|
So, i should probably tell you that i powergamed too much for Lucas.
I just found a way to do 5d12/2 every turn in a 2x2 AoE, unless you roll a 20 in which case it is 5d12*2.
But then i wasn't allowed to do that and had to find something that is slightly less broken and only do 3d12/2 each turn no matter what.
Still not a fan of the system. I hate feeling like i have to build my character for maximum efficiency doing silly shit instead of building him for character and still being reasonably effective at doing something.
|
What did you do? Buy a lot of thermal detonators? Also welcome 404AlphaSquad!
|
Well, it didn't actually happen.
Basically, if you use a weapon with AoE, you do half damage if you miss. So if take an automatic weapon, you can do AoE damage with a -5 to hit penalty (-2 if you brace yourself first). You can also do 2 extra dice of damage for an additional -5 penalty if you have the burst fire feat. So if you have a gun with 3d12 damage like we have on top of our truck, and take that feat, you would do 5d12 damage if you hit. Of course, at a -10, you pretty much only hit on a 20. But if you don't hit, you still do 5d12/2 damage in a 2 by 2 AoE for an estimated value of 16.25 damage each turn, without ever having to worry about missing. And if you roll a 20 you do 10d12 instead for an average of 65 damage. There are feats to increase the AoE, and you can probably find some feats that increase your damage even further if you ignore the penalties to hit around the books.
Only disadvantage: If someone has evasion, you do nothing at all.
Sidenote, i am pretty sure that everyone should take a level in Scout to get Evasion. Totally unrelated to the whole situation.
|
Wait you guys have a truck now?
|
A green van with a big ass turret on top, a sith's space ship and a combined drug den/studio. Still struggling with that broadcasting satellite though.
|
I actually have come up with a plan to that regard, since going there and shooting everyone doesn't work that well apparently.
|
So, i just bought shitloads of FATE stuff once again. I am not quite sure why i keep doing this as i already have a backlog of stuff that i haven't even slightly played yet, but whatever.
http://bundleofholding.com/index/current
And totally unrelated i have a genius plan that will totally net us a bigass communications satellite. There is absolutely no chance of anything going wrong.
|
Does it involve pretending to be doctors sent to inspect the food supply of a random ION cannon?
|
Iron Edda: War of Metal & Bone (retail $15): Tracy Barnett's new Nordic-mecha fantasy setting of dwarven Destroyers, Runescribed heroes, and brave human warriors Bonebonded to giant skeletons. Will you dine with the gods in Valhalla, or dance with the dishonored dead?
^Would totally play this
|
Also, who the f pays $30+ for a random 1 book Fate-core system campaign setting?
On another note, we should totally play something located in Freeport, too (but not using Fate :D).
|
|
w0w fite me 1v1 ill bash yer ead in
|
Wot the fok did ye just say 2 me m8? i dropped out of newcastle primary skool im the sickest bloke ull ever meet & ive nicked ova 300 chocolate globbernaughts frum tha corner shop. im trained in street fitin' & im the strongest foker in tha entire newcastle gym. yer nothin to me but a cheeky lil bellend w/ a fit mum & fakebling. ill waste u and smash a fokin bottle oer yer head bruv, i swer 2 christ. ya think u can fokin run ya gabber at me whilst sittin on yer arse behind a lil screen? think again wanka. im callin me homeboys rite now preparin for a proper scrap. A roomble thatll make ur nan sore jus hearin about it. yer a waste bruv. me crew be all over tha place & ill beat ya to a proper fokin pulp with me fists wanka. if i aint satisfied w/ that ill borrow me m8s cricket paddle & see if that gets u the fok out o' newcastle ya daft kunt. if ye had seen this bloody fokin mess commin ye might a' kept ya gabber from runnin. but it seems yea stupid lil twat, innit? ima shite fury & ull drown in it m8. ur ina proper mess knob.
|
are you kidding me you little piece of shit i’ll have you know i graduated top of my politics class and i’ve been involved in privilege checking with over 150 confirmed political demonstrations i’m trained in conflict resolution and i was the most oppressed person in my entire upper middle class high school you are nothing to me but another cultural appropriator i will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which have never been seen on this side of the 49th parallel mark my words you think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the internet think again fucker, as we speak i’m checking with my anarcho-communist analyst brigade for your location so you better be prepared to deal with some molotov cocktails and angry feminists flying through your window yOU’RE FUCKING DEAD CHERRY! i can be anywhere at any time and i can kill you in over seven hundred ways and that’s just with me boring you to death while i talk about privilege not only am i extensively trained in hotline management but i have access to an entire arsenal of sociological articles to prove my point and i will use them to wipe your fucking face off the earth you little shit if only you had known what oppressed retribution your cultural appropriation would unleash then maybe you would have held your fucking tongue but you couldn’t you’re fucking dead kiddo
|
Ok, so as you might have noticed, i got a bit annoyed yesterday by the first half of the game. After having some time to think now, i would like to clarify what exactly bothered me there.
