Alternate Core Documents

[Kkat]

Counter-rolling for damage seems very interesting, and I like that it doesn't touch on explosives which already have a counter. I'd agree with Tyrannis that an Endurance prereq might be more appropriate, alternately maybe Endurance or Strength?

I was thinking that it would simply reduce the number of dice the attacker rolled (and thus to the minimum of +1d10). That's mechanically a lot easier.

Technically, it would be useful against explosives directly targeted at you (such as a missile aimed at you), but untargeted explosives (such as mines) and not explosions targeted elsewhere that catch you in their AoE.

My first impulse was an Endurance requirement. But Endurance is already such a valuable stat that I didn't want to use it. I considered Agility. Or Luck. Or a combination. Then I realized that Perception could be a factor... And finally settled on the idea that it was a perk anyone who hasn't severely stat-dumped should be able to take.

I'll definitely agree with Thanqol here and say the second one. It's less perks to take to be counter-critical damage, and it doesn't functionally rebalance how useful different types of armors are. It also keeps a functional form similar to Hit the Deck!.

The majority of voices seem to think that a one-rank revision is best, so I'm likely to go with that. However, I'm not sold on the idea that the re-balancing of armor is such a bad thing. Especially since the original perk was supposed to be something that gave an advantage to people in light or no armor, and it fits the intended flavor a lot better. Which I believe is needed. Right now, can you think of any reason whatsoever to use light armor if you have other armors available? And wouldn't this perk, if exclusive to light armors, make light armors an understandable character choice?

If Combat Veteran is added, then I have little problem with making one of the most noteworthy defense perks one with a light armor restriction. In the very least, I want the perk to not completely lose it's flavor by keeping a no-heavy-armor restriction... but you've already pointed out the issue with that.

I don't know if doubling HP would actually be appropriate, hence why I said "a boost to".

I also think that damage numbers are kinda high but it does mean that even poorly armed raiders can be a threat. DT also does a good job mitigating hits, except against crits, which brings me to an idea. If Clever Prancer is seen as a must-have since it is the only defence against crits, then perhaps critical hits themselves do too much damage.

I agree with uSea's idea.

I don't think that raising everyone's HP is such a good idea... battle in this game shouldn't be the whittling down of HP by weapons which apparently can't do more than a flesh wound, like it is in D&D. But the idea of restructuring crits is a good one. (Not to mention, if crits become less overwhelming, this would make it easier to chose the third option for Clever Prancer.) I'm not sure I'd go with the +Xd10 for crits. Maybe x2 for magical energy weapons and x1.5 for everything else?

There is absolutely such a thing as a tanking character in this game, I should know, I'm playing one. You're the pony running out into the open, stands in front of your teammates, or jumps on top of the bomb. Just because there isn't a tanking mechanic doesn't mean that you can't play the distraction who just won't die, which is often enough to let your team avoid being targeted.

I think it's more of the fact that you are the biggest, scariest gun in the wasteland (outside of Mouse), and bad guys quickly figure out they need to take you down if they're going to have a chance.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Auto weapons are absolutely scary to someone in light armor, they're supposed to be, especially if that pony has sunk three weapon specialization perks into them. But, let's look at the math. Assuming somepony did use that twice a round, they'd do 96+32d10, or 272 damage taking average rolls (let's assume all the attacks hit). So, 272-8*DT, definitely scary if you've only got 10 DT, eating 192 damage there. But, at a DT of 20, easily available with 500 caps dropped into armor, that amounts to 112 damage - scary, but far from unreasonable. At my character Night Light's current DT of 31 with 20% DR, he'd take a whopping 20 damage from that full-round attack. Some weapons are good against low DT targets, some are better against high DT targets.

And unless you're playing with a generous GM, availability of armor is a huge scarcity. In all the games I've played, the highest DT armor I've ever been able to manage buying is 15 -- A thousand caps is downright rare to have, and a merchant who sells heavier armor is even rarer. 31 DT is completely unreasonable to suggest as a balancing point for heavy armor. Power armor is something almost nobody will ever have. The highest DT you're going to realistically have on your armor is 18, meaning that second estimate is closer to the max you can reduce damage by than the last.

Not only that, but an assault rifle is supposed to be low tier! The kind of weapon that you wield when the only ponies that have over 200 HP are the ones with 9-10 END, and pretty much everyone has 10DT. You want a better estimate for your endgame examples?

Assault Carbine, 15+1d10 at 25AP, with a RoF of 5. 5mm rounds ignore 10DT baseline. Not even counting ranks of Action Filly, you get three bursts a round. 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst, 3 bursts, making 225+60d10 for a round, applying (DT-10)*15. Average rolls, 555 damage total before reduction. DT of 10, take full damage. Instant death. DT of 20, take 405. Instant death. 30DT and 20% DR, 204 damage per round. Two rounds to die.

Automatic weapons are not okay. Enough damage to kill all but someone wearing what should be unobtainable armor in a single round is not okay.

There is absolutely such a thing as a tanking character in this game, I should know, I'm playing one. You're the pony running out into the open, stands in front of your teammates, or jumps on top of the bomb. Just because there isn't a tanking mechanic doesn't mean that you can't play the distraction who just won't die, which is often enough to let your team avoid being targeted.

Until it just doesn't work. Smart enemies don't target the heavy-armored distraction, they target the light-armored sniper or the one wielding the assault rifle.

I don't think that raising everyone's HP is such a good idea... battle in this game shouldn't be the whittling down of HP by weapons which apparently can't do more than a flesh wound, like it is in D&D. But the idea of restructuring crits is a good one. (Not to mention, if crits become less overwhelming, this would make it easier to chose the third option for Clever Prancer.) I'm not sure I'd go with the +Xd10 for crits. Maybe x2 for magical energy weapons and x1.5 for everything else?

