Alternate Core Documents

[Kkat]

Let's make Heavy Armor a little more attractive, shall we?

If we go with the light armor only restriction for Clever Prancer, then I agree that this should be added to the perks as well.

The arguments still lend me to believe that reducing the power of critical hits is a good idea. The two suggestions I really like are simply cutting the damage multiplier (probably to +50% / +100% for MEW), or not changing the multiplier but ruling that it only applies to the base damage and not the dice. Thoughts?

In the meantime, I've done a little work on the monster perks. Powerful Attacker now gives better bonuses, making unarmed monster attacks a little less wussy. In addition, there is now a perk to allow flying monsters to perform basic Pegasus Tricks, and a perk to give more dangerous monster types Damage Reduction.

[TyrannisUmbra]

The arguments still lend me to believe that reducing the power of critical hits is a good idea. The two suggestions I really like are simply cutting the damage multiplier (probably to +50% / +100% for MEW), or not changing the multiplier but ruling that it only applies to the base damage and not the dice. Thoughts?

The discluding of the damage dice in crits would also solve the problem of the +d10 perks adding huge amounts of extra damage that gets multiplied by the crit.

[Dance_Explosion]

I can live with the crits not multiplying the D10, as they really only weakens the perks to increase your damage,

And i might add, lets not forget medium armor here! while its nice that heavy armor is being made so it doesn't feel like a penalty to wear it, and that light armor should have the benefits of being mobile, Medium armor should have something going for it then! Since i have medium armor and clever prancer i would need to drop down to having light armor, or would just like maybe some upgrade packs for medium armor that allow you to drop the armors DT and wight to to make it light armor, or raise its DT and make it heavy armor [and deal with that heavy armor movement penalty!].

Also, saying the DM needs to control them self to not kill his players is a lot more reasonable then completely changing the way the game works with slashing weapon damages and heavily nerfing crits, which completely screws over any players with sneaky assassin type characters, the game is lethal, and it is supposed to be!

[Kkat]

A double blast from that battle saddle will be two doses of 2x50+++++, which looks like 2x75 lets say for the average damage. that would be an average of about 300 damage in one go, however then we apply some one with armor on, a Armored character with say, 15DT will actually walk away with very little damage out of that.

Ugh. It's not a "pity he is wrong" because he really isn't. As much as I hate when arguments devolve into math, let me put up the numbers you didn't:

The average of 1d10 is 5.5, so the average of 2*(2*50+++++) is 310. A level 10 character is likely wearing around 15 DT, which means 45 DT against shotguns. So the average damage from a double-barrel shotgun battle saddle against this opponent is...

130 damage.

...which is a far cry from walking away with very little damage, and very close to being one-shotted. Now, the average damage from a crit with a double-barrel shotgun battle saddle is...

440 damage.

... after DT. Now remember, a 10th level character should have an average HP of...

160 health.


...so yes, there is a really good argument for reducing the damage from critical hits. I tend to believe a critical hit from a double-barrel shotgun battle saddle should knock a 10th level character from full damage to dying. But I think having it deal x2.75 his total HP is... excessive.

[Night Light]

Yeesh, walk away from the forums for a few days and miss two pages of conversation.

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.

You run into the problem of heavy armor already barely being better than medium armor and even light armor can come close to as good, ignoring power armor, and on top of the movement penalty all the good heavy armor has the nasty -2 Agi penalty. Given it's already easier to pick up in Light or Medium armor, it arguably already has the "favors lighter armor users" built in. Combat Veteran is also in no way a trade for Clever Prancer for a pony who's wanting to be tanky.

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?

A slight buff to HP might be a problem at lower levels, depending on how it was calculated in. But, as we've seen, chewing through my nearly 300 HP in full tank setup (well, about as good as it gets without power armor) hasn't even been that hard for plenty of enemies. Either way, wasn't something I was really pushing, just threw it out as an option

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.

Rofl, alright, that might be helping me there. Still, the "stand in front of people and eat attacks instead of them" strategy has been working pretty well for the most part.

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?

Solid point, there's nothing strictly wrong with a more lethal combat system (such as compared to D&D, as KKat pointed out). So long as combat doesn't turn into "I go first, I win", which our Stalliongrad game has sort of been showing. Granted, we're fighting Steel Rangers, Alicorns, and all other sorts of nastiness, so that's probably tweaking some opinions.

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.

