Alternate Core Documents

[uSea]

I thought that might have been the case for a lot of the changes, damage results being too high once the math was done. Are you planning on adding the Rare quality to the Auto Axe, as it is only seen in the story in Fillydelphia or with the Steel Rangers?

Yep, Rare makes a lot of sense for it. We could also think about adding the weaker Steel Saw variant as a less powerful weapon that the slaves were given, but that's just an idea.


About the Riot Shotgun, I'd previously thought that the general consensus was that it could do too much damage and needed to be toned down, but what you've said brings to light a misconception of mine. When thinking about how much DT a target might have I would always think of the Deathclaws in New Vegas which had a DT of 15 and I thought that was about as high as it got. I remember reading something about Deathclaws and Securitrons initially being bugged to have twice as much DT as they were supposed to and I assumed that the Claws and Bots had the same DT after it was fixed... when in actual fact the Mk I Securitrons have 20 and the Mk II's have 30.

With that in mind I think we can afford to let the Riot Shotgun be pretty awesome in the right situations and I'd like to take on board the ideas voiced by Fridge and others to swap the Riot Shotgun with the Hunting Shotgun. Then we could add Fo3's Combat Shotgun in at T4 as the high-end version (people will need to check my numbers if it gets added, the Combat Shotgun was my favourite weapon in Fo3 and I am bound to be bias towards it.)

I might take another look at the faster melee weapons actually, in particular the 20AP ones that have a harder time reaching their 'sweet spot'. Warp is very right about how well quick attacks scale with perks but luckily spreadsheets can work it out for me!


As for the Rate of Fire stuff, what would people think about weapon mods that brought the RoF up again, similar to how the 9mm SMG Light Bolt used to work? I was worried about the weapon's Full Auto fire being too good on the standard guns but if a character has spent the extra caps and searched for a mod (that might be even be rare in their campaign) then they deserve the extra dakka. It would be something like replacing the wasteland-weary internals with better maintained (or perhaps newly built) parts.

On the subject of mods I'd like to add mods for melee weapons as well. The Katana would be a good example, since as well as something that just gave +# damage we could have things like (for lack of a better word) a "quick-draw scabbard" that gave a bonus to the first attack made when drawing the weapon. You could hammer nails into a Baseball Bat to give it a bleeding effect, or perhaps a mod for the Sledgehammer is what creates a Thunder Hammer. Ideas are more than welcome!

Another thing, what would people think about making the Magic Rifle Focus Optics +3 again (or even +4) but only give +2 per beam if the Beam Splitter was installed?

[Viewing_Glass]

uSea: Please take all my YES for your ideas thus far. I know Mad_Modd has some interesting ideas for a few melee mods that he is testing out. They are pretty easy to figure via a spreadsheet as well.

[Warp]

Even more so on characters who have Kamikaze and 2 ranks of Action Colt.

Haven't reached there yet, but it is going to get pretty insane when I can punch 8 times in one turn and then still have enough AP to waltz back into cover.

Hehe, I know how that feels. Last combat in group 4, some gryphon was unfortunate enough to move next to me behind our group's cover. He then ate 9 attacks that did 24+5d10 each. So, yeah, fast attacks + high AGI/AP + damage perks adding flat, unscaling bonuses...it can get pretty crazy. And this was WITHOUT action filly or piercing strike

And that's really one of the most glaring issues that I can see regarding weapon and game balance, is that damage perks and spells add the same amount of damage to every bullet regardless of attack speed or weapon used. Slow weapons just won't be able to keep up in realistic play unless they get a pretty tremendous bonus to their base damage as long as the D10 method of adding damage is used.

To use a relatively (optimized) low level example, what would you rather be able to do: attack two or three times for 45+5d10 (hunting rifle, two ranks of armed and dangerous, bloody mess, 9 AGI, fast shot trait), or eight or nine times for 12+4d10? (service rifle, same conditions as the hunting rifle example). Even taking away bloody mess from that example, the service rifle looks like a FAR more appealing choice to me.

The application of DT wouldn't even be that large of a consideration in this example, as armor piercing ammo exists, and is in fact downright cheap for the service rifle! The initial base damage of the SR would be able to overcome most armor's DT and just rack up the damage by spamming D10s. And this isn't even considering things like weapons with burst fire, full-auto, spell support, or really even weaponry beyond tier 1 that has a base 15 AP/shot.

