Playtest Feedback 5/27

[LucasC]

Last night all players 'leveled' up to Heroic tier (and d8s). They also spent most of their XP to purchase character improvements.

Leveling Feedback

• Several players remarked on the dichotomy that exists regarding luck. By progressing to d8s their in-game luck decreases as their chance to score an exploding die is diminished. Conversely, part of leveling up a character is a boost to the LUCK attribute suggesting higher level characters are actually luckier.
  • Side note to this - over the course of the last several games I have noticed that most players use their LUCK pool at each night. It generally adds to one roll of the evening for each player. If that is your target for the LUCK pool then, at least at our table, your pretty much on target there.
• My more numerically inclined players suggested that it is almost always more cost effective to purchase an improved tradition as it grants you about 3 points to attributes and a skill increase as well as a special ability - vs. buying each thing independently.
  • This will encourage players to diversify at character creation. There was a clear disadvantage to those players that had already selected multiple ranks in a single tradition vs. those that took one rank in many traditions. If we start new characters I suspect they'll all go one-rank deep in their starting careers and then use XP to boost them.

Heroic Tier Feedback
Moving from Starter to Heroic tier caused a sudden and massive inflation in the games power level. I observe three things that caused this.

1. Dice pools moved from d6s to d8s
2. Skill rank caps moved from 1 to 2
3. XP was spent to increase careers which increased ability scores

The first two go hand-in-hand and always will. The third one will be slightly more spread out now as some of my players didn't realize they could have been spending XP all along.

Generally speaking, dice pools for primary actions increased by 2 dice each. One arising from the skill rank and one arising from ability score increases. This, coupled with the change from d6s to d8s had a fundamental impact on the game.

Last week (prior to leveling up) my players were giving back results from a typical roll in the high teens-low twenties. After leveling up the 'normal' roll moved up to the high twenties and low thirties.

Very few checks were below 26.

Check results in the 40s were not unusual.

The highest roll on a 10d8 pool came back 58 without any exploding dice.

Misc Feedback

• Traditions, Backgrounds and Careers are used interchangeably at various points in different books and different parts of books. Standardizing this language would be helpful. (I notice I used them both in this post also! )
• The Infiltrator Career offers a skill called "Armed Combat" that is presumably a way to double-up a rank in a melee weapon or ranged weapon.
• People feel like Marksman should be more restrictive (maybe Marksman [Pistols], Marksman [Rifles], etc.). Seems I may have read you were planning this in one of the threads.

 

[Morrus]

Last night all players 'leveled' up to Heroic tier (and d8s). They also spent most of their XP to purchase character improvements.

Just a side-note, eventually the XP requirement for these will me much, much higher. For now I've put them at a point where playtesters are likely to actually use them, but I envisage those four tiers as being as long as an entire D&D campaign - a year or more of play. The incremental advances will the the thing.

• My more numerically inclined players suggested that it is almost always more cost effective to purchase an improved tradition as it grants you about 3 points to attributes and a skill increase as well as a special ability - vs. buying each thing independently.

That's currently deliberate, but I'm keen to see feedback on it. I wanted folks to be drawn towards the purchase of character driven concepts rather than just numerical changes, and to use the latter for fine-tuning and tweaking. Additionally, picking up a new career in mid-play should be unusual; that sort of thing should happen between adventures.

This will encourage players to diversify at character creation. There was a clear disadvantage to those players that had already selected multiple ranks in a single tradition vs. those that took one rank in many traditions. If we start new characters I suspect they'll all go one-rank deep in their starting careers and then use XP to boost them.

Could you explain that more? Careers aren't front-loaded in the sense that the first rank is better than the later ones.

Though there are plans to audit them all and ensure that granted abilities towards the end of a career are worth waiting for.

Moving from Starter to Heroic tier caused a sudden and massive inflation in the games power level. I observe three things that caused this.

1. Dice pools moved from d6s to d8s
2. Skill rank caps moved from 1 to 2
3. XP was spent to increase careers which increased ability scores

The first two go hand-in-hand and always will. The third one will be slightly more spread out now as some of my players didn't realize they could have been spending XP all along.

