Alternate Core Documents

[uSea]

Actually there is supposed to be nothing to stop most Automatic weapons from firing a Single Shot (with the exceptions being the Zebra Rifle, the Minigun, and the Gatling Caster).

But of course no one would do that right now since the AP cost is the same for Single, Burst (3x Single with no penalties), and Full Auto.

I propose listing the AP cost for each fire type in the weapon doc. E.g. [20 / 25 / 30] [Sin/Bst/Full] (the abbreviations could use some work)



(Note that the AP cost listed for Full Auto is the same as their AP cost is right now)

This would actually help Automatic weapons by making them a bit more flexible (without boosting Full Auto's potential damage).

What do people think of a change like this?

[TyrannisUmbra]

That actually looks amazing. It's simple, intuitive, and shows at a glance which weapons can and can't fire in which modes.

EDIT: Not to mention, doing it like that should please just about everyone, while at the same time leaving the costs flexible and individually balanceable. If we do go with this, I'd stick a note in the main doc under Burst and Full Auto saying something like "Note: AP cost for this attack is listed with the AP cost of weapons capable of firing in burst/full auto."

[Kkat]

Having just introduced a massive change to the accuracy penalties for Rate of Fire weapons, we are not going to implement any further changes to these weapons until significant playtesting has occurred. Please understand that just because we have been willing to look at one revision regarding these weapons does not mean that it is open-season for a nerf-frenzy free-for-all.

I've talked to uSea, and uSea's chart expansion idea above is going to be held in reserve as a potential future change. We are aware of its merits and flaws, and it might be a worthy addition, but we need to see how the current changes play out first.

Except you shouldn't be lowering the AP costs to compensate, except on a select few maybe, because the majority of these weapons, as calculated multiple times in this thread...

I'm going to be painfully honest here. The words missing here are "by me". There are people we go to for trustworthy mathematical analysis. I'm sorry, but you are not one of them.

Actually there is supposed to be nothing to stop most Automatic weapons from firing a Single Shot (with the exceptions being the Zebra Rifle, the Minigun, and the Gatling Caster).

If you make automatic weapons capable of firing single shot, you will have to increase the base damage of all these weapons to be on par with other weapons of their tier. Right now, they have super-low damage ratings for their tier because they are balanced based on ROF. If we turn firing ROF into an action that has both an increased accuracy penalty and bonus AP costs, then the single shot becomes these weapons' standard attack, and they all need to have their damage significantly upgraded.[

[Ghostpony]

As he discussion of ROF and full auto weapons has consumed this board till nothing else is being noticed I feel the need to put an oar in. TyrannisUmbra given how guns work in RL this argument that they need adjustment based of ROF is purely IMHO a waste of time. With a full auto weapon its almost impossible to get a single round fired. The guns mechanism just works to fast. It is *not* faster to fire a single bullet even if the gun has the option. Not for Burst fire. For Full auto most such guns have very high AP cost to signify that your holding the trigger down to squirt all that lead out. Even then by most game systems I have played the rate of fire fs time used to fire it is *low*.

Just why are you arguing this so heavily? Its already been clearly pointed out that high ROF weapons have some big weaknesses. Wasn't it you who was complaining that one of the adjustments would ninja nerf the full auto weapons?

[Kkat]

Just why are you arguing this so heavily? Its already been clearly pointed out that high ROF weapons have some big weaknesses. Wasn't it you who was complaining that one of the adjustments would ninja nerf the full auto weapons?

Actually, that was me. TyrannisUmbra wants to nerf the full auto weapons.

With a full auto weapon its almost impossible to get a single round fired. The guns mechanism just works to fast. It is *not* faster to fire a single bullet even if the gun has the option. Not for Burst fire.

You bring up an extremely solid point against giving weapons with ROF different AP costs for different attack types. The Gatling Caster and Minigun (which have the "spin up" issue) are both Full-Auto Only (no burst fire) and have variable ROF to reflect this. (Keep in mind that at full ROF, even in the hooves of a grand master gunner, these weapons are shredding the landscape almost as much as they are hitting their target.)

[SilverlightPony]

The thing is, IRL, a lot of military weapons have selective fire, meaning they can be switched between some combination of semi-automatic, burst-fire, and fully-automatic. Obviously a gatling gun wouldn't have this option, but if we're going for realism, most other military-type weapons should -- in which case, those that are capable of selecting semi-automatic mode should be balanced around semi-automatic fire, with accuracy and AP penalties for burst- or full-auto fire modes.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Except you shouldn't be lowering the AP costs to compensate, except on a select few maybe, because the majority of these weapons, as calculated multiple times in this thread...

I'm going to be painfully honest here. The words missing here are "by me". There are people we go to for trustworthy mathematical analysis. I'm sorry, but you are not one of them.

No, those words are not missing, because multiple people have made the same calculations.

If you have the mathematical data to support your view that automatic weapons are /not/ killing things in two rounds, then by all means, share it.

I don't want to sound like I'm goading you or anything, I am genuinely interested to see what kind of data you're seeing.

