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[Roleplaying Games] Thank God I Finally Have A Table For Cannabis Potency.

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Posts

  • RendRend Registered User regular
    It may just be me but I feel like rigidly defining these moves is counter to the design of pbta in the first place. PbtA is pretty explicit about moves evolving from fiction and at least dungeon world is explicit about not naming your moves while playing, and I think that's because pbta cashes in on a style of rp that attempts to have mechanics take a permanent back seat to the fiction.

    I get that it's definitely on brand for a pokemon game to have a huge list of moves, but those moves aren't really pbta moves. They are mechanically focused and don't really care about narrative for one, and they don't offer hard bargains or ugly choices on partial successes.

    Maybe it is or will be still a blast to play since the idea of partial successes is great on its own but I feel like the pbta roll 2d6 sort of moves would be trainer focused, like "when you command your pokemon to exploit an enemy's weakness, roll + confident" or "when you try to bail your pokemon out of a tight spot, roll + resourceful" and pokemon "moves" would be static things you could execute but wouldn't have to roll for, that would be called for and/or altered or mutated by the trainer moves which focus mostly on how you command your mons.

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    The way to run a Pokemon RPG is have a GM that plays all the NPCs you encounter, one player who is the Pokemon trainer, and then all the other players just get told by the Pokemon trainer what move to use and when to use it.

  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Rend wrote: »
    It may just be me but I feel like rigidly defining these moves is counter to the design of pbta in the first place. PbtA is pretty explicit about moves evolving from fiction and at least dungeon world is explicit about not naming your moves while playing, and I think that's because pbta cashes in on a style of rp that attempts to have mechanics take a permanent back seat to the fiction.

    I get that it's definitely on brand for a pokemon game to have a huge list of moves, but those moves aren't really pbta moves. They are mechanically focused and don't really care about narrative for one, and they don't offer hard bargains or ugly choices on partial successes.

    Maybe it is or will be still a blast to play since the idea of partial successes is great on its own but I feel like the pbta roll 2d6 sort of moves would be trainer focused, like "when you command your pokemon to exploit an enemy's weakness, roll + confident" or "when you try to bail your pokemon out of a tight spot, roll + resourceful" and pokemon "moves" would be static things you could execute but wouldn't have to roll for, that would be called for and/or altered or mutated by the trainer moves which focus mostly on how you command your mons.

    Well, I think honestly, Dungeon World fails at being a PbtA game. It's moves are more rigid than other games of the engine. However, I think it is still a good game, one that I actually enjoy. Honestly, I don't think you need every move that Pokemon can make. Like Water Gun is just a low powered version of Water Pulse which is a lower powered version of Hydro Pump.

  • MarshmallowMarshmallow Registered User regular
    edited February 2018
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    The way to run a Pokemon RPG is have a GM that plays all the NPCs you encounter, one player who is the Pokemon trainer, and then all the other players just get told by the Pokemon trainer what move to use and when to use it.

    If anyone does this, I call "sassy, horribly underleveled HM Slave that heckles from the sidelines".

    It's a legitimate party role!

    Marshmallow on
  • ElvenshaeElvenshae Registered User regular
    Elvenshae wrote: »
    Post lacked gesturing with hands to explain complex maneuvers; 2/10
    See, you don't use your hands, you gotta use the sticks! That's what they're there for.

    My favorite thing ever seen in a briefing room was a pair of stuffed gloves on sticks.

    Cannot for the life of me find a picture of them now.

  • FuselageFuselage Oosik Jumpship LoungeRegistered User regular
    Elvenshae wrote: »
    Elvenshae wrote: »
    Post lacked gesturing with hands to explain complex maneuvers; 2/10
    See, you don't use your hands, you gotta use the sticks! That's what they're there for.

    My favorite thing ever seen in a briefing room was a pair of stuffed gloves on sticks.

    Cannot for the life of me find a picture of them now.

