Playtest Feedback: Personal Combat

[LucasC]

We completed our first full-night session of N.E.W. on Tuesday. If your interested, I provide some background on the session itself on my blog.

Here's the results of the playtest.

We played 3 battles. Most of this feedback comes from the latter two which involved the actual PCs.

• PC Setup: each armed with a laser pistol (2d6), 3 armed with a laser rifle (3d6) and one armed with a heavy polaron gun (5d6); each PC has armor totaling 5 SOAK
• Alien Setup: each alien has a laser pistol (2d6) and 2 (of 4) had a laser rifle (3d6). Each alien has armor totaling SOAK 10.

Questions & General Feedback

1. When two or participants tie initiative who goes first?
2. How should moving diagonally be counted? 1, 1.5, 1-2, etc.
3. Too many weapons do 2d6 damage, everyone would like to see some variety here where possible
4. It felt odd that armor absorbed sonic damage
5. Is there meant to be a limit on Emergency First Aid or can a person with, say 15 damage, get Emergency First Aid repeated 15 times w/routine checks and get back to full hit points
6. Are there any penalties for shooting into a crowd? Is there a chance to hit bystanders when/if you miss your target?
7. Is there a way to add the covering fire to a group? In our situation a small group of civilians (4 total) were running away from the gunfight and one of the PCs wanted to cover them. As it turns out, he could only give one of them cover.
8. When a character is dying, is the countdown pool equal to their END score (as explicitly stated) or the associated dice pool? Meaning, if my END is 4, is my countdown 4 dice or 3 dice?
9. Two of my players have statistics that run towards brains and not brawn. They felt like the game didn’t give them an equal footing w/those that have high physical attributes.
10. What is the range increment for grenades?
11. What happens if I miss with my grenade?

Combat General
Here are some conclusions I come to after running the three battles (and why):

1. It is difficult to connect with attacks
   • In most instances the defense numbers we are shooting at right now, be they my monsters or the PCs, are on the high end of the scale or even out of reach without modifiers -
2. Successful attacks are deadly
   • It wasn’t unusual for a single attack to disable the target – and that was even with armor ranging from SOAK 5 to SOAK 10. Exploding dice played a key part in this.
3. Tactics play an important role in successful combat
   • This is the way you overcome #1 above. Using tactics such as pin down and crossfire the PCs were able to reliably connect w/their targets.
4. Mobility is important
   • Both to position yourself to gain tactical bonuses and to avoid the penalties associated with not moving.
5. Exploding dice significantly impact encounters
   • Ignoring the free-for-all brawl where everyone died, we had 3 PCs and 4 aliens fall unconscious. At least 4 of those were put down due to exploding dice. And that only accounts for the damage element, the to-hit exploders also resulted in many attacks succeeding that would have failed.

Pin Down
Everyone likes the concept of this tactic and, sometimes, they like the way it plays out in game. In other instances they find it to be unfair.
What they dislike about it, is that it feels unfair when a combatant engages a new target that has been immobile and (in many cases) not engaged at all previously.

Here’s an example.


In rounds 1, 2 and 3 everything works exactly as you think it should. It all ‘feels’ right. Then in round 4 the blue guy starts shooting at the second orange person. He gains a +3d6 on his attack even though this person has not been attacked yet. It feels unfair.

Couple of questions about Pin-Down

1. Does the ambush turn count when calculating pin-down penalties?
2. Do pin-down penalties accumulate at the end of you turn, or the end of all participants turn and the beginning of the next round of play

Another question that came up, that isn’t unclear in the rules but is a question of the ‘spirit’ of the pin-down mechanic.

1. If I’m hiding behind a pile of crates and get killed and my buddy runs up behind that same pile of crates that has been getting ‘chipped away little by little’ does he get any of my pin-down penalties?

Also, in times when the terrain they were using to hide behind would be unaffected by attacks, should the bonuses grow more slowly?

Lastly, tracking this mechanic for each participant adds a considerable amount of complexity to the game.

