Numenera: Third Time Wasn't the Charm

Retreater · Jun 19, 2019

I recently returned from Origins, where I played several RPGs. Some went as expected (4e D&D), some went better than I was expecting (WHFRPG, Forbidden Lands), and some were amazing fun (Savage Rifts). But the one that struck me as the most disappointing was Numenera.

My first encounter with Numenera was several years ago at GenCon, GMed by someone associated with Monte Cook Games. It went okay. Most of the fun was with the other players at table, reinforcing the idea that almost any system can be fun with a good group. The second time we tried it was in my home group with a friend GMing it. It ended after two sessions - for the same reasons I will explore below with the bad experience at Origins. Then most recently, I played at Origins. Through no fault of the GM or the other players, it was one of the worst RPG experiences I've had at a con - completely the fault of the rules.

Here are the continual themes of problems I've noticed with Numenera.

1) Too much Damage Reduction - not enough ways around it. I couldn't damage the enemies, even on a critical hit. Half the party members had no way of significantly contributing to a battle.

2) Nearly every attack damages Might. Spreading this out to the other ability scores would have two effects: a) characters with other high ability scores wouldn't be as squishy; b) warriors (glaives) wouldn't cannibalize their ability to stand in combat to do cool actions and attacks. Have more psychic attacks damaging Intellect. Have something attack Speed. There is a great idea here that they just don't exploit.

3) Low level characters have very limited abilities. Your character will have one or two attacks and one or two skills. It's not uncommon to have an encounter when one of your attacks flat out doesn't work. So all you can do is spam one ability. It's extraordinarily boring.

I frequently see Numenera come up as a system that people just don't like. I feel like for me, personally, it is a missed opportunity - a system that could've been top tier.

What am I missing? Does anyone love this system? Do others dislike it? Why?

Gradine · Jun 19, 2019

The tricky part of Numenera is... well, the Numenera. The game isn't balanced to allow the characters to survive on their own talents. You're supposed to be constantly using the Numenera that you're supposed to be tripping over.

The problem with this is that there are two potential fail points; the GM failing to provide enough Numenera or the players not being willing to use them often enough.

The design bears some of the blame in not providing enough GM support for this. There aren't enough sample Numenera. This crops up again with the NPC design; things that hurt your Speed and Intellect should not be nearly as rare as things that hurt your Might.

Missed opportunities, to be sure

Aldarc · Jun 19, 2019

Retreater said:
Here are the continual themes of problems I've noticed with Numenera.

1) Too much Damage Reduction - not enough ways around it. I couldn't damage the enemies, even on a critical hit. Half the party members had no way of significantly contributing to a battle.

I have variously encountered this issue as well, depending on party composition. One potential quick work around is to remove static damage and replace it with variable die damage. So Light weapons do d4; Medium weapons do d6; and Heavy weapons do d8. Or knock them up a die. See what works best for your group. This gives a bit more chance that some weapons can exceed typical damage reduction. The other option is to reduce the damage reduction.

I am curious about how much damage reduction your opponent had. If you were using a light weapon (+2 dmg) a minimum and got a crit on 17-20 (+1-4 dmg), then that is +3-6 damage. This is not including any other bonuses to damage that your abilities from your type or focus might confer. I'm not familiar with many monsters that have that much damage reduction, but I would need to double-check.

2) Nearly every attack damages Might. Spreading this out to the other ability scores would have two effects: a) characters with other high ability scores wouldn't be as squishy; b) warriors (glaives) wouldn't cannibalize their ability to stand in combat to do cool actions and attacks. Have more psychic attacks damaging Intellect. Have something attack Speed. There is a great idea here that they just don't exploit.

I agree that there should probably be a variety of ability attacks, but I have not really experienced this too heavily as a problem in praxis. I don't think that Glaives typically cannibalize their attacks that much. A number of people who have played Glaives in my games also pick foci that are Int or Spd powered, so they can spread their abilities across the different stat types. Because otherwise what would they do with their Int scores? Glaives certainly are at risk for having their Might reduced, but they also have armor and Edges that should help in reducing how much Might (and Speed) they are bleeding. And if you spend Effort in Speed to avoid getting hit in the first place, then you reduce how much you lose from your Might pool. So the game does entail these sort of stat pool management choices as well. Not to mention the ability to put more points into Might from their Descriptor, Foci, or tier progression.

3) Low level characters have very limited abilities. Your character will have one or two attacks and one or two skills. It's not uncommon to have an encounter when one of your attacks flat out doesn't work. So all you can do is spam one ability. It's extraordinarily boring.

