Alternate Core Documents

[Kkat]

Thank you for the advice. Yes, this was the right place. I'll pass on the suggestion to Ilushia (rules overmare) and Doubleclick (author of the combat rules).

In the meantime, a few of us are going to start looking at buffalo as a playable race and working up rules for shamanism.

[Kkat]

In preparation for shamanism...

The following change has been made to the racial section:

Zebra: Zebras can use alchemy and may learn zebra shamanism if they have the Shaman trait. Zebras can have a Special Talent.
Buffalo: Buffalo gain the Large Frame trait for free. They may take the Small Frame, gaining the benefits of both. (Small-framed buffalo are the size of a pony.) Buffalo may learn buffalo shamanism if they take the Shaman trait. Buffalo have double the normal base poison and radiation resistance (or the normal resistance if they have the Stable Dweller trait).

The following Trait has been added:

Shaman (Buffalo or Zebra only): You are a practitioner of buffalo or zebra shamanism. You start with a Spirit Affinity score equal to your (CHA / 2, rounded up). Note: Shamanism is still under development.

The following SPECIAL has been adjusted:

Charisma affects the disposition of all NPCs. Disposition is also affected somewhat by karma (most NPCs like good characters more), quests (doing a quest in a way an NPC likes can dramatically boost disposition), and roleplay (being a jerk in conversations can lower disposition). Charisma may also limit your ability to gain followers. Shamans start with a Spirit Affinity equal to (CHA / 2) rounded up. Charisma affects your Barter and Speech skills.

The following Skill has been adjusted:

The Barter skill is primarily used in the buying and selling of items, such as trading with a merchant or scavenger. This skill alters prices for for purchasing and selling items as shown below. Modifiers include factors such as item condition and NPC disposition. Barter is also the primary skill involved in shamanism. The governing SPECIAL for Barter is Charisma.

These rules are still being revised.

[Kkat]

As a bit if feedback though, the slam/buck/charge rules may need a little revising, especially the bit about the distance you knock them back and the damage taken when hitting an object. One of my player's level one character would technically have done over 2000 damage with a sneak attack + charge + buck combo! (Knocked him over 40 feet, but he hit a wall about 15 away, at about 80 damage for the initial attack it, so about 24*80ish damage in total!) Our ideas were to limit distance knocked back to 2*STR, and maybe have the damage dealt be 1d10 per 3-5 feet they had left to travel when they hit an object.

Got a response from Doubleclick:

On review, I fully admit that I failed with the wording of the knockback damage for Slams. The distance part is good - it's meant to allow the feel of what you see in the cartoon... My error was the amount of damage from hitting an object you were knocked back into. I'm honestly not sure what I was thinking on that. A more reasonable amount would be 2 pts. per remaining foot of distance left to travel...

Your mistake is that Buck is not supposed to get any bonus damage from a charge. The wording in Charge is explicit: "For any Slam, Tackle, or Flying Tackle immediately preceded by one or more consecutive Charge movements, add half the distance charged as damage." Those are the only combat maneuvers meant to benefit from it. Also, Slam and Buck inflict knockback through different mechanics, so of course mixing them will come out horribly unbalanced.

Armed with that, Ilushia and I will sit down with the rules for Slams and see if we can get a better write-up that avoids the confusion and issues you had.

[f1r3w4rr10r]

Hi! At first let me thank you for this great piece of work. It really helped me a lot.

One thing I didn't find in there though, was damage done by throwing characters with telekinesis. I might have read over it accidentily, though. But I guess it would work pretty similar to the knockback from Charge and other, similar actions.

[Kkat]

Major Revision!...

... of several of the combat actions. Specifically, we've reworked Charge, Buck, Flying Tackle, Slam and Tackle.

We've also added a new action: Dodging.

The Large Frame trait has been given a boost. This is partially in conjunction with the revision of the above combat actions, partially because many games don't bother with crippled limbs, and partially because buffalo need to be a little cooler.

[Kkat]

One thing I didn't find in there though, was damage done by throwing characters with telekinesis.

Telekinesis doesn't have any real force behind it. At best, it would be something like END + 1d10.

[radmelon]

Me and a couple of friends of mine are big fans of FO:E and Sunrise's tabletop rules (although we haven't actually used them yet), and were in the middle of trying to fix them when we found the updated version (which is awesome). One thing I noticed, though, is that in the Tiered Weapons List, there is nothing that causes shotgun damage to be reduced by armour, as far as I could tell. When I'm going to be running a game, in a while, I thought I'd simply make it so that buckshot triples effective DT, but was wondering if this would be officially addressed. Great work on the game though, I'm really impressed.

[SilverlightPony]

One thing I noticed, though, is that in the Tiered Weapons List, there is nothing that causes shotgun damage to be reduced by armour, as far as I could tell. When I'm going to be running a game, in a while, I thought I'd simply make it so that buckshot triples effective DT,...

I can kinda see that if you're using the basic tiered list. In the "advanced" item doc (by TenMihara), shotgun damage is rolled for each individual pellet in the shotshell, and DT is applied to each pellet separately, so the triple-DT thing is unnecessary.

[radmelon]

Yeah, but there is no such thing for the tiered weapons. I suppose it would be possible to just use the advanced list weapon's stats instead of the tiered list weapon's stats, but it would be nice to have it somewhat standardized.

[uSea]

You bring up a very good point Radmelon.

The goal behind making shotguns one big hit was so that they would be different to automatic weapons, which already filled the role of doing lots and lots of small hits. But I actually really like your idea to have buckshot triple effective DT. We'll have a play around with the numbers and see what works.