The problem is that in the current revision, most combat lasts no more than a single round, maybe two or three if large numbers of combatants are involved. Enough damage gets thrown around that every attack is severely damaging, and even cutting it in half or doubling HP we'd still see weapons dealing severe damage.

[SpencerDespenser]

Now, I'm no mathematician, or expert in game balance, or anything but a player and a GM this one time, but aren't weapons supposed to be damaging and lethal? I don't like to try to talk about "realism" when everyone will just go "Magical ponies, realism is null", but doesn't it make sense that getting pumped full of lead by an assault rifle would kill you?

[SilverlightPony]

Assault Carbine, 15+1d10 at 25AP, with a RoF of 5. 5mm rounds ignore 10DT baseline. Not even counting ranks of Action Filly, you get three bursts a round. 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst, 3 bursts, making 225+60d10 for a round, applying (DT-10)*15. Average rolls, 555 damage total before reduction. DT of 10, take full damage. Instant death. DT of 20, take 405. Instant death. 30DT and 20% DR, 204 damage per round. Two rounds to die.

Something's off here. How are you getting 20d10 per burst?

[Viewing_Glass]

Three ranks of Armed Dangerous will give you an additional 3d10 per bullet, for a total of 15+4d10 on the assault rifle. Full Rate of Fire causes 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Assault Carbine, 15+1d10 at 25AP, with a RoF of 5. 5mm rounds ignore 10DT baseline. Not even counting ranks of Action Filly, you get three bursts a round. 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst, 3 bursts, making 225+60d10 for a round, applying (DT-10)*15. Average rolls, 555 damage total before reduction. DT of 10, take full damage. Instant death. DT of 20, take 405. Instant death. 30DT and 20% DR, 204 damage per round. Two rounds to die.

Something's off here. How are you getting 20d10 per burst?

Three ranks of Armed Dangerous will give you an additional 3d10 per bullet, for a total of 15+4d10 on the assault rifle. Full Rate of Fire causes 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst.

Viewing Glass got it in one.

[Dance_Explosion]

Ummm well one problem, full auto fire's twice the bullets as its ROF, and if you roll odd on a two hit that hits its two hits not one, so potentially twice that in damage, and with crits, twice that as well!

I don't feel that combat is as insanely lethal as some, in no small part to just playing a Ghoul [the easy way to tank with that fast healing!] and while i often get knocked down to around 70 of my 200ish hit points every fight [much like how it seemed in the story!] and then just heal up in the mean time! the two closest times iv been to death have been, getting sniped by a steel ranger with a anti-machine rifle, and when our car exploded! Seriously, if you don't dump END and wear armor to protect your flank, and not gain small bonus's to skills, you easily can survive encounters of your level.

level 1-5 your looking at probably DT 4-8 and the Tier 0-1 weapons are not exactly shredding you to pieces thanks to the 100 hit points you get at start before END is even factored in!

the most dangerous level area [from our game mind you] was around 9-13 were T3 weapons start to appear and you actually have a chance to take 100 damage in a attack and could possibly not have much in the way of DT past 12.

If the game is seeming overly lethal the DM can just adjust the encounters, things like Raiders using shitty T0-2 weapons, don't do much damage at all, but then they just attack a lot! [see Dakka Effect]

Elites like Talon Mercs and Steel Rangers are more late game encounters due to the massive damage they can deal, and in the Steel Rangers case the ability to soak massive amounts of damage as well.

[uSea]

I forgot to mention that I really like the idea of Combat Veteran. Reducing the number of bonus dice an attacker gets on their damage roll (to a minimum of +1d10) is a great way to mitigate stacking +damage perks while at the same time not punishing characters who haven't taken those +damage perks. I am also in favour of the current SPECIAL requirement. Encouraging players not to dump stats (or at least do it less) is a good thing in my book.

Reducing critical damage seems to have struck a chord so I had a few more thoughts on that.

Magic weapons doing 2x and regular weapons doing 1.5x sounds good to me but is made a little complicated because of how we currently do crits (doubling the base damage and then /rolling/ twice as many bonus dice). Say the weapon did 15+1d10 normally:
On a crit it would now do 22.5+1.5d10s. Do we round the base damage up or down? How would we roll 1.5 d10s?

One solution could be to roll the damage as normal and /then/ multiply the result. While I like rolling all those extra damage dice, this method should actually be even simpler to work out than what we do at the moment and ends up in basically the same place (with the new version requiring rounding once, if ever). E.g. 30+2d10 and (15+1d10)x2 are close enough together that it makes no odds.

Another idea would be to have Critical Bonus Damage as a stat for each weapon, like how it worked in Fo3 and New Vegas. I imagine we could start from +2d10 and going up from there based on weapon damage. Magic weapons would have a blanket "2x" in that column. This would give another way to balance weapons against each other and is something that GMs and groups could alter on their own lists to better suit their game. I'm not adverse to the Critical Bonus Damage being a set number, or a set number along with dice, but I've noticed that most of the time bonus damage comes in the form of extra d10s so I'd prefer to keep that pattern here.

[Kkat]

The mane document now includes the Flying Magic section, and the perks document includes the new pegasus, griffin and Pegasus Trick perks. The rules are ready for playtesting.

[Dance_Explosion]

Honestly critical hits do not need any real changes, the game is really only very lethal at low levels when upper tier gear is around. Even in the Stalliongrad campaign were the usual enemies are all red encounters we still haven't had anyone die at all, only Red Button [with a 4 END and the lowest DT in the party by far!] has ever come all that close to death via hit point damage, and that was a starmetal bullet!

Neither Crits nor weapons need any sort of dramatic changes like this since the game is not that dangerous!