    For some reason we just replaced our sticks with new ones...and they're already damaged. We're Hueys, we do not need sticks. If you're briefing a formation, just say "Don't get closer than X" and "Land at Y, we'll land at Z. Fly away this way if we brown-out." That's it. And keeping them within reach of students is just negligent.

    o4n72w5h9b5y.png
  • ArdentArdent Down UpsideRegistered User regular
    Elvenshae wrote: »
    Elvenshae wrote: »
    Post lacked gesturing with hands to explain complex maneuvers; 2/10
    See, you don't use your hands, you gotta use the sticks! That's what they're there for.

    My favorite thing ever seen in a briefing room was a pair of stuffed gloves on sticks.

    Cannot for the life of me find a picture of them now.
    I'm not sure you'd survive briefing with a briefing stick that looks like an airframe, yours or otherwise.

    You're supposed to use your knife hand or one of the wooden dowels.

    Steam ID | Origin ID: ArdentX | Uplay ID: theardent | Battle.net: Ardent#11476
  • FuselageFuselage Oosik Jumpship LoungeRegistered User regular
    Optional Reputation track where you balance your Personality between Wingman, Maintenance, and Admin. Wingman helps you the most in-flight, but if you have a low reputation with Admin your flight hours (experience) aren't tracked correctly, or your weather brief is totally unhelpful. If you piss Maintenance off, your boom-mic gets ball-swabbed, or some of your equipment gets misplaced for a mission.

    o4n72w5h9b5y.png
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    For powers that have upgraded versions of it, you could just have it where you can take that move twice or three times to upgrade it.

    Like do
    Water Gun
    Your Pokemon fires a blast of water, dealing 2d6 damage.
    At Level 5, you can take this move again and deal an extra 2d6 damage.
    At level 7, you can take this move again and deal an extra 2d6 damage.

    It's basically upgrading the move without making three different moves.

  • WACriminalWACriminal Dying Is Easy, Young Man Living Is HarderRegistered User regular
    For powers that have upgraded versions of it, you could just have it where you can take that move twice or three times to upgrade it.

    Like do
    Water Gun
    Your Pokemon fires a blast of water, dealing 2d6 damage.
    At Level 5, you can take this move again and deal an extra 2d6 damage.
    At level 7, you can take this move again and deal an extra 2d6 damage.

    It's basically upgrading the move without making three different moves.

    I considered this, but that closes off some design space for things like "more damage, but costs PP to use", or "less damage, but on a 10+ inflicts a status effect", etc.

    I'm definitely gonna see what I can do about minimizing fiddly lookup time, though. If nothing else, formatting the move list as cards which could be kept with your playbook (similar to spell cards) might be a thing.

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited February 2018
    Should reading a heretek journal that details the heretek becoming consumed, transformed, and led by basically dark age nanomachines cause a willpower test against corruption? I could see my techpriest player being tempted into get into a big archaeotech pod of the stuff to get better bionics. Not sure about the arbitrator or bounty hunter.

    Although what my techpriest wouldn’t know unless he reads the journal all the way (I typed a sizable one up in Roll20) is that the machines would reject him and kill him (or cause him to burn fate). The machines know the heretek’s presence and would automatically attempt to modify the users body to the heretek’s specifications (and this guy really got into physical fucked up transhumanism and was experimenting beforehand).

    Edit: I’ll make it more fair for him. Like the heretek, he could try to will the machines to not kill him and give him what he wanted. He would always have them in the back of his head though, along with the daemon he already has trying to tempt him.

    Edit 2: I guess the actual query is more about corruption that is not specifically Chaotic corruption. Like if you know Eldar exist, you aren’t being corrupted (mechanically). If you know daemons exist, they they have a chance or guarantee of corrupting you depending on their form and manifestation. Does anyone have an idea of when it should happen?

    Edit 3: I’ve been bad at insanity, fear, and corruption as mechanics. These bastards all took jaded so its harder to do without directly pulling in the warp.

    Edit 4: none of my Cannon Fodder group did though. : D

    Kadoken on
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    Yes because it's heretical.

  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    You filthy heretic!

