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A Strange Aeon posted:Yeah, can you please define this so we can follow along? It's in the book under the optional rules. You use 2d6 rolls instead of 1d6.
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Mar 29, 2019 00:19
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Gort posted:Haven't had an issue with 1s causing strikes so far. What's the variant exactly? It's been happening to some players and the fact that theoretically the RNG/Dice loving you up so hard by rolling fumbles on your attack rolls that if an enemy takes you out you are ded is silly..
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Mar 29, 2019 03:10
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I think my biggest issue with d6 is how easy it is for a few enemy 6s to just blat a player down without them getting much of a chance to act, particularly if a sniper type is around
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Mar 29, 2019 03:28
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ShineDog posted:I think my biggest issue with d6 is how easy it is for a few enemy 6s to just blat a player down without them getting much of a chance to act, particularly if a sniper type is around I wonder how much of that was rules fuckup causing us to double ALL damage on a crit, rather than only doubling the damage and leaving damage on the effect line undoubled. I feel like there's something off with the damage on some monster types as well: The "Striker" generalist at level 10 uses an at-will power called "Striking Strike" which does 2 damage, with an effect line of 2 damage more. They then get the "Super damage" trait, which effectively makes it 4 damage with an effect line of 2 damage, meaning a critical does 10 damage, which is enough to drop a character in a single hit. The "Sniper" generalist has the same kind of thing, but at range. They each have a less damaging alternative at-will, but they're both a lot less good than "2 extra damage right now". On the other hand, the "Brute" specialist at level 10 uses at-will powers with 2 damage, and gets the "Extra damage" trait, effectively making it 3 damage, half of what the Striker and Sniper do. It feels like the striker and sniper just do too much raw damage to be balanced with other kinds of monsters, and criticals from them are enormous - a combat full of strikers and snipers will be much nastier than one full of defenders and crowd-controllers, for example. It's a shame, because snipers and strikers can be the most attractive monster choices for encounters you're making up on the fly, or monsters who aren't supposed to be the focus of an encounter - "Guy with sword" and "Guy with gun" are pretty ubiquitous, and they're very simple to run. I also don't get why generalists get extra damage at level 6 and specialists get it at level 10. Is the idea that specialists have much more powerful effects than generalists?
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Mar 29, 2019 10:03
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Gort posted:I also don't get why generalists get extra damage at level 6 and specialists get it at level 10. Is the idea that specialists have much more powerful effects than generalists? Yes, exactly.
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Mar 29, 2019 11:52
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To give more detail, the average battle result should be roughly the same regardless of which of the enemies you pick. But the variance will be higher with the strikers and snipers because they do more damage but have no way of controlling the PCs or stopping them from doing whatever they please aside from getting lucky with lots of hits and crits. And since combat balance is tilted towards the players, higher variance increases the enemy's odds of winning. (Just like how when you're down a game in chess you want to take risks rather than playing for a draw.) If you're worried about the sheer damage they get at high levels, you should realize that by then the players have lots of very strong powers and have had multiple opportunities to pick options that can mitigate high damage.
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Mar 29, 2019 17:21
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Hey, I couldn't find anything on forced movement and squeezing for larger sized creatures, does such a ruling exist?
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Apr 13, 2019 18:37
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Moriatti posted:Hey, I couldn't find anything on forced movement and squeezing for larger sized creatures, does such a ruling exist? As for squeezing, it's the GM's call based on the fiction. Some larger creatures are squishier than others.
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Apr 13, 2019 19:16
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How about forced movement to larger players? Does this follow the squeezing rule?
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Apr 13, 2019 21:51
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So I've got a Rogue in my game now - I was just wondering if there were any guidelines for how much terrain is a good amount for a rogue to thrive. I've been putting in patches of bushes that are difficult + obscured terrain, to make sure he has places to move around out of sight, but i'm not sure if i'm overdoing it, or if bushes shouldn't really grant Obscured. Presumably there should be some fights where they don't get as much terrain as they might like, but this probably shouldn't happen very often.
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Jun 15, 2019 23:20
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Ignite Memories posted:So I've got a Rogue in my game now - I was just wondering if there were any guidelines for how much terrain is a good amount for a rogue to thrive. I've been putting in patches of bushes that are difficult + obscured terrain, to make sure he has places to move around out of sight, but i'm not sure if i'm overdoing it, or if bushes shouldn't really grant Obscured. Presumably there should be some fights where they don't get as much terrain as they might like, but this probably shouldn't happen very often. Rogue doesn't need terrain to function, especially if they took Trap. I wouldn't worry overmuch about it; just do what feels appropriate.
