Playtest Feedback 4/9 (non-combat)

[LucasC]

This feedback is not specific to combat. That topic is worth its own thread and I’ll post that in a bit. As an aside, if you’re interested in the play report about this game, you can read that here.

General Feedback

• Your current defense formula is expressed as (AGI – 1) * 1.75 but when I calculate the math it appears to actually be (AGI + 1) * 1.75.
• It ‘feels’ to me that when I am doing Suppressive Fire and an opponent ‘recklessly’ disregards my suppressive fire I should get a bonus of maybe 1 die on the attack roll
• If die penalties (such as from cover, roll with it, suppressive fire, etc.) reduce a die pool to 0 does the action auto-fail or does it reduce it to 1 die?
• There are several skills that are quite difficult to access without being in the military
• Pilot career grants +1d6 to use starship weaponry, shouldn’t this be expressed as a bonus GUNNERY rank?
• Speaking of GUNNERY it seems that the Pilot career is the only career offering this skill.
• Specific to starship combat, the Evasive Maneuvers trick is either significantly less useful than it sounds, or needs to be declared during the movement phase – in our case the PC ship acted last almost every round but the pilot wanted to use Evasive Maneuvers every round – we allowed him to make that decision during the movement phase but not change it during the normal turn.
• Piloting careers all give AGILITY but many starship rolls (including piloting) are INTELLECT rolls. Consider swapping these skills out.
  • As an aside, I think you should change out starship attack rolls from AGI vs DEFENSE to INT vs DEFENSE. This would help defocus the already bloated AGI skill and bring some use to INT and it feels as real as AGI to me since you’re probably using targeting computers and such.
• LUCK as it exists is negligible in impact. In every case yesterday each PC used their entire LUCK pool on a single roll and (out of 5 of them) only 1 actually succeeded due to it. Their LUCK pool was then expended and didn’t come into play again.
• Is there an actual use for the PILOTING skill?
• We used a countdown, 3 dice pool. It worked about perfectly. The setup was that every round 0-3 new starfighters joined the fray and the PCs reached the safety of their alchemy ship when the countdown ended. They had to survive that long. I wanted about 5 rounds of combat and I believe it took 5 exactly.
  • It did make the PCs very nervous and there was a suggestion that countdowns come with a ‘maximum’ rounds before the countdown expires – so in this case maybe the countdown would be expressed as 5/10 with 5 being the pool and 10 being the max before it empties regardless of rolls.
  • An alternative to that would be to have the countdown change such that at a certain threshold dice start to get removed on 5-6 and then on 4-5-6, etc.
• The bonus XP for using your Trait is a nice thought but effectively useless. The PCs gained 55XP yesterday for their combats and the 1XP they get for using their trait is, while welcome, inconsequential.

Psionics

• FYI only so you can see how the damage is impacting gameplay- In the combat the psionic character did 24 damage to himself through the use of a few (2 I think) lightning bolts (which btw were very effective against the robots) – this rendered him low enough that when I shot him he went down immediately
• Regarding damage taken, it was suggested that PSIONCS first do damage to a pool of points generated from WILLPOWER and only after this pool is expended turn to actual health from ENDURANCE
• None of the psionic careers seem to offer any choices when it comes to starship skills
• Generally speaking, the two people playing psionic characters are not happy w/their career options

Combat Tricks
Generally I think these were well received by the group. There was a variety of tricks chosen including: evasive maneuvers, deadly strike and roll with it (2 chose this). I also heard a lot of people trying to decide which they wanted and that suggests to me that there were multiple tricks they’d like – that’s good.
Aiming and Feinting are presently listed in both the Combat Tricks and Combat chapter.

Observations:

• 7 AGI requirement on AMBIDEXTROUS increases the importance of an already critically important ability
• Roll with It is a very powerful trick. Most handguns only do 2d6 damage and they reduce this to 0 (or 1 die based on the answer to above question). Further, in many instances being prone is a bonus anyhow. Consider lowing the reduction or making it a check of some sort.
• I think some of these tricks (trip, knockback, etc.) are going to get very annoying when applied every round of combat. For tricks like trip I think you should have to lose an action in addition to the dice penalty. The trick is just too good.

Advancement
No one liked the idea of moving up a tier of dice when you advance your character. There were many different concerns expressed which included:

• When you become better (by moving up a tier) your chance to crit (explode) is decreased. The lowest advanced characters explode 1 in 6 rolls and the most advanced just 1 in 12
• Moving from d6s to any other die will significantly increase the ‘swingyness’ in the system and make balancing combat and other rolls much more difficult
• No one has 15d8 or 15d12 laying around to roll and they do have that many d6s (and maybe d10s)

Overwatch
There was quite a lot of discussion about Overwatch. This included a considerable amount of concern that it would be too powerful and allow a single opponent to effectively shoot at everyone in the combat. I will note that this was despite this not being the case during gameplay. In practice, Overwatch seemed to make the PCs more careful about having cover.

