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"You must have Swordsman Skill written on your sheet, or else your character forgets how to use swords while not in combat" isn't untenable, as long as it's clearly stated up front. It's how Strike seems to work as written, but the rules ought to be more clear in the character building section about it, and suggest that almost all characters should have a Skill reflecting their tactical-combat capabilities. But that kind of Skills-tax seems pointless to me. A Skill that essentially everyone has, that typically applies to the same things, isn't very interesting. My approach would be: you don't roll Skills for things that are straightforward expressions of your combat abilities. These are things that your character obviously knows how to do extremely well, to the point of being intrinsic to them. Having a fire-based mage roll to merely set a wooden building on fire would be a silly as having them roll to climb a flight of stairs. Or a character with the Flyer feat rolling to cross a 20 foot gap. You shouldn't be rolling a Skill for "kill a guy with my sword". If it isn't trivial, it should be a tactical combat, or a different Skill roll to get into a situation where the actual killing is trivial. Where Skill rolls should come in is manipulating the situation to turn what might be a tactical combat, into a trivial one (or avoid turning a tense situation into a full tactical combat). Or engaging in combat-like things, such as fencing, jousting, and quick-draw duels. Or using combat powers in non-straightforward ways, that are more subtle than typical combat situations. For example, using a Fireball to break down a door without collapsing the room you're in might actually call for an architecture or engineering related skill. Summoning the fire might be trivial, but knowing how to apply it safely in close quarters might not be. A Rogue trying to assassinate out-of-combat would roll sneaking and blending Skills, not a "Stabbing with Daggers" Skill.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:06
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A Strange Aeon posted:That would cause a lot of narrative dissonance for me personally. Yes, I would highly recommend someone who flings fireballs in combat picks "Fireballs" or "Fire magic" or something as one of their skills in order for their character to make sense. If they don't want to they would have to roll unskilled as some sort of representation of their fire magic being wild and untamed and difficult to apply with precision or to other purposes than burning faces off.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:33
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eth0.n posted:"You must have Swordsman Skill written on your sheet, or else your character forgets how to use swords while not in combat" isn't untenable, as long as it's clearly stated up front. It's how Strike seems to work as written, but the rules ought to be more clear in the character building section about it, and suggest that almost all characters should have a Skill reflecting their tactical-combat capabilities. It is suggested in the Skills area that you pick a skill that you will be using at least once per session. The skill that most of your activities will be based around. In a heavily combat-focused game like Strike, you're probably gonna be spending a lot of time fighting things. That's why a lot of the more fighty Backgrounds have Appropriate Weapons as a skill choice. In my game, all the characters who used guns took Blasters as a skill for situations just like this.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:39
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Also, I feel that, with reskinning in tactical combat, your tactical combat skin should be informed by the skills you've picked. If I ask a player, 'Ok so you're a bombardier mechanically, what the RP for that' and they say 'Fire magic' and then I look at their skills and there's no Fire Magic skill or similar, I'm going to ask them to take it/work out a different skin/come up with a reason they can only use their powers in combat.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:43
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Remember that the counterpart to "success" is "twist" and not "failure." Sure, you've got the power to Fry A Sucker in combat, but there's a zillion ways for that to go wrong out of combat. Maybe you fry that sucker too hard and you've accidentally committed murder, or you fry some other suckers that you didn't want to hurt, or you set the floor on fire, or their yelps alert the guards. You try to set a house on fire: too little fire and the occupants have time to evacuate, too much fire and everything of value is lost, it's a bakery full of flour and it explodes, you set the fire just fine but the guards steadfastly refuse to let it distract them. Hell, since there's no difference in the quality of successes and twists between skilled an unskilled rolls, you should be thinking of twists like this anyway.