Actually there is supposed to be nothing to stop most Automatic weapons from firing a Single Shot (with the exceptions being the Zebra Rifle, the Minigun, and the Gatling Caster).

If you make automatic weapons capable of firing single shot, you will have to increase the base damage of all these weapons to be on par with other weapons of their tier. Right now, they have super-low damage ratings for their tier because they are balanced based on ROF. If we turn firing ROF into an action that has both an increased accuracy penalty and bonus AP costs, then the single shot becomes these weapons' standard attack, and they all need to have their damage significantly upgraded.

They're currently balanced based on RoF because of the lack of a meaningful difference between fire modes, as uSea has said. When it costs the same thing to fire one shot as 3, with no penalties, then for balance's sake you're forced to balance in a way to limit the high-end damage -- the entire reason why we've had this discussion in the first place. Now that there's a penalty for full-auto, it's actually possible to shift the focus down and look at how burst performs, etc.

It is *not* faster to fire a single bullet even if the gun has the option. Not for Burst fire. For Full auto most such guns have very high AP cost to signify that your holding the trigger down to squirt all that lead out. Even then by most game systems I have played the rate of fire fs time used to fire it is *low*.

When you're talking in terms of fractions of turns, yes, they do. Each turn is 6 seconds long, and given that you can expect AP pools to be around 70AP, that means that each point of AP is roughly 1/12 of a second. In terms of RoF of weapons, for example, your standard Assault Rifle costs 35 AP and has an RoF of 3 -- this means that you can explicitly isolate roughly how much AP each shot is worth. In this case, because Full-auto expends 2x the amount of ammo, you're firing 6 shots in 3 seconds -- and as it turns out, each shot roughly amounts to 6 AP per bullet, time-wise, if each shot takes the same "time" to happen (which is doesn't necessarily, but that's a whole extra can of worms).

Even the minigun has a 'measurable' AP-per-bullet of ~3.

Even just measuring RL weapons, all weapons have a measurable rate of fire. It takes more time to fire 30 rounds than to fire 10 rounds -- 3 times as long, in fact.

[Kkat]

I don't want to sound like...

You sound like you are attempting to continue a conversation that (at least for the next few months of playtesting) is over.

Move on. Or move this to the Additional Rules Sets thread. Please.

[Kkat]

Getting back on track by looking at some old ideas left unresolved:

I suggest the following, rather generic trait.

Specialization: Chose one or a few closely related applications of a skill. Increase that skill by +5 (or more in some cases if GM allows it) Any other applications of that skill is done against its base value. This trait can be removed anytime the character improves the skill, removing both the bonus and restriction.

I think a simple +5 is rather innoffensive and encourage good rp more than anything else. I suspect that players simply trying to break the game wont give this a second look.

I do like the idea of a specialization-style trait. However, as Viewing Glass suggests later, +5 seems low for a trait. There was mention of giving a penalty for other uses of the skill. Perhaps +10 for a specific use, -5 for other uses? Something else? And to make the trait more significant, should the bonus from this trait count for meeting difficulties? And should the bonus allow the character to have an effective skill rating above 100% for purposes of determining degrees of success? Also, should this be restricted to knowledge uses (as the original version of this trait suggested) or be allowed for other application?. For example, somepony whose Science is specialized in Hacking?

Alternately, should we make it a perk as Ghostpony suggests?

I think the action description already clears that up.

Use Items: Using an item from your inventory, such as a healing potion or chem, costs 20 AP if you have hands, the Tail Trick perk or telekinesis. Otherwise, it costs 30 AP.

So from the general rules Tail Trick won't be of much use if you already have hands or telekinesis. (It would still give you an extra limb to use for when your hands were otherwise occupied or you couldn't use your magic for some reason.) I'd suggest that players work something out with their GM if they wanted to combine those abilities (like for a gun slinging Griffin who wanted to use 3 pistols at once, or something.)

As for the Griffin's race description, it should probably updated to say that Griffins have a reduced AP cost to use items, since having hands is already accounted for in the Use Item action.

I've made the change in the Griffin's race description. Thank you, uSea!

My suggestion for Monsters of Unusual Size: For every size category above 0, have the monster have 50% more base HP. Size 1 would have 150% HP, Size 2, 200% HP, Size 3, 250% HP, Size 4, 300% HP, Size 5, 350% HP. This helps mitigates PCs with the bonuses they gain to hit a target murderizing the massive monster. As for decreasing the amount of HP for monsters below size 0, I would say no. They already give PCs a penalty to hit them, and have a bonus to hit PCs.

Did we get any further with this idea?
And the idea is to multiply the base HP granted by Threat Level, correct? So a yellow threat (normally 50 + (END x Level) HP), that is size 3 would have (50 x 2.5) + (END x Level) HP... or 125 + (END x Level) HP?

Doesn't sound too bad, honestly. I would recommend against reducing HP of smaller creatures though. They seem squishy enough already.