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    WACriminal wrote: »
    For powers that have upgraded versions of it, you could just have it where you can take that move twice or three times to upgrade it.

    Like do
    Water Gun
    Your Pokemon fires a blast of water, dealing 2d6 damage.
    At Level 5, you can take this move again and deal an extra 2d6 damage.
    At level 7, you can take this move again and deal an extra 2d6 damage.

    It's basically upgrading the move without making three different moves.

    I considered this, but that closes off some design space for things like "more damage, but costs PP to use", or "less damage, but on a 10+ inflicts a status effect", etc.

    I'm definitely gonna see what I can do about minimizing fiddly lookup time, though. If nothing else, formatting the move list as cards which could be kept with your playbook (similar to spell cards) might be a thing.

    Do you even need a move list?

    Seems to me like the two most standard moves would be Damage, or Less Damage but Do Something. You'd probably also have No Damage but Do Something Big, Do More Damage but Slow and Do More Damage but Inaccurate.
    The difference between Pokémon would then come from typing and nature (what they use to attack and what defense they attack in the defender).

    If you want to lock players into Moves then have them name the Moves during battle and lock them into using only those combinations in that battle.
    That said, I'm not sure having Electroshock: Disable Electronics and Electroshock: Attack Normally be different would be terribly compelling.
    Perhaps increase the difficulty of the check if reusing a Move name to do something different and only tangentially related to the previous use this battle, and then limit to four move names that way?

    So I would just have a Move List on the sheet that are examples of names one could use for naming a small moveset of mechanical moves.

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited February 2018
    Maybe just have each Pokemon have a few different attack archetypes, that will increase in damage and/or effect as they level up, Apocalypse World style?

    For example, a Pidgey should have a Normal-type attack and a Flying-type attack specific to itself, in addition to a couple of attacks that ALL Normal and Flying type Pokemon will have, and then later on they can unlock something that's like HM Fly or something.

    Maybe there should be benefits/feats for each attack that are unlocked as they level up. These benefits will differ depending on what sort of dice mechanic you choose for skill resolution, but something like "rolling a natural 20 on your Ground type attack has a 10% chance to stun the opponent" at level X and as you gain every 5 levels the range to activate the effect check or the odds of the effect successfully taking hold can increase.

    Or you could even think about attack synergy in a way that the Pokemon games themselves don't - for example, why not have a damage bonus if you use a Water-type attack and then follow up with an Electric-type attack?

    DarkPrimus on
  • WACriminalWACriminal Dying Is Easy, Young Man Living Is HarderRegistered User regular
    I think my fundamental (but not insurmountable) difficulty is the intersection of these things:
    1) I want to use a consistent resolution mechanic across all the things - 2d6 + modifiers on a scale of 2-6|7-9|10-12.
    2) I very much like the narrative, freestyle feel of Apocalypse games for essentially every situation outside Pokemon battles. I don't want players poring over long lists of skills and wondering about whether to put a rank in Stealth or a rank in Acrobatics, etc.
    3) I really want more tactical, crunchy depth in the combat system. A central part of the Pokemon "feel", to me, is the satisfaction of picking out the right team, teaching them the right moves, leveling them up, and going blow-by-blow with gym leaders and other trainers.

    So I think my challenge, at this point, is that I'm essentially building two rulesets, a Narrative one and a Tactical one, but trying to make sure that they feel like part of the same game. It should feel like your Narrative decisions inform and give weight to the Tactical scenes, and that the outcomes of the Tactical scenes inform and extend the Narrative.

    As to the point about synergy, here's some things I'm looking at doing, but they're definitely going to get a simplification pass:
    Arena Tags
    Any combat scene is defined by "tags", similar to the Fate system, but along specified tracks. For instance, there is a Humidity track that goes: Sandstorm->Dusty->Normal->Rainy->Flooded. A fight at sea or in a Water gym might start at Flooded, but a fight in the desert could be either Sandstorm or Dusty, depending on the weather (<--impact from Narrative mode). This doesn't require a lot of prep or thought, just an Arena sheet with poker chips/coins/whatever on it that can be moved around the tracks as necessary. Takes less than 10 seconds to define a combat scene this way, even if you've done zero prep for the scene.

