacked against the PCs.

Iron Heroes is actually quite similar this way. There's lots of over-the-top aspects of the system, but they're met with commensurate challenges.

(I finished reading all of SC2.0 this weekend, so I'm still honeymooning. I got plenty of d20M love left, nonetheless.)

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

But even with WP/VP, Spycraft is very specific in neutering all but "key" type NPCs from being in any way a threat to the PCs beyond annoyance. NPCs can only crit if they're Special NPCs, and then only if given a specific attribute that allows for such, AND the PCs don't have any feats or abilities that cause the GM to spend loads of his (smallish) pool of APs.

Note that "normal" NPCs have Damage Saves instead of WP/VP, so the +4 DC from Boomstick equates out to, more or less, +4 damage "most of the time".

--fje

You have to keep in mind SC2.0's use of VP/WP, fwiw, which makes things work a little differently.

Also, any judgement of feats needs to keep in mind prerequisites. d20M's selection is probably not as broad yet, but in D&D we see very powerful feats all the time... coupled with stiff prereqs that keep them in line with PC level. There a lot more feats, most with prereq trees, in SC2.0 than in d20M core.

That said, yeah, SC2.0 PCs have a bit more "oomph". Of course, they also have to deal with error ranges (i.e., fumbles) and a GM with his own pool of action dice. And when a scene is shifted to "dramatic" (an actual scene mode in SC2.0 that makes everything more deadly and challenging), the odds become deliberately stacked against the PCs.

Iron Heroes is actually quite similar this way. There's lots of over-the-top aspects of the system, but they're met with commensurate challenges.

(I finished reading all of SC2.0 this weekend, so I'm still honeymooning. I got plenty of d20M love left, nonetheless.)

 

[Jim Hague]

But even with WP/VP, Spycraft is very specific in neutering all but "key" type NPCs from being in any way a threat to the PCs beyond annoyance. NPCs can only crit if they're Special NPCs, and then only if given a specific attribute that allows for such, AND the PCs don't have any feats or abilities that cause the GM to spend loads of his (smallish) pool of APs.

Note that "normal" NPCs have Damage Saves instead of WP/VP, so the +4 DC from Boomstick equates out to, more or less, +4 damage "most of the time".

--fje

I guess that Step 1 of NPC Creation (that's pp. 441-443), focusing on the NPC's concept, including things like motivations, strengths and weaknesses is 'neutering' from the roleplaying perspective? That the call for each and every NPC to be memorable to the PCs is just...what? Granted, there's no gnoll pimps or Special Forces-garbed kobolds, but come on.

You're factually incorrect, too - the Treacherous Quality (pp. 451) isn't applied to solely to Special NPCs. That's the one you're complaining about, by the by - the ability for NPCs to gain GC-activated criticals. For that matter, those 'neutered' NPCs carry the same - or better - equipment as the PCs, making them fairly significant threats, even without the Treacherous NPC Quality.

Consider the SWAT writeup, or the Special Forces trooper - each one poses a significant threat to PCs individually, complete with some nasty NPC Qualities (like the CQB Feats and Marksman Feats) to bolster the equipment they're carrying. All of the sudden, those Vitality Points don't look like they'll stand up so well when the PC is facing someone firing at them with an assault rifle or chucking grenades.

You're making a bogus argument, Heap. If you don't like the system, fine, great, super; the Game Police aren't going to come and take D20 Modern away from you. But for pete's sake, man, don't make statements like the ones above, because you're just plain wrong.

 

[The Shaman]

Okey-doke. My point was simply that, flavorful as the game is, it's not like every other feat has a whimsical, wacky name.

I'd be curious to go through my d20M supplements and see if there are any similarly flavorful names.

It's not a problem of "whimsical, wacky" names, but rather whimsical, wacky abilities that may be suited to superspy/espionage genre settings but little else. Unfortunately I don't have my 1e book handy or own the 2e book to cite specific examples at the moment, but in culling through 1e for material to inject into my Modern games, it jumped out at me again and again how many SC abilities were just too over-the-top for the style of games that I like to run.

Again, I don't think that makes SC bad - it just means that I don't care for it.