RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Oh, also if you can't come up with a satisfying way to run capital ship combat by the next session then just don't. Activate some special bullshit circumstances (weird nebulas are great!) that disables the means of a traditional space battle. Then turn it into a different tension setting device, like a race
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Have the capital ship fight occurring in the background with a semi-fixed timer that will inevitably result in a loss for the good guys if the PCs don't interfere.
Have the capital ship fight occurring in the background with a semi-fixed timer that will inevitably result in a loss for the good guys if the PCs don't interfere.
Well, the thing is that the PCs have fled a Lucrehulk, which is being reactivated and taken over by a rampant astromech who has uploaded their consciousness to the servers, and some of them are trying to reactivate a nearby Venator while the others are dealing with the aforementioned Force ghost ship.
And they're all agreed that the Lucrehulk needs to die, so capital ship combat is what they want to do.
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Ah, I see. I don't think that changes much though. I would still abstract it out -- various skill checks (moving quickly, computers, etc) as they race to activate the ship while the Lucrehulk is pounding it with fire, then subsequent combat/piloting with bonuses/penalties based on how long it took them to activate it and therefore how much damage it's already sustained. Ultimately culminating in a sliding scale of success/failure based on what their ideal goals are (would they prefer to destroy the Lucrehulk or disable it? Do they want the Venator undamaged for salvage or are they gonna abandon it? Is there somewhere else they need to be quickly?) with the worst case scenario being they have to flee to escape pods as the Venator goes down around them.
So things have been gradually escalating every session in my Star Wars campaign and now I have to figure out two things before the next session.
1) How does combat between capital ships work? Like, when a ship lists its armaments as "seven port and seven starboard quad heavy turbolaser batteries, seventeen dorsal and seventeen ventral turret-mounted dual heavy laser cannons, Ttwo forward-mounted battleship ion cannons, six port and six starboard twin light ion cannons, six port and six starboard heavy flak cannons, twenty-five port and twenty-five starboard proton torpedo launchers, fifty-two forward-mounted proton torpedo launchers, five port and five starboard heavy tractor beam emitters; and each grouping of those weapons has different stats listed as far as damage, range, critical cost, etc. So is the stats representing a single one of each of those emplacements firing? How many of each can be fired during a turn? Things like that.
2) Suggestions on how I should run a showdown between an ancient Dark Side Force ghost and a Force-sensitive PC character who doesn't have any actual Force abilities purchased? The encounter is going to be taking place mentally, at least at first, but just rolling Discipline checks or whatever seems boring. And I'm not sure how physical combat rolls would be applicable to a ghost? The ship they're on is literally powered by the tortured spirits of Force users sealed away in large Kyber crystals, so I suppose freeing some of those spirits could help in combating the Dark Side guy somehow but that still leaves me needing to come up with what sort of checks to roll to do that, too.
So I don’t have the books on me right now, but from memory, for #1:
So it helps to visualize battle between capital ships like fights between say, old pirate ships or WWII battleships. So you have different gun placements on different sides of the ship. The side that will be firing is the side facing the enemy. So if the opposing capital Ship is on the starboard side, you’ll be firing your weapons on that side only. Now having said that, if the enemy has say, a couple of squadrons of x-wings, tie fighters, or some other star fighter, you could theoretically end up fighting on multiple sides at once.
For your question about the guns, theoretically they could all be fired at once if there are enough enemies in range and enough people/AI to man the cannons and other weaponry. Capital ships tend to be fucking huge, even on the small end of them. If you remember in Episode 3 at the beginning space fight you see scores of clones manning some giant laser cannons? It’s essentially that. Now with you saying it’s being run by an astromech and the players are being linked to the ship, you could easily hand wave that the guns are connected by computers to be fired via various computer programs your players can link up to. I would definitely recommend having the players split up control of the ships weaponry by type, locations, or some manner to both keep everyone involved and to share the burden of rolling everything.
