I've seen games where you spend skill points 1:1 but later you spend XP in increasing amounts depending on skill level, and it just encourages maxing out a couple skills at the start. If you want people to have well-rounded characters you should give them a sum of character points to spend exactly as they would if they gained them during play.
I mean to say only that if you have a 1:1 point buy at first and then during play skills cost more to improve if higher, people will naturally have more powerful characters if they spend their initial points on only a few skills. That is, if you have one character who spreads their points out, and another who focuses on a few, after one adventure the focused one will be able to pick up the skills that the generalist took - but the generalist will take several adventures to reach the skill level of the focused one in his chosen skills. Only a very sensitive person would describe that as min-maxing. It's the same as not wanting to create a character who spends a lot of points in Cultural Sciences, Domestic Arts, and Literary Arts.
Secondly, if we're talking about role-playing, then yes there's no reason your character should develop differently before chargen than he develops after chargen.
Regarding the intro, it's a little sad. He goes to great lengths to try to say his game isn't inspired by D&D, despite language like "prime requisites", pig-faced Orcs, basically D&D stats shuffled around and renamed (plus Perception, and a Magic-user stat and a Cleric stat), and Saves. The XP gain system is basically Karma from Shadowrun 2E. Assets are just 3E D&D feats, and the Asset/Liability system is identical to Edges/Flaws from SR2 and various others. Armor reducing damage is present in Hackmaster, and semi-ablative armor in Car Wars. The death spiral and wound track is very similar to SR2. The central success mechanic is Car Wars and GURPS.
In general the intro is very carebear and "roleplay over rules" which some people enjoy. I do not. If you just want to roleplay you don't seen a rulebook. If you want the barest scent of rules to give legitimacy to your roleplaying, there are a lot of games out there. The GM advice at the back of the book basically amounts to "you can let players avoid your carefully crafted plot, but if you want to railroad them, here are a ton of great ideas on how to do it".
Regarding the game rules, I see a problem with certain "skills" which are really just applications of raw stats such as "Strength Feat" (STR) and "Cool" (WIL). Really these should be straight rolls using the stat, but that's unbalanced because everything else uses a skill. So we have a weird situation where you can effectively get better at basic Strength and Willpower tasks, but not basic Intelligence tasks - because there are no basic Intelligence tasks. It's a fix, but it's a kludgy one.
The combat styles are a nice idea but marred by Kung Fu sensibilities jammed into an otherwise Western-style game. The author made up too many words. And it's not because this is an alien and wondrous game world because we sure do have an ice land called Nordia.
The difficulty guidelines on p.40 are too vague. You need to include some examples of, for example, high wind, fog, a wet and smooth stone wall, etc. It wouldn't take up much more space but would give a lot more guidance to the GM. Again, if we're just throwing the GM to the wolves and saying "It's your game, make it your own!" then why did he bother downloading and/or buying a rulebook.
It says there's no Breathing skill, for example, but there sure is a sweeping and mopping skill, which suggests it's important enough to have people roll for it.
The critical success and failure rules (2 or 12 on 2d6, meaning 1 in 36 chance) have some weird outcomes. For example, 100 athletes stand ready to leap as far as they can. They all have identical AGI and Athletics skill (evidently, jumping is an entirely Agility-based task and Strength plays absolutely no part). The starting pistol goes off, and they leap. How far will they go per margin point? This is a silly question that will never come up, so the rules don't seem to offer any guidance. But we do know that about 3 of these people at random will spring twice as far as the next-tier competitors. Bewildered, they return to their starting positions. Going again, three completely different athletes are now favored by the gods and leap twice as far as their next-longest competitors. Scientists and magicians study the phenomenon for centuries and can only come to the conclusion that not enough serious game design thought and playtesting went into this book.
Entanglement and grappling, connected with the size modifier to hit, seem to make it extremely easy for a human to grapple a larger, say 9', target. Am I missing something? Scale is also poorly defined and, like ad hoc difficulty, needs a table of good examples as guidance for the GM.
Falling damage of 6 WR for a 30' fall onto bare stone (or whatever surface - no guidance is given for landing on soft surfaces or what the default surface is). This means the character makes an Athletics roll against an attack with no success margin, and the character will almost certainly succeed, meaning ... no falling damage because it counts as a miss? Let's assume I'm misreading or there's a typo, and that it's actually supposed to be 6 damage for the 30' fall. But you add SHRUG to the damage, meaning the damage will always exceed SHRUG, so any fall of 5' or more will always cause at least 1 Wound. And for characters of SHRUG = 1, a fall will never be lethal unless damage total is 7x SHRUG, meaning at least 30' for SHRUG=1 and 60' for SHRUG=2. And that's just not well thought-out or playtested.
Dropping prone counts as an action? Firing missiles into melee has no chance to strike unwanted targets like friends? Striking the head is at a penalty, when most attacks tend to strike the head and arms? Non-lethal attacks must strike the head? And they ignore the damage capability of the weapon and armor on the head?
Ship stats are wonky. Galleons are equal or worse than Brigantines in all ways - why buy a Galleon? Perhaps because there's more cargo space, or it's more seaworthy - things not given stats in the game. Similarly a Sloop is much better than a Dhow.
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Topic: Arrowflight: Island Nations - OOC Thread (Read 22010 times)