Crossfire
This mechanic had an awesome impact on combat. My players were jockeying to get into position to gain the crossfire bonuses every fight. As monsters moved, the PCs readjusted. Everything was in flux round-to-round. That was great.

Having said that, maybe I’m a dullard, maybe I’m not trying, maybe it’s the beer but… the 90 degree angle thing makes me not want to use this mechanic. It probably should be simple but my brain hurts trying to figure out where I need my creatures standing or when a PC is at a 90 degree angle. Something simpler would go a long ways towards improving this.

Grenades
So we tossed around a lot of grenades. Actually, I had to stop throwing grenades because I would have wiped out the PCs entirely.

Here’s why…

• In gunfights, an alien shoots at a PC w/his gun. More often than not, the attacks will miss.
• Same alien tosses a grenade. Now he’s targeting a defense of 5 – trivially easy to hit – and does automatic damage to anyone within 1 square.

There’s really almost no reason not to just load down w/grenades and blow everyone up all the time. You’ll hit every time, you’ll hit a group and damage is comparable. It is expensive, that's the only downside.

The PCs hated the grenades, even though they had their own.

Dying
In the last combat (6 PCs v 3 aliens) the PCs won but not before 3 of them were knocked unconscious. They all were stabilized, but only because we read the rules wrong. On a later reading I picked up the following:

The character providing the medical attention rolls an INT check as normal (with appropriate bonus die). This takes two actions (a full combat turn). The difficulty value of the check is equal to twice the damage of the final attack which dropped the patient (twice the number recorded above).

(emphasis mine)

Here are the difficulties we used:

• 14
• 20
• 21

The actual difficulties should have been doubled. The weapons dealing damage were 3d6 rifles. In all three cases at least one, and in some cases more than one, exploding d6 resulted in high damage.

If the targets had been correct, as shown below, the latter two would certainly have died, while the first one probably would have.

• 28
• 40
• 42

Is that intentional? I have to assume these results, and the difficulties noted above, are not going to be highly unusual since they are the results of the only 3 attacks that dropped PCs for the night.

 

[LucasC]

Here's the alien.



and the PCs are in this PDF doc (they got new armor and weapons though) -

 

[Morrus]

Friggin' awesome feedback - again! Lucas, you're definitely the star playtester! Thank you!

I'll go through your items one by one. In some cases, though, it'll just be a quick note that you've spotted an error, omission, or just something that hasn't been written yet.

1. When two or participants tie initiative who goes first?

Undecided. I'd probably go with the one with the highest AGI, then highest INT.

1. How should moving diagonally be counted? 1, 1.5, 1-2, etc.

Again undecided. I like/dislike each for different reasons. I might be inclined to go 1 for speed of play. Thoughts?

Too many weapons do 2d6 damage, everyone would like to see some variety here where possible

That lack of granularity is something I've noticed, too. I want to stick with just d6s though, so that needs some thought.

It felt odd that armor absorbed sonic damage

Good call!

Is there meant to be a limit on Emergency First Aid or can a person with, say 15 damage, get Emergency First Aid repeated 15 times w/routine checks and get back to full hit points

I haven't put a limit in, but I'd suggest there one - perhaps equal to one's END attribute per day.

Are there any penalties for shooting into a crowd? Is there a chance to hit bystanders when/if you miss your target?

Not as yet.

Is there a way to add the covering fire to a group? In our situation a small group of civilians (4 total) were running away from the gunfight and one of the PCs wanted to cover them. As it turns out, he could only give one of them cover.

Not as yet. I'll think about that!

When a character is dying, is the countdown pool equal to their END score (as explicitly stated) or the associated dice pool? Meaning, if my END is 4, is my countdown 4 dice or 3 dice?

As written it's END; however I'm very receptive to playtest feedback on whether that's too long or not.

Two of my players have statistics that run towards brains and not brawn. They felt like the game didn’t give them an equal footing w/those that have high physical attributes.

I'll try to think of other ways for them to use their attributes in combat. There's psionics, medicine, etc. of course, and INT is used for initiative.

What is the range increment for grenades?

Hah! Can't believe I didn't put that in! Thrown weapons as a whole are 3 squares (15') unless otherwise noted.