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Jun 15, 2019 23:30
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My Strike! GM is gearing up for a new campaign - this time, a parody of the A-Team with monsters! https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/172034/the-m-team
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Aug 13, 2019 08:42
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Haha, I'm about to run something pretty similar! If he wants good on the fly tokens, METAL slugs Attack is a dumb mobile game with very good spritework.
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Aug 13, 2019 12:57
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So, I know this thread's been quiet for a while but I always have Strike on my shortlist when I'm trying to do any kind of tactical combat rpg - I keep running into one big downside when I'm selling it to my players, though: they're all gear porn/item acquisition addicts. Has anyone made any guidelines or big lists of gear and the tangible benefits items could give? (my players, mournfully, are too D&D-poisoned to appreciate things that have vital narrative importance but don't give +1s) Thoughts about how much power loot per level is appropriate to avoid overshadowing class/role powers would also be nice. (I know you can flavor normal powers as being from items, but my guys are real into the "my numbers went up, hell yes!" neurotransmitters)
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Jan 27, 2020 19:51
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Pieces of Peace posted:So, I know this thread's been quiet for a while but I always have Strike on my shortlist when I'm trying to do any kind of tactical combat rpg - I keep running into one big downside when I'm selling it to my players, though: they're all gear porn/item acquisition addicts. In my current game in giving out about 1 item a session that grants a new skill/trick or gives a weak feat/encounter power. Each character is only allowed to keep 2 each of in combat and out of combat items at a time though. Stuff like: quote:Overcharged Kinetic Manipulator or quote:Spybane Cytoplast
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Jan 27, 2020 20:00
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A Book of Gear is still my biggest wishlist item for this game - I, too, have difficulty with loot. Consumable powers seem to be well-liked but won't necessarily scratch the New Swords itch. Something that might is 'Hungry' items, which give out action points for specific conditions being met. I.e, maybe this sword hates healers and gives you an action point for taking one out. Maybe this gun slowly injects stimulants into you which give you an action point at the end of a combat wherein you had a 'killstreak'. You've gotta be careful though because AP are wildly powerful. A once-per-session/adventure clause would not be out of line. e: the idea of giving them limited Item Slots is a good one too ^ Ignite Memories fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jan 27, 2020 |
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Jan 27, 2020 20:02
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Hey, Strikeheads, I'm bumping this thread because I've recently had the cause/opportunity to playtest and keep tweaking my potentially-official and insanely overcomplicated custom Strike! class. As far as I know none of this information is relevant to anyone who isn't literally me, but here's the "Evoker" as it stands: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JC3ZZCfSfIfiYVqA50saZ5YnNDWXwc-JJREHIbWE36g/edit?usp=sharing Its at-will "Basic Elements" and AoE "Basic Evocations" have been retooled slightly-to-significantly, and the special "Terrain" mechanic got stripped out of Elements and turned into a formal class feature. It's been holding up pretty well, though, and if for some reason someone else still wants to take it for a test drive the most updated version can be found in the link above. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 13:16 on May 15, 2020 |
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May 14, 2020 00:35
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Strike is in the big Itch bundle, btw! (Along with Lancer, and lots of other fun things!) https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality
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Jun 13, 2020 15:21
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I made a fight I thought was pretty cool. My players ended up taking it apart more easily that they should have because of absolutely cursed monster attack rolls, but they also did use the correct strategies and would have won regardless. IMO it's a great example of why I like Strike; it allows for pretty complicated tactical fights in a relatively fast playing system.
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Jun 14, 2020 22:52
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It says I need authorization to view it.
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Jun 15, 2020 01:09
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It should work now? They changed how authorization works recently.