Couple things on Overwatch –

• What happens when you declare Overwatch and there are legal targets that have no cover at all and never had cover? Do you get to shoot at them? If yes, do you shoot at them on your turn or at the very beginning of their turn?
• It was suggested that you consider a cumulative 1 die penalty to each attack following the first when Overwatch is being used

 

[Morrus]

Awesome feedback - thank you! I apologize for being a little lacking on responses the last week or so; the KS launch has occupied all my time, leaving little for actual design work!

I'll get to this properly ASAP. This is the bit I actually enjoy, as opposed to the admin stuff!

I gave you a shout out in today's news BTW).

 

[LucasC]

Awesome feedback - thank you! I apologize for being a little lacking on responses the last week or so; the KS launch has occupied all my time, leaving little for actual design work!

I'll get to this properly ASAP. This is the bit I actually enjoy, as opposed to the admin stuff!

I gave you a shout out in today's news BTW).

No problem. This feedback is for you anyhow. Take your time, reply or not as you see fit and are able.

I gave you a shout out in today's news BTW).

Thanks!

 

[Velcerick]

Psionics

• FYI only so you can see how the damage is impacting gameplay- In the combat the psionic character did 24 damage to himself through the use of a few (2 I think) lightning bolts (which btw were very effective against the robots) – this rendered him low enough that when I shot him he went down immediately
• Regarding damage taken, it was suggested that PSIONCS first do damage to a pool of points generated from WILLPOWER and only after this pool is expended turn to actual health from ENDURANCE

I was that player. I hit with three lightning bolts, but also missed with two and used my psychic shield. I didn't think that the damage was overly penalizing, but I happen to have a pretty solid END. I prefer the idea of a different resource being burned up before causing actual physical damage/fatigue. I know the other psionic character has fewer HP.

Overwatch
There was quite a lot of discussion about Overwatch. This included a considerable amount of concern that it would be too powerful and allow a single opponent to effectively shoot at everyone in the combat. I will note that this was despite this not being the case during gameplay. In practice, Overwatch seemed to make the PCs more careful about having cover.

I have to agree that folks seemed pretty worked up about Overwatch conceptually, but it played out without seeming too powerful. If we had legitimate cover and we realized we were being overwatched, it was relatively easy to negate the attacks of our opponent. I could see excessive use of overwatch leading to some odd scenarios on an open battlefield, but again, maybe it wouldn't play out that way in actual gameplay.

​

 

[Morrus]

OK, here goes - lots to delve into!

• Your current defense formula is expressed as (AGI – 1) * 1.75 but when I calculate the math it appears to actually be (AGI + 1) * 1.75.

Typo alert! Thanks!

If die penalties (such as from cover, roll with it, suppressive fire, etc.) reduce a die pool to 0 does the action auto-fail or does it reduce it to 1 die?

Yes; you *always* get 1 die.

There are several skills that are quite difficult to access without being in the military

For now. Careers are easy to add, but not high priority!

Pilot career grants +1d6 to use starship weaponry, shouldn’t this be expressed as a bonus GUNNERY rank?

Possibly. I may replace that with a combat trick, as I'm not keen on abilities which mimic skills.

Speaking of GUNNERY it seems that the Pilot career is the only career offering this skill.

True enough!

Specific to starship combat, the Evasive Maneuvers trick is either significantly less useful than it sounds, or needs to be declared during the movement phase – in our case the PC ship acted last almost every round but the pilot wanted to use Evasive Maneuvers every round – we allowed him to make that decision during the movement phase but not change it during the normal turn.

That's correct. It's intended to be a movement declaration.

• Piloting careers all give AGILITY but many starship rolls (including piloting) are INTELLECT rolls. Consider swapping these skills out.
  • As an aside, I think you should change out starship attack rolls from AGI vs DEFENSE to INT vs DEFENSE. This would help defocus the already bloated AGI skill and bring some use to INT and it feels as real as AGI to me since you’re probably using targeting computers and such.

That's a good idea. I'll definitely give that some thought. I agree that AGI is overrepresented. One aspect of that, though, is that as more infrastructure for non-combat stuff is added, other skills become more and more useful.

LUCK as it exists is negligible in impact. In every case yesterday each PC used their entire LUCK pool on a single roll and (out of 5 of them) only 1 actually succeeded due to it. Their LUCK pool was then expended and didn’t come into play again.

