|
In 3.5, temporary hit points are effectively a buffer in front of your regular reserves of hit points: when you take damage, you subtract from your pool of temporary hit points (if any) before digging into your regular hit points; the drawback is that they can never be recovered (which is why they're "temporary"). The most common way to get temporary HP is through spells, which specify how long these temporary HP last. It's a neat little way to make your fighter fight a little while longer before needing the cleric to come waddling over. Now, vampires have the ability to suck the blood of an enemy with a successful pin attempt, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution damage to the victim and giving the vampire 5 temporary hit points. It's important to note that, nowhere in the vampire's stat block nor in the description of temporary hit points is either an inherent expiration date on temporary HP or an upper bound to the amount of temporary HP you can have. There's also no restrictions on what a vampire can suck blood from to gain this effect, other than the target being a "living victim". Thus, an enterprising vampire could suck the blood of whatever enormous piles of vermin he could find lying around. Since vampires don't need sleep and don't get tired, the rate at which they can gain hit points is limited only by the speed at which they can suck blood. Rats, for instance, have a Constitution score of 10. They can thus, on average, take 4 rounds of 1d4 points of constitution damage before dying. (Note that it is impossible to go below 1 hit point per Hit Die through constitution loss, so the rat's base HP of 1 doesn't matter here.) Since it takes a standard action to start a grapple, and a standard action to pin or maintain a pin, it would take five rounds for a vampire to suck a rat dry, gaining 20 hit points in the process. Assuming an unlimited supply of rats, the vampire could thus gain 40 temporary HP in a minute, 2,400 in an hour, or 57,600 in a day. Again, these temporary HP never expire, so a vampire with enough rats (or access to enough summoning magic) can have an arbitrarily large number of hit points. Let's also not forget that creatures that vampires bleed dry turn into vampire spawn. It's unclear whether this only applies to humanoids: while the text specifically mentions that only humanoids slain by the vampire's energy drain turn into vampire spawn, there's no such restriction directly stated for the bite attack. As such, with an extremely literalistic interpretation of the rules, all of the rats consumed this way (2,880 rats!) become vampire spawn, which are sentient, Medium-sized humanoid undead with 4 Hit Dice each. Vampires can only control a limited number of spawn, though, so nearly every vampire spawn created this way will be free-willed. As such, the vampire's keep will be constantly spewing forth evil, intelligent, vaguely rat-like vampire spawn at all hours. Thankfully, vampire spawn don't reproduce like vampires do, although they still can gain temporary hit points. Even if the vampire can't turn rats into vampire spawn, they can still be turned into wights. When a creature dies from taking negative levels, it turns into a wight, which is, again, an intelligent, free-willed, Medium-sized humanoid undead. So, instead of draining the rat of its last points of Constitution, the vampire can instead use his energy drain attack (which still gains him 5 temporary hit points) before chucking the rat out of the window. Basically, gently caress vampires.
|
#
?