In terms of ranges capital ships fight at, it tends to be on the far end of the scale, the long to extreme range bands. Medium is as close as anyone wants to get. The reasoning for that is that, as you’ve noted, the weaponry on the ships have different ranges. The capital ships will want to struggle for control of the space to keep the enemy within range of their big guns while staying out of range and side the opponents big guns are at. To go back to the pirate ship analogy, picture how in pirate movies that when the ships get close to each other they tear each other apart. It’s the same with capital ships. If capital ships are within medium or closer range bands in the planetary sense, they’ll destroy each other as each side unloads their full armaments into each other.
For the stat block, it represents one of those weapons firing. That can be confusing because some of them as like twin or quad cannons, those are considered one block for the stat blocks. Now if it says there are six twin mounted light ion cannons, that means you would have six of t stat block.
Capital ship combat can be really cool, but it’s also very intensive. And why most space combat is at the fighter or freighter level.
As for your #2 question:
-When it’s in the minds AO’s, have them use their physical skills when they logically would be doing that if it wasn’t in a dreamscape. Your mind makes it real? Right? So you are still swinging the lightsaber or firing the blaster or climbing the wall, and it makes sense it would trigger the same parts of your brain and therefore still using your skills and attributes for it. If you want to make it feel different, you might have it be willpower plus the skill, to represent willing your mind to mentally do what you normally would physically.
As for how to fight the ghost in the physical world, maybe an opposes discipline check to force the ghost to manifest? Or a flip of the destiny token to represent the force sensitive player pulling the ghost to become corporeal?
Actual mechanical stuff for the absurdity that is star wars capital ship combat:
1) Make note of what a capital ship can actually do. Most notable is that they can only ever take one (1) pilot-only maneuver. Plus as a result of their size the only maneuvers they actually qualify for is Accelerate/Decelerate and Fly. This is to say Capital ships mechanically aren't really mobile. At best a faster capital ship might be able to close range on another capital ship or otherwise change the angle they're fighting at a little but 90% of star wars capital ship fights work like Battlefront: Two large bits of terrain firing turbo lasers with a moshpit of fighters in the middle.
2) You do not have tooand should not fire all those guns individually. There's specific firing options for ships of Silhouette 5 or more that are designed to make capital ship combat fast, fun and dramatic:
Blanket Barrage: aka the leave me the fuck alone button. Fires all of one type of weapon in a given battery/firing arc to set up a big screen of 'go away X wings and enemy ships'. Making it harder to hit you based on how well the gunnery check went and letting you spend threat and despair to wing or directly hit people who dare approach you while the screen is up.
Concentrated Barrage: is how you do capital ship to capital ship combat. It fires all of one type of weapon as a battery at a single target. If it hits it just does the normal damage one weapon would but you can spend 1 advantage to add damage equal to the number of weapons in the battery. Yes this does make the stupid 30 turbo laser batteries on Star Destroyers piss terrifying.
Overwhelming Barrage: aka fuck those X Wings in particular fires a battery like normal. You can spend 1 advantage to hit a second target at short range (and at least the same size as) your initial target. For every ten guns you can trigger this an additional time. So with less than ten you can hit two ships, ten can hit three, 20 four and so on. This lets you dramatically fly swat down fighter squadrons or fire at freighters/non capital PC ships without fucking obliterating them like a concentrated barrage would.
3) To answer the question of "yeah but how many initiative slots am I supposed to have for a ship with ten thousand crew?" the generic advice that holds strong is to mirror however many initiative slots the PCs are providing. Chuck some extra rival NPCs on either side if you think there's not quite enough (you probably want a pilot, an engineer a few gunner crews and a captain of sorts).
4) Don't forget additional starship and vehicle actions (p248 in the AoR rule book but it's present in every core). A lot of stuff that's just kind of "I guess a character that sucks at space combat can do this?" for smaller combats suddenly becomes way cooler and thematic on larger capital ships. Stuff like having your leadership PC implementing fire discipline so that volley really lands, having a dedicated engineer running around fixing things, reducing strain, angling reflector shields and boosting them is very on point.
5) Remember terrain can be a thing even for capital ships! Have the fight be around a broken up space station or the graveyard of a past fleet engagement. This way you can have piloting checks (which will be pretty hard due to the size of the ship) which can result in movement not happening and small/large collisions. Which does allow for more dramatic flanks than two large ships in open space would.