Give out another ability or two then? IME, the game isn't so much about combat but, rather, about discovery. Combat mainly serves as an obstacle for making those discoveries. Again, keeping in mind that you get XP not for defeating monsters but for making discoveries. Combat is one pillar that allows players to do cool things, and many options are certainly oriented towards that,* but many are also oriented towards exploration and social pillars. And while players have a small subset of abilities - which makes things easier to learn for new players - they also have a rotation of cyphers that they can use that give them a variable set of choices.

* I do think that Monte & Co. are somewhat stuck in their 3.X mindset where they think primarily in combat options.

There is also a certain degree of OSR design philosophy present where sometimes you are not meant to confront everything through combat. It's sometimes best to sneak around, negotiate, or use your cyphers to circumvent challenges. I think that this becomes clearer with the newest edition of Numenera where they now added (essentially) a charismatic type, an engineering type, and a salvaging-explorer type. None of which are stellar at combat. Most of these are oriented towards building-up a community so their combat utility is questionable. But I do think that the newer edition edges them closer to their original design goal about creating a game oriented towards buildign a future in the colossal shadow of the past.

What am I missing? Does anyone love this system? Do others dislike it? Why?

I enjoy the system, but I do not necessarily love it. It's incredibly easy for me to run a game of Numenera with little prep time. I guess that you are probably missing the cypher use aspect. These are big ticket items that you should be using and finding at a fairly regular pace. But this is GM-dependent, much as [MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION] says.

Retreater · Jun 19, 2019

Aldarc said:
I am curious about how much damage reduction your opponent had. If you were using a light weapon (+2 dmg) a minimum and got a crit on 17-20 (+1-4 dmg), then that is +3-6 damage. This is not including any other bonuses to damage that your abilities from your type or focus might confer. I'm not familiar with many monsters that have that much damage reduction, but I would need to double-check.

I think it was 5 or 6, against a 1st level party. But still, having only a 10% chance to accomplish anything is a bad percentage. Sitting around waiting for my turn just to do nothing does not make a compelling game design.

IME, the game isn't so much about combat but, rather, about discovery. Combat mainly serves as an obstacle for making those discoveries.

In theory, yes. In practice (based on my XP), I'd say it's not. The two con games I played, both designed and run by Monte Cook affiliates, were both basically set up like D&D adventures. Ambushes in the first adventure that couldn't be avoided. In the second, competing in a battle tournament in a gladiator arena.

In no game did I get a cypher during the course of play. It was as a reward at the end of the adventure, when it was too late to come into play.

These house rules you provide might improve the experience. But these are known issues. The 2nd edition is less than a year old. This stuff should've been fixed before the printing.

Aldarc · Jun 20, 2019

Retreater said:
I think it was 5 or 6, against a 1st level party. But still, having only a 10% chance to accomplish anything is a bad percentage. Sitting around waiting for my turn just to do nothing does not make a compelling game design.

That's a helluva a lot of damage reduction, especially against a Tier 1 party. I don't think that's a game design issue, but, rather, a GM encounter design one.

In theory, yes. In practice (based on my XP), I'd say it's not. The two con games I played, both designed and run by Monte Cook affiliates, were both basically set up like D&D adventures. Ambushes in the first adventure that couldn't be avoided. In the second, competing in a battle tournament in a gladiator arena.

Both of which seem like an adventure design issues.

In no game did I get a cypher during the course of play. It was as a reward at the end of the adventure, when it was too late to come into play.

Which is naturally a problem. Characters should also start play with cyphers.

These house rules you provide might improve the experience. But these are known issues. The 2nd edition is less than a year old. This stuff should've been fixed before the printing.

Maybe. There are other Cypher System games also produced by MCG that marginalize the need for cyphers. But for Numenera, cyphers are meant to be a part of the setting.

Tony Vargas · Jun 20, 2019

From the discussion of Metics thread:

DMMike said:
In Numenera, players roll all the dice, they use XP to change the GM's mind, and they use abilities to determine/adjust how difficult a task is. The book encourages the GM to let players describe their actions, and gives many examples of negotiation between player and GM of certain outcomes.

Sure sounds better than that game you guys are discussing, here.

Xaelvaen · Jun 20, 2019

Retreater said:
1) Too much Damage Reduction - not enough ways around it. I couldn't damage the enemies, even on a critical hit. Half the party members had no way of significantly contributing to a battle.

How very bizarre - in the Numenera core rulebook, damage resistance is a very -rare- thing. It's not even supposed to be on a third of the monsters, thus why the design in damage being 2, 3, and 5. Sounds like bad monster creation (only referring to your third play example, obviously).

Otherwise, we had fun with the game (playtesting and after the release). To be fair, however, we still incorporated many of the playtesting rules, because they were just more intuitive.

