First Session Feedback

[Peter Holland]

1) Shooting into combat rules? Penalty to shoot? One roll- compare against all Defence- hit the lowest? Perhaps if you roll 5 higher than that you may hit the next highest? .g. firing against Def 12, you roll a 17- you may choose to try and hit the next highest Def- you may miss, but miss your ally too?

2) Assisting on skill checks? Half the lower skill? Or add your skill ranks to theirs?

3) Stun on Phasers? Same as others?

4) Ammo- how much actual ammo do weapons have? or do you roll each shot and on a 1? 6? you run out?

5) What's the difference between a Blaster and a Laser Pistol? essentially a Blaster seems better on all counts.

6) Character sheet is cumbersome- the character creation stuff is nice but gets in the way- would it be better on the back of the sheet for now? There are only 10 spaces for skills, should there be more slots? As a starting character you potentially have 8. More space for abilities? Double-space stat boxes- with a space for stat and then dice pools.

 

[Morrus]

Thanks. I'll try to answer your questions over the weekend (though I'll be away). In the meantime, did you have any feedback on how it went? Fun? Not fun? Fast? Slow? Easy? Hard?

 

[Peter Holland]

It was pretty fun, but got bogged down in lots of failed checks. My session started with an investigation- difficulties ranged from quite a few 8 or 10s to one 13- only characters who actually had skills, or ridiculously high INT stood any chance of making those checks, meaning that quite a few failed over and over- just because its an average, doesn't mean it is always rolled.

 

[Morrus]

Thanks; the standard difficulty benchmarks will get continually tweaked with feedback like this.

 

[Peter Holland]

With exploding dice I think it mattered less, but now they don't explode it is more difficult.

For example we have a Psionic in the group- she will basically never use her Psi-Blast as she only rolls 2d6 for it (she went for breadth rather than min-maxing): she can't beat the basic mental defence of most people.

 

[Morrus]

Is anyone using Luck, aiming, etc.? You can easily add 3-4 dice to the pool with little effort. It *is* designed that - especially in combat - you need to get into position etc. Without tactics, you're supposed to miss a lot.

Simply aiming gives you +2d6. A crossfire can add another die or two. Plus a luck die, perhaps, and that 2d6 is now 6d6.

Though the difficulties may also need to come down a bit.

 

[Peter Holland]

Combat wasn't a problem- there's plenty there to boost. Luck wasn't really used because players got so few Luck dice (many had good WIL so were on 1 or 2 dice)- they were reluctant to use them.

 

[Morrus]

Combat wasn't a problem- there's plenty there to boost. Luck wasn't really used because players got so few Luck dice (many had good WIL so were on 1 or 2 dice)- they were reluctant to use them.

Heh - they're there to be used!

I have some thoughts on probability manipulation as a psionic power or powers - essentially manipulating the size of a luck pool. It's only a vague idea right now though. I may also revisit some careers and give them the occasional ability to use a free luck die, plus add luck dice in as a reward type alongside XP.

 

[LucasC]

Did you think about using a countdown for Luck vs. a static # of dice added? I think people would be more apt to use it rather than sit on it then.

 

[Peter Holland]

I actually wonder whether just giving you 1 dice per point of Luck stat, rather than converting it into a dice pool would be better.