In terms of your force ghost it's a much shorter list of mechanical stuff but:
1) Remember that different social checks are opposed by different skills, Negotiation vs itself, Charm vs Cool and the rest vs Discipline means you can have your force Ghost vary up ways to tempt and tug at someone.
2) Have it be a strain tug of war with varying social checks and actions. A character that's out of strain in social situations doesn't pass out like in combat ones but instead becomes insolent, pouty, emotional and otherwise useless but suggestible.
3) Feel free to have the force sensitive shoot at the ghost! Give it a high soak and have any wounds it would take just go to the ghosts strain pool. Then slap the PC with some conflict because Jedi don't resolve conversations with violence
4) In terms of some good talents to pinch to put the screws on your PC, the Advocate tree is basically a social encounter monster with some really flavourful ways to needle at people and put mechanics to social rolls.
Playing D&D for the first time in ages tomorrow so I built a Tortle Circle of the Moon Druid who is basically the love child of Maui from Moana and Crush from Finding Nemo.
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
edited January 2020
so my Party, at the very beginning of their adventures, found a roadside shrine and recalled the old knowledge, "It never hurts to give thanks to the local gods, you never know who might be hungry."
so they left trinkets and food, and have since been cursed blessed by the God of Cold Open Dreams, which introduce the Monster of the Week.
I just found the perfect acoustic version of Bring Me to Life by Evanescence to play when they dream of the Princess forever sleeping in her Castle of Thorns.
Depressperado on
+13
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
So my DM for the Descent into Avernus OK'd all of my backup character ideas, so now I need to pick one.
For anyone curious here's all the character sheets for them (I haven't done much of their background stuff since they were all preliminary)
But to summarize my preferred picks are (in no particular order)
1. Falker, CN Kenku Death Domain Cleric/Circle of Spores Druid
2. Grundj, NE Half-Orc Enchanter Wizard
3. Othorn, LN Kobold Battle Smith
4. Lethel Aresian, LE High Elf Cavalier
5. Yorga Rull, NE Bugbear Monster Hunter Ranger
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I finally cracked what the thrust/theme of my Eberron Campaign is gonna be
Eat the Rich
The first villain is gonna be a Sharn City Councilor who is introducing policies and procedures that fleece and abuse the poor and downtrodden (particularly targetting Cyran refugees), but in such a way that he isn't actually breaking any laws.
The big picture will have them butting up against The Aurum (as the Councilor was a low-ranking member) , which I'll keep somewhat vague for now as the players do Player Things so I can adapt rather than rail road them.
It's a timely, satisfying antagonistic angle and is somewhat non-traditional for a Fantasy Adventure. Plus it works well with our party who are all part of fairly minor races on the global political stage and are frequently discriminated against. (Warforged, Bugbear, etc.)
+20
WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Good news, everyone! So I floated the "have the low level person scale in level as well, even if they don't play much" idea to the group, describing the possible situation we will encounter that would warrant such a thing, and they don't mind it. So that's one worry less.
More... news. I now have a potential sixth player. (Who loudly exclaimed it'd be cool/they'd love it if they get to play the double-crossing-spy-guild-pretending-to-be-from-another-guild, in front of all my other players. Such subtle, very sideeyes.)
I finally cracked what the thrust/theme of my Eberron Campaign is gonna be
Eat the Rich
The first villain is gonna be a Sharn City Councilor who is introducing policies and procedures that fleece and abuse the poor and downtrodden (particularly targetting Cyran refugees), but in such a way that he isn't actually breaking any laws.
The big picture will have them butting up against The Aurum (as the Councilor was a low-ranking member) , which I'll keep somewhat vague for now as the players do Player Things so I can adapt rather than rail road them.
It's a timely, satisfying antagonistic angle and is somewhat non-traditional for a Fantasy Adventure. Plus it works well with our party who are all part of fairly minor races on the global political stage and are frequently discriminated against. (Warforged, Bugbear, etc.)
This works really well for the pulp detective quadrant of Eberron, which is always the place I gravitate towards with the setting.