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Sep 23, 2016 17:56
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Serf posted:It is suggested in the Skills area that you pick a skill that you will be using at least once per session. The skill that most of your activities will be based around. In a heavily combat-focused game like Strike, you're probably gonna be spending a lot of time fighting things. That's why a lot of the more fighty Backgrounds have Appropriate Weapons as a skill choice. In my game, all the characters who used guns took Blasters as a skill for situations just like this. Normally, I would not expect a game to require redundant statement of the same thing; in this case, how I kill dudes. I've already got a class for that, why would I need a Skill too? If I were building a Rogue, I'd expect a sneaking skill to fit that "at least once per session" suggestion, and I'd be caught by surprise if the GM had me roll untrained when I tried to use my dagger outside combat for something analogous to what I do in-combat. In fact, if I picked Thief, probably the most obvious Background for one of all, I wouldn't have any combat-relate Skill at all, unless my origin gave one (very few do), or I picked one with my personal skill (just plain boring). That's hardly intuitive. Overall, very few backgrounds actually come with combat-related Skills. Veteran, Assassin, and Noble Knight do, but Police Officer and Pirate don't. So, no, I don't think the existing guidance is sufficient. It's fine for the "default" game without tactical combat, where combat is just one of many things your character might shine at (or suck at). The game should be clearer about how skills and tactical combat mechanics are meant to be related. If people are expected to only use combat-related backgrounds, or roll their own, or spend their personal skill on combat, that should be stated clearly. But really, I think Skills that are "what you do in combat, but you can also do it out-of-combat" are dumb, boring, and redundant, and should be discouraged. If a character actually has trouble using combat abilities outside combat? That seems like an interesting Complication, not what the default state should be. And those few backgrounds that have combat skills? Just use them as knowledge or "show off" skills. There's a difference between knowing how to shoot guns at people, and knowing that this one is a 1941 German gun used on the Eastern front by the SS. Abyssal Squid posted:Remember that the counterpart to "success" is "twist" and not "failure." Narrative, its still likely a failure. It's just a "fail forward" instead of the more traditional "fail, nothing happens".
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Sep 23, 2016 18:21
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Yeah, I'm still on the separation side. I'd fluff a Thief with no combat skill as needing the chaos of tactical combat to fight to his fullest with the distractions it provides for his enemies. (With Stealth kills being a linked roll with that skill to get advantage or something you could use as a related skill for an Action Point to get advantage.) Brought this up with my Strike groups and they're in favor of the assess question(s) version of Speak With Dead.
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Sep 23, 2016 18:40
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eth0.n posted:Normally, I would not expect a game to require redundant statement of the same thing; in this case, how I kill dudes. I've already got a class for that, why would I need a Skill too? If I were building a Rogue, I'd expect a sneaking skill to fit that "at least once per session" suggestion, and I'd be caught by surprise if the GM had me roll untrained when I tried to use my dagger outside combat for something analogous to what I do in-combat. I guess we're just at a difference of opinion then.  I thought it was spelled out pretty well that you should pick a skill that is central to what your character does. If you shoot guns all the time, then that skill should be Guns, or Shooting I guess. eth0.n posted:And those few backgrounds that have combat skills? Just use them as knowledge or "show off" skills. There's a difference between knowing how to shoot guns at people, and knowing that this one is a 1941 German gun used on the Eastern front by the SS. Now this I don't think is true. I believe that skills have two ways of using them for the most part. One is actively practicing the skill, while the other is just knowing things because you have the skill. I don't have the book in front of me to check, but I don't think you even have to roll for the latter use. Also, Jim, I think the current wording of Speak With Dead is fine and very easily reskinned while fitting with the Necromancer's overall theme.
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Sep 23, 2016 18:49
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The reason to use Skills for things like "Gunslinging" or "Brawling" or whatever is that they are a clearly defined mechanic on how to resolve things. There is no rule or even guideline for how to apply combat powers to noncombat situations. Because those powers all could be skinned in a thousand different ways.