The obvious thing is that i just don't find aquiring money for gear to be a particularly interesting goal, and would rather be doing other more interesting stuff instead. Having some of that is not really problematic, but we basically spent the first 3 hours doing that instead of things that are motivated by some sort of interesting goal (Like stealing a broadcasting satellite or something along those lines), which on a usual day would have been most of the session basically farming money for gear instead of pursuing actual character goals.
Usually i would just lobby for not doing that, but in this system that does not seem to be a possibility, as every one of our characters basically needs ~3500 creds worth of gear to be roughly half as efficient in a combat as the average dude we fight. And fighting will be something we do no matter what, so if we show up without armor and with a 3d4 blaster pistol, that is not gonna end well against the guy with 20 reflex defense, a +9 to hit and 4d8+4 points of AoE damage.
Now, it is obvious that after we had lost all our gear, we needed some way to gain money. I agree that the cratestealing wasn't that interesting of a way to achieve that, but in this case it would have saved me a lot of frustration if the abduction of the guy from the bar would have just netted us enough money to kit us out reasonably well, instead of 80% of the money randomly disappearing for inexplicable reasons, which lead to a situation where after 2 money-making schemes and two hours of play we had roughly half the money we needed to be not totally shit at everything. Which lead to the frustrated "Ok lets just shoot random guys and get this over with".
So what i am asking for is for Lucas to be a bit less stingy with the money when we obviously NEED that money to even try to achieve the goal we have set for ourselves. I also promise not to abuse that to buy a stardestroyer or some other ridiculous stuff.
Some of this also ties into my problems with the system in general. I think it is very clear that i prefer more narrative game systems, and those where character creation is less about "ok, i take this and this and this to be as effective as possible" and more about "Ok, i want to be good at this, average at that and bad at that other thing". So less having to game the system to be just generally MORE effective, and more just having to define WHAT you are effective at with everyone having similar powerlevels, but strengths in different areas.
In this game there is the added problem of everyone just being plain better than us. I generally assume that we as characters are among the more competent actors in our direct vicinity. After all, that is why we play these characters and not the guy who cleans the broomcloset. But after the first session pretty much any enemy we fought who actually has a gun, even random gangbangers on the streets, just has better stats than we do in every respect, and the only reason we sometimes win is that they deliberately make the worst possible tactical choices. I think it would feel a lot better if they had statistics similar to what we can reasonably have, or maybe even below ours from time to time if they are really just the most average boring dude, but made smarter combat decisions (Like not trying to first bring all of us down to 1 hp and then aiming for the guy that is hardest to hit). It is just very weird that the best way to fight is apparently to hire NPCs to do the fighting, since they are so much better at it than we are.
Another point of critique is the very...classical experience system. You get experience when you kill stuff, and pretty much mostly when you kill stuff (Though i think Lucas has changed that a bit in the last session), and even then you only get a small amount of it.
I know that my whining about the system is getting annoying, and i was also harping on Lucas a bit much. Basically, i greatly enjoy all of the parts of this game where we don't get influenced by the game system, and i think Lucas does a great job at giving us a big world in which to achieve our goals, and in reacting to what we do. It is just that every time we hit the actual game part (as opposed to the roleplaying part) of the game, i find the experience to be frustrating and annoying. And the requirements of that game part ooze out into the roleplaying part of the game from time to time too, like they did last session.
Part of that might just be my preference for more rules-light systems. In my opinion, the best system is one that gives you the absolute minimum of rules required to adjudicate actions, and preferably also adds systems that give you neat ideas for playing your role, not one that is as complicated as possible and is basically a knowledge test which it gives you the illusion of choice, but really you need to choose this, this and this otherwise you are simply worse. Because in those systems i can just google the correct answer and be another completely soulless identical character. That might be fine in an MMO, but it is not really what i want out of an RPG.
|
We had a bit of this during Jack's campaign too, and I think I said this back then. I never mind if the goal is simply to get money or equipment if that is what we need, because that can be achieved in so many interesting ways if we choose to. That's kind of what this is for Wek and Akal anyway, get a show to get rich. Even if we go about getting money in the most boring way possible, interesting things can still evolve from that. We went with crate robbing, and were still presented with problems of electric containers and what not. Maybe we could have spotted a camera lense on the crate, and then realize someone had filmed us doing this and then they would come after us, or hire us for something sketchy. Maybe some self appointed law bringer swings down from the roofs and starts lecturing us on how all of Nashadar should strive to be good people, and that we should cease seizing boxes. It can't happen every time, and I'm not arguing that something like that should have definitely happened, but it could have if Lucas had gotten some cool idea. The kind of organic story that develops because of our actions and the DM's interactions with those actions is one of the coolest parts of playing to me. So our goal can be super boring and the story can still develop into something fun IMO.
Frustration was definitely showing and brought us to this "everything has to be rushed through because this isn't what we really want to do" state of mind, which is what made that first segment boring to me. If it's really that bad we could just choose a slow automated money making task and fast forward similarly to how we healed this session, but I would rather legitimately play.
