Game night July 12. Hybrid rules set

[Primitive Screwhead]

Finished a game session of OLD using some of the NEW July playtest rules.

Rather than a full re-work, we added the Intuition stat and plugged in the score from Willpower. Then we calculated the new defenses, health, and other stats.
No change to exploits, equipment, or spells {mostly}

PCs defenses ranged from 10 {Fire Mage} to 18 {Small-folk Berserker}. Weapon attacks were mostly 4 to 5 dice with weapon damage mainly 3 to 4 dice.

NPCs {3 Ogre Thugs and 3 Orc Hatchetmen} defenses were 18 and 15. Weapon attacks were 4D6 and 3D6. Damage was 3D6 and 2D6. Health was 34 and 24.

Combat lasted about 5 rounds, ending with the Fire-Mage down and dying and significant damage to the rest of the team. It would have been worse, but a Transform spell turned one Ogre into a mushroom early on.

I think the to hit and damages were about right. Both the mage and druid felt like glass cannons, altho the both players think that the bows they had are now worthless with the stat changes. I thought it kinda had the feel of low level DnD.

The big sore thumb this time around was SOAK. With armor available, pretty much everyone has a SOAK of 5 or more. This means that the Hatchetmen's 2D6 damage might actually be able to do actual damage if they were lucky enough to hit, but probably not. Essentially the SOAK scores of the group meant only exploding dice were a hazard. Because they only had an attack of 3D6 there wasn't much room for trading to hit dice for damage.

I think SOAK needs to be looked at due to the lower damage dice pools. Also there needs to be clarification on how natural SOAK and armor/exploit SOAK stack/relate, and whether or not natural SOAK applies to magical evoke attacks {as reads now it doesn't which makes magic doubly powerful with higher damage dice pools and avoiding SOAK}.

Wandering into house rule territory, my thoughts include:
1: SOAK cannot reduce damage to zero, any attack that hits will deal at least 1 point of damage per die in the pool
2: Redo SOAK as dice pools and roll to see how protective it is {Chaosim's Elric did this and I thought it worked great} Basically Hide armor would grant 1D6 of SOAK. When damaged, the character rolls the SOAK pool and reduces the incoming damage by that amount.
3: significantly reduce the value of SOAK down to where the smaller damage pools are not pointless.


Then.. getting ahead of myself: Magic and the new stat/dice process. The Cleric hit one of the Orcs with a Drain Strength spell.

Its way too fiddly and not table-top friendly. The DM and Players need to keep an excel spreadsheet open to recalculate everything.

The Cleric casts an Infuse that grants 5 points of STR to all allies within 30 feet. What happens?
They probably get +5 to physical defense, but maybe not.
Gain +1 or maybe +2 to speed
They might get an additional dice added to the STR pool. Or two

What about a lower level spell that grants only 3 points? Maybe +3 to defence, maybe +1 to speed, and maybe +1 STR die... or maybe nothing at all.

I was okay with the stat modifying when there was an easy math to determine the changes, but now its too much to lookup and reference. Infuse/Drain needs to have enhancements that have clear results that are not tied to changing the stats. Things like 'Boost: 2 MP grant an additional dice to the related attributes dice pool', 'Accelerate {STR}: 2 MP add 1 to the targets speed score', and 'Protect {STR,AGI,END}: 2MP adds 1 to the targets defense score'

Abjure and Hex have the Shielding enhancement that grant a defence at a rate of 2 points per MP spent, so the Infuse method is not better and should not steal this niche.

 

[Morrus]

Thanks!

If they're only attacking with 3d6, try suggesting to them that they aim or feint, get high ground, or set up a crossfire or flank (is flanking in O.L.D.?)

Also, they should fairly quickly get some high quality weapons.

There should be no real reason to be stuck with 3d6.

A question - did you recalculate the bad guys' DEFENSE too? (I assume from your post that you did).

2: Redo SOAK as dice pools and roll to see how protective it is {Chaosim's Elric did this and I thought it worked great} Basically Hide armor would grant 1D6 of SOAK. When damaged, the character rolls the SOAK pool and reduces the incoming damage by that amount.