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Jun 15, 2020 01:13
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Nettle Soup posted:Strike is in the big Itch bundle, btw! (Along with Lancer, and lots of other fun things!) fool of sound posted:I made a fight I thought was pretty cool. My players ended up taking it apart more easily that they should have because of absolutely cursed monster attack rolls, but they also did use the correct strategies and would have won regardless. IMO it's a great example of why I like Strike; it allows for pretty complicated tactical fights in a relatively fast playing system. This looks awesome! I love it. My favourite part? The way Cyclone incentivises the players to clump up. It sucks them in! paradoxGentleman posted:It says I need authorization to view it. Anyway, I've been working on Strike! stuff again in fits and starts. Just going by my work schedule, I should have tons of time... but then I have 3 kids and they aren't in school now because of COVID, so that takes up a ton of my time. Like all my time. Also dealing with a flareup of my old RSI - I guess my new sedentary quarantine lifestyle isn't doing wonders for my body. I'm trying to put together a decent draft of my X-COM themed implementation of Strike! (tentatively named UFO strike!), which is a huge project. There are some really cool ideas there and I'm super excited, and I wish I was farther along in terms of getting it out of my head and into a playable draft. But I'm not. If day camps in Ontario don't get cancelled, I may get some freedom in July. I'd love to have a draft done by the end of July, and I'm really going to try to, but who knows what calamity will befall the world next. In the meantime, I've also been playing with my kids (4, 8, and 10) and I tried getting them to run a Team Conflict and it didn't go great. Even the 10-yr old who usually takes to rules quickly had trouble getting her head around it. I had previously done a revision which changed the victory conditions and added tracks/clocks, while keeping the mechanics mostly the same (two or three people here might have seen that version). This was the version I ran for my kids, and it still wasn't clicking. So I decided to overhaul it and do a complete re-write with new mechanics. Here is a playtest version. Fixed: The victory and loss conditions were a bit weird. Now there are tracks (or you could make them clocks) - you gotta get to the end of your track and stop the enemy from getting to the end of theirs. Less weird, more intuitive. Fixed: The dual-mind thing of trying to come up with an action in character that also lines up with what action you want to pick tactically. This was tricky for people not as used to constantly reskinning everything like I and my group. You don't have to do it anymore! The specific mechanical bonus you pick is a free choice - you CAN link up the description to your action, but you also don't have to. Fixed: Less jargon! You don't have to remember the difference between a Draw and a Push, a Hit and a Strike, etc. I would love for anyone to check it out and give it a shot, and to tell me how it goes. But I'd especially love if a group that tried the original version before and didn't like it much would give it a go. Even if you can't give it a try, comments on the rules are welcome. I'm sure there is room for the rules to be clarified or explained better. It's pretty easy to explain the system in person when I can move the dice around and point to my hand-drawn tracks, but that doesn't mean that my written explanation is doing the job so let me know about any hard to understand parts of the rules. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Jun 15, 2020 |
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Jun 15, 2020 06:59
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I haven't played Strike! but I've been thinking about making a dungeon delve board game for my friends, and using the tactical rules for the delving parts. I've also been thinking about letting the powers come from items (like the Necro's Deadly Poison could instead come from a leather case full of deadly oils and powders) so that their powers need to compete for space in their backpacks with treasures, and possibly conditions (gain a condition while your pack is full -> drop a piece of gear or treasure to make up for carrying om while exhausted or injured etc). I figure the players would still pick a role as normal, or perhaps reskinned as following a Totem, which means they could possibly switch roles by some ritual or other. How dumb is this? I'd want to Keep it fun and engaging, but not overwhelming. Perhaps limiting the available starting gear/powers, and then they could find more lvl1 powers as treasures as they delve?
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Jun 15, 2020 11:12
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ovenboy posted:I haven't played Strike! but I've been thinking about making a dungeon delve board game for my friends, and using the tactical rules for the delving parts. I've also been thinking about letting the powers come from items (like the Necro's Deadly Poison could instead come from a leather case full of deadly oils and powders) so that their powers need to compete for space in their backpacks with treasures, and possibly conditions (gain a condition while your pack is full -> drop a piece of gear or treasure to make up for carrying om while exhausted or injured etc). I figure the players would still pick a role as normal, or perhaps reskinned as following a Totem, which means they could possibly switch roles by some ritual or other. How dumb is this? I'd want to Keep it fun and engaging, but not overwhelming. Perhaps limiting the available starting gear/powers, and then they could find more lvl1 powers as treasures as they delve? Not dumb at all. Sounds cool! In my UFO Strike! project, roles are determined by gear. So you can be a Telekinetic (class) grenadier (role), for instance.
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Jun 15, 2020 14:42
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Jimbozig posted:Not dumb at all. Sounds cool! In my UFO Strike! project, roles are determined by gear. I've been excited about that one for a while.