    Combat moves can influence the tracks, and can receive added effects under certain conditions. For example, using Surf would obviously move the Humidity track towards Flooded, and could do additional damage if the Arena was already Flooded. Or, for a slightly different approach, using Flash moves the Illumination track towards Sunshine, but only receives an additional effect (causing the opponent to flinch) if the Illumination track is currently at Pitch Black. Some moves could be completely useless under certain conditions, like being unable to use Dig if the Arena is Flooded.

    Arena Hazards
    There can also be hazards in a given combat scene that can be used to deal additional damage or status effects. For instance, perhaps one gym has an electric fence around the combat ring. If you can steer your opponent into the fence, they'll take bonus Electric damage on top of whatever damage your move dealt. The ability to inflict hazard effects would be limited to specific moves. For instance, Tackle might not let you push your opponent into the fence, but Seismic Toss definitely would. If a move can inflict hazard damage, it will be marked as such.

    Of course, hazards have to come from somewhere, right? Some moves can create hazards over the course of combat, which can then be used in later moves. Maybe Poison Gas creates a lasting cloud hazard that, anytime a Pokemon is pushed into it, poisons them anew. Maybe Fissure creates a simple hazard that can be used to add some Ground damage to any hazard-inflicting move. Hazards can be anything from ice spikes to flame jets to crushing machinery to lasers to tangling vines.


    With these systems, I'm hoping to bridge the gap between "tactical, crunchy" and "narrative, freestyle" mechanics by providing a structure for cinematic elements to translate to tactical advantage, and vice-versa. Additionally, it opens up design space for gyms and scenes that aren't themed around specific Pokemon types, but rather around specific Arena dynamics. For instance, maybe there's a gym leader who uses Pokemon of many different types, and specializes in manipulating the Illumination track to set up status effects and hazards. Or maybe there's a fight in a crumbling building where temporary, massive hazards appear at regular intervals. You can even kinda simulate zone-based combat with the hazard system, though it's certainly not the best way of doing that.

    If properly implemented, the systems should also reward both creative thinking and strategic preparation. Example: There's an advantage to casing a gym before you challenge the leader, because you can get an idea for what sort of tags and hazards you might be dealing with. You might even take some time to sabotage a particular element of the Arena to give yourself an advantage in the coming fight. For instance, if you've observed/speculated that the gym leaders use Synthesis to heal their Pokemon by keeping the Illumination track at Sunshine, then you could rig up some sort of trick to obscure the gym's skylight as soon as the battle starts, adjusting the Illumination track downward. Or maybe you can bring some Dark-type moves along to keep the light levels down, forcing the gym leaders to either dedicate moves to getting the Illumination back up or go without their passive healing.

    So yeah, it's definitely gonna be less freestyle than PbtA usually is when it comes to actual battle scenes. But I think that can work, if I can hew close to the tone of the show, really make sure there's narrative meat to the out-of-combat mechanics, and really fine-tune the connective tissue between the two halves of the game.

  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    The thing is though, picking the right team and getting your synergy on is something that’s satisfying because the games structure supports it.

    In a narrative focused game having to stop the story flow because you’ve not got quite the right set up is counter productive and if you don’t need to get technical then why’s the system even there?

    It might be worth looking into City of Mist if you want a more mechanically Heavy PbtA combat system with its use of tags and statuses.

  • FuselageFuselage Oosik Jumpship LoungeRegistered User regular
    The thing is though, picking the right team and getting your synergy on is something that’s satisfying because the games structure supports it.

    In a narrative focused game having to stop the story flow because you’ve not got quite the right set up is counter productive and if you don’t need to get technical then why’s the system even there?

    It might be worth looking into City of Mist if you want a more mechanically Heavy PbtA combat system with its use of tags and statuses.

    *Whispers along with the wind* "...ICRPG.....?"

