Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Toaster]

_{do we have to use a d6?}

[syvarris]

@Nik

Ahh, yes, this is where the mandatory abstraction comes in.  Historically, yes, people had to actually have some reasonable method of preparing a dyn bonus.  There's two problems with having specific things:
A.Some people will game the system and just say things like "ready my rifle", which is equivalent to the current system, but penalizes fair players.
B.EXO people are forced to do that, becuase there's no real situation specific preparation you need to do with Exo.  Thus, it makes EXO even more OP if people play fair, because fair CON people ca 't prepare a bonus in every situation.

In general, most skills could benefit from a moment of preparation.  A surgeon might want to consider if any afteries are near where he's gonna cut (Or just suppress those violent urges to hack in willy-nilly).  A coder should consider what the overall structure and function of his software is going to be, before he starts.  A rifleman would assume a more steady stance before firing.

[Nikitian]

Maybe. Yeah, maybe you're right. (Or maybe Exo people should live without preparation bonuses, for once, if there is no sensible explanation for what exactly they do - maybe Piecewise should provide us slightly more setting-specific knowledge to get ideas for Exo preparation; though it should probably remain parallel with Uncon, so either neither can prepare, or both.
Also, aren't certain 'preparation' actions implied with user's level of skill? That seasoned soldier likely wouldn't ever shoot from an unsteady stance if he can help it, unlike some green recruit, so it might be better abstracted away as implied with skill level.)

What I am implying, still, is that 'taking a turn to prepare' makes sense only in a narrow amount of cases. There happen to be turns when so much time passes that both preparation and action could happen; and then there are turns so quick that not even the action itself could happen, much less any sort of preparation.
So, I'd rather propose this (in spirit of the new edition, as I'm currently grokking it):

• Allow preparation, which comes with a straight (non-dynamic) bonus to the skill/attribute (not roll); the size of bonus depends on specifics of the action itself - so creative ways of preparing would be awarded, and boring/not-so-useful restricted.
• Preparation takes in-game time; if there is reasonably enough time on hand, preparation could be done in the same turn as action - and, on the other hand, if there is no fair way to prepare in that amount of time, no preparation bonus for you.
• Preparation is an in-game action, not game mechanics abstraction, so no arbitrary restrictions can be applied - though the size of preparation bonus may decrease (possibly to the point of non-existance) if an unreasonable amount of simultaneous actions are taken.

I can see where the first might get bad for some players, so the exact amount is better arbitrated by GM - but I do want that 'brace the rifle on the sandbags, and train the sights on the door entrance, at center-of-mass level' gave slightly more bonus than the generic 'ready my rifle'; I might be grossly wrong here, however.

[Lenglon]

Last time I tried to non-abstract prepare an EXO bonus it immediately, directly, and quite literally killed me. That has left me with very little incentive to try it ever again.

[Xantalos]

Last time I tried to non-abstract prepare an EXO bonus it immediately, directly, and quite literally killed me. That has left me with very little incentive to try it ever again.

Oh, the sand incident?

[Hapah]

Haven't had a chance to weigh in yet but the new system looks interesting. Just needs a little fleshing out and some more discussion, is all.

_{do we have to use a d6?}

BLASPHEMER!

(It's a valid question, really)

[Empiricist]

Effects similar to the one she uses are actually available to players. Well, to one particular player in a certain circumstance.

Is that player still (somewhat) active? Or could it be someone who has been inactive for a while such as Grate or STEPHEN HAWKING?

[Dorsidwarf]

What happened to all the angry shouting people with guns who burst into the hallway out of R&D and arrested a guy? Did they just go away?

[Harry Baldman]

What happened to all the angry shouting people with guns who burst into the hallway out of R&D and arrested a guy? Did they just go away?

They went off to have lunch. If they come back and he's still down and waiting to be processed, they'll know he's either legit or incredibly desperate, and then they can let him into their house of fun.

[Kriellya]

@Syv, I didn't say the dyn bonus was bad in the current system. Quite the opposite, though saying that the bonus is good is entirely different from saying that the bonus is a perfect game mechanic. (it isn't)
I also agree with you that it is quite necessary in the *current* system.


My point was that in the proposed system, it can be easily replaced by a more active choice that doesn't cause players to waste time just so they can insure themselves against failure. They can choose to shoot the thing, and have that simple action be (relatively) safe. Or they could push it, go for broke, and risk greater penalties for failure. This is a much more interesting choice to make, rather than choosing whether or not to do nothing. Similarly, they could choose to perform an action carefully, as a modifier on the difficulty of the action. This could decrease progress rate and the side effects of a crit fail or overshoot. All of this choice in preparation, without having to spend a turn doing nothing. When your player is voluntarily doing nothing for any reason, there is a problem. Games live and die on action, so giving a bonus for inaction is a very bad idea.

And if you're worried about the system being abusable... Well, Nyras has a bat for dealing with these problems.



(( Also, since you hinged on it when it's besides the point, I'm using the word 'star' incorrectly here. One of the most common overshoot states of our pyro amps has been a massive heatup of an area, causing an explosion and usually destroying anything nearby. I usually call it a 'star', due to the cause of the explosion. It's the instant addition of high heat, which violently dissipates into the surrounding area. ))

[Radio Controlled]

So, kri, you basically propose that we have two (invisible) sliders:
One for potency (power of the action) and one for security (how safe is the action/chance for action to succeed). People with higher bonusses can push one slider more before sacrificing the other.

Aka a system with more direct risk vs reward in terms of difficulty of actions.

[Harry Baldman]

I find the dynamic bonus to be a perfectly sensible idea in theory, but I'd be the first to state that it probably gets abused way too much, especially in the case of space magic.

Kriellya's idea, as stated in the post above, seems more interesting, even if it's less 'fair' in the classical sense due to depending quite a bit on GM whimsy. It also would make actions way less gamey and more in line with the way they're written.

[Xantalos]

A big part of the reason I support this new system is that it makes dynamic bonuses not quite as necessary for unabashed minmaxer scum such as myself, though I'm sure this has been stated before at least 6 times. It always did seem kinda counterintuitive to me that becoming more skilled in a particular field of combat actually made you more susceptible to massively fucking up rather than more competent.
Course, I was fine with the old system because all the overshots were hilarious to watch, but being competent appeals to me as well, I must admit.

[Harry Baldman]

A big part of the reason I support this new system is that it makes dynamic bonuses not quite as necessary for unabashed minmaxer scum such as myself, though I'm sure this has been stated before at least 6 times. It always did seem kinda counterintuitive to me that becoming more skilled in a particular field of combat actually made you more susceptible to massively fucking up rather than more competent.
Course, I was fine with the old system because all the overshots were hilarious to watch, but being competent appeals to me as well, I must admit.

Perhaps now you can focus on competently doing hilarious things rather than hilariously doing competent things?

[Xantalos]

I should theoretically be able to pull a Forgotten Art and replace people's legs with pigs or clown heads if they piss me off now, so yes!