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Some remarks on the full rules

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 5:57 am
by Dregntael
First of all, a big congratulations to Clay and Niko on the finished pdf, it reads and looks absolutely amazing. I played a first quick session with my brothers (set in a modified avatar-universe with airbending sky pirates and fire nation dragon cultists), and we had a lot of fun. However, I have a few remarks about some of the rules that we found less than intuitive:
  • The Attack ability increases DX instead of attack roll. I struggled quite a bit with this one, until I realized that attack roll and DX can be exchanged freely by taking accurate+ineffective or effective+inaccurate. So I houseruled that Attack gives a bonus to attack rolls and allows them to "power attack" to exchange attack dice for DX. To avoid duplication, I then made Combat Specialist give free perks equal to level x5 in endurance cost, this also encourages the players to think about their combat style. I think this works rather nicely to remove the confusion.
  • Since the PC's had a rather low TV (average of 10), I decided to start the first fight with some weak extras, expecting the PC's to deal with them quickly. However, when calculating the TV of these extras, I came out 0 (after subtracting the -8)! So the TV did not help me at all in predicting the difficulty. In the end, I used 4 of these extras and I'd describe the fight as moderate to challenging (as I said, the TV of the PC's was on the low side). Maybe it would be better to divide the TV by 2 for extras instead of subtracting a fixed number?
  • I think some of the weaknesses really should be flaws or perks instead because they modify other abilities. In particular, I'm talking about endurance use, focus, limited uses, suppressed power, and trigger. I suggest the following:
    - Replace endurance use by a new perk: endurance powered (throw 1 extra die for each +5 endurance spent).
    - Remove focus, limited uses, and trigger, because they are superseded by the weapon, ammunition, and requirement flaws.
    - Replace suppressed power by a new flaw: suppressed power (throw 1 fewer die for -5 endurance cost)
Of course, these are just my thoughts after one session, if there's a good reason why these things are as they are I'd like to hear that as well. We're having a lot of fun regardless!

Re: Some remarks on the full rules

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 8:09 am
by CursedEmbrace
All sounds cool, hope the session went well!
Dregntael wrote: * The Attack ability increases DX instead of attack roll. I struggled quite a bit with this one, until I realized that attack roll and DX can be exchanged freely by taking accurate+ineffective or effective+inaccurate. So I houseruled that Attack gives a bonus to attack rolls and allows them to "power attack" to exchange attack dice for DX. To avoid duplication, I then made Combat Specialist give free perks equal to level x5 in endurance cost, this also encourages the players to think about their combat style. I think this works rather nicely to remove the confusion.
I can certainly agree with the name Attack being a little counter intuitive, it has been briefly discussed here before I believe.
Dregntael wrote: * Since the PC's had a rather low TV (average of 10), I decided to start the first fight with some weak extras, expecting the PC's to deal with them quickly. However, when calculating the TV of these extras, I came out 0 (after subtracting the -8)! So the TV did not help me at all in predicting the difficulty. In the end, I used 4 of these extras and I'd describe the fight as moderate to challenging (as I said, the TV of the PC's was on the low side). Maybe it would be better to divide the TV by 2 for extras instead of subtracting a fixed number?
If it were me I'd have probably just considered the minimum threat of an extra (or anyone else for that matter) 1, so your 4 extra combat had a threat value of 4, which certainly is easy going! Doesn't sound bad for the first combat of the game though.
Dregntael wrote: * I think some of the weaknesses really should be flaws or perks instead because they modify other abilities. In particular, I'm talking about endurance use, focus, limited uses, suppressed power, and trigger. I suggest the following:
- Replace endurance use by a new perk: endurance powered (throw 1 extra die for each +5 endurance spent).
While your suggestion for a new perk is cool (though probably in need of some tuning) I don't think it needs to replace Endurance Use, which simply adds a cost to using one of your abilities.

I have used it (Endurance Use I mean) in the past to give a cost to a particular character's ability to heal (which wouldn't normally have a cost unless you attach perks to it), or to have a character use a sort of 'enhanced sight' mode that they don't always have access to and have to strain themselves to use (which is simulated with the Endurance cost). It just seems to me that Endurance cost has a very defined role and removing it or greatly altering it wouldn't serve much purpose.
Dregntael wrote: - Remove focus, limited uses, and trigger, because they are superseded by the weapon, ammunition, and requirement flaws.
I would also disagree with what you've said here, because focus, limited uses ect are used on abilities, rather than techniques.

Focus, for example could be a magical necklace that gives a character X levels of Sixth Sense, or the ability to speak if they are otherwise mute, which is something Weapon isn't really designed to do, even if it was able to be used on abilities.

There is no doubt some overlap between these abilities and perks, but since in the base rules the abilities, weaknesses and perks and flaws are kept mostly separate it doesn't benefit anyone to remove them, though of course, even if you did they could still be easily make use of them via creating unique abilities and weaknesses.
Dregntael wrote: - Replace suppressed power by a new flaw: suppressed power (throw 1 fewer die for -5 endurance cost)
Once more I'd have to question the need to remove anything, as Suppressed Power does a completely different job to the perk/flaw you have described (which seems a lot like Inaccurate in a sense, unless your intent was that you can subtract as much Endurance as you want (in multiples of 5) to subtract a variable number of dice from your own attack?)
Dregntael wrote: Of course, these are just my thoughts after one session, if there's a good reason why these things are as they are I'd like to hear that as well. We're having a lot of fun regardless!
Thoughts are good to hear, but if I were to make a tiny suggestion I would say don't try and think about stuff to remove or change (though of course you can adjust what you want for your own campaign), just try and continue coming up with more interesting abilities, weaknesses, perks and flaws to add to the pool that we already have.

Other than that I hope your campaign goes well!