Feb 14, 2013 23:58
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 14:04 |
|
|
LogicNinja posted:OK, so, Things I Am Never Watching, #3: Evangelion. You know how Watchmen was written with the idea that you shouldn't think Rorschach is cool in mind? But then people did anyway and Alan Moore went insane and grew a wizard beard? Evangelion is the same way. Only the creator had a few years in between the series end and the movie to see his fanbase think the protagonist (who sucks and you shouldn't like) is so great and they totally relate. So he went to great lengths in the movie to drive home the point that you should not like or sympathize with the main character. Then people still did. This was a recurring thing throughout Eva's original run, people kept missing the point, so the creator kept dropping bigger and bigger hints and scenes to drive the point home. Culminating in well... that and the freaky choke sex thing. Like it really is Watchmen for Gundams. "What would happen if you stuck children in giant robot suits to fight monsters?" "they would come out horribly hosed up both mentally and physically and you probably wouldn't be very successful. I am going to make an anime to point this out. Oh people are watching my anime and taking exactly the opposite from it. Who could have seen this coming?" The new series actually is everything the creator hated because people are embracing it instead of pointing out how hosed up it is that they are using child soldiers to fight aliens because they make the giant robots work better. Red_Mage fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Feb 15, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 00:10
|
|
|
A good one from the very early days of Storyteller games was the ability for Mages to absolutely ruin the night of any vampire they come across. Of course, Mages can ruin the day of pretty much anything they come across with a modicum of effort, but a Mage with starting character level skills in Matter and Prime could wipe out a super powerful ruler of the city with one spell. This was because Vampires, as dead people, counted as an inanimate objects and inanimate objects can't roll to resist magic. Including magic that transmogrified them into other inanimate objects. This was quickly errata'd.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 00:10
|
|
|
AD&D 2e:quote:Urdlen (Intermediate God)'s form is that of a white mole, hairless, sexless, and blind but with wicked claws of steel. A mindless force of malicious evil and destruction, Urdlen serves as a warning to every gnome to beware the taint of greed that lies within the gnomish delight in gems and jewelry. In keeping with the importance of a balance of forces, Urdlen's place in the pantheon is unquestioned, though the god is greatly feared and secretly reviled. Its few worshippers destroy gems and works of art to propitiate the god and thus are regarded as immoral villains by the bulk of gnomish society. Gnomes are loving weird.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 01:02
|
|
|
I'm a one-note kinda guy! Exalted 1E had a bunch of social and mental influence powers that were ill-defined, rules-wise. Any given power may have some random-rear end resistance roll, and sometimes the writer just forgot to put a resistance roll. 2E attempted to solve this problem by introducing social combat. This way you could have a system for social characters to hang their hats on, and an underlying framework to hook all those social Charms onto. These good intentions are about as good as it gets; it's all downhill from here! "Social Combat" was a very appropriate name, because it was literally physical combat with some traits swapped out. The system operated on "long ticks", aka all its actions had cooldown periods of many minutes. The idea was already a bit iffy in regular, second-long ticks for physical combat, but in social combat (and mass combat which also used long ticks), the system is saying that your attempt to intimidate the guard is going to take 4 minutes no matter how you describe it narratively, or there's just long stretches of dead air between social actions. Intimacies were introduced to reflect the specific beliefs or strong, enduring feelings of characters. Stuff like "My wife (deep love)" or "Meting justice (a painful duty)." Being both the best way to mechanically flesh out your character and a really great way to insert narrative hooks into the system to make a social game actually fun, these of course were made one of the weakest elements of social combat. Without bringing superpowers to bear on them Intimacies are always a less tempting target than the broader, more exploitable and more mechanically advantageous Virtues or Motivation. And manipulating Intimacies is great and all, but social combat "shined" in that it was pretty much mind control. Intimacies, Virtues and Motivation provide a modest bonus to resist influence that goes against them, but in the end the social combat system said "exploit me and you can just make people do stuff." You can just compel people to action. They have to do it, unless it's suicidal or they have magic that makes them view something as equivalent to suicide. (In Exalted 2E no one holds beliefs as dear to them as life itself without magic getting involved!) The way you resist all this emotional manipulation and mind control is by spending Willpower, a