I do agree that I would be scared of dying a lot more when broke in this campaign though, because of the strong opponents, so maybe Lucas has been a bit stingy with that in mind. When succeeding in capturing the satellite after using probably 8-10 force points in total solely to not die over two sessions maybe it's time to consider if the entire campaign changes and we become millionaires with entirely different sets of goals and problems. However shortlived that would be. You know Jalazar would mostly buy useless shit, and you could probably easily get him drunk and tempt him with all manner of sketchy scams intended to lose him money in hilarious ways. Hell he might just buy two star destroyers and then crash them into each other to get good footage for our show. Akal would probably want to invest in equipment, especially since that is what this campaign is basically training us to do as players with these hard enemies. Maybe he'd buy a fast smuggler like ship of his own that would sooner or later get shot up, or maybe invest in some smuggling operation that could go horribly wrong. I mean whatever we do it shouldn't be that hard to take things away from us again, or upgrade the difficulty if we do decide to upgrade ourselves.
It does seem clear that millionaires in space isn't what Lucas had intended, so maybe it throws out too much of what he enjoys about the game if we are rich, but realizing that we aren't going to get much back from the invested time and blood into the satellite really made it easy for us to just blow that shit up out of spite towards the network guy. Now we have bounties on our heads, and awesome satellite explosion footage for our show, so hopefully we can have some fun with that. I guess we need to find another way to reach the masses though. Maybe we do go for some sort of spacernet based DIY way of broadcasting, but we would definitely need to advertise it. Maybe enslave a web developer to spruce it up as well. Hmm.
Anyway, I think we can still have fun playing this... Right?
|
Meh, getting passive aggressively bitched at by someone for two hours is pretty annoying. n_n
I don't feel like writing loads of text, but I can't do anything to placate Sven's quarrels with this game. Of course, if you want to play super heroes in gleaming plot armour who run around solving Fermat's last theorem while beating up bad guys by the dozen, I can deliver that. It's just not even remotely interesting as opposed to them meeting real challenged, struggling to survive and striving to carve out their own niche in the world. I find it much more logical if PCs aren't suddenly three times as competent at everything just by virtue of being PCs.
Now I'd like to remind you that I also influence the world a fair bit. I'm not actively looking to kill and punish heroes. If you went and did something interesting instead of choosing to raid random boxes the opposition wouldn't have consisted out of battle hardened mercenaries. And yes, maybe you should've considered doing something that doesn't exclusively involve punching people in the face. Maybe Akal and Darmillo trying to sneak into the the weapons cache of some random gang while Jalazar distracts them with his incredible drinking abilities and wek poses as his body guard. (Honestly, this is what bothered me the most. I can't magically make something like that interesting, but I also don't want to say no if that's what the party choses to do that. If you then get annoyed because you got bored, that's really nothing I have any influence over.)
As for the combat, I don't understand most of the complaints. Other people in the world are just that, people. You aren't magically better, and really you aren't any worse either. You have all the advantages that PCs usually have (freedom to make plans, preparation, better combat tactics, etc). Do you really think it'd be interesting to fight against a bunch of guys with 15hp that die in one shot, do 2d4 damage and only hit on a 20? From all the encounters you've fought in so far, you've only lost one, and according to both methods I've used to calculate their strength, they have been beatable.
|
|
Yeah, i guess i was pretty annoying, sorry about that.
And we did something interesting. The crate thing was obviously not it, but then we kidnapped a guy from a restaurant in a scene that i think was not too bad. And in my opinion at that point that should have been it. Just have that guy pay us enough so we can get on with the stuff we actually want to be doing. Which the 18000 that you rolled would have pretty much been. But then for some inexplicable reason we only get 4k and 14k randomly disappear in "banking fees". Basically that was the point that frustrated me the most. I was under the assumption "ok, now we have enough money, now we can get going." And at that point, it was still at the point where the amount of stuff we did for the boring goal of just making money was acceptable. And Bam "Yeah ok, now do three other similar things and maybe you can finally be equipped to do something you want to do, because 3/4 of your money randomly disappeared for no apparent reason"
And it is not necessarily that we need to be superpowered monsters. On the other hand, not everyone should just be way better than we are. From my point of view, the most sensible choice now is to just always hire a gamorrean. That guy has stats that are so far removed from anything i can ever achieve that it is absurdly silly. At which point i am wondering "Well, if i always hire the gamorrean, why don't i just play that guy instead". The only reason we won that fight yesterday was because we also had stupidly overpowered NPCs on our side. If we had gone in there alone we would just have been raped even harder than before. It just seems that we need to make this game into NPC fights NPC, because all NPCs have much better stats then we do.
And regarding your second point, well, we are for once playing a rather direct group. I see that you want us to make really complex plans, but in this case that is just not what this group does, just because of the composition of characters. Wek doesn't really do "complex plan", neither does Akal, Dalmillo i don't really have a good read on yet, and with Jalazar being the only one who really does any planning whatsoever, those plans tend to involve an excessive amount of violence as opposed to finesse. Basically, this group is more along the lines of a Rorschach, while i think you would prefer an Ozymandias.
|
^meh, sorry for getting annoyed. the other 80% from the kidnapping thing disappeared because that's what the book said to do. n_n
Again though, I don't think everyone is a lot better than you are. It's just that the gammorean was lvl 12 or something.
|
|
|
|