Spycraft 2.0 is awesome!

[Morgenstern]

Also it depends if the target is a player character/somebody important (a special character), or joe shmoe (a standard character). Joe Shmoe doesn't have vitality and wounds - he gets to save or die with DC 10 + one half the damage inflicted (round up). With the AK-47 he faces an average save DC of 16 or croaks. The revolver is giving an average DC of 13, but either way it is way easier to mow down mooks in 2.0.

Hope this helps,

 

[swrushing]

Does edited copy count?

snip excellent examples...

Hope this helps!
Alex

yes it does.
thanks a million!
you just saved me from blowing 30 odd bucks.

much obliged.

 

[PJ-Mason]

yes it does.
thanks a million!
you just saved me from blowing 30 odd bucks.

much obliged.

eesh. Someone roll on that Table of Ouch, please!

 

[Morgenstern]

eesh. Someone roll on that Table of Ouch, please!

LOL. Really. Because, you know, I'd judge a 496 book by the way one bullet behaves. Especially after I asked people to ignore how burst fire, cover fire, strafing, recoil, called shots, cheap shots, final attacks, a dozen odd feats, subdual damage, stress damage, critical hits and critical injuries work in an effort to keep the answer simple . It's all about "did they pick the right dice roll for damage to satisfy my inner gun bunny?" The combat chapter is 40 pages long and the weapons portion of the gear chapter annother 53 pages. Curse you AK-47 for not being convincing enough!!

 

[swrushing]

LOL. Really. Because, you know, I'd judge a 496 book by the way one bullet behaves. Especially after I asked people to ignore how burst fire, cover fire, strafing, recoil, called shots, cheap shots, final attacks, a dozen odd feats, subdual damage, stress damage, critical hits and critical injuries work in an effort to keep the answer simple . It's all about "did they pick the right dice roll for damage to satisfy my inner gun bunny?" The combat chapter is 40 pages long and the weapons portion of the gear chapter annother 53 pages. Curse you AK-47 for not being convincing enough!!

classy!

 

[swrushing]

eesh. Someone roll on that Table of Ouch, please!

Nah, that was clearly not in the 26+ damage range. Of course, they might be setting the "Push Spycraft" campaign at a whimpier scale!

regardless, i just see no need to pay a second time for mechanics the same/similar sort of "unacceptable to use in my game mechanics" i bought once already. (a hit = near miss/graze/tiring but being near miss/graze by rifle is much worse than being near/miss graze by a pistol round??? Firing 15 rds Autofire making the chance of a "complete miss" more likely than the same shot with only one round!)

If i start describing successful to-hit rolls (attack rolls) as near misses and grazes but start telling my players that the rifle does 3d6 grazes while the pistol only tires you out 1d8+1 or whatever, thats going to raise eyebrows and start chuckling at inappropriate times. (Potential house rule/different approach... all "near miss/grazes" from small arms do the same amount of vitality damage" and the difference between rifle and pistol damage shows when you are actually hit by them, ie as wounds level damage. The value used by any weapon for a "near miss/graze" could be set as a dial for campaign lethality.)

Similar things will happen if i start telling them that firing 15 rounds autofire instead of 1 round direct (same rifle from same aiming status) results in an increased chance of a clean miss. (Potential alternative/house rule: autofire does not create a -1 penalty per burst fired. So your chance of a clean miss "with that first round" doesn't get increased by the hail of bullets that follow it.)

I don't necessarily have a solution for the error rate problem, which iirc seems to make full auto hosing less error prone than firing the same shots straight up. fire 15 rounds as individual shots... chance of at least one "error" = ~54%. Fire tham all as a hose down autofire barrage, chance of "error" = ~20% (assuming an error chance of 1 to begin with, best case, it gets worse with a 1-2 base error rate... around 80% vs 25%) In my games, one of the drawbacks that makes autofire less appealing is having a greater chance of error.

I know my player wont buy those spycraft 2 choices, and i wont do as good a job selling it, since i don't either.

Also, see my "stupid rule."

net result, spend my money elsewhere.

i am glad to have the online comments to help me decide whether or not to purchase it.

