rangerjohn said:
Well then the ansewer is no. You simply can't do it untill +5 b.a.b. +5 b.a.b. is a prerequisite for quick morph. Well that's two down. Apparently sportcars are just for speed. No way you can have a decent weapon in that form. You would have to use all your form feats to puchase gear slots. That's the side effect of your hardness rule. It makes most of the simple firearms worthless.
You would have to be fighting a medium or smaller bot, and hope you get max or near max damage. As far as unarmed, no way your going toe to toe with a larger bot. It's getting so bad, I'm really considering scraping the whole concept.
Actually, no, it wasn’t my hardness rule that did it… all mechamorphs already had an energy resistance of 10. This was regardless of the nexus energy imbuing as that is a DR of 10/Nexus Energy… so… ranged weapons were nerfed while melee weapons were not… my hardness rule is in place of the 10 energy resistance, nerfing ALL weapons, not just energy weapons. But, you can use gear points to increase the damage of the weapon just like melee weapons for larger sizes (1 gear point to improve the weapon one shift down the Table 6-4 Increased Damage by Size chart on 44. This doesn’t increase the size of the weapon, just the effectiveness of it.) I had had originally seen that problem and offered that as a way to help make energy weapons more viable… sure, melee weapons are cheaper, gear wise, but you also have to actually be in Melee, no cover and within reach, while ranged weapons have obvious advantages, hence the extra cost.
As well, I didn’t say that the larger ‘bots would be getting all the Ability loving glory… the smaller ‘bots would be getting bonuses to things like Dex… I am a LONG time champions player and the core rule of thumb in that game is balance. I dislike innate classes and races and such in games where there is not a balancing factor. I like point buys much better than rolls because one guy could roll up fantastic numbers while another rolls mediocre man. Once you offer balance, what happens after that is up to the players. So, I would never make it so that the BIGGER your ‘bot, the better a warrior you will be. (Though, there is a bit of that since you have to spend a higher priority for that larger size… so, the bigger guys should get something out of those extra priority points, right?) So… and NO ONE quote this as gospel, but something I might do would be
Gargantuan: +4 STR, +2 CON
Huge: +2 STR
Large: +2 DEX
Medium: +4 DEX, +2 WIS
This is NOT what I’m going to do, but that is how I think when I’m thinking of how to provide advantages. The big guy is much easier to hit and has a harder time hitting, so gets the bigger advantages up front. The little guy has less hardness, and less hit points so gets a different way of compensating. Bumblebee (size medium) would have a long run blasting down Ultra Magnus (size Gargantuan) but at the same time, Ultra Magnus is going to have a hell of a time trying to swat down Bumble bee with his -4 to hit (Size) and the Bee’s +2 to AC that he’d get for the Dex boost. Granted, once UM does hit, he’s going to hurt the Bee… but the Bee is going to be hitting the big man pretty much all the time. So, in a way, it balances.
So, the thing is... there is a problem. I've been steadily working on trying to balance it out as best as I could. Like I said, the Hardness thing is actually more of a balance since the book's Energy Resistance 10 only nerfed the guys trying to use guns rather than brute force. Also, giving the gear boosts to boost weapon damage was also to counter the fact that you could take a higher priority to get a bigger guy to do more melee damage. He spends a higher priority for that, the blaster guy spends a higher priority for more gear points... it is a form of balance.
Now, I just have to figure out what kind of an advantage it is for the big guys and what kind of advantage the small guys have without ruining the bit of balance that I *think* that I have achieved nor completely butchering the game system which I'm starting to feel like I am getting close to doing.
OH
And on "This is how Vendetta GMs" Note:
SINCE this is play by post and not table top, there are a few considerations that I will be using.
I am a ROLE-PLAYER. That is what I love about RPGs and MMORPG video games like City of Heroes. Mechanics are secondary. R. A. Salvatori did an interview that I loved. He was talking about how he loved to play RPGs and was asked how he used Character sheets and game mechanics (paraphrased). He said something like, if a level one thief sneaks up behind Drizzt and slits his throat in D&D, the thief wont kill him because he can't do enough damage. (sneak attack and all that) but in real life, if that happened to Drizzt, he'd probably be dead. So, when I write, I try to keep it realistic and not hold to some mechanics that compremise that. (the basic jist, anyway) I love that and I try to be more realistic with my games than a slave to the game mechanics.
Having said that, there also has to be rules... which is why I like balance so much. Balance, in my opinion, makes breaking the rules, when it is called for, more fair. So, there has to be a set of rules that has a sense of fairness to them, at least as much as possible. (Which can never be fully achieved)
So... in this game, We'll have these characters with this somewhat unstable form of balance and some game mechanics to guide us. But the story will be driven by RP. So, if you as Cliffjumper manage to sneak up behind Megatron in the first outing of the story and "Slit his Throat", I can't just kill him off (because of Game Mechanics, of which he'll probably be able to survive most everything you guys can throw at him) but you wont be fully ineffectual either. many times did ole Megabum turn tail and run because someone got a fantastic shot off on him. Does that make sense?
Anyway, I hold the RP in much higher esteme.
As well, since we are not sitting around a table with time constraints threatening to make us bored, we have the luxury to sit back, think about what exactly our characters say and do in character before actually posting it. In a Table Top game, it really drags out a game when the players spend five minutes thinking of each action. While they will undoubtably come up with better things to do or more accurate role-playing, dragging out the game like that can kill it. That is not something that we have to worry about as much here as that five minute drag in face to face RPGing doesn't hit until after a couple of DAYS here.
So, RP is more heavily weighed and will often carry a lot of weight in XP awards and other perks.
I don't know what all that means... but it is just how I like to play. And, not having any previous experience with Play By Post GMing, I've got to go with what I know, via my DMing experience and playing experience here at EnWorld and figure out how it works from there.
What I do know is what I like... I'm in two fantastic games right now where I play Xerxes, a Xeph Psion and the DM there, Ashy, doesn't worry so much about the details of the battle. He's admitted that he sometimes doesn't even roll the dice on some things. I like how he does it. Ashy got from us what we wanted to do and compiled it into this. Here is an example
Ashy's Oathbound Adventure Round 1 Combat results
(hafrogman is in this campaign as well... I hope he's enjoying it)
And, more importantly, I love the role-playing in
DralonXitz's The Lost Patriarch game in which I play Zar-Vroxiar, a cocky Sea Elf Wizard. The characters here in this story haven't even gotten out of town yet to start our quest and yet we have five pages of role-playing. I love it.
Anyway, sorry about this extremely long post again... I seem to be doing this a lot. Anyway, I hope that by the time you guys read this you'll have the story lead in to read as well.
