Tell me about Savage Worlds

Turanil · Aug 19, 2005

By the way, I suppose it must be easy to use Savage Worlds with setting published by GURPS (I was considering Planet of Adventures, that I could buy too when at the FLGS...)

Sado · Aug 19, 2005

I've got a rules question. From the Test Drive:

When you want to do something, the GM tells you what trait to use and you roll that die. If it's equal to or greater than 4, plus or minus any modifiers, you're successful.

Then it says:

If a character doesn't have a skill for an action he's attempting, he rolls 1D4 and subtracts 2 from the total.

I don't get it. By this method you could never get the 4 you need to be successful. Does this mean you can never do anything untrained, unless you have a modifier of at least +2?

Particle_Man · Aug 19, 2005

Masked Otaku said:
Some people seem to love the system, but it never worked out for my group. You see when you roll, your rolling against a target number. For every 4 point over that you get what's called a "raise" it's sort of like a success level. Where my group ran into trouble was in combat. Especially ranged combat. The target number is 4 on ranged attacks, modified by range [short +0, Medium -2, Long -4 to roll]. Most combats took part at short range, so no modifier for rnage. It was not unusual for my players to roll in the teens and twenties on their rolls. Well that meant with a roll of say 12 they hit with 2 raises, wich added +2 damage per raise [+4 total]. Then they would roll damage [2d6+1 AP1 {ignores 1 pt of armor} for a Colt Peacemaker]. On damage it was not uncommon for them to roll in the twenties because of the exploding dice. Lets say they rolled a 18 on their damage, +4 for the raises on the to hit roll, so 22 damage total. A Toughness [kinda like DR, you have to roll above toughness to do damage] of 7 or 8 is quite high. So 22 - 8 = 14, they beat the targets Toughness by 14. Well divide that by 4 and you get 3 raises worth of damage, that's enough to take a character from healthy to almost dead. There are ways to reduce that, but like I said my group had a way of rolling high. it was not uncommon for them to get 4 or 5 raises on damage.

Which means that they killed damn near anything I threw at them. This lead to a false sense of power and invincibility. The first time an enemy did as well on a roll as they did they were shocked and cried foul.

EDIT: I was using the first printing, the second printing added in a lot erranta and changed some of the rules, so it my have fixed the problem I experienced in play.

They did fix that one. Now you can never get more than one raise, but the raise gives you 1d6 rather than +2.

Henry · Aug 19, 2005

Sado said:
I've got a rules question. From the Test Drive:Then it says:I don't get it. By this method you could never get the 4 you need to be successful. Does this mean you can never do anything untrained, unless you have a modifier of at least +2?

Don't forget two things:

Heroes have the wild card die (the 1d6);

if you max the die, you get a reroll-and-add-to-total.

Henry · Aug 19, 2005

Particle_Man said:
They did fix that one. Now you can never get more than one raise, but the raise gives you 1d6 rather than +2.

That kinda sucks, because now the occasional rare "ULTRA-EXPLODE!" doesn't give you any benefit. In the demo I played in, I rolled something like a 45 on a 1d6 attack roll once, and the whole table was freaking out!

Henry · Aug 19, 2005

Hey Blusponge, a question:

Could I possibly get you to post one or two "Attack Maneuvers" from the book? People keep referring to them as an answer to very high toughness beasties, but I have no idea what one would look like.

Masked Otaku · Aug 19, 2005

Particle_Man said:
They did fix that one. Now you can never get more than one raise, but the raise gives you 1d6 rather than +2.

Actully that can make it worse, as that 1d6 explodes. All dice rolls explode in Savage Worlds.

Sado · Aug 19, 2005

Another question, the Test Drive rules don't give any rules for the effects of weight/encumbrance as far as I can see. Did I miss that?

Masked Otaku · Aug 19, 2005

Henry said:
That kinda sucks, because now the occasional rare "ULTRA-EXPLODE!" doesn't give you any benefit. In the demo I played in, I rolled something like a 45 on a 1d6 attack roll once, and the whole table was freaking out!

That sounds like one of my players. His total roll to hit was 35, and then he rolled a 41 on the damage. Which would have been really cool if it hadn't been against an NPC that was supposed to be a reoccurring character.

They did that to all the reoccurring NPCs, I couldn't keep the story going.