Are you thinking of keeping things (relatively) mundane or are the wealthy literally bloodsucking monsters?
But to summarize my preferred picks are (in no particular order)
1. Falker, CN Kenku Death Domain Cleric/Circle of Spores Druid
2. Grundj, NE Half-Orc Enchanter Wizard
3. Othorn, LN Kobold Battle Smith
4. Lethel Aresian, LE High Elf Cavalier
5. Yorga Rull, NE Bugbear Monster Hunter Ranger
Kobold Battle Smith is just such a dope idea on its face
This is very true, and I like the idea lot
but I'm leaning somewhat towards the Bugbear. Her backstory is that she was trained as a member of an anti-fiend taskforce in a Hobgoblin kingdom, to kill both botched summons and those summoned by their enemies. If I go with her, she'll either be on detached duty to Baldur's Gate for some reason, or is acting as a mercenary after a hazard pay dispute (she thought hunting down demons and devils should get her a better payrating than other recruits at her rank, her superiors disagreed. LE society and all).
Lethel I like as well, having more trouble bringing her backstory together though, being a Knight of a lesser known elven order which follows Vandria Gilmadrith
Othorn would be a merchant and part time tinker who served as a member of the merchant caravans of one of the local Kobold clans that has decent relations with Baldur's Gate and ostensibly sold his hand-crafted gadgets and toys, and found his skills lay far more in the tinkering than in the selling.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Good news, everyone! So I floated the "have the low level person scale in level as well, even if they don't play much" idea to the group, describing the possible situation we will encounter that would warrant such a thing, and they don't mind it. So that's one worry less.
More... news. I now have a potential sixth player. (Who loudly exclaimed it'd be cool/they'd love it if they get to play the double-crossing-spy-guild-pretending-to-be-from-another-guild, in front of all my other players. Such subtle, very sideeyes.)
It's only bad if all six show up, right?
Honestly yeah it's gonna bog down some and you may find some players are taking a while to take their turns because they're checking out because it takes so long for their turn to come back up.
The good news is you can institute a "3 strike" policy regarding attendance. As long leas than 3 players call out, you can still have full game.
Also I'd recommend, given your XP policy, just keep the party together, and anyone who's player couldn't make it is just off-camera and just doesn't contribute anything of consequence that week.
DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
my friend got the Eberron sourcebook for Christmas and I've added Warforged and Artificer to Squire, that 5e character sheet app (it is very useful, you gotta do a little manual labor to add stuff, but there's a reddit thread that has basically everything released for 5e ready to import)
It's named Seventh of Twenty, Dwarves found it encased in solid rock. Basically it's a Jem'hadar from DS9 with amnesia because a security feature wiped it's memory when it was 'captured' by the Dwarves.
Artificer looks dope as hell, too, I can't wait to try it out.
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
so I decided I want to get an official printed copy of Rebirth Degenesis, a.k.a. "what if you took Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun to its logical conclusion and set it 500 years in the future: the ttrpg"
thing is it's indie as fuck, the english printed edition has been out of stock for years and every copy on the market costs hundreds of dollars
but I fucking found an italian nerd hobby store, in italy the actual country, that for some reason has the english edition available relatively cheaply too
so guess who's importing a copy of a long out of print game from continental europe
+16
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
edited January 2020
I still remember bowling around Venice in 2001 ducking in and out of gift shops, tourist traps, overpriced jewelers and glass shops essentially at random and taking a random blind alley I thought might be a short cut and instead walking down a couple steps into a random unsigned Italian Hobby shop with a 3E Italian Core Set stacked up at the entrance .
It was probably the most honest, least faux shop I saw the entire time I was in Venice.
That's unbelievably cool. Your new name is cool guy. Let's have sex.
+12
Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
yeah rome was a similiar mix of overpriced touristee tat and little hidden mom and pop stores just doing their thing in a genuine and unassuming manner
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
edited January 2020
My airship of fools reached the midwest with the new year. Facing the rockies, they then see a tremendous, continent spanning storm courtesy of the storm giant they torked off. So they need a storm shield! Well, don'tcha know, the people of Far'as'you'll'go recommended a nice little place called Devil's Lake that just got one! Just nip on down and ask Mary!