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Sep 23, 2016 19:17
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Scyther posted:The reason to use Skills for things like "Gunslinging" or "Brawling" or whatever is that they are a clearly defined mechanic on how to resolve things. There is no rule or even guideline for how to apply combat powers to noncombat situations. Because those powers all could be skinned in a thousand different ways. They're not so clearly defined. It's still a judgement call whether a Skill applies or not. And the actual effect and intent of a Skill roll is entirely freeform. It would be quite easy to treat combat powers in a similar way, and apply judgement to whether they imply training for the situation at hand, and intent of the player. This is a change to the game, though. But again, that's not what I think the best approach is. If you're doing something that's the same kind of thing you do in combat, and there's not enough opposition around to warrant a tactical combat, just let it work. There are lots of other things to roll Skills for. This isn't a change to the game; just a different mindset for deciding what warrants skill rolls, and what doesn't. That decision is already core to the Skills system.
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Sep 23, 2016 19:41
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Serf posted:I thought it was spelled out pretty well that you should pick a skill that is central to what your character does. If you shoot guns all the time, then that skill should be Guns, or Shooting I guess. The issue with this, for me, is that if you're using tactical combat – and the game is very clear about this – then everybody is supposed to be capable of contributing in combat. So combat is central to every character. But the prebuilt backgrounds and origins aren't written on the assumption that combat is central to every character. A lot of this can be gotten around by not having people make checks that are directly combat things. If the situation is a character trying to stab someone to death with a dagger in a straight-up fight, then that's what the tactical combat rules are for. But the out-of-combat skill set of an assassin isn't built around parrying, dodging, and stabbing, it's based on getting close enough without warning that using the dagger is easy: moving quietly, disguises, etc. But this doesn't apply to everything. A sniper on top of a building trying to hit the correct target in the crowd below is going to succeed or fail mostly on their skill with a rifle. Of course, long-range sniping isn't the sort of thing you do in tactical combat as none of the powers have that sort of range. So maybe you only need a "combat" skill if it's for types of combat you wouldn't handle using tactical combat. But this has the issue that if someone provokes a one-on-one fight you have to pull out the tactical combat rules. Or, as I'd be tempted to rule, just assume that a character is "trained" if they're doing something that they have a combat power for. But, while this might be fine for cutting a fool, it can get out of hand when you look at, say, a controller's ability to freeze someone in place. Scyther posted:Yes, I would highly recommend someone who flings fireballs in combat picks "Fireballs" or "Fire magic" or something as one of their skills in order for their character to make sense. If they don't want to they would have to roll unskilled as some sort of representation of their fire magic being wild and untamed and difficult to apply with precision or to other purposes than burning faces off. This works fine for a fire mage where all the combat powers are fire magic. But what about the spec ops guy who flavors attacks on individuals as assault rifle fire, but then uses grenades for bursts, and other tools for others powers. That's a fine character thematically, but they're going to need several skills (if we're using the sort of scope the rules tells us to make skills) if they want to cover everything they do in combat. And that seems like a huge waste of the player's ability to define their character using skills.
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Sep 23, 2016 20:56
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As I recall, some version of Strike made it clear that one of your skills should be the one your character actually fights with, like "Melee" for a warrior or "Demolitions" for a grenadier or something. That said, it's definitely possible to bite off more than your skills can chew if you go really wild with flavoring stuff, and I think it's more sensible to require people to pick trained skills representing their combat prowess rather than let people treat their combat prowess as an extra trained skill.This heads off "Well all my combat powers represent reality manipulation and matter transmutation so out of combat I expect to be able to transform anything into anything else" as well as much less extreme versions of the same problem that might crop up at an actual game table. Especially for supernatural characters, I think it's pretty important to work out what the scope of a single skill, in general, is, such that skills representing powers aren't more or less broad, or more or less context dependent, than skills representing regular old skills. Like, when I put a blaster magician representing a hermetic wizard together, I gave them "Blasting" "Binding" and "Weather-working" as three separate out-of-combat skills, because of course in combat they could blow people up with fire, debuff them with various magician powers, conjure mist or difficult terrain, etc. It didn't seem right to just slap down one "Magic" skill. Similarly if I was playing some kind of Solid Snake omnicapable soldier I might have separate CQC, Firearms, and Demolitions skills rather than one called "Combat". Oh, and if I had some at-will, unrolled combat power that I'd logically be able to use to consistent advantage out of combat without it having a 33% fail rate, like teleportation or invisibility, I'd make it a skill trick.
