Playtest Feedback: Character Creation (session 3/25/14)

[LucasC]

Two parts to this session.

1. Character Creation
2. One zero-G combat encounter (will post on this separate)

Character Creation

Good

• Psionic careers seemed to work well at first glance getting people what they need to use psionics
  • They did express a desire to have a non-psicop career option
• Everyone seemed happy w/their starting money and what they could buy with it (totals were 290, 370, 240, 600)
  • There was a comment about starting money being lower than what a fast-food worker makes in a month

Bad

• I am unable to overstate how much groaning and complaining erupted when I told them that they lost LUCK because of a high WILLPOWER. This was universally disliked.
• AGILITY is over-represented. Standing head-and-shoulders above any other stat. It directly impacts Speed, Defense and Attack Rolls with most weapons. One of the four players chose careers with AGILITY on every one. This character is much more difficult to hit (Defense 28), runs like the wind (Speed 14) and shoots untrained with 5d6.
• As mentioned before - movement. The results are somewhat all over the place. The Speed of the 4 PCs ended up: 14-9-8-7. I really movement should be standardized and then modified up with Running.
  • The character with a 14 speed is ridiculously fast. This came from High School Jock (+2), Running (+1), AGI 9 (+9) and STR 4 (+2)
• The Skills with specific bonuses (tactics, running, marksman, etc.) tend to revolve around combat and are generally viewed by my players as superior to the less well-defined skills such as Engineering or Carousing.
  • In particular, Marksman is a coveted skill and this due to the direct and significant impact on combat

Observations & General Feedback

• No criminal careers offer Marksman as a skill
• Due to a series of low rolls, the venetian character started out below adolescent for his race - as a side note, everyone expressed a desire to choose their starting age rather than roll it up randomly.
  • I let them do this but it is not without its own wrinkle. This resulted in me having characters aged 30-120. On the surface that doesn't matter, but it does for the personal skill. Someone recommended granting ranks in this skill based on your progress through the age table vs. a set 10 years. Given the theme behind these skills I am not sure that it matters.
• Personal skills are an area that will probably cause problems in some groups. My players are not min/maxers but all it would take would be someone to insist on taking Marksman in this slot to cause balance problems.
• As a bunch of middle-aged people, many people got a chuckle out of the resilient age trait, suggesting that at this age they felt about the opposite of the trait.
  • RESILIENT You are resilient and able to bounce back from disaster; you heal an additional 1d6 HEALTH each day
• Layout of careers and skills makes things difficult to find

• In buying equipment, they'd like things laid out by tech level vs. having things of all kinds intermingled.
• The regular knife appears superior to the laser knife despite it being a tech level back (same damage, one armor type is vulnerable to stabbing and you can throw it)
• There was a discussion about the real-world effect of hollow point bullets. I'm not a bullet guy but apparently they tell me that they should do extra damage but be particularity vulnerable to SOAK and armor piercing should do less damage and penetrate SOAK. I didn't look close at these rules just passing this discussion on.

 

[Morrus]

I think the issue with combat skills being more important is one you'll find mitigated quite a lot when the Adjudicating the Game chapter gets expanded. There's going to be lots of important non-combat activities there. That may be some time off yet, though.

I'd agree with your observations on AGILITY (and also its effect on SPEED). That's something I've been looking into. Partly its value is linked to the point above, but I'm with you on the speed. I think we mentioned this the other day - I'm going to look at a few different methods of speed calculation. The likely result is that speed will be set by race, and adjusted a little up and down by AGI and STR, but not by nearly as much. This should reduce the swinginess a lot.

Thanks for the feedback - useful as always!

They did express a desire to have a non-psicop career option

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There's Psychic on page 41.
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[Velcerick]

There's Psychic on page 41.
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I was one of the two players with psychic job trees. I think it may be useful to have a "wild talent" career or something thematically similar that suggests a person uses their psychic energy to support a life or career that isn't necessarily based around it. This would be a character who is a mercenary, criminal, private investigator, or some other normal career, but relies heavily on psychic powers to support that career. I guess, as a history, the psychic profession feels a little hokey to me, while the others rely on being bound to an organization. Alternately, a few different, generic, careers which focus on different aspects of the psychic power source might be useful.