Devil's Lake was an elaborate wintertime resort, but my players never even engaged with the ice dragon petting zoo! Instead they got suckered into a presentation on time shares, engaged combat with the presenter, and basically turned the entire place into a riot. Eventually they meet Mary...who is, of course, a marilith. Now Mary was meant to be a one-shot boss, but I noticed an odd little ability the marilith have: teleportation 120 feet.
So when she gets down to 20 HP, rather than die, she decides to teleport out of the fight...across the resort...and steal the stormshield. She bamfs to her corvette airship, flips them the bird with six arms, and takes off north!
My party follows in their airship, roll absolute crap on piloting checks, and lose her headed north. Next session (today), they pick up her trail and come upon:
Iceskull Doom Mouth, aka, Winnipeg, a hell blasted icy fortress demon portal erupting from the ground amidst the ruins of Canastan.
Now I work with my players, and they decided to talk about the new Star Wars movie aaaall lunch today, so I just had to turn this into a star wars ripoff.
They land in the hell mouth to find rows of storm(shield) troopers aiming blasters at the ship. Who proceed to miss a stationary airship with every shot. While vaguely British officers threaten them through jowls puffing out of their collars.
My players must have caught the stormtrooper, cause they rolled so many one's they nearly wiped against the opening fight.
Well, whatever, they sneak to the "stormshield generator" shaft, have another fight, and are basically tapped. Exhausted, out of healing, they call the elevator down.
My airship of fools reached the midwest with the new year. Facing the rockies, they then see a tremendous, continent spanning storm courtesy of the storm giant they torked off. So they need a storm shield! Well, don'tcha know, the people of Far'as'you'll'go recommended a nice little place called Devil's Lake that just got one! Just nip on down and ask Mary!
Devil's Lake was an elaborate wintertime resort, but my players never even engaged with the ice dragon petting zoo! Instead they got suckered into a presentation on time shares, engaged combat with the presenter, and basically turned the entire place into a riot. Eventually they meet Mary...who is, of course, a marilith. Now Mary was meant to be a one-shot boss, but I noticed an odd little ability the marilith have: teleportation 120 feet.
So when she gets down to 20 HP, rather than die, she decides to teleport out of the fight...across the resort...and steal the stormshield. She bamfs to her corvette airship, flips them the bird with six arms, and takes off north!
My party follows in their airship, roll absolute crap on piloting checks, and lose her headed north. Next session (today), they pick up her trail and come upon:
Iceskull Doom Mouth, aka, Winnipeg, a hell blasted icy fortress demon portal erupting from the ground amidst the ruins of Canastan.
Now I work with my players, and they decided to talk about the new Star Wars movie aaaall lunch today, so I just had to turn this into a star wars ripoff.
They land in the hell mouth to find rows of storm(shield) troopers aiming blasters at the ship. Who proceed to miss a stationary airship with every shot. While vaguely British officers threaten them through jowls puffing out of their collars.
My players must have caught the stormtrooper, cause they rolled so many one's they nearly wiped against the opening fight.
Well, whatever, they sneak to the "stormshield generator" shaft, have another fight, and are basically tapped. Exhausted, out of healing, they call the elevator down.
So that new hero forge color thing is at over 200k less then an hour after launch
At 350k right now. I doubt ill back it but a real nice feature will be able to digitally paint the mini, which will be a boon to test color schemes before actually painting something.
Posts
Well, the thing is that the PCs have fled a Lucrehulk, which is being reactivated and taken over by a rampant astromech who has uploaded their consciousness to the servers, and some of them are trying to reactivate a nearby Venator while the others are dealing with the aforementioned Force ghost ship.
And they're all agreed that the Lucrehulk needs to die, so capital ship combat is what they want to do.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Depends. How many fireballs do they have?
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
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PSN: AbEntropy
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
So I don’t have the books on me right now, but from memory, for #1:
So it helps to visualize battle between capital ships like fights between say, old pirate ships or WWII battleships. So you have different gun placements on different sides of the ship. The side that will be firing is the side facing the enemy. So if the opposing capital Ship is on the starboard side, you’ll be firing your weapons on that side only. Now having said that, if the enemy has say, a couple of squadrons of x-wings, tie fighters, or some other star fighter, you could theoretically end up fighting on multiple sides at once.