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Jun 15, 2020 15:01
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So - I'm shortly going to be paid to run a four week roleplaying game for some 8th to 11th graders, and I decided to use Strike on the basis that it's simple and easy to teach. Well, six pregen characters packed into google docs later, I am reminded that Strike has an extremely simple task resolution mechanic but an absolute shitload of actual rules, conditions, and exceptions going on. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly people can pick up and use the stuff I've got in here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15OztgCSn8y6IjMgaVsLuBSdCmtDSkNE6?usp=sharing <-- click if you need some polished-looking level ones for whatever reason. I took a few liberties with streamlining and consolidating mechanics for the sake of saving space. While putting that together, a balance question occurred to me: why does the Warlord's "Hit This Guy" power specify that your ally has to use a basic attack? Since the warlord themselves doesn't get to make any kind of roll, they have no chance of scoring a support token or stockpiling a charge of Tactics or anything like that, so you're basically getting the value of Basic Attack + Role Boost when you could instead be doing your own At-Will Attack + Role Boost. I realize that there's a feat that your ally can take that can make this better, but that feat only makes them as good for these purposes as a martial artist is naturally. Of course, being able to pick one of several positions from the battlefield to attack from, and one of several role boosts to actuate as you do so, is a tactical benefit in itself, but then it's still even more of a benefit if you've got a martial artist handy and the asymmetry bugs me. One of my pregens is a warlord and another is a martial artist, and I just decided to change Hit This Guy to granting an at-will rather than a basic specifically so that if we had both in the same party it wouldn't always be the right move to grant attacks to the martial artist specifically. But maybe I'm missing something? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jul 7, 2020 |
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Jul 7, 2020 04:27
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Man, it's been so long that I don't remember why it's like that. I think in the earliest versions I had it granting any attack. I think the reason for the change was that letting it grant any attack can make alpha-strikes worse. Limiting it to at-wills should mostly fix that. I also think there was some idea of comparing it to other warlord at-wills and maybe it was a bit dominant before. Limiting it to at-wills should mitigate that problem, too. I know I thought about limiting it to at-wills when I made the change, but I don't remember why I didn't go that route. It might have been partly an aesthetic thing where it makes the power text more complicated, and I did want power text to be simple when possible. Basically I think your fix is probably fine.
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Jul 8, 2020 22:54
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Well, folks, it's four weeks on and the Strike! game I ran as a summer camp exercise on behalf of my tutoring company and some kind of other program we partnered with is wrapped up. We went ten minutes over on our last session but I would call the entire project a smashing success; the kids loved the game and totally dumpstered my final boss, which I was hoping for because we were really trying to pack a lot of content into our last two hours and if they hadn't managed to just melt every enemy in a couple rounds with degenerate warlord-granting-the-striker-actions tactics I don't know what I would've done. Here are my DM notes for the entire affair in case anyone wants to rip me off: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGaepdYf_SOL4ZdWfN32GBqstUOyF4lrs9zoJJa6UXE/edit?usp=sharing I've only actually included monster powers for the first session because I ended up mostly creating the monsters as I macro'd their powers up in Roll20 to save time. Most of the monsters are right out of Strike!'s default bestiary - the infestor is basically the Crowd Control monster, the hydralisk is basically the Sniper, etc (adorably, all of my students were too young to realize they were fighting zerg units for half the game). I did create a few original designs which I didn't really get to completely test drive because fights had to be short and easy for the sake of time, but which may be of interest to other DMs. I'm going to post some screenshots here summarizing what I'd call innovations: The Rune Priest/Ghost Mage was a Goon that sets up a field of runes and then starts zapping as many people as possible:  The Clash of Titans was a fight between an ultralisk and a red dragon. The ultralisk had a small group of supporting zerg units, and the players came in on the dragon's side. The two big monsters were both champions, but while they were occupied with each other each took only one turn. However, their attacks caused a lot of collateral damage:  Credit to my friend Tom for this one - he ran a fight between gigantic dwarven golems from warring clans in his Strike! game (that I'm testing the Evoker in...!) last week and I loved