Had that originally. The extra dice rolling slows down combat too much. (As a side-note, quite a few D&D editions had "roll your AC each time" as an optional rule).

One thing to bear in mind is that SOAK may be noticeable now, but when they've progressed a bit, and they're rolling much larger dice pools, it won't be nearly at noticeable. Its value decreases (proprtionally) somewhat as your characters gain attributes and training. Plus, of course, there are exploits to avoid SOAK - they're in N.E.W. right now, but the Scientific Exploits will be present as Scholastic Exploits in O.L.D.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Yes, they did get into the aim, feint, flanking.. which is why I think the attack/hit is right since it avoided the 'I just swing' scenario.

Higher quality weapons will be good, my setting doesn't have shops so these will have to be loot drops. My group didn't mind the SOAK as the Ogres only had a soak of 6. I minded the soak as I can't have every bad guy with high quality weapons and now that the Cleric has a better grasp on Infuse the PC defenses are going to be higher when it counts.

Roger on the rolling SOAK as taking too much time. I would like a minimum damage however as mid combat the Ogre smashed the Mage to the ground and then did a big overhand swing driving to squish the mewling Mage... and rolled below the Mage's leather armor SOAK, dealing zero damage.
That was followed up by a Hatchetmen's double axe attacks that also hit and did zero damage..
But it evened out when the axe found its mark across the Mages neck for 22 damage from 2D6

So is SOAK idea #1 out?

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

New game session

Just finished the rest of the delve using the hybrid rules.

This time we incorporated the rule that only LUCK dice explode. Two of my players mentioned that the lack of exploding die decreased the 'fun' factor altho combat was much more predictable.
I recommend granting players a LUCK pool equal to the LUCK attribute instead of using the associated dice due to the changes in how many dice you get with the attribute. Most of the PCs would have 1 or 2 LUCK dice that regenerate 1 per night. With more than one encounter per adventuring day the use of luck dice is very limited.

The group did better with using flanking and exploits, as well as using magic, to improve their combat effectiveness. In the first encounter they gang-piled the Warhulk and shredded him in two rounds, then took apart the skirmishers. It helped immensely that they skirmishers first round was spent with attacks on the PC Ogre and dealt zero damage due to his SOAK of 11. Had they hit the mage or druid it might have been a different story.
It also helped that the WarHulk was weakened {drain STR 5 points} which translated into lowered defenses and lower to hit {heavy flail weapon}

Ogres			507 xp
Large Warhulk	Level 6 XP 784
Str	11	4d6		Physical	AC 20		Hitpoints 	34		Soak 10
Agi	6	3d6		Mental	12		perception 9	3d6
End	11	4d6		Natural attack	3D6 to hit, 3D6 damage
Int	2	1d6
Log	6	3d6		Heavy Flail, 4D6
Will	6	3d6		Whirlwind Strike – 2D, Knockdown, Charge
Cha	3	2d6

two Skirmishers	Level 5 XP 576
Str	9	3d6		Physical	AC 16		Hitpoints 	26		Soak 5
Agi	7	3d6		Mental	12		perception 9	3d6
End	8	3d6		Natural attack	3D6 to hit, 2D6 damage
Int	2	1d6
Log	5	2d6		Javelin 2d6
Will	5	2d6		Club 2D6
Cha	3	2d6		Shoot and Charge

Second encounter was with a 'Lich' and Zombie Hulks, but was more about realizing that the undead-healing magic made the fight too dangerous and the goal was to destroy the evil artifact. Inventive use of Create Nature turned this fight from a 'we are all going to die' to a 'alright, we beat them!'