Generally speaking, dice pools for primary actions increased by 2 dice each. One arising from the skill rank and one arising from ability score increases. This, coupled with the change from d6s to d8s had a fundamental impact on the game.

How did the scaling of defenses and HEALTH etc. figure into that? Do they need to be boosted a little to match the overall power gain and keep things even?

Very few checks were below 26.

Check results in the 40s were not unusual.

The highest roll on a 10d8 pool came back 58 without any exploding dice.

That is higher than I intended at Heroic. Looks like some tweaking is required. Thanks for the feedback, as always!

• The Infiltrator Career offers a skill called "Armed Combat" that is presumably a way to double-up a rank in a melee weapon or ranged weapon.

That's just a category for melee weapons. Non-standard naming! It means "sword" or "club" or what-have-you.

People feel like Marksman should be more restrictive (maybe Marksman [Pistols], Marksman [Rifles], etc.). Seems I may have read you were planning this in one of the threads.

Agreed; yep, that's in the next update. Sidearms, Rifles, Heavy, Gunnery (the latter being the existing ship-mounted stuff).

 

[LucasC]

This will encourage players to diversify at character creation. There was a clear disadvantage to those players that had already selected multiple ranks in a single tradition vs. those that took one rank in many traditions. If we start new characters I suspect they'll all go one-rank deep in their starting careers and then use XP to boost them.


Could you explain that more? Careers aren't front-loaded in the sense that the first rank is better than the later ones.

OK, so if we understand the rules correctly, the following limitations are in place.

1. You cannot purchase a new career with XP. New careers are gained during down-time between adventures.
2. You can use XP to gain an additional career rank during an adventure.

With that in mind, the players that diversify their careers in the beginning have (relatively) cheap options for using XP to raise careers (as the XP cost is based on the level of the career). Conversely those that specialized in one or two careers are left without a viable career choice to raise using XP and must fall back to the less desirable option of pumping skills or stats directly.

Example.

• Wrellin started with 1 rank in Pirate, Ninja and All-Around Cool Guy. He gains XP 4,000 XP. He can raise two careers to rank 2 (each one for 2,000 XP). That gives him roughly +6 to stats, 2 new skills and 2 new special abilities.
• Gor started with 3 ranks in Pirate. He gains XP 4,000. He can raise Pirate to rank 4 gaining 3 points in stats and 1 skill and 1 special ability.

Basically they all figure by diversifying at lower levels they can make their XP go further.

How did the scaling of defenses and HEALTH etc. figure into that? Do they need to be boosted a little to match the overall power gain and keep things even?

I've only got one night behind me but the DEFENSE boost seemed pretty good to me. I used d8s for all my critters and noticed a much harder time hitting the PCs.

I'll have to play more to give you much feedback on HEALTH.

I didn't notice everything go wonky so much in combat as all the non-combat checks that were being made but we had a session with only limited combat so that could be why.

That is higher than I intended at Heroic. Looks like some tweaking is required. Thanks for the feedback, as always!

It was quite a system shock I have to admit. =)

 

[Morrus]

OK, so if we understand the rules correctly, the following limitations are in place.

1. You cannot purchase a new career with XP. New careers are gained during down-time between adventures.
2. You can use XP to gain an additional career rank during an adventure.

With that in mind, the players that diversify their careers in the beginning have (relatively) cheap options for using XP to raise careers (as the XP cost is based on the level of the career). Conversely those that specialized in one or two careers are left without a viable career choice to raise using XP and must fall back to the less desirable option of pumping skills or stats directly.

Example.

• Wrellin started with 1 rank in Pirate, Ninja and All-Around Cool Guy. He gains XP 4,000 XP. He can raise two careers to rank 2 (each one for 2,000 XP). That gives him roughly +6 to stats, 2 new skills and 2 new special abilities.
• Gor started with 3 ranks in Pirate. He gains XP 4,000. He can raise Pirate to rank 4 gaining 3 points in stats and 1 skill and 1 special ability.

Basically they all figure by diversifying at lower levels they can make their XP go further.

But they can't return to a career unless it's marked as repeatable. So even if they have five careers at the end of generation, they can only progress in one of them. The idea is that it's a life path - you can't leave the police force, become a pirate, then rejoin the police force, for example.