Retreater · Jun 20, 2019

Xaelvaen said:
How very bizarre - in the Numenera core rulebook, damage resistance is a very -rare- thing. It's not even supposed to be on a third of the monsters, thus why the design in damage being 2, 3, and 5. Sounds like bad monster creation (only referring to your third play example, obviously).

Otherwise, we had fun with the game (playtesting and after the release). To be fair, however, we still incorporated many of the playtesting rules, because they were just more intuitive.

Very unusual. It seemed a common feature with nearly every monster from all three games I played with different GMs. Monsters that can just shrug off 2-3 points of damage here or there is pretty substantial when most characters can't regularly do more than 2 points of damage without a critical hit.

Xaelvaen · Jun 20, 2019

Retreater said:
Very unusual. It seemed a common feature with nearly every monster from all three games I played with different GMs. Monsters that can just shrug off 2-3 points of damage here or there is pretty substantial when most characters can't regularly do more than 2 points of damage without a critical hit.

Ouch - I can definitely see armor (damage resistance) easily abused in that way. Sorry your experience was so terrible. It could also be I'm behind the time a bit in regards to its current iteration. I only have the original kickstarter books for the game, so only one monster portfolio, a couple of free adventures, and the players information and world-building. As of -that- time, monsters were meant to rarely have armor, because it even talks about the limitations of damage against armor causing some issues.

Aldarc · Jun 28, 2019

So out of my own curiosity, I decided to go through the main Numenera books to get a sense for the Armor ratings (AR) of the creatures. I will look per book (of the selected books) and then the total.

Numenera Discovery (old core book but modified)
0 AR: 12
1 AR: 6
2 AR: 9
3 AR: 6
4 AR: 5
5 AR: 1
6 AR: 1

Numenera Destiny (new core book)
0 AR: 9
1 AR: 4
2 AR: 5
3 AR: 7
4 AR: 5
5 AR: 1

Numenera World Guidebook
0 AR: 5
1 AR: 10
2 AR: 7
3 AR: 3
4 AR: 1
12: 1 (the Eurieg, which is DC 4/TN 12 sled "dog," so I am fairly convinced this was a typo)

Bestiary 1
0 AR: 19
1 AR: 33
2 AR: 26
3 AR: 21
4 AR: 12
5 AR: 5
6 AR: 2
8 AR: 1

Bestiary 2
0 AR: 58
1 AR: 28
2 AR: 37
3 AR: 26
4 AR: 10
5 AR: 7
10 AR: 1 (The Vow, which is DC 10/TN 30 and the stuff of apocryphal legends)

Bestiary 3
0 AR: 48
1 AR: 57
2 AR: 31
3 AR: 21
4 AR: 9
5 AR: 4
6 AR: 1
8 AR: 1

Totals (558 creatures)
0 AR: 151; ~27.1 percent
1 AR: 138 ~24.7 percent
2 AR: 115; ~20.6 percent
3 AR: 84; ~15.1 percent
4 AR: 42; ~7.53 percent
5 AR: 18; ~3.23 percent
6 AR: 5; ~0.90 percent
8 AR: 3; ~0.54 percent
10 AR: 1: ~0.18 percent
12 AR: 1 (likely meant to be 1-2 AR); ~0.18 percent

Also, while going through these books, I noticed that many of the higher AR creatures are not necessarily even meant to be fought. Some are things like creatures that support entire settlements on their back or in a pocket dimension in their head. Most of the things that 5+ AR are either things like that or things are you are not meant to fight until higher tiers when you should have more ways to penetrate armor.

But let's run a hypothetical scenario with a Tier 1 glaive and a Tier 1 nano where you were facing a creature with AR 4-5, so around 10-11 percent collectively from creatures surveyed.

Glaive: You get Combat Prowess, which provides +1 damage to your choice of ranged or melee weapons. You have access to all weapons, which would include Medium (4 dmg) or Heavy (6 dmg). This is 5-7 damage default per hit, not including any special abilities that you may have as part of your focus, which should get past most 4-5 AR. This does not include the possibility for critical hits either.

Nano: You can only use Light Weapons (2 dmg), but you can pick a Tier 1 ability called Onslaught that does 4 dmg. It costs 1 Int to use, but as a Nano you have Intellect Edge 1, so the ability cost is effectively 0. If you get a critical hit on a 19, that's +3 dmg; or on a 20, that's +4 dmg. So that would still provide you 7-8 dmg to bypass 4-5 AR. Sure that requires a critical, but you had mentioned "even on a critical" you didn't do damage.

Now if we are talking about bypassing any AR above 5, then we are talking about 1.8 percent of all creatures in the books that I looked through above: the 2 core books, the setting book, and 3 bestiaries.