What happens if I miss with my grenade?

I expect I'll add a scatter diagram, though I'm not keen on them.

Combat General

Here are some conclusions I come to after running the three battles (and why):

1. It is difficult to connect with attacks
   • In most instances the defense numbers we are shooting at right now, be they my monsters or the PCs, are on the high end of the scale or even out of reach without modifiers -
2. Tactics play an important role in successful combat
   • This is the way you overcome #1 above. Using tactics such as pin down and crossfire the PCs were able to reliably connect w/their targets.
3. Mobility is important
   • Both to position yourself to gain tactical bonuses and to avoid the penalties associated with not moving.

Excellent! Pretty much exactly as intended! That's exactly what I was hoping you'd say!

Exploding dice significantly impact encounters

1. • Ignoring the free-for-all brawl where everyone died, we had 3 PCs and 4 aliens fall unconscious. At least 4 of those were put down due to exploding dice. And that only accounts for the damage element, the to-hit exploders also resulted in many attacks succeeding that would have failed.

This - as a core mechanic - is vital to get right. So we'll continue playtesting until we do. For now, you feel that too many exploding dice makes things too swingy?

Pin Down

Everyone likes the concept of this tactic and, sometimes, they like the way it plays out in game. In other instances they find it to be unfair.
What they dislike about it, is that it feels unfair when a combatant engages a new target that has been immobile and (in many cases) not engaged at all previously.

Here’s an example.
View attachment 60438

In rounds 1, 2 and 3 everything works exactly as you think it should. It all ‘feels’ right. Then in round 4 the blue guy starts shooting at the second orange person. He gains a +3d6 on his attack even though this person has not been attacked yet. It feels unfair.

Couple of questions about Pin-Down

1. Does the ambush turn count when calculating pin-down penalties?
2. Do pin-down penalties accumulate at the end of you turn, or the end of all participants turn and the beginning of the next round of play

Another question that came up, that isn’t unclear in the rules but is a question of the ‘spirit’ of the pin-down mechanic.

1. If I’m hiding behind a pile of crates and get killed and my buddy runs up behind that same pile of crates that has been getting ‘chipped away little by little’ does he get any of my pin-down penalties?

Also, in times when the terrain they were using to hide behind would be unaffected by attacks, should the bonuses grow more slowly?

Lastly, tracking this mechanic for each participant adds a considerable amount of complexity to the game.

So here we have an issue. Some of the stuff you don't like is because I wanted to keep it simple to track; and yet you're already observing it's a bit complex to do. This is a conundrum - it's easy to deal with those issues, but they do add a little extra complexity to a mechanic you already feel is too complex. so, for sure, every one of those points is trivially easy to fix; it's just whether it's worth it or not. Your feeling?

Crossfire
This mechanic had an awesome impact on combat. My players were jockeying to get into position to gain the crossfire bonuses every fight. As monsters moved, the PCs readjusted. Everything was in flux round-to-round. That was great.

Having said that, maybe I’m a dullard, maybe I’m not trying, maybe it’s the beer but… the 90 degree angle thing makes me not want to use this mechanic. It probably should be simple but my brain hurts trying to figure out where I need my creatures standing or when a PC is at a 90 degree angle. Something simpler would go a long ways towards improving this.

I'm really glad it works as intended! That's exactly what it's supposed to do.

The 90-degree thing is, sadly, the simple version of what was there before.

Grenades
So we tossed around a lot of grenades. Actually, I had to stop throwing grenades because I would have wiped out the PCs entirely.

Here’s why…

• In gunfights, an alien shoots at a PC w/his gun. More often than not, the attacks will miss.
• Same alien tosses a grenade. Now he’s targeting a defense of 5 – trivially easy to hit – and does automatic damage to anyone within 1 square.

There’s really almost no reason not to just load down w/grenades and blow everyone up all the time. You’ll hit every time, you’ll hit a group and damage is comparable. It is expensive, that's the only downside.

The PCs hated the grenades, even though they had their own.

Noted. Grenades broken; need work! Will do!