Star-Crossed Friendship

I really like this idea. There are too few traits that are not geared towards racial special abilities or combat, and having one that plays off of a character's virtue is an extra bonus. However, I think that the benefit is too high. For obvious reasons, the go-to example is a group of six friends. A +60 bonus seems way too high, especially when +30 is the maximum net bonus in most circumstances. I would either reduce the bonus to +5% per friend or restrict the bonus to +10% for each such friend you are acting on behalf of.

Were there any objections to this write-up? Does it need more work? If not, I think it's worth possibly adding this to the system.

A lot of places likely didn't see the need for spell wards as the highest form of magic they'd likely seen the zebras utilize was cloaking and the zebras being the enemy and all was who you would be considering when making your defenses.

Also I think it would be a great idea to tie an alarm of some sort into the wards. No use putting them up if someone can break through without waking you up.

I like the idea of an "alarm" ward of some sort. The trick with that is that wards would be put into surfaces and effect things attempting to pass through the surface rather than over it. So how would we an alarm ward work without breaking that rule?

Also, I'm thinking that the time for setting up wards (with the exception of the possible alarm ward) would be in the range of an hour per level of the ward. How does this sound? I do agree with the assertion by Viewing Glass and TyrannisUmbra that making the spell last weeks is undesirable from a fun standpoint, although very appropriate from a conceptual standpoint. So I am inclined to make only the expert versions last weeks, and make permanent wards only possible through a Great and Powerful version of the spells. Making the Great and Powerful version also require either a gemstone of high Rarity or a surface made of non-degrading material (such as a Stable walls or a clipboard) would also explain why every building in the wasteland isn't fully warded.

[Viewing_Glass]

Getting back on track by looking at some old ideas left unresolved:

I suggest the following, rather generic trait.

Specialization: Chose one or a few closely related applications of a skill. Increase that skill by +5 (or more in some cases if GM allows it) Any other applications of that skill is done against its base value. This trait can be removed anytime the character improves the skill, removing both the bonus and restriction.

I think a simple +5 is rather innoffensive and encourage good rp more than anything else. I suspect that players simply trying to break the game wont give this a second look.

I do like the idea of a specialization-style trait. However, as Viewing Glass suggests later, +5 seems low for a trait. There was mention of giving a penalty for other uses of the skill. Perhaps +10 for a specific use, -5 for other uses? Something else? And to make the trait more significant, should the bonus from this trait count for meeting difficulties? And should the bonus allow the character to have an effective skill rating above 100% for purposes of determining degrees of success? Also, should this be restricted to knowledge uses (as the original version of this trait suggested) or be allowed for other application?. For example, somepony whose Science is specialized in Hacking?

Alternately, should we make it a perk as Ghostpony suggests?

Hrm... I like the idea of having it be a trait that gives +10 to a specific usage of a skill (Such as bartering with spirits for barter, or inventing with an Earth Pony's special talent) and to allow it to break a skill cap. The trait should also be subject to GM Approval.

My suggestion for Monsters of Unusual Size: For every size category above 0, have the monster have 50% more base HP. Size 1 would have 150% HP, Size 2, 200% HP, Size 3, 250% HP, Size 4, 300% HP, Size 5, 350% HP. This helps mitigates PCs with the bonuses they gain to hit a target murderizing the massive monster. As for decreasing the amount of HP for monsters below size 0, I would say no. They already give PCs a penalty to hit them, and have a bonus to hit PCs.

Did we get any further with this idea?
And the idea is to multiply the base HP granted by Threat Level, correct? So a yellow threat (normally 50 + (END x Level) HP), that is size 3 would have (50 x 2.5) + (END x Level) HP... or 125 + (END x Level) HP?

Doesn't sound too bad, honestly. I would recommend against reducing HP of smaller creatures though. They seem squishy enough already.

Ah! I was actually going to run the formula as Total HP x 2 for each size category above 0. So, the size three yellow threat would have ((50 + (END x level)) x 8). This means that, at level 1, a threat yellow level with 7 END has a total HP of 456.

As for reducing the HP of lower level creatures... eh. That would take some playtesting. -10 and -20 to hit can be kind of a really, really good boost for them.

A lot of places likely didn't see the need for spell wards as the highest form of magic they'd likely seen the zebras utilize was cloaking and the zebras being the enemy and all was who you would be considering when making your defenses.

Also I think it would be a great idea to tie an alarm of some sort into the wards. No use putting them up if someone can break through without waking you up.

I like the idea of an "alarm" ward of some sort. The trick with that is that wards would be put into surfaces and effect things attempting to pass through the surface rather than over it. So how would we an alarm ward work without breaking that rule?

Also, I'm thinking that the time for setting up wards (with the exception of the possible alarm ward) would be in the range of an hour per level of the ward. How does this sound? I do agree with the assertion by Viewing Glass and TyrannisUmbra that making the spell last weeks is undesirable from a fun standpoint, although very appropriate from a conceptual standpoint. So I am inclined to make only the expert versions last weeks, and make permanent wards only possible through a Great and Powerful version of the spells. Making the Great and Powerful version also require either a gemstone of high Rarity or a surface made of non-degrading material (such as a Stable walls or a clipboard) would also explain why every building in the wasteland isn't fully warded.

Agreed.