Hmmm. That sounds unfortunate. Is the issue that the pool is too small?

Is there an actual use for the PILOTING skill?

Out of combat, definitely. It's used during travel, landing, docking, etc. It wouls also be used when attempting tricky activities - navigating through an asteroid field, for example. It would provide a bonus in chase scenarios.

The bonus XP for using your Trait is a nice thought but effectively useless. The PCs gained 55XP yesterday for their combats and the 1XP they get for using their trait is, while welcome, inconsequential.

I agree. I might switch it back to the +1 die bonus. I worry about big swingy dice pools though, as you know, and the trend has been to tighten them.

Psionics

• FYI only so you can see how the damage is impacting gameplay- In the combat the psionic character did 24 damage to himself through the use of a few (2 I think) lightning bolts (which btw were very effective against the robots) – this rendered him low enough that when I shot him he went down immediately
• Regarding damage taken, it was suggested that PSIONCS first do damage to a pool of points generated from WILLPOWER and only after this pool is expended turn to actual health from ENDURANCE
• None of the psionic careers seem to offer any choices when it comes to starship skills
• Generally speaking, the two people playing psionic characters are not happy w/their career options

Careers will be added, I promise. I'll think about the use of WIL for absorbing that psionic damage.

Combat Tricks
Generally I think these were well received by the group. There was a variety of tricks chosen including: evasive maneuvers, deadly strike and roll with it (2 chose this). I also heard a lot of people trying to decide which they wanted and that suggests to me that there were multiple tricks they’d like – that’s good.
Aiming and Feinting are presently listed in both the Combat Tricks and Combat chapter.

Great! I do have to review the careers and remove abilities that are basically just combat tricks. And allows some careers to gain additional tricks.

Overwatch
There was quite a lot of discussion about Overwatch. This included a considerable amount of concern that it would be too powerful and allow a single opponent to effectively shoot at everyone in the combat. I will note that this was despite this not being the case during gameplay. In practice, Overwatch seemed to make the PCs more careful about having cover.

I can't imagine that ever happening, but if a group of 6 bad guys is being covered by owerwatch and they all choose to jump out of cover, I have no problem with them all getting a shot taken at them. As you say, in any given turn that simply won't happen, anyway. People don't make targets of themselves deliberately. I honestly don't think it's a concern, but we'll keep an eye on it.

• What happens when you declare Overwatch and there are legal targets that have no cover at all and never had cover? Do you get to shoot at them? If yes, do you shoot at them on your turn or at the very beginning of their turn?

I would be inclined to say that someone already out of cover at the start of their turn has an opportunity to find cover. If he doesn't the shooter gets a shot. That's of the top of my head, though.

I have a question, BTW - the single skills/career thing. How did that go? How did it affect the game in turns of overall swingyness? Did it feel too restrictive, or was it OK?

 

[LucasC]

Hmmm. That sounds unfortunate. Is the issue that the pool is too small?

2 issues seem top of mind -

1. They used their LUCK when faced with a daunting challenge - so when they needed to roll quite high on all their dice, including the LUCK dice.
2. They used their LUCK all up on a single roll.

In most instances, even with the added LUCK dice they still missed.

We will keep at this though. This was the first week they remembered to use LUCK at all.

I have a question, BTW - the single skills/career thing. How did that go? How did it affect the game in turns of overall swingyness? Did it feel too restrictive, or was it OK?

I'll cover this more specifically in a separate post about combat that I just haven't had a chance to type up yet but the short answer is that the change in career/skill had a negligible impact on overall dice pools. Of the five players, one had to change out one rank of Marksman for another skill and everything else remained unchanged.

At a glance you'll be inclined to think that's bad but don't. Our opinion on this is evolving - in fact we had close to a 45 minute discussion on this very topic towards the end of the night (discussion is the nice way of putting it ).

The new lower DEFENSE scores coupled with Combat Tricks and utilizing in-built mechanics such as Overwatch and Suppressing Fire changed up the combat dynamic significantly.

 

[docdoom77]

I haven't played yet. Heck I haven't finished reading all the rules yet .

That being said, what about making Luck a set number of dice (which could be increased with a skill or ability), let's say 3 dice (or some other number that better fits what you want it to be able to do). Each time you use Luck, it reduces your luck score by 1 point (which would refresh at 1 per day OR 1 per game session, depending on how you want the resource to work). But, since your luck dice do not decrease with each use, Luck score serves only to tell you how often you can use your luck.

Well, that or something similar. Then you know exactly how much luck can help in any given situation, and are prone to use it more often, rather than saving the whole pool for one big shot.