the idea enough to steal it. Rathma was an Elite necromancer boss who could summon Stooge ghosts and wasn't anything special in terms of his powers, but I did mechanize his Elite status in a fun way: he always succeeded on saves, but only had as much HP as a Standard monster would. When he died, he split into two Standard monsters: his own skeleton, and his own ghost, each of which inherited half his attack powers. When our Necromancer used Greater Mark of Death to finish off Rathma's living form, I let her choose whether to assume control of the ghost or the corpse. Grimnir was the final boss of the game, stolen directly from Magicka. He used the same summon Elements -> cast Elements -> summon Elements pattern as my Evoker class, following these specifications:   After putting him together, I realized I'd effectively given him the AoE templates of Zenos yae Galvus from Final Fantasy 14. But I'd also already put some lalafell into this game so whatever. In addition to Grimnir, the players would have to fight a Nydus Worm, a Standard monster that would pop in and out of the battlefield spawning critters. I ended up not putting it in due to time constraints but I think the design is good:  Finally, to give the players an edge, I gave them Supernal Boons. Depending on whether they used the help of an angel, demon, or faerie to breach the abyss without instantly disintegrating or going insane, they'd be able to take advantage of a different power on the battlefield. Specifically, glowing magic circles would pop up and a player who entered one could use a free action to gain its benefit.  My players took Demon's Deal, and given that they had an attack-granting warlord and a level 4 Striker with Speed 10 they could do absolutely degenerate bullshit where the striker'd go pinballing around the battlefield collecting boons and then unloading some 40-odd damage onto an only 50 HP boss (I lowered it a bit in the interests of time) to burn him down in a little under two rounds. Not as challenging or as I would've wanted it to be given another hour's time, but as is I was very satisfied with the conclusion, as were the players - even the player of the Striker, who was a very shy 8th grader but who really came out of his shell towards the end when he realized what kind of absolutely ridiculous damage he was doing. ... Overall, what I largely didn't use from Strike!'s basic systems were Complications, which the players had on paper but either never remembered or weren't interesting in using, and Miss Triggers, which I mostly didn't include onto monsters in order to lower my own cognitive burden and to speed up both macroing monsters before games and running monsters in games. I think if I were to run another Strike! campaign I might rework Complications all together into "Power Sources" or similar - they'd just be narrative circumstances that allow a player to claim an Action Point and may or may not take risks to get based on context. Also, I didn't really like having to come up with and hand out Costs for 1s and 3s on skill checks; I'd occasionally make people Winded or give them Disadvantage on further use of that Skill or whatever but for the most part it felt more like a chore and an interruption than an opportunity for me. Overall, though, this was a really great experience. I was worried when putting characters together that Strike! is actually a lot more complicated than it looks based on its resolution mechanism, and indeed I ended up giving players advice or reminding them they could do certain things (like use the Blaster's AoE capabilities) fairly frequently but as far as I could tell everyone had a blast and I'd happily do this again, except I did not get paid nearly enough for all the prep work I did in addition to the actual hours of running the game. EDIT: Oh yeah, and I mentioned this in the chat thread, but the kid who played the Warlord/Leader built so as to do no damage itself really loved the character archetype and asked where I got it and if I thought it'd be possible to port it into D&D, and I had an amusing but also depressing time telling him after the game that in fact it was from D&D.... 4th edition, which Strike! was inspired by, so he should look there. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Jul 30, 2020 |
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Jul 30, 2020 00:14
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Thank you for all the monster examples--I love the clash of titans! Out of curiosity, what Roll20 character sheets/scripts are you using? The Strike! sheet in the Roll20 character sheet list when creating a new game doesn't have enemy trait and power formatting nearly as orderly or fully-featured (e.g. advantage dice). Custom macros?
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Jul 30, 2020 02:18
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King Cohort posted:Thank you for all the monster examples--I love the clash of titans! Out of curiosity, what Roll20 character sheets/scripts are you using? The Strike! sheet in the Roll20 character sheet list when creating a new game doesn't have enemy trait and power formatting nearly as orderly or fully-featured (e.g. advantage dice). Custom macros? They look like customized versions of the ones from my guide, so check that out and see if you can tweak those a bit for what you need.
