Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Primitive Screwhead" data-source="post: 6251971" data-attributes="member: 20805">Playtest report with three players of various experience with gamingCharacter generation:  4.5 stars  This took three hours, mostly because of only one print-out and working our way through it carefully. We had fun building the characters, a feeling that was really helped by the players not knowing what the careers would do for them. I had them choose from the list and then read off the details of the career. I can see how players could pick and choose the right careers to hyper-focus their characters. Androids: The attribute boost is too much, 'Slash' ended up with an INT of 8! Careers: Some are really hot, most are not. Then there are the 'holy....' Rank III of Field Scientist allows you to MacGyver anything at a check that beats 1/10 the cost of the item? Blaster Pistol costs 40 cr, so a Rank III Field Scientist can whip one up out of whatever is laying around without breaking a sweat.  I do like the idea of having randomized results from the career tied to a 'this is what happened' sort of story. CP2020 and Fasa Aliens is where I saw this done, and in Aliens you could have a character die during creation!Skills:   Nice system that looks like it could encourage narrative game play, however average humans have to be skilled to be reliably competent. A 'Routine' check is against a target number of 13, and 4D6 averages at 12 so that would be a 50% chance. The book references climbing a rough cliff wall and landing a ship as 'Routine', not something I would want to try with only a 50% chance of success. At least 70% reliability is prefered on a task where my life might hang in the balance. Couple this with combat {see my notes in the 'weapon, weapon, weapon' thread} where a Thug has a defence of 25, now Average Joe needs to roll an exploding die in order to connect. Bar fights would never end!   So, either lucky strikes or focused character builds will be successful.  For some skill checks, it doesn't make sense for just one roll. There should be some notes about complex skill checks where a series of checks is required, like for instance manufacturing a weapon. A whole chapter could be devoted to crafting. Also a deeper social system should exist in order to make use of the carousing and flirting skills.Equipment:  Lacking in the 'fluff' parts of the equipment list, my crew took weapons and armor. But is was an encounter night, so no worries.Game Play: 4 stars  The narrative style was easy to slip into and was entertaining, I was able to run the encounter in the document very easily and build it up as part of a world. The non-combat portions of the encounter remained engaging.  One concern is the exploding die mechanic. Since this is for every die rolled, it means that characters with larger dice pools have a larger chance of getting lucky and racking up higher results.. which they don't need as much as they have the high dice pool to begin with. So it doesn't feel like a 'you have a chance even if you are not that skilled' and more like a 'if you are really good, you can be really really good' Another concern is the progression of ability stat to dice conversion. a) I dislike conversion tables b) when progressing you have 'dead' levels where advancing a stat does nothing.     {This is a major change, so ignore me if you want.. just brainstorming... perhaps on odd levels you gain +1D and on even levels you gain a skill related to that attribute}Combat: 2 stars   As posted in the other thread, the defense-health-soak-damage balance needs adjustment. You need a lucky hit or skilled marksmanship, and then the target is probably down. Basically its a game of whoever hits first wins. In tonight's game, the PCs hit first and the NPCs didn't get a chance to hit back.   Recommend dropping Defence to 5 + (AGIx3), granting SOAK equal to WILL, and removing bonus damage die from skills.We will be playing again tomorrow, which means I get to try out creating bad guys!</blockquote>

Verification