relatively scarce resource. Once you're completely out of Willpower you're pretty much wide open to whatever a social character wants to do to you. Willpower was also a vital currency for actual physical combat—for magic folks anyway. And you could automatically and irresistibly end a social interaction by getting handy with the steel and declaring Join Battle! Being drained of Willpower in either arena was basically a death sentence, but social combat was just a safezone setup for socialites to drain you of essential combat nutrients. The whole way the Willpower thing shook out is an outgrowth of creating a social system, and then thinking "What if some goober in a market really, really wants to sell me a baby crocodile? What if I'm in a market full of those dudes?" Now, you might think that the proper response is "unless that goober is using mind rays on me, maybe we just don't need to bust out the social combat rules for me to ignore unimportant everday stuff." Nope! Instead, you spend Willpower to resist, but so long as it's not a magically alluring crocodile salesman you only have to do that twice to refrain from buying a stupid pet that you're going to flush down the toilet like the urban legend factory you are. There was really no advantage to acquiescing to social influence that you would've agreed with anyway. There were superpowers that boosted you up a little here and there, but they were basically locked behind being super high-level and were huge group effects that were consequently made pretty weaksauce to "balance out" their scope. There was only one such power that was unequivocally useful and within reach of normal PCs, and it's hidden in the massive tome of errata for one of the less popular playable types and I wrote it just a few months before we finally got to say "gently caress 2E it's completely busted, here comes 3E!" There was also "mass social combat" which was seriously just like normal social combat, except your two dudes shouting at each other for minutes on end had their cliques egging them on in the background. The one who plays the dozens best demoralizes his opponent's friends and some of them leave. Repeat until they are friendless. This all adds up to a system that encourages murderous rage in response to any and all attempts at social pressure.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 01:19
|
|
|
Rulebook Heavily posted:
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 01:23
|
|
|
FactsAreUseless posted:Similarly, the Boar clan (iirc) once had an ability that allowed them to replace any attribute with Strength for any rolled skill. Now that I am home and can read through my Legend of the Five Rings shelf (a whole shelf unto itself). I couldn't find anything like that for Boar. Or Badger. I even looked at Ox! Explain yourself, sir. J'accuse.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 01:45
|
|
|
Plague of Hats posted:There was also "mass social combat" which was seriously just like normal social combat, except your two dudes shouting at each other for minutes on end had their cliques egging them on in the background. The one who plays the dozens best demoralizes his opponent's friends and some of them leave. Repeat until they are friendless.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 01:48
|
|
|
"Yo momma" forms the cornerstone of courtly intrigues in Exalted.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 02:12
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Now that I am home and can read through my Legend of the Five Rings shelf (a whole shelf unto itself). Edit: Plus, his uncle works for AEG. FactsAreUseless fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Feb 15, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 02:31
|
|
|
Plague of Hats posted:And manipulating Intimacies is great and all, but social combat "shined" in that it was pretty much mind control. Intimacies, Virtues and Motivation provide a modest bonus to resist influence that goes against them, but in the end the social combat system said "exploit me and you can just make people do stuff." You can just compel people to action. They have to do it, unless it's suicidal or they have magic that makes them view something as equivalent to suicide. (In Exalted 2E no one holds beliefs as dear to them as life itself without magic getting involved!) While this is a goofy as hell system, I guess some slack can be cut their way because of the PCs of Exalted being of demigod to full-on-god status. I can imagine a crazy charismatic demigod walking into a group of random shmucks and saying "Hey, you all my bitches now" and convincing them to do basically whatever because they got the silver tongue. That being said, it's almost entirely stupid because they don't have a toned down mundane system for social interaction. I suppose I should share some sort of goofy rule though. There's apparently a combo in D&D 4th edition where a group of high-level fighters all with an ability called Iron Vanguard that grants automatic damage when they force a target to move. Combine this with an attack called Opening Shove which pushes a target and grants a free basic attack to an ally adjacent to that target, and Goad of Blood which lets them use any at-will power (like Opening Shove) as a basic attack, and you have these fighters shoving a dude back and forth over and over again in the same round until dead. This strategy is called Knights of the Roxbury