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Sep 23, 2016 22:10
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Ferrinus posted:As I recall, some version of Strike made it clear that one of your skills should be the one your character actually fights with, like "Melee" for a warrior or "Demolitions" for a grenadier or something. This makes a lot of sense, and I wish it was stated in the rulebook (still?). As it is, you've got a tactical combat section saying some fights should be fought with skills, and a skill section which says nothing about choosing skills and tricks related to tactical combat. It makes the fiction of fights awkward, strongly depending on whether the GM decides a fight warrants rolling initiative or not. I still think "Killing Dudes with Swords/Spells/Whatever" is so common (in a game with tactical combat) and boring that paying a Skill-tax for it is a shame. One followup: if a character has the Flyer feat, would you require a skill or trick for flight to be able to do it at all out of combat, or just to do unusually difficult flying tasks with a Trained roll?
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Sep 23, 2016 23:49
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Serf posted:I thought it was spelled out pretty well that you should pick a skill that is central to what your character does. If you shoot guns all the time, then that skill should be Guns, or Shooting I guess. I agree. Page 16 advises you to "strongly consider" picking up a combat Skill. If they don't, I make them roll Unskilled until they learn the Skill. It's not that big a difference. Page 71 is also a bit relevant to the discussion of magic in particular. Does it make sense for a wizard to cast fireball Unskilled? Sure, it just means she's more likely to get a Twist for any of the reasons others described. (She isn't good at Evocations - yet. She is too strong and her fireballs yield collateral damage. Hell, she might just have bad luck with that spell for no reason at all.) The Unskilled table doesn't have any results that the Skilled table doesn't have, so what happens when a character is missing a Skill you think they "ought" to have? Nothing special, unless they roll a 6, and then you can say "see? She is Skilled at that after all!" as they add it to their sheet. Whether you should always say yes for combat stuff that doesn't rise to the level of a full Tactical Combat is up to the GM, but it happens enough in my games that I want players using their Skills and Complications and Kits and stuff there, so I absolutely have them roll. Either way, in Strike! you don't have to worry about "wasting" Skill slots because it won't take you long to learn any Skill you use often enough. So if you're too busy making flavorful picks to grab a combat Skill, that's fine - you'll roll a 6 sooner or later (sooner if you have help). You can be the dude who spends all his Skill points on useless crap and it's fine - you'll catch up on useful Skills in the long run, and maybe your Literary Criticism Skill will come in handy once an adventure or so. Edit: if you are playing a one-shot or something and there is no long run, you should probably work with the GM to make sure you are picking at least a few relevant Skills, whether they are fighty Skills or otherwise. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 23:56
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Jimbozig posted:I agree. Page 16 advises you to "strongly consider" picking up a combat Skill. If they don't, I make them roll Unskilled until they learn the Skill. It's not that big a difference. I did miss this. It's important enough, though, that it could use some more emphasis and discussion. A combat skill means something different depending on whether the game is using tactical combat or not. A whole section basically copying Ferrinus's post would be reasonable, I think. quote:Either way, in Strike! you don't have to worry about "wasting" Skill slots because it won't take you long to learn any Skill you use often enough. So if you're too busy making flavorful picks to grab a combat Skill, that's fine - you'll roll a 6 sooner or later (sooner if you have help). You can be the dude who spends all his Skill points on useless crap and it's fine - you'll catch up on useful Skills in the long run, and maybe your Literary Criticism Skill will come in handy once an adventure or so. Taking combat skills over flavorful ones at creation is unfortunate, though. Starting build options heavily define who your character is, more than ones gained later. Combat skills add little "new" to who a character is that their class picks don't already define; they're largely a mechanically necessary redundancy. Also, they're your only opportunity to "push" the campaign with skill selection. After that, your skills are reactive to the campaign.
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Sep 24, 2016 00:41
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It probably wouldn't hurt the game to have an optional rule of, "If your game is using the tactical combat rules, then all characters are going to be proficient in some sort of combat skill. As such, each player should select two additional skills during character creation that reflect their choice of class and role (which is not necessarily one for each)."