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Jul 30, 2020 04:39
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King Cohort posted:Thank you for all the monster examples--I love the clash of titans! Out of curiosity, what Roll20 character sheets/scripts are you using? The Strike! sheet in the Roll20 character sheet list when creating a new game doesn't have enemy trait and power formatting nearly as orderly or fully-featured (e.g. advantage dice). Custom macros? Yeah. A friend also hooked me up with some icons to put in the top left corner, here's one example of each: ATTACK ICON: &{template:default} {{name=[Attack](https://i.imgur.com/IWSnXbM.png) **Kaiser Blades** | Melee | At-Will Attack}} {{attack=[[1d6]] (Advantage/Disadvantage Die: [[1d6]])}} {{damage=**4**}} {{Effect=Slide the target 4 and Shift to follow it. Then everything adjacent to either the behemoth or the target takes 2 damage.}}{{Special=If the behemoth's first attack roll is 5+, Assimilate recharges.}} ROLE ICON: &{template:default} {{name=[Role](https://i.imgur.com/rbJ8CzY.png) **Conjure Terrain** | Ranged 5 | At-Will Role Action}} {{Choose one:=• A 3x3 or 5x5 area (your choice) becomes **Difficult Terrain**, which costs double squares to move through. You can flatten any Low Cover in this area if you want. • A 3x3 or 5x5 area (your choice) is **obscured** by fog, giving Disadvantage to units trying to attack through it. • One square becomes **low cover** which gives ranged attackers Disadvantage, or **full cover** which is a block as tall as you are that blocks movement and line of effect.}} TRIGGER ICON (WHICH I ALSO USED FOR PASSIVES): &{template:default} {{name=[Trigger](https://i.imgur.com/1Etzdzi.png) **Voidbound Archmage** | Passive Traits}} {{Arcane Alacrity=Grimnir takes a full turn on each of Initiative 7, 4, and 1. He spends an entire turn readying elements, and then an entire turn attacking with those elements.}} {{Mage Armor=Grimnir succeeds at all saving throws.}}{{Slave To Jormungandr=Grimnir cannot be moved from his spot. When he would be force-moved or knocked Prone, he instead becomes Vulnerable 1 to all damage until the end of his next turn. If he is already Vulnerable, he loses 1 HP (not further increased).}}{{Secrets of the Void=When Grimnir readies elements on Initiative 4, he gains access to forbidden elements much stronger than normal.}} What I would absolutely love is a way to make the actual header bar on one of these things colors besides purple.
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Jul 30, 2020 05:16
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Response from one of my kids post-game: "I would love to know the rules of Strike. It’s probably the most fun rpg I have played in quite a while. It encourages teamwork." I guess I'd say that too if I was able to cut the final boss down in barely over one round by granting a stream of bonus actions to the Striker, but it's still adorable.
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Jul 31, 2020 21:53
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Ferrinus posted:Response from one of my kids post-game: quote:Overall, what I largely didn't use from Strike!'s basic systems were Complications, which the players had on paper but either never remembered or weren't interesting in using, and Miss Triggers, which I mostly didn't include onto monsters in order to lower my own cognitive burden and to speed up both macroing monsters before games and running monsters in games. I think if I were to run another Strike! campaign I might rework Complications all together into "Power Sources" or similar - they'd just be narrative circumstances that allow a player to claim an Action Point and may or may not take risks to get based on context. Also, I didn't really like having to come up with and hand out Costs for 1s and 3s on skill checks; I'd occasionally make people Winded or give them Disadvantage on further use of that Skill or whatever but for the most part it felt more like a chore and an interruption than an opportunity for me. This is super interesting because I've been looking at revising some of the core mechanics after playing with my kids and these are exactly some of the areas I'm targeting for revisions: costs, complications, and the action point economy. My kids found the current way Conditions work to be too harsh - having a -1 on everything felt bad for them. And using their complications wasn't a thing they were doing without prompting (when I played with adults that wasn't a problem - they wanted to play their complications). And yeah, giving costs is still sometimes a chore. So let's fix that! The current version I want to test goes something like this: Players get to choose their own cost. (This moves some of the burden off the GM and gives players more agency). Choices: mark a condition, mark off a piece of gear that is used or damaged, mark a favor with an NPC. The GM decides when your Conditions are important. Minor Conditions give disadvantage, but also an action point. Major conditions give an automatic failure but also an action point. But you can always pay an action point to ignore a condition. (So it's similar to FATE compels). What Major Conditions do in combat in this revision is still something I'm not sure about. I'm considering having a little set of options that do different things. Like a leg injury might reduce your speed. Having a -1 on attack rolls is just a bit too feels-bad. Another thing I'm considering is adding a Health track, inspired by Blades and Ironsworn. Would go 0-5 or 0-6. When you pay a cost, you could reduce it by 1. The GM could reduce it by 1 or 2 on a Twist. It gives players a buffer before having to mark conditions. It could tie into combat by having you start at HP = Health+5 each combat, and some of the results after combat could be to reduce your Health depending on the Strikes you got. Having your health go to 0 would be a thing to tie in some customizable system that would depend on the tone of the adventure. The goals of changes like these are to - reduce the feeling of it being a chore for the GM to assign costs - tie into the Gear system since the expansion stuff will have more gear. - give more juice to the Action Point economy with more ways to spend and receive APs, with more player control over it. -reduce the feels-bad of Conditions, especially Major Conditions. Thoughts?
