New System Deal Breakers

[Summer-Knight925]

Okay, it looks like you didn't hit the orc after all."

Roll once to hit. Roll once to damage. Why in the name of the Seven Hells should we have to keep rolling to ignore the hits? Why drag on combats? If you want for a monster to be hard to damage, make it harder to hit and not worry about blocks, parries, shields, dodges, or the winds of fate. This slows down combat to an annoying crawl. (I'm looking at you, Shadowrun.)

Are there any deal-breakers for you?

Retreater

What about the option to spend an action to dodge or parry? Rather than automatic, I agree it can drag on combat, but if its "I attack the orc, the orc has 2 actions left, he spends on action to attempt to parry and fails, so I do damage" I see no problem, its like rolling a defense check or similar option

and the min/maxing does get annoying, I'll drink to that, but one of the things that really makes me mad is when a system has easily broken rules, usually with multiclassing....

I also hate skills that cover a very broad range on something, I like lots of skills...

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

There are only two deal-breakers that have kept me from playing particular games:

1) Too wide of a power gap between different characters. Rifts, you are the king here.

2) Not enough adventure support. Not necessarily pre-made adventures, but something to help a bust DM/GM keep his campaign going. I've stop playing some games I really like otherwise, including my favorite RPG of all time - Earthdawn, just because the ideas stop flowing from me and the professional writers stop producing.

 

[Croesus]

I believe that Champions, when it introduced disadvantages back in the 1980s, already had limits on how many points you were expected to get back from disadvantages.

This still left players with every incentive to choose disadvantages (and limitations on powers) that weren't really that disadvantageous, so GMs were later warned to be on the lookout for abuse and to disallow any disadvantage that wasn't a disadvantage.

Later games solved the problem by skipping the up-front point-rebate for points that were only earned when the disadvantage came up in play.

As I remember it, the original Champions gave characters a fixed amount of starting points, plus whatever the player selected in disads. Each type of disad could be taken up to six times: the first two gave full points, the next two gave half points, the last two gave quarter points. Allowing players to select variable totals of disads led to situations where you could have a group of characters with very different power levels.

Later versions of the Hero System changed the formula to assigning characters maximum total points, of which a certain amount was free, and the rest had to be from disads. The latest version goes an extra step and significantly lowers the amount of points from disads, so players will select fewer disads, which should therefore be more meaningful.

On a lark, I once created a Champions character (original rules) with maximum disads just to show how absurdly one could break that system. The character was vulnerable to everything, susceptible to everything, afraid of everything, had everyone as a DNPC, yadda, yadda. But man, did he have some truly cosmic power...

Any point buy system will be abusable, if a player is so inclined. But I don't see that as much different from a system like 3.x, where many players spend hours coming up with the "perfect" build using base and prestige classes, feat chains, and the like. The more control players have over the design of their character, the more responsibility they have to do so without being jerks.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I'm not sure if these are deal-breakers, but they're certainly "deal-reconsider-ers."

Overly generic systems. I have no interest in a one-system-fits-all game like HERO. If I'm playing a fantasy campaign, I want a game purpose-built for fantasy. Ditto horror, supers, etc.

Overly mechanical rules text. Reading an RPG book should be inspiring to the imagination. I shouldn't just come away with an idea of how the powers work, I should come away brimming with character and story concepts. And yes, that means I want some flavor attached to all the mechanics, in terms of setting, description, etc. It can certainly be ignored or changed, but it should be there. I'm one of those who believes that bad flavor text is still better than no flavor text.

Systems that try too hard to restrict DM fiat. Yes, this applies even when I'm playing, not just running. I don't want the DM just dismissing rules willy-nilly, but I also don't want the DM being largely superfluous.

I endorse all these opinions

 

[Dragonblade]

1) Too wide of a power gap between different characters. Rifts, you are the king here.

Rifts (at least how I played it back in the day) is fun because the game makes little pretense at balance. Its like watching a cheesy B movie that completely embraces and has fun with its over the top-ness. Its like the Army of Darkness of RPGs.

At least it was once I patched the Palladium system with some house rules that made it playable.

If a GM wants balance between Rifts PCs its up to them to pick a campaign theme, like everyone plays Coalition, and stick to it.

 

[Pentius]

Ptolus is for you my friend The Brick is amazing heh

The book is good sized.

But I'm not sure about the mechanics.

But I mean, I'd like to roll all the core books together and slap something like this on the table.

 

[Hussar]

Just read the first page so far and nothing there actually stands out as as deal breaker for me. Wow, people are picky.

I think about the only deal breaker for me now is if I am required to use a calculator to calculate things. Whenever things get into square roots and whatnot, sorry, not interested.

 

[steeldragons]

What about the option to spend an action to dodge or parry? Rather than automatic, I agree it can drag on combat, but if its "I attack the orc, the orc has 2 actions left, he spends on action to attempt to parry and fails, so I do damage" I see no problem, its like rolling a defense check or similar option

I don't want to get into a "thing" about this...or segue the thread...but when did this become "ok"?

How/why/when was "I hit. I do dX +Z damage" become too difficult or undesirable?

Who asked for a "defense mechanism"? Why was it necessary? Where did it come from? Forget about the deal-breakers already brought up about parry/dodge/...HOH, haha, dodge, parry, turn, thrust, twist (bill smacked up into face)...

Just wond'rin'.
--SD

 

[Hussar]

I don't want to get into a "thing" about this...or segue the thread...but when did this become "ok"?

How/why/when was "I hit. I do dX +Z damage" become too difficult or undesirable?

Who asked for a "defense mechanism"? Why was it necessary? Where did it come from? Forget about the deal-breakers already brought up about parry/dodge/...HOH, haha, dodge, parry, turn, thrust, twist (bill smacked up into face)...

Just wond'rin'.
--SD

This is hardly new. Dodge/Parry were part of the Palladium system back in the 80's. The 007 system had something like this as well, IIRC, and that's REALLY early 80's. That bit of a video rant on why D&D is crap (or something to that effect) on the front of EN World news talks about Runequest which had these sorts of mechanics (apparently). GURPS combat had all sorts of this thing as well.

Making combat a bit more simulationist has been a pretty solid goal for a lot of systems for a really long time.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

I don't want to get into a "thing" about this...or segue the thread...but when did this become "ok"?

How/why/when was "I hit. I do dX +Z damage" become too difficult or undesirable?

Who asked for a "defense mechanism"? Why was it necessary? Where did it come from? Forget about the deal-breakers already brought up about parry/dodge/...HOH, haha, dodge, parry, turn, thrust, twist (bill smacked up into face)...

Just wond'rin'.
--SD

I'm not talking about endless rolls in combat, just the option to dodge a blow vs attack, like fighting defensively in 3e...I think that's what you asked, was sort of unclear at times.