N.E.W Playtest- first read feedback

[Morrus]

I must admit, many of those are rather too abbreviated for me to make head or tail of. Would you be so kind as to elaborate?

(Also, it works be incredibly helpful if you could separate things into ideas/suggestions and issues).

Plus please also feed back on positive stuff! It's important I know what works!

 

[Peter Holland]

TYPOS
1. Skill section page 72- if you have agility 6 don’t you roll 4 dice as standard- 6/2=3+1=4
2. Exploding dice on page 73?
3. pg76- breathe not breath- says countdowns are used if you can't breath
7. Page 90 fuel costs confusing-1 fuel= 1 parsec per class? Meaning is very unclear- does a Class IV ship use 1 fuel per parsec or 4 fuel?
9. 104- destructible- 5 damage or 10 to destroy- says both
12. 114- weaponss coverage
15. 123- ion postol instead of pistol
16. 143 formatting of table for bug and Geiger counter
18. 162- should the shuttle have the asterisk?
19. 167- exploding dice mention
20. 173 Panwatch Metallurgy- solar misspelled- for the sails
21. 178- Reactive and Ablative armours- table and description conflicts as to which is better against Energy
179- Shield example- 40 shields on a Class VIII ship = 5 soak

RULES etc.
Death pool: Made up of your END score or dice pool= /2+1
5. Luck pool- calculate as standard-a pc android is special maybe they took risks so should have 1 Luck dice
6. 85- should medical scanners give a big bonus at ranges such as 5ft
8. Trip and knockdown- should the stats be changed, surely ranged knockdown is less about strength more about accuracy of shooting
10. 108-amnesia- people often retain skills whilst losing memories- should they lose them for the condition?
11. 109-does being unconscious always mean dying? Should it have another term?
13. Ship actions- medical care takes up one action?
14. 117- casualties in ship based combats- should this scale based on damage? E.g. for each 5 points 1d6 become casualties
17. Cybernetics- what about replacement limbs which don't enhance? Cost and do they count towards the limit?


Positives- if I haven't mentioned it, it's a positive. When we start the system, then we can give fuller feedback

 

[Peter Holland]

Psionics- Worldbuilding

1. 198- shouldn't it be a Psi attribute equal to or greater than to master a power?
2. 198- description of disciplines- telekinesis is spelled incorrectly
3. 202- aren't the addiction rules before this section?
4. 204- same as 198
5. 206- mind control, is there a limit to the range of control? If not should there be as it is powerful. Also says tarhet. What is the duration?
6. Xp of a creature- just needs simplifying and exemplifying
7. 241- heat makes you sickened and acutely sickened- should this refer to nausea?
8. 242- radiation starts at weak, atmospheres refers to light
9. 257- refers to college student career- it is now called college
10. 258- says soldiers instead of soldier's

11. Should Psi-blast be mandatory? Why not telepathy or a scanning power? Or a choice of a few?
12. Psi suppressant on page 202- should they be weak, standard and strong? If not why wouldn't you buy three small and combine them? They cost less
13. 206- mental defence-could there be a reflexive use at increased cost?
14. Psychic scream-scaleable?
15. Psi-shield for soak vs psionic attacks?
16. Career advancement- option to buy into new careers say 500xp? What do Cr bonuses become during play?
17. Zero-G: why no encumbrance? Mass still exists and requires force to be moved
18. With ranked careers do you need to complete them to use them as a prerequisite for another career?

 

[LucasC]

Character Generation- Typos and Ideas
1. Starter Careers- Should they give access to ‘general skills’ that provide half the benefit (and count as half the ranks of specific careers for qualifying)- to create slightly more rounded/capable characters?

In my opinion, the interplay between skills and character creation, prerequisites and other areas of the game are already complex enough. Attempting to add a 'half' rank would only needlessly snarl this up. New characters start w/3 racial skills, 5 career skills (starter + four additional) and one bonus personal skill. Between all of this I think characters can come out pretty rounded.

Question for Morrus, did you remove the specialization skill? I don't see it in the latest playtest doc but want to make sure it's not just moved somewhere.

 

[Morrus]

Question for Morrus, did you remove the specialization skill? I don't see it in the latest playtest doc but want to make sure it's not just moved somewhere.

Yup; it's gone from the latest iteration.

 

[Peter Holland]

In my opinion, the interplay between skills and character creation, prerequisites and other areas of the game are already complex enough. Attempting to add a 'half' rank would only needlessly snarl this up. New characters start w/3 racial skills, 5 career skills (starter + four additional) and one bonus personal skill. Between all of this I think characters can come out pretty rounded.

Starter of 3 ranks, plus 5 5 others is really quite low- your character will barely be able to do anything, certainly won't seem heroic and certainly won't be rounded as you'll only have a few, really focused skills unless you've flitted about in careers.

 

[Morrus]

Starter of 3 ranks, plus 5 5 others is really quite low- your character will barely be able to do anything, certainly won't seem heroic and certainly won't be rounded as you'll only have a few, really focused skills unless you've flitted about in careers.

A skill doesn't mean "able to do something" - it means "better than other people at doing that thing". Everyone is basically competent at everything, assuming average attribute scores. You can pilot a spaceship, shoot a bad guy, climb a wall, use a sword, pick a lock - all without taking a single skill. The system follows a philosophy that the GM should never find himself saying "no, you cannot do that" but rather "sure, you can try". Success isn't guaranteed, of course.

Starting characters get to be good at a small number of things. As they gain experience, their competence increases in the form of attributes and skills.

(That said, the new post-exploding dice difficulty benchmarks need some thorough playtesting; I'll be surprised if they don't need tweaking. Starting characters aren't legendary heroes yet, though).

 

[Peter Holland]

No- exactly- whilst you can do 'anything' you will fail at most things (based on challenging difficulty levels) a lot of the time- that will either lead to artificially lowering difficulties or gaming sessions with lots of "So you failed at that, want to try again? Or would you rather just give up, we've been a this for hours and none of you can succeed because your 8 skill ranks each can't help".

 

[Morrus]

No- exactly- whilst you can do 'anything' you will fail at most things (based on challenging difficulty levels) a lot of the time- that will either lead to artificially lowering difficulties or gaming sessions with lots of "So you failed at that, want to try again? Or would you rather just give up, we've been a this for hours and none of you can succeed because your 8 skill ranks each can't help".

You'll fail challenging things a lot, sure. They're challenging. Routine things with the Luck bonuses don't really play out like that in practice. I encourage you to give it a try - you might be surprised. Luck and equipment, plus circumstance bonuses often mean an average character with no skill ranks is still rolling a handful of d6s.

As the characters increase in experience challenging tasks become relatively easier, and it's the difficult ones which you fail a lot. Later on, you'll be passing those regularly and so on.

However - as I said earlier - the new post-exploding difficulty benchmarks need thorough playtesting. They may need to be tweaked. The issue there will simply be calibrating the correct new default difficulty levels, not inflating the size of the die pools (which have come down consistently and drastically since the first playtests in December).

 

[Peter Holland]

I'm just worried because we've played 'you can do anything' games with skills working like this before, and hey never seem to work!