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Aug 2, 2020 16:48
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I like the idea of a consistent health track in or out of combat; it took my players a little while to realize/get used to the fact that they just shot back up to 10/10 or 13/13 every fight regardless. Of course, depending on how you mechanize it you might accidentally turn Toughness into the one Feat that's relevant to non-combat adventuring. Players choosing Costs is interesting, but it seems to me that there might often be obvious choices (which maybe isn't bad). Like, of all the conditions you might get, Winded is probably the most benign by default because you know you just need ten minutes' time and a drink to mark it off and in many circumstances that's trivial. Meanwhile, something like Angry (or "confused" or "depressed" or whatever) is more nebulous, Lost Confidence has a very straightforward effect and was probably my favorite one to hand out (although I'd generally say "until you succeed despite the penalty or after you get through another few rooms") and of course the Injured/Sick/Cursed/etc are devastating and right out for the most part. I did have one kid get Injured after he attempted to use time travel to retroactively prevent some villagers from being injured and rolled a 1, but I knew that it'd at most penalize some followup skill checks and that he'd get to spend a night in the infirmary before setting out on the main adventure the following day. "Equipment damaged" wouldn't have meant much to us since we weren't tracking it. Action points the kids did end up using consistently (sometimes with reminders). I think the "you can spend an AP to combine two skills on one task" phrasing I used was helpful for them to understand what was going on, and I often allowed them to spend action points retroactively - like someone rolls a 2, we're all disappointed, I point out that they still have an AP...! - which might be a good general rule to adopt because no one likes making a blind bet and failing. .... I was given to thinking the other day as to whether a Complication is actually worth enacting at the base. Like, ignoring Tricks for a second, let's say you have two Trained skill checks to make, right? You're getting an average of 2/3rds of a success per skill check and therefore, when attempting two tasks one after the other, you're likely to get 4/3rds or 1.3333... successes. Now, lets's say you invoke your Complication to autofail one but then use the AP to get Advantage on the other. Napkin math tells me that you've got an 8/9ths chance to roll a 3 or better on a roll with Advantage. So that's 8/9ths of an expected success with a guaranteed Twist! Okay, "4/3rds expected successes" is kind of a weird way to look at it so we can go more into depth. Making two separate skill checks, you're going to fail both 1/9th of the time, pass only one 4/9ths of the time, and then pass both 4/9ths of the time. Meanwhile, Complication -> Advantage gives you the same 1/9ths you're screwed 8/9ths you get something you want result, except there's no chance of passing both at all (but you are more certain to pass the particular skill check you care about; 8/9ths to get The Important One versus 6/9ths to get The Important One but with the possibility of getting both bundled in there to boot). Now, Tricks push this math more in favor of using a Complication, and obviously if you have to make an Untrained skill check followed by a Trained skill check the Untrained is more of a write-off and more attractive to just toss into the Complication hole. But my students almost never did roll Untrained, except for one point at which I told them all to roll Stealth (of which only two were Trained in) and was looking for a total of 3 successes to make sure they got away from a zerg hunting party unscathed. This is partially due to my DMing style where I'd present a situation and be like "okay, who has skills pertaining to..." as opposed to putting specific people on the spot, but I think you can generally expect people to use their Trained skills more often than not. Basically what I'm saying here is that it might be best for a Complication to either A) be a 1/session power you can invoke to get a free AP after you've already failed a check, which you can use to declare exactly why you failed and what the Twist looks like, or B) for Complications to shift into Inspirations or Sources or whatever that may or may not get you into trouble depending on the narrative. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 17:21
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Well the idea behind complications is that you can use them even when you have Disadvantage. Getting a Twist when you already have a high chance of that but also have a decent chance of a Twist plus a Cost is not such a bad deal, and you get an AP out of it. You can also use your complications on rolls where you don't care that much about the outcome or where you think it would even be fun to have that kind of Twist, and get an AP to use on a roll you really do care about. But if the revisions to Conditions end up like I described, then I might tweak complications anyway.
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Aug 2, 2020 17:31
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Generally in my group, if the player doesn't care that much about the outcome of an action, we don't hit the point of engaging the die-rolling mechanics. Which might help explain why complications don't see much use at all.
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Aug 6, 2020 21:13
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I could see Complications being a thing you could invoke 1/session when you've already rolled a failure, and the benefits are: 1) You get to decide the Twist, as long as it's in line with your Complication 2) You get an AP Although I might still cleanly separate "getting AP" from "failing rolls" just so that it never feels like the latter is the correct move. But then, that's due to my tastes/preferred authorial stance when it comes to playing a character.