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 04:04
|
|
|
Opening Shove is a Warlord power 
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 04:20
|
|
|
Captain Walker posted:Opening Shove is a Warlord power Reclassing: the key to breaking things in any D&D edition. Speaking of which, one of the less-useful but vaguely hilarious combos in 4e involves a Battlemind daily power which makes all enemies grant combat advantage to you, multiclassed onto a Rogue. You can literally sneak attack people in the face for the whole encounter, and if you're really interested, you can make it an encounter power through some epic destiny shuffling. While not especially broken mechanically, the image of someone sneak attacking people in plain sight without even trying to be stealthy is amusing.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 04:56
|
|
|
Captain Walker posted:Opening Shove is a Warlord power So he's gotta be a half-elf, big deal.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 04:56
|
|
|
blastron posted:Basically, gently caress vampires. Temp HP doesn't stack, man.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 05:00
|
|
|
Glagha posted:This strategy is called Knights of the Roxbury
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 05:04
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Temp HP doesn't stack, man.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 05:47
|
|
|
Glagha posted:While this is a goofy as hell system, I guess some slack can be cut their way because of the PCs of Exalted being of demigod to full-on-god status. I can imagine a crazy charismatic demigod walking into a group of random shmucks and saying "Hey, you all my bitches now" and convincing them to do basically whatever because they got the silver tongue. That being said, it's almost entirely stupid because they don't have a toned down mundane system for social interaction. No, I pretty much just talked about 2E's "toned down mundane system." That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Feb 15, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 07:04
|
|
|
Yeah, when magic gets involved you can rewrite personalities or change the laws of nations by talking to a farmer for a few hours.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 07:08
|
|
|
Zereth posted:Not seeing anything about that in the d20 SRD. That's the case in 4e, though, probably to prevent exactly the sort of thing being described. Right, got it wrong. The actual answer is "Bonuses from the same sources do not stack." Either way it doesn't work.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 07:30
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Right, got it wrong. The actual answer is "Bonuses from the same sources do not stack." Either way it doesn't work. Temp HP isn't a bonus. As it turns out, they never actually put it in the rules; it's a case of Rules by FAQ.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 07:34
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Right, got it wrong. The actual answer is "Bonuses from the same sources do not stack." Either way it doesn't work.  EDIT: Ah yes you have to consult something that isn't actually errata to fix this issue, apparently?
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 07:39
|
|
|
The creator of Rebuild of Evangelion must really hate himself, seeing as he split off from the studio that made him a star to found his own production studio, with his own money, specifically to make the movies. And now, content. In 3.5, there is a Lords of Madness prestige class called the Beholder Mage. It's meant for Beholders and gives them a spell level's worth of arcane spells per class level. You learn like a Wizard and cast like a Sorcerer. There is also the Ur-Priest, which gives you a spell level's worth of divine spells per class level. It requires Will +3, Fort +3, Spell Focus {Evil}, Iron Will and some skill ranks that make it a level 6 entry PRC. You are a human. For now. You start off as a class with a good Will progression: for ease of qualification, Wizard or Sorcerer, for maximum hilarity, a Paladin with one of the feats that opens up the skill tree to you. You grab Iron Will and Spell Focus (Evil) by level 3; note that you don't actually have to be able to cast spells to take Spell Focus. On the cusp of a level up, you head to the biggest town you know and purchase the services of a spellcaster. You have her cast Polymorph any Object on you twice: once to turn you into an Aberration-born (Humanoid Aberration) and then again to turn you into a Beholder (Aberration). This'll run you (CL 15 x 80)*2 2400 gold. Doable if everybody pools their money together at 2nd, doable solo at 3rd or 4th. This two-step method makes you permanently a beholder: same kingdom (+5), same class (+2), related (+2). You also gain the Beholder's Int score. Now that you're a beholder, you go kill poo poo and gain enough XP to gain a level. Then, you put your main eye out and take a level in Beholder Mage. At this point, you could either stay a Beholder, or go back to town and pay a wage mage to PaO you back into a Humanoid Aberration (so you freak out the normals slightly less). Whichever way you do it, kill stuff until you gain another level. Take it in Beholder Mage. You are now X 3/Beholder Mage 2. Two of your eyestalks are dead and you're blind in your main eye but hey, you can cast three spells a turn now. By this point, you should qualify for Ur-Priest next level. Turn back into a Human (paying the wage mage yet again). All of your arcane spells only need the ruined eye as a focus and you get your eyes back. Take Ur-Priest to 2; you are now X 3/Beholder Mage 2/Ur-Priest 2. You have 2nd level arcane and divine spells, which isn't that big a deal, honestly. Stay with me here, because this is where it gets fun. You take your first level in Mystic Theurge, choosing Ur-Priest as your divine spellcasting class and Beholder Mage as your arcane spellcasting class. 