Dying
In the last combat (6 PCs v 3 aliens) the PCs won but not before 3 of them were knocked unconscious. They all were stabilized, but only because we read the rules wrong. On a later reading I picked up the following:



(emphasis mine)

Here are the difficulties we used:

• 14
• 20
• 21

The actual difficulties should have been doubled. The weapons dealing damage were 3d6 rifles. In all three cases at least one, and in some cases more than one, exploding d6 resulted in high damage.

If the targets had been correct, as shown below, the latter two would certainly have died, while the first one probably would have.

• 28
• 40
• 42

Is that intentional? I have to assume these results, and the difficulties noted above, are not going to be highly unusual since they are the results of the only 3 attacks that dropped PCs for the night.

Thanks! So, again, this is where playtesting feedback is useful. What looks good on paper may not play out as expected, and this is one example. So would you say that not doubling them feels about right?

 

[Morrus]

and the PCs are in this PDF doc (they got new armor and weapons though) -

Hey, fancy chucking the blank versions of those character sheets up in the character sheet area? Always good to give folks options!

 

[Morrus]

Some thoughts.

One early version of the pinned down rule was a bit simpler. It didn't accumulate - it just went to +1d6, you add a little marker to your character if you didn't move that turn, and take it away when you move. Very simple to track, but makes pinning down weaker overall.

Your observation on it applying even when not fired upon can slot into that reasonably easily.

So it would work like this --

1. You take your turn. If you didn't move, you put a marker next to your character. If you moved, you remove the marker (if present).

2. Everyone else has their turns.

3. Your turn comes around again. If you were not fired upon, you remove the marker. Got to (1).

 

[LucasC]

1. How should moving diagonally be counted? 1, 1.5, 1-2, etc.
Again undecided. I like/dislike each for different reasons. I might be inclined to go 1 for speed of play. Thoughts?

For simplicities sake only I prefer the 1-cost movement option for diagonals. I know this is an important decision to some people though. I’m just not among them.

Too many weapons do 2d6 damage, everyone would like to see some variety here where possible
That lack of granularity is something I've noticed, too. I want to stick with just d6s though, so that needs some thought.

I can see how the d6s limit this. Maybe more diversity in damage types coupled w/more diversity in SOAK in the armor? That could begin to feel like differentiation.

When a character is dying, is the countdown pool equal to their END score (as explicitly stated) or the associated dice pool? Meaning, if my END is 4, is my countdown 4 dice or 3 dice?
As written it's END; however I'm very receptive to playtest feedback on whether that's too long or not.

Well, our guys didn’t go long at all before they had Emergency First Aid applied. I do recall that one of them with an END 4 happened to drop two 6’s on the first round. But I don’t have a good feel for whether this will be too long/short right now.

Two of my players have statistics that run towards brains and not brawn. They felt like the game didn’t give them an equal footing w/those that have high physical attributes.
I'll try to think of other ways for them to use their attributes in combat. There's psionics, medicine, etc. of course, and INT is used for initiative.

I’ll be introducing PSI to the game in a few weeks and that could make a difference. I’m a little stumped on other options myself.

Exploding dice
This - as a core mechanic - is vital to get right. So we'll continue playtesting until we do. For now, you feel that too many exploding dice makes things too swingy?

My gut reaction says they are self-rewarding and therefore maybe too much. A guy with a 2d6 pool actually needs the exploders more than the fellow with 6d6 but he’s gonna get them a lot less. So the powerful become more powerful and the weak stay weak. Gotta keep at it in play though.

Pin Down

Sometimes complexity isn’t bad, sometimes it is. Personally, I’d prefer it to remain stacking dice rather than a static 1d6. That is not going to drive people to move around nearly as much.

The question of applying when not being shot on is a little more sticky, because then your tracking the number against each individual combatant.
One thing the guys tossed out was starting this clock after I get shot at – by anyone – and resetting it when I move or after I go a round or two w/out getting shot at.

Crossfire

One possibility would be to drop it to simply being across from the target. I dunno, I am sure if I stick w/the 90 degree thing I’ll pick it up eventually.