For your question about the guns, theoretically they could all be fired at once if there are enough enemies in range and enough people/AI to man the cannons and other weaponry. Capital ships tend to be fucking huge, even on the small end of them. If you remember in Episode 3 at the beginning space fight you see scores of clones manning some giant laser cannons? It’s essentially that. Now with you saying it’s being run by an astromech and the players are being linked to the ship, you could easily hand wave that the guns are connected by computers to be fired via various computer programs your players can link up to. I would definitely recommend having the players split up control of the ships weaponry by type, locations, or some manner to both keep everyone involved and to share the burden of rolling everything.
In terms of ranges capital ships fight at, it tends to be on the far end of the scale, the long to extreme range bands. Medium is as close as anyone wants to get. The reasoning for that is that, as you’ve noted, the weaponry on the ships have different ranges. The capital ships will want to struggle for control of the space to keep the enemy within range of their big guns while staying out of range and side the opponents big guns are at. To go back to the pirate ship analogy, picture how in pirate movies that when the ships get close to each other they tear each other apart. It’s the same with capital ships. If capital ships are within medium or closer range bands in the planetary sense, they’ll destroy each other as each side unloads their full armaments into each other.
For the stat block, it represents one of those weapons firing. That can be confusing because some of them as like twin or quad cannons, those are considered one block for the stat blocks. Now if it says there are six twin mounted light ion cannons, that means you would have six of t stat block.
Capital ship combat can be really cool, but it’s also very intensive. And why most space combat is at the fighter or freighter level.
As for your #2 question:
-When it’s in the minds AO’s, have them use their physical skills when they logically would be doing that if it wasn’t in a dreamscape. Your mind makes it real? Right? So you are still swinging the lightsaber or firing the blaster or climbing the wall, and it makes sense it would trigger the same parts of your brain and therefore still using your skills and attributes for it. If you want to make it feel different, you might have it be willpower plus the skill, to represent willing your mind to mentally do what you normally would physically.
As for how to fight the ghost in the physical world, maybe an opposes discipline check to force the ghost to manifest? Or a flip of the destiny token to represent the force sensitive player pulling the ghost to become corporeal?
1) Make note of what a capital ship can actually do. Most notable is that they can only ever take one (1) pilot-only maneuver. Plus as a result of their size the only maneuvers they actually qualify for is Accelerate/Decelerate and Fly. This is to say Capital ships mechanically aren't really mobile. At best a faster capital ship might be able to close range on another capital ship or otherwise change the angle they're fighting at a little but 90% of star wars capital ship fights work like Battlefront: Two large bits of terrain firing turbo lasers with a moshpit of fighters in the middle.
2) You do not have too and should not fire all those guns individually. There's specific firing options for ships of Silhouette 5 or more that are designed to make capital ship combat fast, fun and dramatic:
Blanket Barrage: aka the leave me the fuck alone button. Fires all of one type of weapon in a given battery/firing arc to set up a big screen of 'go away X wings and enemy ships'. Making it harder to hit you based on how well the gunnery check went and letting you spend threat and despair to wing or directly hit people who dare approach you while the screen is up.
Concentrated Barrage: is how you do capital ship to capital ship combat. It fires all of one type of weapon as a battery at a single target. If it hits it just does the normal damage one weapon would but you can spend 1 advantage to add damage equal to the number of weapons in the battery. Yes this does make the stupid 30 turbo laser batteries on Star Destroyers piss terrifying.
Overwhelming Barrage: aka fuck those X Wings in particular fires a battery like normal. You can spend 1 advantage to hit a second target at short range (and at least the same size as) your initial target. For every ten guns you can trigger this an additional time. So with less than ten you can hit two ships, ten can hit three, 20 four and so on. This lets you dramatically fly swat down fighter squadrons or fire at freighters/non capital PC ships without fucking obliterating them like a concentrated barrage would.