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Sep 24, 2016 00:49
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Combat skills are flavorful!
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Sep 24, 2016 00:54
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One of my players learned Illegal Wrestling Moves not long ago.
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Sep 24, 2016 01:05
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The whole draw of Strike, to me, is the tactical combat system. Everything else is built around that. I run Strike because I want to have good tactical combat (which Strike does excellently), even if it might not fit into the genre of the game I'm running. To me that is the centerpiece of the game and the whole reason to run it. With that assumption, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask that players take a skill relevant to how they fight. If that seems like wasting a skill slot, just give it to them as a freebie?Scyther posted:One of my players learned Illegal Wrestling Moves not long ago. My players learned awesome skills like Instructional Pointing, Aggressive Negotiations, Vehicle Gunnery and Live Capture. Rolling 6s while Unskilled and naming a new skill is honestly one of the best parts of the game.
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Sep 24, 2016 03:22
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Ferrinus posted:Combat skills are flavorful! They can be. My concern with trying to cover everything one does in combat with a single skill would be that you're less likely to get something flavorful if you want to make it broad enough. Full Auto Mayhem is unlikely to be a good descriptor for your ranged basic attack, so you pick Assault Rifles. Boring. Serf posted:If that seems like wasting a skill slot, just give it to them as a freebie? That would make a ton of sense, but, by god, I'm trying not to houserule a game for once.
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Sep 24, 2016 04:28
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Full Auto Mayhem isn't really more flavorful than Assault Rifle, just more specific (and goofier - frankly, I'd rather see Assault Rifle on my friend's character sheet). Although, on the subject, it's probably a weakness of the game that once you have Guns there's no reason to get Rifles. I think I saw some kind of "more specific skill wins ties" rule in Chuubo's or something but I don't think it works for Strike since it's not like skill vs. skill rolloffs are common.
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Sep 24, 2016 05:16
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Ferrinus posted:Full Auto Mayhem isn't really more flavorful than Assault Rifle, just more specific (and goofier - frankly, I'd rather see Assault Rifle on my friend's character sheet). Although, on the subject, it's probably a weakness of the game that once you have Guns there's no reason to get Rifles. I think I saw some kind of "more specific skill wins ties" rule in Chuubo's or something but I don't think it works for Strike since it's not like skill vs. skill rolloffs are common. It does have that rule, though -- see "specialists vs. generalists" on page 10.
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Sep 24, 2016 05:20
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Ferrinus posted:Full Auto Mayhem isn't really more flavorful than Assault Rifle, just more specific (and goofier - frankly, I'd rather see Assault Rifle on my friend's character sheet). Although, on the subject, it's probably a weakness of the game that once you have Guns there's no reason to get Rifles. I think I saw some kind of "more specific skill wins ties" rule in Chuubo's or something but I don't think it works for Strike since it's not like skill vs. skill rolloffs are common. I'm not sure how you're using the word "flavorful" where giving a skill the combination of a psychological and practical context doesn't qualify. But that's besides the point. In a game which encourages highly specific skills, a single skill to cover all of your class and role is going to have to be very broad. Tuxedo Catfish posted:It does have that rule, though -- see "specialists vs. generalists" on page 10. Going to be unusual to be in a position to learn "rifles" once you have "guns," though, because you're only going to be rolling unskilled when you're in an opposed roll. So a broad skill to cover your entire combat setup is going to cost you the opportunity to make up a bunch of more interesting more-specific skills, which as Serf points out, is one of the best parts of the game.