[Viewing_Glass]

To use a relatively (optimized) low level example, what would you rather be able to do: attack two or three times for 45+5d10 (hunting rifle, two ranks of armed and dangerous, bloody mess, 9 AGI, fast shot trait), or eight or nine times for 12+4d10? (service rifle, same conditions as the hunting rifle example). Even taking away bloody mess from that example, the service rifle looks like a FAR more appealing choice to me.

The application of DT wouldn't even be that large of a consideration in this example, as armor piercing ammo exists, and is in fact downright cheap for the service rifle! The initial base damage of the SR would be able to overcome most armor's DT and just rack up the damage by spamming D10s. And this isn't even considering things like weapons with burst fire, full-auto, spell support, or really even weaponry beyond tier 1 that has a base 15 AP/shot.

*whistles innocently, totally not having made this point repeatedly to some folks concerning the Service Rifle*

[Viewing_Glass]

Sorry for the double post, but I would like to discuss some basic rules for Sprinting, IE, making sure a Sprinting Character can't just run/fly forever. Here is my idea:

A character can sprint for a number of rounds equal to there Endurance. Every round after that, a character may make an Endurance check to continue sprinting. If they fail the Endurance check, they stop sprinting. If they critically fail the Endurance check, they stumble, taking 10*(the number of rounds sprinting) in stun damage.

Once a character has finished a long distance sprint, they can not start again for 1 minute. GMs are encouraged to place limits on how much a character can sprint in the day, as sprinting puts a lot of strain on the body.

Wind Effects:

Against the Wind: Running/Flying into the wind is difficult and tiring. This slows a pony, effectively reducing there Agility by 2 for calculating movement speed. Reduce a ponies Endurance by half (Rounded up) for calculating the number of rounds a pony can continuously sprint. However, the wind does help you slow down, reduce the AP needed to slow down from a sprint by half.

With the Wind: Running/Flying with the wind makes you fly faster! Increase the ponies Agility by 2 for the purposes of calculating movement speed. Increase a ponies Endurance by half (Rounded up) for calculating the number of rounds a pony can continuously sprint. However, flying with the wind makes it harder to slow down, so you need to double the AP to slow down after a sprint.

What do you guys think?

[Warp]

*whistles innocently, totally not having made this point repeatedly to some folks concerning the Service Rifle*

The math is indeed somewhat worrying Not bad numbers for a vanilla T1 weapon, eh?

For the sake of argument, I gave the hunting rifle the custom action mod, which is the only way it can possibly surpass its lower tier brother. And, you'll notice, its higher tier ones! (By the way, I realized that this makes it a battle rifle except...much better, since it's a long range weapon on top of doing more damage for the same AP, and the scope mod makes it far more accurate to boot. Oh, and it can hold more ammo with the clip mod. Poor battle rifle...)

Does Fast Shot/Lead Rain affect burst fire or full auto? The idea of 25 or 20 AP burst fires is...scary It would essentially be a loophole to get around the 10 AP minimum for attack costs, which...well...

[ToWhatEnd]

*whistles innocently, totally not having made this point repeatedly to some folks concerning the Service Rifle*

We once had an hour long argument and had to stop the game because of a character with a Service rifle doing ludicrous damage and sweeping a room. Hence forth, every time someone used burst fire we always kept spamming BURSSS BURSSS BURSSS SWAG in the chat. Anyway after GM blew the rifle up we haven't had much problems with that, but I agree. Service Rifle OP, pls nerf.

[uSea]

For the sake of argument, I gave the hunting rifle the custom action mod, which is the only way it can possibly surpass its lower tier brother. And, you'll notice, its higher tier ones! (By the way, I realized that this makes it a battle rifle except...much better, since it's a long range weapon on top of doing more damage for the same AP, and the scope mod makes it far more accurate to boot. Oh, and it can hold more ammo with the clip mod. Poor battle rifle...)

That was a big reason for changing the Custom Action mod so that it lowered AP cost to 30 (instead of 25). This isn't strictly speaking how it worked in NV but I thought weakening it was important for balance.