Lich Kopitila		Level 6	 XP 784
Str	9	3d6		Physical	AC 15		Hitpoints 	60		Soak 5/15 fire
Agi	6	3d6		Mental	12		perception 13	4d6
End	9	3d6		Natural attack	3D6 to hit, 2D6 damage
Int	6	3d6			Necrotic Strike: Natural attack also deals -2D to attacks
Log	6	3d6		Heavy Flail: 4D6
Will	6	3d6		  - Whirlwind -2d, knockdown,
Cha	10	4d6		Vitality Drain: Close blast 3 CHR vs End, 2D6 necrotic and slowed (-2 to speed) Koptila gains 10 temp hit points

Zombie Hulk		Level 5	 XP529
Str	10	3d6		Physical	AC 16		Hitpoints 	26		Soak 10
Agi	3	2d6		Mental	5		perception 13	2d6		Vuln Radiant/15 fire
End	9	3d6		Natural attack	4D6 to hit, 3D6 damage
Int	1	1d6			Immobilizing Strike, target rolls END versus the attack roll to resist
Log	4	2d6			Gain +2d to attack and +1D to damage against immobilized targets
Will	4	2d6		
Cha	1	1d6		Rise Again. When killed, spend a move action to regenerate 13 hitpoints unless the artifact is destroyed

After artifact is destroyed, all undead take 10 points of damage each turn

Comment on my game design.. I am being lazy and using the 4e 'Dungeon Delves' book as the scenarios are ready-made. I convert the monsters by cutting the DnD stats in half and then equipping/converting weapons and spells to close-enough exploits. It has worked pretty well and comes close to the stats published so far.

 

[Morrus]

It's always tough getting diametrically opposite playtest feedback! The LUC amounts are less than they used to be because the amount of swinginess they added was generally found to be too much. They used to be just like you suggest. I'm definitely interested in hearing more about peoples' experiences with those mechanics - it's important they be set at the right level.

Bear in mind, though, you're using a kinda hybrid set there and missing part of the rules. In N.E.W., there are also REP and TECH dice pools. In O.L.D., you have a REP dice pool (though communication distances are less and slower) and a "FAITH" dice pool which is analogous to TECH but represents your god helping you out a little. You'll see that when the next O.L.D. docuemnt comes out, but for the moment I need more feedback on the core new N.E.W. math before I convert O.L.D. wholescale to it. It's great that you're doing this already, albeit kinda on the fly.

Out of interest, are you converting any of the scientific exploits over? Those sorts of things are used for bypassing SOAK and the like. There will be LORE exploits, which do much the same thing -- "I heard that a troll's kneecap is weaker than the rest of it!"

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I think that 'faith' will help somewhat, altho the two characters that have the least problems are the druid and the cleric. The Halfling berserker doesn't really have problems altho he thinks he does. The mage might have problems, altho at the moment he looks alot like a squishy low level mage.
The setting and scenarios makes REP pretty useless, so that won't help for a while.

I have not converted any of the exploits over, but will definitely look at that.. assuming you won't have more OLD documents for me to work with in two weeks?

As to the opposed playtest reports and LUCK... the change definitely limited the swingy-ness and makes running combat safer for the DM, but reduces the entertainment factor for the player. Its the 'critical hit' issue where its cool to have a spectacular success when you don't expect it but don't want the NPCs to be able to wipe you out with a lucky hit of their own. With only 1 or 2 luck dice, the players are going to hang onto them until the most dire moment comes out.. and then if the rolls are low its disappointing. However if you have 4 or 5 you are more willing to use them in less dire circumstances and its more likely that one will actually explode.
Perhaps an option that keeps LUCK rare but more reliable is to not use a special die for your luck die. If you use one Luck die than any one dice that rolls a six can explode. If you use two Luck, then two of your dice can explode, etc..
This means when you have only 2 luck dice and you save one for the most dire moment as it is much more likely to make a difference, and use your second die for less dire moments.


Last thought: Faith and Mages. Our mage hasn't adopted well to the dynamic of a point based magic system and really enjoys nuking the enemy. In the last game he turned a melee nastiness of an Ogre into a mushroom...
But that means he basically has three spells a day. Adding Faith to the divine casters will appear to him to boost classes that are already more powerful than his. A large part of this is player expectations and something I have to work on, but just wanted to share that difficulty.
I am going to have to get with him offline and help develop better spell selections and clarify that if he wants to be the group nuke, expect to be sitting on the sidelines for most of the combat time. He can't pull out the nukes in every combat.