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Sep 24, 2016 05:45
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I can think of ways for the player to specialize even when they already have the generalist skill, especially if the DM's aware of the dilemma that exists otherwise and plays along. Like quick-drawing your pistol vs. long range sharpshooting with a rifle to further differentiate a generic "Guns" skill. You can even fluff it as pushing yourself out of your comfort zone / focusing on one narrow aspect of your expertise in order to improve, which is basically how learning works in real life anyways. (e: that is to say, if you want the chance to learn a new skill, you're gonna be rolling unskilled to do it -- it's a neat little trade-off for a very small but non-zero benefit) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 05:47
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I can think of ways for the player to specialize even when they already have the generalist skill, especially if the DM's aware of the dilemma that exists otherwise and plays along. Like quick-drawing your pistol vs. long range sharpshooting with a rifle to further differentiate a generic "Guns" skill. My question would be, for people with significant play time with the game, how often are players making opposed checks? Because in other systems I've run I've found them to be a relative rarity, which makes giving up immediate performance for a relatively low probability of getting a skill that might never be more useful than the broader skill you already have seem like a lousy deal. That said, combat skills would be precisely where you'd expect to see an unusual number of opposed checks, so it might work. I feel like I'm being more argumentative than I'm intending to be, so sorry for that. I'm really just interested in getting a feel for how people have handled these things in their own games and how they feel it worked as I think through the game I'm prepping. On which subject, to change the subject, how have people handled magic in their games? I'm trying to port over Shadowrun, which uses a list of individual spells, that have to be individually purchased, that all get resolved using a single Spellcasting skill. My thought was to just let people who had "paid" to be spellcasters by picking an appropriate origin buy spells using the Wealth system, but I'm a little nervous about letting people buy what's essentially equipment that can never be taken away. Would that break how buying stuff is supposed to work, or does that seem reasonable?
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Sep 24, 2016 06:06
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Scyther posted:If any of my players want to do things that match their combat abilities out of combat, they need to pick an appropriate skill during character creation, or be prepared to make unskilled rolls for something they're ostensibly supposed to be good at. I'm a player in this game and can confirm it works out very well and feels very clean
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Sep 24, 2016 06:15
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Sir Kodiak posted:I'm not sure how you're using the word "flavorful" where giving a skill the combination of a psychological and practical context doesn't qualify. Well, someone who has "Assault Rifles" rather than "Spray and Pray" is clearly not dependent on a specific context or technique to use an assault rifle and instead has broad and practiced competence. I know which one I'd expect to see on a soldier. But what I said before is that you shouldn't have a single skill to cover your class and role. My preference is that if your class/role imply you have a broad library of distinct capabilities, you'd reflect that with your skills, such that your sheet reads "Necrotic blasts" "Corpse animation" "Fear auras", not "Necromancy". Same reason I'd give James Bond Pistols, Stealth, and Seduction rather than "Spy". Tuxedo Catfish posted:It does have that rule, though -- see "specialists vs. generalists" on page 10. Oh, so it does. I decided that I must have been remembering wrong since, like I said, you don't actually get a lot of opposed checks in Strike so the actual benefits to "AK-47" versus "automatic weapons" would be preeeetttty rarely seen, right?.
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Sep 24, 2016 06:26
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Ferrinus posted:Well, someone who has "Assault Rifles" rather than "Spray and Pray" is clearly not dependent on a specific context or technique to use an assault rifle and instead has broad and practiced competence. I know which one I'd expect to see on a soldier. I'm comfortable with the idea that a necromancer should have "Necrotic blasts," "Corpse animation," and "Fear auras." My point would be that the section on selecting skills absolutely does not lead one towards that. Anyways, I think eth0.n's point – not to speak for him – isn't that combat skills can't be expressed colorfully, but that if they merely reinforce one's class/role selection, then they aren't expanding the narrative space in which a character operates. This is on me for my lousy example, but it's less about "Spray and Pray" vs "Assault Rifles" than "Assault Rifles" (which is already expressed in the player's conception of the class/role) vs "Yakuza Traditions" or whatever.
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Sep 24, 2016 07:44
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We've done opposed checks most when there's hand-to-hand or even one-on-one ranged combat that doesn't rise to the level of breaking out the tactical grid. Edit: or, I should add, partial party (some of whom are unskilled in the kind of combat) vs a small number of enemies. homullus fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 14:05
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I practically never do opposed checks. I'm not sure I see the benefit of having an NPC roll against a player VS just having the player rolling, and Player VS Player conflict is pretty rare.