3) To answer the question of "yeah but how many initiative slots am I supposed to have for a ship with ten thousand crew?" the generic advice that holds strong is to mirror however many initiative slots the PCs are providing. Chuck some extra rival NPCs on either side if you think there's not quite enough (you probably want a pilot, an engineer a few gunner crews and a captain of sorts).
4) Don't forget additional starship and vehicle actions (p248 in the AoR rule book but it's present in every core). A lot of stuff that's just kind of "I guess a character that sucks at space combat can do this?" for smaller combats suddenly becomes way cooler and thematic on larger capital ships. Stuff like having your leadership PC implementing fire discipline so that volley really lands, having a dedicated engineer running around fixing things, reducing strain, angling reflector shields and boosting them is very on point.
5) Remember terrain can be a thing even for capital ships! Have the fight be around a broken up space station or the graveyard of a past fleet engagement. This way you can have piloting checks (which will be pretty hard due to the size of the ship) which can result in movement not happening and small/large collisions. Which does allow for more dramatic flanks than two large ships in open space would.
In terms of your force ghost it's a much shorter list of mechanical stuff but:
1) Remember that different social checks are opposed by different skills, Negotiation vs itself, Charm vs Cool and the rest vs Discipline means you can have your force Ghost vary up ways to tempt and tug at someone.
2) Have it be a strain tug of war with varying social checks and actions. A character that's out of strain in social situations doesn't pass out like in combat ones but instead becomes insolent, pouty, emotional and otherwise useless but suggestible.
3) Feel free to have the force sensitive shoot at the ghost! Give it a high soak and have any wounds it would take just go to the ghosts strain pool. Then slap the PC with some conflict because Jedi don't resolve conversations with violence
4) In terms of some good talents to pinch to put the screws on your PC, the Advocate tree is basically a social encounter monster with some really flavourful ways to needle at people and put mechanics to social rolls.
so they left trinkets and food, and have since been cursed blessed by the God of Cold Open Dreams, which introduce the Monster of the Week.
I just found the perfect acoustic version of Bring Me to Life by Evanescence to play when they dream of the Princess forever sleeping in her Castle of Thorns.
For anyone curious here's all the character sheets for them (I haven't done much of their background stuff since they were all preliminary)
https://ddb.ac/characters/21416824/N2C6jm
https://ddb.ac/characters/21399465/2KfImI
https://ddb.ac/characters/21399041/XFHt7c
https://ddb.ac/characters/21398192/grSGWS
https://ddb.ac/characters/21387816/mhJXWZ
https://ddb.ac/characters/21387032/dACsSM
https://ddb.ac/characters/21385296/gSApo6
https://ddb.ac/characters/20975025/XCYk2M
But to summarize my preferred picks are (in no particular order)
1. Falker, CN Kenku Death Domain Cleric/Circle of Spores Druid
2. Grundj, NE Half-Orc Enchanter Wizard
3. Othorn, LN Kobold Battle Smith
4. Lethel Aresian, LE High Elf Cavalier
5. Yorga Rull, NE Bugbear Monster Hunter Ranger
Kobold Battle Smith is just such a dope idea on its face
Eat the Rich
The first villain is gonna be a Sharn City Councilor who is introducing policies and procedures that fleece and abuse the poor and downtrodden (particularly targetting Cyran refugees), but in such a way that he isn't actually breaking any laws.
The big picture will have them butting up against The Aurum (as the Councilor was a low-ranking member) , which I'll keep somewhat vague for now as the players do Player Things so I can adapt rather than rail road them.
It's a timely, satisfying antagonistic angle and is somewhat non-traditional for a Fantasy Adventure. Plus it works well with our party who are all part of fairly minor races on the global political stage and are frequently discriminated against. (Warforged, Bugbear, etc.)
More... news. I now have a potential sixth player. (Who loudly exclaimed it'd be cool/they'd love it if they get to play the double-crossing-spy-guild-pretending-to-be-from-another-guild, in front of all my other players. Such subtle, very sideeyes.)
It's only bad if all six show up, right?
This works really well for the pulp detective quadrant of Eberron, which is always the place I gravitate towards with the setting.