We once had an hour long argument and had to stop the game because of a character with a Service rifle doing ludicrous damage and sweeping a room. Hence forth, every time someone used burst fire we always kept spamming BURSSS BURSSS BURSSS SWAG in the chat. Anyway after GM blew the rifle up we haven't had much problems with that, but I agree. Service Rifle OP, pls nerf.

This was entirely my bad. I completely forgot to add the AP cost for using Burst Fire into the mod description and it was a long time before I realised my mistake. Burst Fire was supposed to cost 30AP for the SR, so it would be a possible 150% damage... instead of the 300% it would have been with rules as written. And if you were using 30AP Bursts at the time then... um... ouch?

As a side note, I'd considered ammo scarcity (rather than cost) as the main drawback for using special rounds. Taking NV as an example a character would be lucky to find more than a hand full of special bullets on random vendors... and it might not even be ammo for weapons the group uses. This depends on the GM's setting though of course and on where the group is trying to shop. A merchant with access to military stuff would probably stock more, etc.

[Dance_Explosion]

now i do have to admit by and large, that my opinion on some of the low damage dakka guns is a tad screwed by the game i am in, out in stalliongrad we fight a lot of high DT monsters, gargoyles, prism ghouls, zombie steel rangers, living steel rangers, and the like. so as a party, Dime, Viewing glass, and I don't really focus on the dakka guns since they can be a bit iffy for getting past all that DT.

now on the topic of shotguns:

shotguns in upper levels really need the perk, shotgun surgeon, and/or the flettchet ammo. with the DT multiplication most high level, and often high DT, enemies can shrug of more then half the damage easy. now recalling back to NV the riot shotgun did seem to do less damage then the hunting shotgun, but did shoot faster, it was however super expensive. i feel that the riot shotgun should be buffed and moved up the list to T3 and replace the double barreled shotgun, if for no other reason then in Point Lookout i recall that gun really sucking. now adding a T4 shot gun? im all for that, the combat shotgun was one of the best guns in Fo3, often being only replaced with only named guns, or longer ranged guns just for some situations!

For a T4 shotgun id say something like 50 as the base damage, and AP 25 short ranged like a higher damaged hunting shot gun, but with a drum of ammo for a larger magazine[?] and faster reloads.

now going back a bit, i really liked the MASR the MEW need guns like that to help with the some what lack luster damage for a lot of the guns in that class, since before that only Heavy class weapons and the guass rifle did that well.

I have to disagree a little with melee weapons.
the lighter weapons CAN do a lot of damage with a flurry of stabs to ones body, and in practice i have envy done that! but the requirements are for a player to work their way really close to an enemy that is either A) using a gun and while weaker in melee still has a gun and could have spent a round or two shooting the incoming player, or B) a melee based character or worse monster, that only the best built meleeist can hope to fight.

I see it more as the light weapons are appealing to the high skill melee characters, while the heavy high damage ones appeal more to lower skilled melee ponies who need that one heavy hit and choose to aim the attack instead.

unlike with guns melee weapons have to deal with the fact that in the wasteland most ponies use guns, and the only thing that always chooses to melee are things like bears and timber-wolfs, that are really scary in melee! that's why [IMHO] that so many melee perks exist, if you focus in it, it CAN be better then using guns if you can close quickly or are some kind of sneaky assassin type [like me!] who sneaks up and tries to slit throats [or as is more practical hack them in the head with a fire ax Bloodlines style] to take out most bad guys.

So, more guns like the MASR for MEW's, lets see a combat shotgun, and lets see Melee Mods!

[Gidonihah]

I like to chime in that a few of the weapon changes were quite nice. I liked the Maser phaser laser and the Flamer change, Sniper Rifle and Varmint Rifle boost also felt needed.

For balancing High rate of fire weapons with d10 perks with Low rate of fire weapons, have you considered adding perks that benefit them more? For instance, for melee/unarmed you could make a imbues/perk that increase the first hit of the turns damage by a 1.5 multiplier.
The example perk would effect all unarmed/melee but would clearly be better with High damage low rate of fire weapons.

Also I really wish some bits of the rules were clearer. The minimum 10AP for weapon usage I only found out through looking at the Spirit of Wind Spell... Also is their anything that actually stops a Unicorn with 5 Versatility from wielding 5 weapons? The exact usage of Telekinesis is vague on what it cant do...