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Sep 24, 2016 15:11
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So there's something I'm not clear on regarding the idea that players benefit from skills with a narrower scope in opposed checks because they're more likely to be more specialized rather than more generalized in comparison to whatever an NPC might use. The GM decides the scope of the NPC's skills, and unless you're dealing with an NPC with an unusually long presence in the game, the GM is going to be making that decision with knowledge of the existing scope of the PC's skills. And this decision has neither the rules-based structure of building an NPC's tactical combat abilities or the character-driven structure of simply deciding whether this NPC should be considered trained in this particular task. Rather, the question is whether, to use the example that's been kicking around in this discussion, the NPC should have the skill "guns," "assault rifles" and "shotguns" and "pistols" etc., or "close-range full auto assault rifles" and "long-range assault rifle sniping" etc. Or however you think they should described, the point is the scope, not the specific skills. Which means that rather than being a relatively organic question of whether an NPC should be considered skilled in something or not, which flows naturally from the conception and description of a character, it seems like it's another difficulty-adjustment knob that the GM can use. You'd end up doing a two-step process: first you decide whether the idea of the character suggests that they should be skilled in this task, then you decide whether the idea of the character suggests that they should be more specifically practiced in this particular task than the scope of competency described by the player's skill. Sometimes this seems like it will be straight-forward to figure out – be careful getting into a quick-draw contest with a practiced duelist unless you've got specific competency in that, even if you're broadly skilled in using firearms – but not necessarily all the time: deciding just how broad or narrow a SWAT team member's skills should be doesn't seem to receive the same sort of support that I'd receive for, say, deciding what powers he should have in tactical combat. Or maybe I'm just missing something. How has this actually played out in people's games? What has your thought process been in building NPCs given the dual questions of competency and scope and how those interact with player skills? Just trying to wrap my head around how to run the system. Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 15:46
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Sir Kodiak posted:So there's something I'm not clear on regarding the idea that players benefit from skills with a narrower scope in opposed checks because they're more likely to be more specialized rather than more generalized in comparison to whatever an NPC might use. The GM decides the scope of the NPC's skills, and unless you're dealing with an NPC with an unusually long presence in the game, the GM is going to be making that decision with knowledge of the existing scope of the PC's skills. And this decision has neither the rules-based structure of building an NPC's tactical combat abilities or the character-driven structure of simply deciding whether this NPC should be considered trained in this particular task. Rather, the question is whether, to use the example that's been kicking around in this discussion, the NPC should have the skill "guns," "assault rifles" and "shotguns" and "pistols" etc., or "close-range full auto assault rifles" and "long-range assault rifle sniping" etc. Or however you think they should described, the point is the scope, not the specific skills. I can honestly say that in my entire game we probably used opposed skill rolls less than ten times. And I don't think I paid much attention to the Specialists vs. Generalists rule, because most of my style is improvisational, it would feel lovely to arbitrarily say that the opposition had a more specific skill when I did not come up with their skills in advance. I pretty much can eyeball what an NPC would have as skills, but out of all the NPCs I made for the game I never gave any of them a concrete list of skills. So unless you're writing up these NPCs skill lists in advance, I wouldn't worry too much about the scope of their skills and just roll Opposed straight-up.
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Sep 24, 2016 16:38
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When players learn new skills, I push them to make them specific. In addition to beating general skills, they're also more memorable -- the whole group remembers when the player got The Sleeper Hold or whatever, and it's a more interesting trademark than Wrestling or (worse) Unarmed Combat. When there are opposed rolls, I always give the NPC the general one or no skill at all. At best they have an edge on Unskilled players and specifically-skilled players will have an edge on them.