3rd level arcane/divine. Take the second level; 4th level spells. Third level gives you 5th level spells; you are now caught up with a single class caster. You can either finish out Mystic Theurge, in which you outpace normal casters by level 12 or take Geomancer (from Complete Divine) for 10. This slows down your progression, but still gives you 10th level arcane and divine spells at level 20. More importantly, it allows you to pick and choose what casting stats and styles you want for your spells. For example, you can cast arcane spells with no Arcane Spell Failure chance in armor while casting divine spells with your Int. This is pretty dumb, but you can make it dumber. If you graft eyestalks back onto yourself (Fiend Folio) and take a level in Beholder Mage, your eyestalks become spellstalks. You get to cast one extra spell as a free action per stalk. Beholders have 8 to 10 eyestalks. Yeah. MadRhetoric fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Feb 15, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 08:18
|
|
|
3.5 is the most videogamey RPG ever, since it has the ability to create save states. Basically, a psion can manifest forced dream, a power that allows you to "undo" a turn and retry it. But they instead share it with their psicrystal. Then the psion gives it the ability to check on the status of the party, with status or something, and prepares a readied action to manifest time hop on it when it moves. The psicrystal moves, and the readied action goes off, sending it into the future. The party then goes on its way. The psicrystal appears several hours in the future, checks on the party (a free action), and then if the party is dead or elsewhere or just want to go back, it rewinds its turn, going back several hours to when its action started. Thus, savestates.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 09:41
|
|
|
gently caress D&D, I want to play a session of Beholder Squad now, wipe out cities and just have a psion quick load his save state at the end of the session for shits and giggles. I mean, with CRPGs who doesn't save and then wipe out an entire town every now and again? Non psychotic people? Too bad I don't know any of those.
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 10:16
|
|
|
Zemyla posted:3.5 is the most videogamey RPG ever, since it has the ability to create save states. I don't know who would bother to trot out the old "4e is a viddyagame!  bullshit in the year of our lord 2013 but you have just destroyed that argument forever. I tip my hat to you, sir; now the grogs shall be revealed for the paper
|
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 16:32
|
|
|
There was something kind of like that in Exalted's First Edition Alchemicals, the Anticipatory Simulation Processor, but it only let you rewind within a single turn. However, you play out the turn normally until they activate the rewind, then you go back to the Initiative count it was originally "saved" on and everything plays out exactly like last time until the Exalt chooses to deviate. If you had the resources and wanted to piss everyone off, you could do it every turn! Having anyone like that in the playgroup pretty much necessitated keeping careful track of all actions, rolls and outcomes so that you can play everything back up to the point that the Alchemical wishes to deviate from the "simulation", which could amount to dozens of actions and twice that many rolls, all of which may become marginally invalidated and then have to be played out again. And don't forget "rewinding" all the magic juice, Willpower and other things spent by everyone involved, and any other volatile traits of the game. Or you could just tell the guy who wants to buy that Charm to gently caress off and pick something else. This Charm mysteriously did not reappear in Second Edition! That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Feb 16, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 15, 2013 16:49
|
|
|
Did you know that there was a Firefly ttrpg? Because there was! Now by all accounts I've heard from my friend, the only person I've known to actually play the thing, it was/is a completely broken and nearly unplayable piece of poo poo. However, the most interesting rule-lemon I've heard about it, it as follows: A large aspect of the Firefly game is traveling expenses. Space travel costs quite a bit, and the game itself has what, at first glance, is a very well thought out and detailed chart for navigating to anywhere in the galaxy from anywhere in the galaxy. On further examination, however, it starts to break down. For example, if you were to travel from Planet A to Planet B, it would cost 10 resource. But if you were to take a more roundabout route, going from Planet A to Planet 1, it would cost 4, and to then travel to B would only cost 1. So that whole gravity-slingshot idea Zapp Branigan had in Futurama? Totally viable, and easily the smartest way to travel in Firefly-verse.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 09:26