Dying
Thanks! So, again, this is where playtesting feedback is useful. What looks good on paper may not play out as expected, and this is one example. So would you say that not doubling them feels about right?

I did think the straight-damage felt good.

 

[Morrus]

Super. It's very encouraging to hear that we're broadly in the right ballpark and the rules are working as intended; what we're looking at now is tweaking, which is fantastic.

The lethality thing is a big, big decision, and exploding dice play into that. It might be a simple fix to say they only apply to attribute check (including attacks) and not damage; or make that an optional element for those who like more deadly games.

 

[Decim8or]

I personally like the exploding dice mechanic, it added that excitement to the skill check, however I think that it could potentially lead to some kind of overpowering result. Think of what if Luke had missed the thermal exhaust port, but managed to have an extra hot d6 that gave him enough damage to blow up the Death Star anyway?

Perhaps a cap on max explosions, say no more than original die pool count? I.E. a 3d6 weapon can only explode 3 times. Just an idea. Could effectively reflect a payout for devoting more ranks to a particular skill check.

 

[Unwise]

Thanks for the write-up, I have had an interest in the system so am keen to hear more about how it plays out in practice.

Just to contribute, I really love suppressive fire rules. I feel that they really give a pinned-down effect and make machine guns and similar weapons play the way I feel they should. In the instance mentioned of the character wishing to give support to the fleeing civilians, I feel that some good rules for supressive fire could really help there. The best rules I have seen for this are in Shadowrun 5th edition. To bastardize them, I would suggest something like this:

A) You pick an area to lay down suppressive fire in. EG a LMG can do a 5 meter line area of effect, or X squares.
B) Everybody in that area is given the choice to fall prone or dive behind cover. If they don't, you attack them as normal, with a bonus to hit. If they do take cover, you automatically miss them.
C) From here on, until you stop doing it, your gun runs out of juice or overheats, everybody in the suppressed area gets -X to all attacks and cannot move out into the open.
D) At any time, the enemy can choose to not take the - to attack, or to move out into the open. If they do, you get a free shot on them.

The particulars need adjusting for the game of course, but I find that the rules worked really well in my Shadowrun games. It gives people the feeling of being pinned down and having to just take cheaky potshots. It plays out very tactically and makes people fear machine guns as much as they should. I like having a weapon can really change the battle without actually doing any damage at all.

The interactions between this style of suppressive fire and your pinned-down and crossfire rules could be very interesting, but very deadly. The HMG lays down the suppresseive fire, trapping people, while the standard infantry move to outflank. There is a reason that people use grenades, smoke and airstrikes to get rid of machine-gunners.

On a side note, excuse my ignorance, but does the Pinned-down rule make sniper-nests and entrenched positions a little impractical? You would have to give them such a huge bonus to defence to counteract the advantages the attackers get. Would it be an idea to say that an entreched position has X dice resistance to being pinned down? So in a properly made sandbagged machinegun nest or a WWII normandy bunker, you ignore the first 3 bonus dice that the enemy are getting to pin you. I think that this could help distinguish between an encounter where you are storming a defensible position and an encounter where the battlefield just happens to have various peices of debris to take cover behind.

 

[MarkB]

For Pinned Down, I'm wondering if it's workable to put the onus on the attacker. Something like this:

Pinning Down
When shooting at an opponent who doesn't change position, your aim against them improves over successive rounds as you account for cover and anticipate their positioning. Each turn you make a ranged attack against an opponent, you will gain a cumulative 1d6 bonus to attacking them on subsequent turns. This bonus is lost as soon as the opponent moves to a position at least 10' (2 squares) from his current position, or if you make no attacks against that character on your turn.​

That solves the issue of new attackers against the target, adds a requirement that attackers keep up the pressure to maintain the bonus, and also gives pinned-down characters a tactical decision to make - either they can move to eliminate the penalty, or they can concentrate on killing their attacker. However, it also requires attackers to track their bonuses accurately. I'd suggest having players stack up their bonus dice in front of them, or using different-coloured d6s for the bonus dice.