    Speaking of which, I got mentioned on an ICRPG podcast (I think the only one) for about five seconds which feels great even though I know anyone can make a podcast these days.

    o4n72w5h9b5y.png
  • RendRend Registered User regular
    Quick question because I'm not sure I'll have time to go look it up today before it becomes relevant later, but how quick is advancement in Genesys, RAW? What does it mean for a character to be a novice vs competent vs powerful, how many sessions does it typically take to get there?

  • RendRend Registered User regular
    To be clear, what I mean is I remember on my first readthrough the suggested number of XP gained per session and the costs for advancements like skills and talents seemed to match up to characters getting a HUGE amount of advancement every session. However, having not played this game, and not having played SW a significant amount, I'm looking for some more subjective accounts for that.

  • KadokenKadoken Giving Ends to my Friends and it Feels Stupendous Registered User regular
    edited February 2018
    Would anyone be interested in reviewing one of my homebrew modules and tell me what I could improve on? I would PM you the link to it and discuss it there as to not clutter the thread.

    I don’t really do adventure repeats; I’ve got one consistent continuity I work with, but it would help me in designing modules in the future.

    Kadoken on
  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    so basically the idea is that each hour of play by default equates to 5 xp or so. this might have been modified in Genesys but that's the Star Wars model

    what that means is that assuming you play the same amount of time each week or interval, characters will advance in one of two ways: tall or broad

    you can advance broadly quickly but that's only if you are low tier. since talent costs and skill costs go up, you have to spend more per advancement

    if you go tall, advancement will sort of be similar and maybe a little slower, but you will see power rise in the character's area of expertise. usually this meant acquisition of force powers but in Genesys I don't know what that would look like necessarily

    @rend answer your question?

  • italianranmaitalianranma Registered User regular
    My friends and I are in total disagreement over this in Star Wars, and by extension Genesys. I maintain that for most tasks two yellow and two green dice have a nearly guaranteed success rate, and that's something you can get right at character creation with the proper combo of archetype and career. If you needed to build into that on a 2 characteristic it would take 50-70xp for your career/non-career skill with no ranks. My buddies think that the main power spike comes from the tier 3 and tier 4 talents costing 50 or 100XP cumulatively. At 20 ish XP per session, you're looking at some significant advancement each month.

    Ramping up the difficulty is different between combat and non-combat: non-combat checks are mostly by fiat, so you can just start giving them 3 and 4 difficulty obstacles or using opposed checks from stronger adversaries. Combat difficulties are set, so rather than more difficult opponents, I find multiple opponents is more challenging, though there is a mental cost you pay for managing more NPCs.

    飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
  • RendRend Registered User regular
    so basically the idea is that each hour of play by default equates to 5 xp or so. this might have been modified in Genesys but that's the Star Wars model

    what that means is that assuming you play the same amount of time each week or interval, characters will advance in one of two ways: tall or broad

    you can advance broadly quickly but that's only if you are low tier. since talent costs and skill costs go up, you have to spend more per advancement

    if you go tall, advancement will sort of be similar and maybe a little slower, but you will see power rise in the character's area of expertise. usually this meant acquisition of force powers but in Genesys I don't know what that would look like necessarily

    rend answer your question?

    Partly yes. Approximating 5xp per hour is a good baseline, which would mean at low tier you can get a new skill every hour. But it also means you could go from skill 0 to 5 in 15 hours, or what like 4-6 sessions? Does that FEEL quick, or slow, or what? Also, how many experience points on average might it take for a character to go from feeling like a level 1 dnd character to say a level 5, or 10, or 20 dnd character?

    I'm trying to assess the speed of advancement in genesys, as well as how I might turn that knob, for a group which is perhaps wanting to go for a much longer game than is our typical. Since I'd personally rather avoid d20 system I was looking at Genesys as a possible alternative.

