Draw Steel General Thread [+]

[Staffan]

In one of the videos I watched there was mention of also researching NPCs to discover their motivations/pitfalls. Is that in the book, too?

I don't think there are mechanics for it in the book but you could certainly learn things like "Sir Roxers is known throughout town for his lavish lifestyle" which would indicate that Revelry is one of his motivations.

 

[tetrasodium]

They're baked into the negotiation rules. You can just ask an NPC about their motivation, but they might not want to tell you. In that case, or to discover pitfalls, a hero makes a Reason, Intuition, or Presence test. On a tier 1, you learn nothing and reduce the NPC patience by 1. Tier 2 gains you nothing and on a tier 3 you learn a Motivation or a Pitfall. You can't do it again until someone makes an argument or the negotiation ends.

Haven't finished reading the new PDF yet but Iirc NPCs also have a value for how patient they are. If you need to ask it counts against that

 

[Staffan]

Haven't finished reading the new PDF yet but Iirc NPCs also have a value for how patient they are. If you need to ask it counts against that

Not necessarily. Trying to learn a motivation/pitfall without outright asking is a power roll using Reason, Intuition, or Presence. 11- means no info and lose a Patience, 12-16 is no effect, and 17+ you learn something.

Of course, just asking can never hurt.

 

[gnarlygninja]

Yeah, so far as I can tell just asking them at the start of negotiation doesn't cost patience. But thinking of some people I've known I can definitely imagine a scenario where the way you ask would.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not necessarily. Trying to learn a motivation/pitfall without outright asking is a power roll using Reason, Intuition, or Presence. 11- means no info and lose a Patience, 12-16 is no effect, and 17+ you learn something.

Of course, just asking can never hurt.
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Yea I was thinking more about the well trod metagaming social structure where the player with a job in sales or something gets to "roleplay" around the mechanics while the GM is expected to just kinda let them keep spinning the interaction.

Having those mechanics when I ran it during some of the the playtest packets was amazing when it made players say "oh wait no [Bob] stuff itmmm there are rules and they are kinda neat. I want to kinda insert myself between the two before [Bob] can screw us so I can...."

Edit: those guard rails made it feel less arbitrary as a gm in good ways

 

[Enrahim]

Just read the slamming rules on forced movement. Those are absolutely insane! I think I have never been so happy and excited reading any rules in my life

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Just read the slamming rules on forced movement. Those are absolutely insane! I think I have never been so happy and excited reading any rules in my life

Yeah pretty much all the "tactical combat" rules seem to be great, like awesome.

I do have some questions about the monsters, like, I consider it to be a bit silly that all the frankenstein army guys have explicitly gunpowder-based (magic gunpowder but still fundamentally a chemical explosive) bomb collars, but those bomb collars only damage their enemies? I don't believe that! Also I suspect every single one of them having them (almost) will get pretty tedious in terms of endless attempting to force-movement and kill them. But that's a small critique of what are otherwise generally good and interesting monster designs, and easily house-ruled (also it prevents "chain reactions" which could be very dangerous which maybe is the real intent).

 

[Enrahim]

I do have some questions about the monsters, like, I consider it to be a bit silly that all the frankenstein army guys have explicitly gunpowder-based (magic gunpowder but still fundamentally a chemical explosive) bomb collars, but those bomb collars only damage their enemies? I don't believe that! Also I suspect every single one of them having them (almost) will get pretty tedious in terms of endless attempting to force-movement and kill them. But that's a small critique of what are otherwise generally good and interesting monster designs, and easily house-ruled (also it prevents "chain reactions" which could be very dangerous which maybe is the real intent).

I think you can theme it with something like these army people being drilled in how to avoid the blast zone. It is not like it is a major explosion anyway, and likely focused inwards.

Any kind of monster can be tedious if meeting too many of them, but force move finishes might not be the only viable tactic. Reach weapons and ranged attacks do the work as well. As does just eating that minor damage as you are a bad-ass

 

[chuckdee]

I'd not really kept track of this, but taking a look at the resources further up in the thread, this looks really cool! Looking forward to taking a dive into it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think you can theme it with something like these army people being drilled in how to avoid the blast zone. It is not like it is a major explosion anyway, and likely focused inwards.

Any kind of monster can be tedious if meeting too many of them, but force move finishes might not be the only viable tactic. Reach weapons and ranged attacks do the work as well. As does just eating that minor damage as you are a bad-ass

I like the idea re drill, that's a good one though I feel like it should still have consequences somehow. The difficulty re tedious is that they're explicitly an army and explicitly almost all have the bomb collars and don't use non-frankenstein monster troops/allies so it's likely you'd repeatedly encounter groups of them in a given adventure (potentially). I guess I feel like at some point because it's minor damage and just over and over it's going to get old, based on similar stuff I've seen before. I suppose I could tell the players their PCs have simply learned to avoid the normal collar blasts after X encounters (or have an NPC teach them to), leaving major/special ones as still an issue.