I am sure there are some good bits too, after all there were good bits in stargate, and for sure there will be some who like their style of gunplay mechanics. heck, i liked the d20 system they put in stargate, in spite of their gunplay/Vp/Wp mechanics.

just not for me worth spending more on.

hopefully though, some people wont take this personally.

and, amazing but true, it wasn't about the Ak-47 at all, that was just a common enough rifle that i figured it was there.

one bullet? nah.
core gunplay mechanics? yeah.

 

[swrushing]

Hey, another question, and this one i figure they did get right this time.

Does ammo have weight in the game and get counted for encumbrance now?

that might be a selling point!

 

[Morgenstern]

Nope. Nevermind, not the game for you . Nothing personal.

I found this in about 3 minutes on the web~

Caliber (Projectile weight (gr)) [Number of Rounds per 8.5 lbs]
9mm (124gr) [320]
.45 ACP (230gr) [180]
5.56x45mm (.223) (55gr) [320]
.30 Carbine (110gr) [300]
5.45x39* (Russian) (57gr) [355]
7.62x39 (Russian) (123gr) [210]
7.62x51(.308) (150gr) [160]
.30-06 (150gr) [144]

I might add something along these lines to the on-line appendix for reference. I have a bunch of MAG conversion work to do anyway . But its definitely not what we viewed as core material (though I do wonder why this person picked 8.5 pounds as his increment... guess he got a lot of round numbers there).

We did include the weight of the weapons, in some detail, but ammo? I like the "stupid rule", and if I were to tell my players they need to count up all their ammo - by type - and figure out how much it weighs (assuming no unusual rounds have been requition and we are going to actually hand wave the weight of the magazines since magazine size/weight varies from weapon to weapon making any sort of standardized entry an appproximation), I'd feel stupid because the next thing I'd be asking is "did everyone get their gadgets?" In all honesty, Bond Movies and FPSs actually agree on this point - it is below the threshold of concern. Get back to the shooting ! Difference in playstyle to be sure.

Similarly, as a game designer, I have to keep an eye out for the pitfalls of flawless simulationism. Guns are deadly, and gunplay is a merciless endeavor in which luck has a painfully large contribution here in the real world. It's also short and final. With things like autofire, if you create a game option that is vastly superior to a normal attack and almost invariably fatal, you have to realize that not only will players gravitate to it, but NPCs should too - and by shear coincidence you are going to end up spending more time making characters than playing . OTOH, movie physics tell us that namesless gunmen spraying lead never hit anything ! A state of affairs that might allow a PC to get to double digit levels eventually.

As to more rolling producing more errors, errors by themselves don't do anything when you are shooting - somebody has to spend an action die to apply the suck. We tried to provide the GC with a LOT more cool things to do with his action dice that go after you every time you error, but if he does, tell him, from me, to knock it off .

Moving on!

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Sorta like d20 Moderns Professions.... only with a bit more bonus and Core Ability to it as opposed to just a skill and feat bonus.

I've actually been thinking of doing that as a House Rule for d20 Modern anyway-- probably along the lines of the Alternity generic classes, with each generic class having a list of Occupations that it can be combined with.

Of course, I'd also have to include new generics for non-psionic FX.

 

[AscentStudios]

If i start describing successful to-hit rolls (attack rolls) as near misses and grazes but start telling my players that the rifle does 3d6 grazes while the pistol only tires you out 1d8+1 or whatever, thats going to raise eyebrows and start chuckling at inappropriate times. (Potential house rule/different approach... all "near miss/grazes" from small arms do the same amount of vitality damage" and the difference between rifle and pistol damage shows when you are actually hit by them, ie as wounds level damage. The value used by any weapon for a "near miss/graze" could be set as a dial for campaign lethality.)

So, why are you playing d20? Why is vitality SO unpalettable but HP are perfectly acceptable? Because 1 line of different description in no way changes that VP/WP is HP but with the ability to kill in one shot rather than the terribly realistic system of grinding down a character hundreds of hit points to get to the juicy center. If you have that much of problem with the "official" description of VP/WP, you could always go with the *other* description I had of 'shots that hurt' (wounds) and 'shots that don't' (vitality).

*shrug*