  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    that's a loaded question--since the dice are weighted differently, like mentioned above the main value of going beyond 2 yellows is the possibility of many triumphs on one roll.

    for me personally i would never be focusing entirely on skills--talents are where the meat is, of which there are tons. I would say characters start feeling like the movie characters around 200-300 xp

  • jdarksunjdarksun Struggler VARegistered User regular
    Note that it's 5 * (hours played - 1), not just straight 5 * hours played. Even 15 xp / (four hour) session is a good bit though.

    I think our Star Wars campaign ran for ... eight months, almost exactly ... playing every other week on average. So call it 16 four-hour sessions, 64 hours or thereabouts? My notes say 20 sessions, so give or take 25%.

    Anyhow, general consensus was that it was probably a bit too much power too quickly. I might drop it down to 10xp per typical session, 5 if we went short - and ramp up later if needed.

  • RendRend Registered User regular
    jdarksun wrote: »
    Note that it's 5 * (hours played - 1), not just straight 5 * hours played. Even 15 xp / (four hour) session is a good bit though.

    I think our Star Wars campaign ran for ... eight months, almost exactly ... playing every other week on average. So call it 16 four-hour sessions, 64 hours or thereabouts? My notes say 20 sessions, so give or take 25%.

    Anyhow, general consensus was that it was probably a bit too much power too quickly. I might drop it down to 10xp per typical session, 5 if we went short - and ramp up later if needed.

    Having had time to run a few numbers at this point that's kind of what I was thinking.

    If I were to start a long term game, like I was positing before at like 100 sessions or what have you (at 2.5-3 hours apiece) I'd drop it down to like 5 per session plus maybe 10 for major milestones. That's 500 + another like 70-100 depending on how many major milestones for the campaign, assuming 7-10 sessions between them, which is enough to have 6+ skills maxed out plus two tier 5 talents

    Additionally that probably puts you at like 300 skills points after something like 50-55 sessions which means about half the time would be spent growing fast into a badass and half the time would be spent growing slowly AS a badass? At least that's how I'd hope it'd work?

    But again I haven't actually played so pretty much all of this is theorycraft

  • Super NamicchiSuper Namicchi Orange County, CARegistered User regular
    it also bears mentioning it depends on your group's concepts--if they all hyper specialize at one thing each they will get good at that one thing real quick

    the game works better if you spread out amongst a couple things (imo)

  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    Starting characters in FFG aren't comically inept like (non-4e) 1st-level D&D characters, but it's fair to describe them as kind of novices. If they're built per the (very prominent, very correct) advice in the char gen chapter to spend their starting XP on attributes rather than skills (as attributes can't be raised after character creation), they'll have raw talent and be decent at a couple of skills related to their core concept, like a starting X-Wing pilot in Star Wars might be throwing 2 yellows and a green on their Gunnery and Piloting checks, and they might have picked up a single little 5xp gimmick from their talent tree.

    After about 200 XP earned (200 XP on top of the starting XP, in other words), characters are highly competent in their core thing or broadly competent at a few things.

    After about 400 XP, characters are experts in their field and have started branching out into other fields, or they've brnached into several fields and are working at becoming experts in one or two of them.

    After about 450-500 XP combat starts to become a little strange - offense power outstrips defense, and the effect gets more pronounced as the game progresses, so PCs facing enemies built to challenge them end up in combats that are a bit like rocket tag - whoever wins initiative is likely to deal a crippling blow to the other side. I prefer this to fighting giant sacks of HP, and there's an argument to be made that it's a more realistic depiction of what would happen when two incredibly powerful combatants face each other (instead of lots of misses and grazes the battle ends with one stroke, like a samurai duel), and in any case it can be mitigated or obviated by the specific circumstances of the combat (turning it into a chase, a race against time to defuse the bomb, or etc) but it does mean a GM needs to kind of reconsider the role of combat in the game at that point, and it can be a useful signal that it's time to begin drawing the story to a close.

