Playtest Feedback 4/9 (combat)

[Velcerick]

Spartan.

• AGI 3 + marksman (racial)
• Navy brat +1 AGI + marksman
• police officer +1 AGI + marksman
• military academy marksman
• sniper +1 AGI + marksman
• assassin +1 AGI + marksman

That theoretical character would have AGI 7 (4 dice) and 6 ranks of marksman for a total pool of 10 dice. Now, that character is no good at anything but shooting, but he/she's gonna really make combat suck for someone.

I'd say that that career path doesn't even seem especially contrived from a story/flavor standpoint which is a common failing of min/maxing. Even picking marksman every time could be a character being obsessive about his sniper skills (like a superhero-style sniper).

 

[Obryn]

http://anydice.com/program/38e6

I'll be honest, the probability curves in general seem really weird to me. For example, Difficulty 11 from 2d6 to 3d6 jumps from 8.3% to 50%; there's just as big a jump going up to 4d6, where it's north of 80%.

Has analysis been done as to what difference the wild die makes for probabilities of success on different dice curves? That makes things wonkier.

 

[Nagol]

http://anydice.com/program/38e6


I'll be honest, the probability curves in general seem really weird to me. For example, Difficulty 11 from 2d6 to 3d6 jumps from 8.3% to 50%; there's just as big a jump going up to 4d6, where it's north of 80%.

Has analysis been done as to what difference the wild die makes for probabilities of success on different dice curves? That makes things wonkier.

Going on the premise that the first d6 is explosive and the rest aren't, the graph is here: http://anydice.com/program/38ec

The biggest change is 1d6 approximates the flow shape of the rest to a limited degree.

The math will always be wonky at lower dice pools -- the probability range hasn't had a chance to flatten.

 

[Obryn]

Going on the premise that the first d6 is explosive and the rest aren't, the graph is here: http://anydice.com/program/38ec

The biggest change is 1d6 approximates the flow shape of the rest to a limited degree.

The math will always be wonky at lower dice pools -- the probability range hasn't had a chance to flatten.

Cool; that's interesting on the 1d6, but yeah it doesn't seem to make a giant difference at bigger pools. It increases the overall chances of success, especially at low dice, but the gap between dice is still very significant.

This is a whole lot like the West End Ghostbusters mechanic, IIRC.

 

[Morrus]

I don't have all the character sheets here but I don't believe anyone has an 8-dice pool, which is not to say they couldn't. Looks like a 6-die pool is the highest of those in front of me. That's a character w/AGI 6 + 2 rank in marksman = 6d6 attacks.

Looking at last week's sheets I find an 8d6 pool but that was because of AGI + 4 ranks in Marksman. Those 4 ranks were knocked down to 2 ranks after the recent change.

Someone actively min/maxing could get higher.

Spartan.

• AGI 3 + marksman (racial)
• Navy brat +1 AGI + marksman
• police officer +1 AGI + marksman
• military academy marksman
• sniper +1 AGI + marksman
• assassin +1 AGI + marksman

That theoretical character would have AGI 7 (4 dice) and 6 ranks of marksman for a total pool of 10 dice. Now, that character is no good at anything but shooting, but he/she's gonna really make combat suck for someone.

Some limits on starting abilities and max ranks for new characters could sovle that.

I could envision something like capping ability scores at 5 (maybe 7 for your racial ability) and limiting max starting ranks in a skill to 2 or 3. That would compress the starting dice pools and stop the min-maxers from maxing out. Might need some tweaking, just tossing numbers out.

Yeah, 5 ranks in a skill is "best trained in the universe". Like 5 ranks in botany makes you the botanist all botanists know about.

No way we want starting characters doing that. That should be the end game. That's Kirk or Vader or The Doctor.

Maybe that 1 skill rank idea wasn't so bad after all.

 

[LucasC]

Yeah, 5 ranks in a skill is "best trained in the universe". Like 5 ranks in botany makes you the botanist all botanists know about.

No way we want starting characters doing that. That should be the end game. That's Kirk or Vader or The Doctor.

Maybe that 1 skill rank idea wasn't so bad after all.

Keeping in mind this is only for starting characters I don't disagree. Once they start getting XP and such they can add more ranks through gameplay.

 

[LucasC]

BTW, the character with 9 AGILITY was not attempting to stack AGILITY. He wanted to be the space equivalent of a trucker.

Here's how he got there:

• Human (4)
• High School Jock (+1)
• Navy Cadet (+1)
• Pilot (+1)
• Space Jockey (+1)
• Space Jockey (+1)

 

[Morrus]

So a few quick thoughts:

• I know there has been a bit of resistance to the idea, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that one skill rank for a starting character is the way to go
• There's an observation that [using the new low defenses] folks hit all the time, but often do no damage due to SOAK. I wonder if moving Deadly Shot to a combat trick helped cause that? Before that happened, you sacrificed attack dice for damage dice. So you'd hit less often but do more damage - that's how extra damage from more skilled combatants is accessed (rather than increasing the actual damage dice directly - so a laser pistol is always 2d6; crappy, until you think that a skilled combatant with lots of accuracy can increase that damage a lot). So the question is this: was moving Deadly Shot to a combat trick a bad idea? Should it be a core mechanic? I believe this directly addresses at least half of the observations in this thread, which are all related to a root cause.
• Combat oriented adventures will certainly attract combat oriented characters. What this is telling me is that the rulebook needs to directly encourage other types of scene. Investigative, social, political, survival, scientific, etc.

 

[Nagol]

Cool; that's interesting on the 1d6, but yeah it doesn't seem to make a giant difference at bigger pools. It increases the overall chances of success, especially at low dice, but the gap between dice is still very significant.

This is a whole lot like the West End Ghostbusters mechanic, IIRC.

Yeah as a mechanic it is very similar the WEG's d6 Star Wars game right down to the one exploding die. The systems appear to diverge otherwise.

 

[LucasC]

So a few quick thoughts:I know there has been a bit of resistance to the idea, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that one skill rank for a starting character is the way to go

I think your right on this. Especially if you want 5 ranks to be the very high-end.

You probably need to look at the XP cost related to advancing them too.

• Rank 2 = 20 XP
• Rank 3 = 30 XP
• Rank 4 = 40 XP
• Rank 5 = 50 XP

Total cost = 140XP

In the three weeks of play we've had a few encounters and my PCs are sitting at just over 100XP. If they wanted to, they could burn it on (any) skill and be at rank 4 already.

There's an observation that [using the new low defenses] folks hit all the time, but often do no damage due to SOAK. I wonder if moving Deadly Shot to a combat trick helped cause that?

Just my opinion but... if the game is balanced around expecting you to trade attack dice for added damage then deadly shot should be readily available or it simply becomes a Combat Trick tax and everyone needs to pick it to reasonably expect to do damage.

Combat oriented adventures will certainly attract combat oriented characters. What this is telling me is that the rulebook needs to directly encourage other types of scene. Investigative, social, political, survival, scientific, etc.

Some additional structure around this would be nice, although I expected that would come with the expansion of skills beyond the core combat skills which is where the focus has been thus far.