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Aug 6, 2020 22:55
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I ended up giving the players a free AP each session so that we could engage more with the action point economy. They already play up their failings, and we already explain twists in terms of them, and everything I could think of as a reason to have a mechanic regarding complications. I'm not saying they're a bad idea for a game in general, but they're a mechanic I feel fine not having.
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Aug 7, 2020 00:01
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Oh, yeah, that's something I forgot to mention; I ended up just giving everyone 2 AP/sesh rather than one, and said you can give one of your AP to someone else on the spot if you want to.
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Aug 7, 2020 00:05
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| # ? May 26, 2024 01:41 |
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So this post started as a reply to the ongoing action point conversation and turned into an effortpost about everything Strike. There's a ton of criticism but it really is one of the best RPGs I've ever played. In my long-running Strike campaign I also found that nobody was using complications since they felt that the bonus of an action point didn't line up with the amount of trouble the complication could provide. (EG: We're sneaking into the Renraku corporate facility guarded by cyberbasilisks and Red Samurai - is an action point really worth auto-failing the stealth roll?) That may have been a symptom of how I run my games - I basically have a plan for what'll happen in the session (EG: The players told me last session that they want to break into the Renraku facility, so this session I've got an idea of how the facility's laid out, they'll come across this opposition, there'll probably be a fight against two Strikers and a Charger etc) and the players will broadly follow that plan, with off-the-rails stuff being handled by quickly-thrown-together encounters and ad-libbed skill checks. Maybe in other people's games the players are constantly invoking their complications and getting into situations based on them, but in mine they didn't feel an action point was enough payback for the trouble failing a skill check could cause. I also found that there was pressure for the players to come up with excuses to give their "awesome points" to whoever needed an action point, not really as a reward for doing something truly awesome. The result was that players effectively had two action points per session, so I just chucked out the awesome point mechanic and gave everyone two action points per session. ----- While I'm being critical, I'll give some more random feedback from my campaigns - we've done two from level 1 to 10, one was a Warhammer Fantasy thing, the other was Shadowrun: * I never found a situation that I felt Team Conflict or Chase could handle better than the basic (awesome) skills system. Both systems feel like a lot of interacting with mechanics, rather than fiction being advanced by light mechanics, which is where the skills system really shines. * We never really interacted with the Wealth system. There's nothing to buy, with no set costs, so in both campaigns the party was just sort of assumed to have whatever they needed to use their powers and skills. I'm not saying you should make a huge list of equipment to buy with set costs or anything like that, just that characters with different levels of wealth in their backgrounds didn't play any differently in the campaigns I ran. * I'm not a fan of monster damage increasing as you go up in levels, but player health staying almost static. It means the counterbalance to monster damage increasing is stuff like damage reduction increases (which only some characters will have) and powers that negate hits. The result is that at higher levels hitpoints become a lot less of a buffer between a character being up or down, and more of a binary thing where some characters are one bad round away from floored once their defensive powers are used up. It might be better to have monster damage, player damage reduction, and hit-negating powers be things that are all static at level 1 and never change. * Characters get too many feats for how many good feats there are. Characters get five feats each by level 10, and there aren't that many good ones. I saw a lot of characters with toughness and fast reactions, and every archer had melee shooter and fast archer, for example. I was thinking it might be better if characters only had something like two feats total, but they improved with levels. So at level 1 your battle robot character might have the feat Huge, gaining 3 HP and becoming large. Then at level 3 they could be used as cover by friends. Then at level 5 they gain reach. Then at level 7 they can gain a second feat (which might be off a separate list of "advanced feats" that you can't start with), which improves a step at level 9. That way there'd be less cherry-picking of the best mechanics, and more commitment to the theme of a character. * I'm a lazy GM, so I'd love more pre-made monsters, and especially traps, particularly ones that can be an encounter on their own, like the garbage compactor from Star Wars. * I like treasure. It'd be cool to have some pre-made stuff like a flaming sword that gives you a fireball encounter power and an at-will firebolt or something like that. Maybe it could also be a skill, "I'm gonna roll flaming sword to cut through Shelob's webs". ----- Hopefully that doesn't just read like a giant wave of negativity. Strike might be the best RPG I've ever played, and there are things from it I've stolen to use in other RPGs I run. Like the Zeitgeist campaign I'm running in 4e D&D, I threw out their sea combat rules and I just use the skill system from Strike instead. And stuff like combining the to-hit and damage roll into a single throw of a D6 is straight-up brilliant. There are also nice bits like being able to combine any Role or Class in a character instead of being pigeonholed into one particular class if you want that playstyle.
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Aug 7, 2020 13:56
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