    So played every week at a rate of 10-15 XP a session you'll end up with a game that goes from beginning to end in a little under a year. I feel like that's situated in a good spot where it's a meaty game but not some impossible epic "you can reach level 30 if you keep playing for 10 years" thing, but knowing this you can adjust the gains up or down accordingly to achieve the effect you're going for.

    rRwz9.gif
  • MsAnthropyMsAnthropy The Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm The City of FlowersRegistered User regular
    edited February 2018
    Jacobkosh wrote: »
    Starting characters in FFG aren't comically inept like (non-4e) 1st-level D&D characters, but it's fair to describe them as kind of novices. If they're built per the (very prominent, very correct) advice in the char gen chapter to spend their starting XP on attributes rather than skills (as attributes can't be raised after character creation), they'll have raw talent and be decent at a couple of skills related to their core concept, like a starting X-Wing pilot in Star Wars might be throwing 2 yellows and a green on their Gunnery and Piloting checks, and they might have picked up a single little 5xp gimmick from their talent tree.

    After about 200 XP earned (200 XP on top of the starting XP, in other words), characters are highly competent in their core thing or broadly competent at a few things.

    After about 400 XP, characters are experts in their field and have started branching out into other fields, or they've brnached into several fields and are working at becoming experts in one or two of them.

    After about 450-500 XP combat starts to become a little strange - offense power outstrips defense, and the effect gets more pronounced as the game progresses, so PCs facing enemies built to challenge them end up in combats that are a bit like rocket tag - whoever wins initiative is likely to deal a crippling blow to the other side. I prefer this to fighting giant sacks of HP, and there's an argument to be made that it's a more realistic depiction of what would happen when two incredibly powerful combatants face each other (instead of lots of misses and grazes the battle ends with one stroke, like a samurai duel), and in any case it can be mitigated or obviated by the specific circumstances of the combat (turning it into a chase, a race against time to defuse the bomb, or etc) but it does mean a GM needs to kind of reconsider the role of combat in the game at that point, and it can be a useful signal that it's time to begin drawing the story to a close.

    So played every week at a rate of 10-15 XP a session you'll end up with a game that goes from beginning to end in a little under a year. I feel like that's situated in a good spot where it's a meaty game but not some impossible epic "you can reach level 30 if you keep playing for 10 years" thing, but knowing this you can adjust the gains up or down accordingly to achieve the effect you're going for.

    Re:: bolded. Rocket tag is definitely a thing, and can be magnified in a game like ours where people generally don’t get equipment upgrades very often and only one character is really comat optimized. Also, if there is a big bad evil with who you don’t want getting one shotted from a crit Fisher PC, then you will need to spec them with specific talents that make it take more advantage to trigger those.

    MsAnthropy on
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    "The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
  • honoverehonovere Registered User regular
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Is it playable?

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    It's got iterative attacks... so not modern d&d... that makes it a pathfinder class?

  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    Nah, I read that as 3.5 D&D.

    As for playable...uh, technically I guess? It doesn't do much aside from funny stuff though.

    Their capstone ability is a killer but you have to be a MBA first, which is a waste.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Is it playable?

    Most of its features are more for laughs than a viable character.

    The 17th level feature is you get a haircut so fresh that everyone else in the party immediately gains a level.

  • italianranmaitalianranma Registered User regular
    I'm confused by the "I'm on a horse" class feature... isn't that how you always get on a horse in RPGs?

    飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    I'm confused by the "I'm on a horse" class feature... isn't that how you always get on a horse in RPGs?
    The Old Spice man in the commercials is often seen riding a horse.

    8i1dt37buh2m.png
  • italianranmaitalianranma Registered User regular
    I know the reference... I was just making a joke about how RPGs work.

    飛べねぇ豚はただの豚だ。
  • Grunt's GhostsGrunt's Ghosts Registered User regular
    Now I want to see The Most Interesting Man in the World stated up as a monster that the Old Spice Gentleman has to fight.

  • RendRend Registered User regular
    Now I want to see The Most Interesting Man in the World stated up as a monster that the Old Spice Gentleman has to fight.

    I don't always force you to roll fortitude saving throws
    but when I do
    it's a save-or-die effect

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