|
|
|
KillerQueen posted:Did you know that there was a Firefly ttrpg? Because there was! Honestly if it's talking about travel just within the show's solar system, that doesn't actually sound like a bad way of handwaving how you would actually travel within a solar system. Gravity slingshots within a solar system are a real thing, it's how we send unmanned probes around for less fuel than they'd otherwise need, and get them to reach faster speeds than we could from just their engines alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 09:55
|
|
|
Idran posted:Honestly if it's talking about travel just within the show's solar system, that doesn't actually sound like a bad way of handwaving how you would actually travel within a solar system. Gravity slingshots within a solar system are a real thing, it's how we send unmanned probes around for less fuel than they'd otherwise need, and get them to reach faster speeds than we could from just their engines alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist True, but here's the rub: the game isn't actually talking about the gravity assist. Apparently there aren't even rules for it, the game is saying that the distance between A and B is greater than the distance between A and 1 and the distance between 1 and B combined. It's basically describing a completely impossible triangle.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 10:14
|
|
|
For my sins, I am perusing the d20 SRD. Apparently everyone, fighters and wizards both, can teleport and rotate their momentum through 90 degrees. But how you ask ! It's in the Jump skill, specifically the high jump. For a high jump, you pick your target height and roll against the appropriate DC. If you make the roll, you jumped up and maybe grabbed something. Then there's this bit... quote:If you fail the Jump check, you do not reach the height, and you land on your feet in the same spot from which you jumped. That's the slow pitch. quote:As with a long jump, the DC is doubled if you do not get a running start of at least 20 feet. If you make that roll, you go straight up... from a running start. Your forward momentum is redirected straight up. Likewise, if you miss the roll you take a running start and land where you jumped from. There's a short teleport involved there. More advanced d20 players probably know why this isn't a Murphy, but it kinda leapt out at me. Edit: KillerQueen posted:True, but here's the rub: the game isn't actually talking about the gravity assist. Apparently there aren't even rules for it, the game is saying that the distance between A and B is greater than the distance between A and 1 and the distance between 1 and B combined. It's basically describing a completely impossible triangle. It doesn't SAY gravity assist, but that's exactly what the rules are describing. Nobody wants to calculate transfer orbits, so they just have you check the table. And the less astronomical rigor is applied to the Firefly setting, the better. It's a handy load bearing abstraction. mllaneza fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Feb 16, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 10:17
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:It doesn't SAY gravity assist, but that's exactly what the rules are describing. Nobody wants to calculate transfer orbits, so they just have you check the table. And the less astronomical rigor is applied to the Firefly setting, the better. It's a handy load bearing abstraction. That's how I initially read it. But from memory when you read it closely, A-B-C is cheaper than A-C even if you land at B. Which is dumb. Unless what you mean is "shorter hops are always way cheaper because orbits". If that's what you mean, I'll concede the point because my entire knowledge of orbital mechanics comes from playing Kerbal Space Program and either crashing my guys headlong into Mun or accidentally flinging them off into deep space.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 12:19
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:That's how I initially read it. But from memory when you read it closely, A-B-C is cheaper than A-C even if you land at B. Which is dumb. Unless what you mean is "shorter hops are always way cheaper because orbits". If that's what you mean, I'll concede the point because my entire knowledge of orbital mechanics comes from playing Kerbal Space Program and either crashing my guys headlong into Mun or accidentally flinging them off into deep space. Playing devil's advocate, the problem might be maintaining e.g. the oxygen supply in deep space. You get to move a certain distance under SOP with the oxygen (or any other limited resource) working perfectly, then you need to put exponentially more energy and work in to recycle the oxygen once you've exceeded the range of the ship. Not that you can't do it (burning fuel cells like there's no tomorrow) but for practical purposes you have a limited range.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 14:52
|
|
|