Are you thinking of keeping things (relatively) mundane or are the wealthy literally bloodsucking monsters?
Rich assholes fucking over people for their own gain on increasingly large scales
But not a panty dropping cool vampire?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWDiJjHw1LU
This is very true, and I like the idea lot
but I'm leaning somewhat towards the Bugbear. Her backstory is that she was trained as a member of an anti-fiend taskforce in a Hobgoblin kingdom, to kill both botched summons and those summoned by their enemies. If I go with her, she'll either be on detached duty to Baldur's Gate for some reason, or is acting as a mercenary after a hazard pay dispute (she thought hunting down demons and devils should get her a better payrating than other recruits at her rank, her superiors disagreed. LE society and all).
Lethel I like as well, having more trouble bringing her backstory together though, being a Knight of a lesser known elven order which follows Vandria Gilmadrith
Othorn would be a merchant and part time tinker who served as a member of the merchant caravans of one of the local Kobold clans that has decent relations with Baldur's Gate and ostensibly sold his hand-crafted gadgets and toys, and found his skills lay far more in the tinkering than in the selling.
Honestly yeah it's gonna bog down some and you may find some players are taking a while to take their turns because they're checking out because it takes so long for their turn to come back up.
The good news is you can institute a "3 strike" policy regarding attendance. As long leas than 3 players call out, you can still have full game.
Also I'd recommend, given your XP policy, just keep the party together, and anyone who's player couldn't make it is just off-camera and just doesn't contribute anything of consequence that week.
It's named Seventh of Twenty, Dwarves found it encased in solid rock. Basically it's a Jem'hadar from DS9 with amnesia because a security feature wiped it's memory when it was 'captured' by the Dwarves.
Artificer looks dope as hell, too, I can't wait to try it out.
thing is it's indie as fuck, the english printed edition has been out of stock for years and every copy on the market costs hundreds of dollars
but I fucking found an italian nerd hobby store, in italy the actual country, that for some reason has the english edition available relatively cheaply too
so guess who's importing a copy of a long out of print game from continental europe
It was probably the most honest, least faux shop I saw the entire time I was in Venice.
Devil's Lake was an elaborate wintertime resort, but my players never even engaged with the ice dragon petting zoo! Instead they got suckered into a presentation on time shares, engaged combat with the presenter, and basically turned the entire place into a riot. Eventually they meet Mary...who is, of course, a marilith. Now Mary was meant to be a one-shot boss, but I noticed an odd little ability the marilith have: teleportation 120 feet.
So when she gets down to 20 HP, rather than die, she decides to teleport out of the fight...across the resort...and steal the stormshield. She bamfs to her corvette airship, flips them the bird with six arms, and takes off north!
My party follows in their airship, roll absolute crap on piloting checks, and lose her headed north. Next session (today), they pick up her trail and come upon:
Iceskull Doom Mouth, aka, Winnipeg, a hell blasted icy fortress demon portal erupting from the ground amidst the ruins of Canastan.
Now I work with my players, and they decided to talk about the new Star Wars movie aaaall lunch today, so I just had to turn this into a star wars ripoff.
They land in the hell mouth to find rows of storm(shield) troopers aiming blasters at the ship. Who proceed to miss a stationary airship with every shot. While vaguely British officers threaten them through jowls puffing out of their collars.
My players must have caught the stormtrooper, cause they rolled so many one's they nearly wiped against the opening fight.
Well, whatever, they sneak to the "stormshield generator" shaft, have another fight, and are basically tapped. Exhausted, out of healing, they call the elevator down.
You know what comes next.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB7PU9ZcVms
The elevator opens. There's Mary. She tosses back her black hood, raises her arms, and ignites six lightsabers.
This is Grimm Shado as fuck, and I mean that in the best possible way.
At 350k right now. I doubt ill back it but a real nice feature will be able to digitally paint the mini, which will be a boon to test color schemes before actually painting something.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I can't say I'm too excited for it as I've never listened to Critical Role.
But maybe the setting is interesting! I won't play in it, because I favor my own, but if it presents interesting ideas I'll happily steal from it.
But as it is? Ehhhhh