 

[Morrus]

But there aren't divine and arcane casters. That's a D&D-ism I think you're bringing across! Magic's whatever you want it to be.

But if the mage is finding he doesn't have enough to do, that's very valuable feedback. I can address that directly. His spellcasting ability is pretty much identical to the other casters, though, except in theme, so any issue he's having the other casters will be having, too, unless I've made some enormous typo and given one class twice as much MAG as another!

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

He went FireMage and has the largest pool of Magic, the most spell lists, and the widest variety of what he can do with spells. The problem isn't the build...its the player desire to be nuke in every combat and have spell-like things to do in between. Like the way 4e gave its mages at at-will magic ability {even tho it was basically a dressed up cross-bow}, but more like how in Champion you are major players and rarely run out of 'juice'. He would do better with either 3 times the amount of MP or just one encounter per adventuring day.

So, I repeat, not a build issue but a playstyle issue. The other two casters built on the premise that spell casting is only a part of their characters capability and generally cast minor spells throughout the day.

RE: Faith
Ah, yes.. DnDism at work. but how else will you portray the devout Cleric of Pew-Pew with more faith than the hedge-wizard healer? or will that even matter?

If it is compatible with 'TECH', shouldn't it translate into something like 'MYTHIC'? the knowledge and application of the fantastic? devout characters would call the results miracles and the result of their deity, arcane-scientific grounded characters would call the result the application of symbology/ritual/essence..
Base it on CHA and the BARD would be the best at it, not casting spells but linking mystical energies and the invisible lines of fate to improve the outcome in her favor.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Game session last night went well. I am running a hex-crawl sort of scenario with less focus on combat and more on exploration. The group is adventuring across a large plain so the encounters have been mostly normalish creatures. One note, as the PCs quite reasonably focused on defenses they add to the swingyness of combat. The Small-Folk can't be hit by creatures that roll 3D6 to attack, but gets severely wounded if hit for 3D6 damage. The Ogre might get hit by the same critter, and his soak really helps survivability.
The Mage just picked up MasterCraft Plate, which would give him a SOAK of 17 on top of being harder to hit.
This takes pretty much all the level 4 and below monsters out of the mix.

The battle last night that drove this home was 9 Giant Fire Beetles who ambushed the party. Round one the beetles flailed around biting at the PCs, if they did get lucky enough to hit they didn't do enough damage to penetrate the SOAK. The Fire Mage toasted the beetles taking them all to half health.
Round two, the group retreated and the Druid cast a blast of cold, killing them all. Unfortunately,Fire Beetles explode in a blast of heat and flames when they die, and flame bypasses armor soak... the Ogre was next to three beetles and he lost over half his health in the resulting conflagration.

Assuming the PC's remain at their current health/defence/soak ratings, to challenge them I need to ramp up the enemies To Hit through tactics and straight boosts, but also to find a way to penetrate the high SOAKs without using high damage.. else the low SOAK characters will suffer.

I have decided that the BBEG they are pursuing is a Dragon.. so I will be working on building a dragon up within the next 4 weeks {dragon for Halloween!}
Mainly because I think that they can definitely handle that level of fight..and might actually be able to walk over a dragon, especially if the Mage is at full power.

Part of this is due to the XP payouts. I have been using the NEW math for XP values and I think that they are too high. Even split 5 ways the last four combats ended up granting over 1,000 xp to the PCs.
I think the XP awards needs to be scaled by threat level. The Fire Beetles lasted 2 rounds with 9 of them at 289xp each. They were not a threat, except when they all went Kabloom. If the Ogre had moved out of melee range he might have taken 5 points of damage instead of half his health.


I am looking forward to seeing the new playtest document and trying out the new math/combat in its full glory!


A question:
- MasterCraft Shield and Armor. Do these require skill to use the benefits? If so, what does the skill of 'Shield use' do besides grant access to the MasterCraft shield?