Azgulor said:
I guess I would term it heroic. Not so gritty that combat must be avoided entirely, but certainly not Hollywood action-hero style. Say, like 24 as opposed to Alias. This has been my reluctance to convert to d20 Modern thus far. I've read where the MDT keeps combat lethal, but I still have visions of the D&D mindset where high-level characters have no fear of mundane threats.
I can put some of those fears to rest for you, based on my games.
If you're playing a Spy Hard kinda game where every guard has an automatic weapon, you figure out two things quickly: 1) all those vaunted hit points disappear quickly if you're being fired upon by a lot of guards, and 2) one good damage roll and one bad Fort save can still take you out.
I ran an "Enter the Dragon" ripoff one-shot where the good guys were martial arts experts and the bad guys were either ninjas or drug-factory guards. The guards had machine guns (2d8 or 2d10, can't remember which). The players were unafraid. Then the guy who'd been untouchable in melee combat (Defense 29 before Combat Expertise, which he always used) rolled badly on a Reflex save against automatic gunfire. He took 18 points damage, blew his Fort save and was out of action -- and he'd been the "Unkillable" character. (12th level, 32-point buy -- a Fast/Martial Artist defense-max'd hero)
That's the one good thing about d20M's oft-criticized automatic weapons rules -- Defense 10 is pretty easy to hit, so the real burden falls on the PCs. And while a DC15 Reflex save doesn't sound that hard, you're always going to blow it every once in awhile.
My players want the game to make sense.
Ditto. And by and large, it does, unless you're specifically trying to break it. But then, I no longer judge games by how hard it is for me to break them. I judge them by how well they work when I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing with them -- and whether what I'm supposed to be doing is what I want to be doing.
The big problem I hear people complain about is "one PC, high-level, versus 20 mooks with pistols". I've run this as well, and it's not the problem people suspect. If the player is stupid and doesn't run or surrender (or have great skills that work well in the environment in which the fight is taking place, like everyone having partial cover and the PC having the ability to ignore cover when targetting people), the PC pretty much dies. Then again, I build my mooks under the theory that even mooks want to be effective. If the high-level PC is so hard to hit that I only hit on a 20, well, that just means there's no reason not to use Double-Tap. After all, it doesn't lower my chance of hitting at that point. (Any gun-using mook I build will have Point Blank Shot and Double-Tap at some point -- usually early on, so I can have a Strong/Dedicated guard with lots of ranks in Spot, a profession that gives Personal Firearms Proficiency, and a firearm attack that does 3d6+1.) This doesn't make a single mook into the equal of a high-level player, but it does mean that if the PCs run into 10 mooks and they all start shooting, the PCs either take cover or throw a grenade. There's no casually avoiding people who can force an MDT on you.
And if you run a few adventures and it still doesn't seem deadly enough, I've found that one simple change makes it a TON worse. Trigger the massive damage save based on damage taken per ROUND, not per hit. If you're hit 3 times for 7 apiece, that's 21 -- so you probably have to make a save. That makes a bunch of mooks shooting at you a whole crapload deadlier.
1) I'm not convinced d20 Modern can fit the bill for me or my group. I do think it's a good game, I just think it didn't diverge far enough from D&D and therefore wasn't all it could have been.
This is the all-important factor. If it's not right for your group, it's not right for your group. No arguing that.
2) GURPS provides support for modern and sci-fi genres that is at least equal to (and is arguably stronger) than their support for fantasy. WotC has a wide gulf between its support for D&D and d20 Modern. (I understand their reasons for it. Doesn't change the reality of the disparity.) If I've got to fill in the "gaps" presented by d20 Modern, I'm just changing one form of prep time for another. 3rd-party products help, but I haven't found one publisher that hits the mark across the board. Net gain = 0 or worse (if gameplay doesn't satisfy).
That sounds like a good point for your game. My games don't need that much prep-time, so it's not one I can speak for myself, but yeah, if every session involves you having to hunt around for information on how something new should work in d20 Modern terms, it's not the right system for you.
If you don't mind me asking, what kind of prep-time are we talking, here? Is it research like "I need to know what an average hotel layout looks like," or "I need to know whether an Abrams tank with severe tread damage can do a 90-degree turn, or, failing that, how to handle a bull-rush-style attack with a swinging tank turret." For me at least, both the former and the latter fall under the heading of "Things I handwave", but mileage varies for different gamer groups.
3) Spycraft, being AEG's flagship RPG, presumably has a large interest in the game doing well - which would suggest it would be well supported. Their innovations to the d20 system look interesting. If the core rulebook grabs me, I would be interested to see IF they would do a better treatment of modern and sci-fi genres than d20 Modern has thus far.
Could happen. And I'm sure that it'll make the archetype-loving people happy. (That's not a slam on them. They deserve to be happy, and d20 Modern certainly isn't their way to get there unless the GM makes "The Fencer" as a Strong/Fast combination and tells them to take levels in that. And that's a pretty ugly kludge.)
hate that type of 'classes')