KillerQueen posted:Did you know that there was a Firefly ttrpg? Because there was! This actually sounds really cool! Or it would if the resource costs were less wonky. Sounds like a case of good ideas and bad implementation.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 20:16
|
|
|
I have run the Serenity TTRPG and it is fun and not horribly broken.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 20:30
|
|
|
It's just a victim of being in Cortex, a system that is bland and honestly a bit to granular for fun time space cowboys. If only it had come out a few years later, we could have had Cortex+ Firefly, which would own.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 20:41
|
|
|
Mr. Maltose posted:It's just a victim of being in Cortex, a system that is bland and honestly a bit to granular for fun time space cowboys. If only it had come out a few years later, we could have had Cortex+ Firefly, which would own. Cortex+ Firefly would be pretty cool... http://www.margaretweis.com/
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2013 21:37
|
|
|
I like Cortex standard's granularity just fine. Cortex+ annoys me in some indescribable fashion.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2013 02:08
|
|
|
Yeah gravity slingshots are awesome. This is how its technically possible, if your timing is correct, in Jovian Chronicles to travel between Earth and Mars in a mech. You have almost exactly the amount of resources required to do it, so I imagine whoever made the game did it intentionally but its still pretty cool. Mind you have to way to survive reentry but you can make it to orbit. I have come to the conclusion recently that no one involved in the making of Scion had any idea how math and statistics work. First of all they made a couple of the bloodlines/pantheons be much much much better than any other ones. If I remember correctly Atlantis is just head and shoulders better than every other pantheon at combat. They routinely produce pools that are like ten dice higher than everyone else just by fighting with guns or a chainsaw.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2013 02:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 14:04 |
|
|
Here's a few from Chaos 6010 A.D., an obscure game I've been reviewing over in FATAL & Friends. I'm sure almost nobody has heard of it outside of that thread but I'll post 'em here for posterity/as an example of what not to do. First up, the Revenant! They are actually a pretty cool race of undead cyborgs. Like, they take bodies of dead humanoids, slap some cybernetics in 'em to make 'em functional again, and install an independent A.I. that kinda sorta remembers bits and pieces of the organic's former life. So all Revenants are cyborgs. All of them. To reflect that, they have a Spirit of 20, whereas most races have half that or less. Spirit is basically a pool of points you can use to install cybernetic implants with, so having twice as much as normal means you can have twice as many parts. Now, having cybernetic parts comes with a downside - you take double damage from electrical attacks. In fact, if your Spirit falls too low, you take triple. Revenants, being cyborgs, all take triple damage from electricity. Except that penalty is a racial trait and has nothing to do, rules-wise, with having cybernetic parts - which the Revenant don't get automatically. So if you're a Revenant and you decide to install any parts whatsoever, those multipliers get combined and your electrical vulnerability jumps up to x5 damage. Which is enough to turn even mild shocks into lethal blasts. As a result, Revenants are the worst cyborgs in the game. The other gem comes from an ability called Beckon Foe: Beckon Foe posted:This is an ability that is used to taunt a creature from attacking a different member in the crew. The character that beckons the foe must make a charisma check. This check will be resisted by the enemy’s willpower check. If the check succeeds, the enemy must only attack that character for the remainder of the round unless slain before that. This ability may be used once per round, OOT, and costs 0 actions. Thugs (a class) get this ability at level 2. Now, when used by players, this ability is fine and works kind of like a 4e D&D Mark. But NPCs in Chaos get class levels and class abilities, and a group of Thugs can be really annoying if they want to be. It goes something like this: let's say Dave is a Thief, and he wants to stab Thug #1. Naturally, he has to get into range, so he spends an action moving up to his target. But Thug #2, standing just ten feet away, decides to interfere by using Beckon Foe. He can do this because it can be used Out Of Turn (OOT). If he wins his contested roll, Dave is forbidden from attacking Thug #1. No penalty, he just can't do it, period. The only person Dave can attack is Thug #2. But since Thug #2 is 10 feet away, he's not in melee range, so Dave has to spend another action moving over to him. At which point Thug #1 is free to use Beckon Foe on him. So long as the number of Thugs equals or exceeds the number of actions a PC has, and so long as that PC has no ranged attacks - entirely possible at low level - they can keep him running around impotently as long as they keep succeeding at their opposed checks. It costs them nothing to attempt this, and there are abilities that allow you to spend points for a one-off bonus on a Charisma check.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2013 08:46
|
|