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Sep 24, 2016 17:04
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Serf posted:I can honestly say that in my entire game we probably used opposed skill rolls less than ten times. And I don't think I paid much attention to the Specialists vs. Generalists rule, because most of my style is improvisational, it would feel lovely to arbitrarily say that the opposition had a more specific skill when I did not come up with their skills in advance. I pretty much can eyeball what an NPC would have as skills, but out of all the NPCs I made for the game I never gave any of them a concrete list of skills. So unless you're writing up these NPCs skill lists in advance, I wouldn't worry too much about the scope of their skills and just roll Opposed straight-up. That was my impression of how it would make sense to handle it, but I was wondering if that was wrong given this: Tuxedo Catfish posted:I can think of ways for the player to specialize even when they already have the generalist skill, especially if the DM's aware of the dilemma that exists otherwise and plays along. Like quick-drawing your pistol vs. long range sharpshooting with a rifle to further differentiate a generic "Guns" skill. Anyways, thanks. That seems like a more practical way to run things than trying to police how general player skills are after they've already been granted. Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Sep 24, 2016 |
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Sep 24, 2016 19:08
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How does diagonal movement work in Strike! or is it GM discretion? I was going to assume 4E style "first diagonal costs 1, second 2, third 1, etc." but some of this stuff seems like it might make more sense if it always only costs 1.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:37
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:How does diagonal movement work in Strike! or is it GM discretion? 1 movement per space, omnidirectional, unless I'm seriously mistaken.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:42
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The examples of play on page 100 show multiple successive diagonal moves each costing only one square of movement. I don't think it's actually mentioned in the text, though.
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Sep 24, 2016 19:44
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:How does diagonal movement work in Strike! or is it GM discretion?
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Sep 24, 2016 19:48
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I'm not sure PC vs NPC Opposed Rolls make much sense at all. The main difference vs normal Skill Rolls is both sides can suffer Twists and Costs. But, what does a Twist or Cost mean for an NPC? I can't find any guidance in the rules. Is it imposed by the players? By the GM on himself? What's the point of that? Shouldn't the "cost" to the GM just be the players getting their intent on a success? I could see including Opposed Rolls as optional/advanced rules for resolving PC vs PC conflict, but otherwise, the Skill system seems so Dungeon-World-like, that "only PCs roll" makes perfect sense to me (aside from Tactical Combat, and the other optional systems). There's no reason an NPC's intent can't be represented in the resolution of a normal Skill Roll. And without PC vs NPC Opposed Rolls, there's no need to think about NPCs in terms of discrete Skills at all. Sir Kodiak posted:Anyways, I think eth0.n's point – not to speak for him – isn't that combat skills can't be expressed colorfully, but that if they merely reinforce one's class/role selection, then they aren't expanding the narrative space in which a character operates. This is on me for my lousy example, but it's less about "Spray and Pray" vs "Assault Rifles" than "Assault Rifles" (which is already expressed in the player's conception of the class/role) vs "Yakuza Traditions" or whatever. Yeah, that's what I meant. Really, it undermines siloing. If I want a non-combat side that's unrelated to my combat side, suddenly my character doesn't fight competently whenever the GM decides a fight isn't "interesting", unless I sacrifice non-combat Skills to take redundant combat Skills, when the whole point of siloing was to make sure we don't have "Linguist vs Weapon Focus" decisions to make. It's still less severe than in most games, sure, but it seems unnecessary. Without Skill Combat, I'd have no reason to pick redundant combat-related Skills at all. Whether I want my character's non-combat Skills to be related to my class choices or not wouldn't matter. My character would be equally competent, and equally as well fleshed-out, either way. I guess my problem is primarily with having Skill Combat alongside Tactical Combat at all. It inherently brings inconsistency to the fiction, even with workarounds like granting free starting combat Skills. I'd rather avoid the issue entirely, and just not ever roll Skills to directly represent combat (in a game using Tactical Combat). If it's not worth rolling initiative, just find some other aspect of the situation to roll Skills for.
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Sep 25, 2016 02:48
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I finally got to run this today! I screwed up all kinds of stuff in the name of expediency, but I was able to find answers to most of it afterwards so I'll get it right next time. However, there was one thing I wasn't sure about -- the text mentions on page 93 that allies provide Intervening Cover against enemy attacks, and that you typically cannot take cover against other creatures. Does it follow then that other enemies don't provide Intervening Cover against enemy attacks?
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Sep 25, 2016 03:09
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