Solid thought, as a pony who has definitely dumped a couple stats I'd still say that's a fair point. So, if I'm reading that idea right, the intention is that this would work against perks and the bits of shamanism that add d10s? How would it apply against dot effects, such as from the zebra rifle? I would assume not ammo, but I figure that's still worth bringing up too.

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.

I definitely think this would be the best solution of all noted so far. A similar mechanic is even already in the system, given everyone with a Perfect quality weapon is already having to do that (multiplying the final roll sum by 1.1, that is).

Yes, the system is lethal. However, as you get further into the game, DR is greater than ALL.

As the pony in said discussion with the 20-40% DR there, I'll point out that it's not as amazing as it sounds. All it is is bonus HP, which, as we've pointed out, isn't all that tricky to burn through if you're basically sitting there and trading shots back and forth like this was a "Combat as Sport" D&D 4th Ed game. Granted, it can be a lot of bonus HP if you've got an absolute mess of HP already, but that'll be pretty late game. Taking a page from Dance Explosion's book, DR counter big boom weapons, DT counters Dakka weapons.

Let's make Heavy Armor a little more attractive, shall we?

Agreed, though realistically I feel like just making the actual armor better would probably be a superior choice. Removing the Agi penalties from heavy armor also seems like a poor choice, given that is (or should be) the trade off for wearing heavy armor - less AP, significantly less speed, significantly more difficult to quality for the Agi heavy perks, but some solid DT in exchange. As KKat points out, lighter armors should still be viable, and that Agi penalty is a pretty big hit that'll keep heavy armor benefits in check.

DR shouldn't be a necessity... and even salvaged power armor should fall under the "borderline unobtainable" category. Merchants aren't going to be selling something like that, unless you're Idolized with a leading faction, and even then...

Salvaged power armor is 500 caps, lacks the rare descriptor, and (pretty much) doesn't even have a faction tag. I fail to see why it would be difficult to find. I literally bought 3 suits of the stuff at once from random merchants. However, agreed, DR shouldn't be a necessity and realistically isn't. Good for survivability, really solid if you've built for it, but far from necessary. Wearing it currently I'm basically exchanging 2 perks worth of stats (-2 Agi) for slightly less than one perk (Celestial Blessing).

[Viewing_Glass]

Agreed that reducing the agility penalty is probably too much. I have instead decided to just increase the amount of DT the perk provides (the Mastery Bonus is rather nice).

[Kkat]

Agreed. Although I suggest making the bonus +4 DT each rank with a mastery bonus of an additional +3 DT. Same net result, but the perk is more useful at lower ranks and less of an insane jump with the final.

At this point, I'm heavily inclined to add in Combat Veteran, Clever Prancer (version 3, light armor only), and Knight in Shining Armor.

Jury is still out on changing crits, although the arguments to do so are persuasive.

[Dance_Explosion]

im actually pretty well behind the perk VG, it mean some one in heavy armor doesn't have to be in power armor unless they want to suck. but dammit man i like medium armor!

And i have to say i like all three of these new perks, the game does need more defensive perks to counter the massive amount of offensive perks.

[Viewing_Glass]

Alright, I like the change to Knight in Shining Armor. When taken with Combat Veteran and the perk that increases DT against Crits, that is a nasty combatant you might have to face.

[Dimestream]

My two bits' worth! I don't mind this system being a little more dangerous than other games I've played in. I can count on one hand the number of times I've felt truly threatened in games of Dungeons and Dragons. And getting into combat in other systems like Dark Heresy or Vampire the Masquerade tend to feel like we're having a friendly game of "who can murder the other's face first" moreso than it does life-and-death combat.

But I will agree with Kkat and others' points about critical hits being a bit over the top sometimes. But here's some handy bullet points about that.

I'm pretty sure that real-world application of this (read as 'in game testing' rather than just number crunching) hasn't been done at high enough levels to really justify making sweeping changes. Sure, all Tier 4 weaponry seems super dangerous. But that's because it IS. Those are supposed to be the most dangerous weapons in the world. And since there hasn't been enough high-level testing... let's not jump the (ridiculously high-powered) gun here.
Reducing crit multipliers to 1.5 for most weapons and 2.0 for Magic Energy weapons does cut down on the issue somewhat and makes a crit more survivable.
If you all around want everything to be easier to survive, I agree with Night Light: just give more HP to players and don't change the monster HP calculation at all. That way monsters will, in general, be weaker, and so will NPCs built as monsters. I personally think that takes the difficulty and sets it to Easy like you can in the actual Fallout games, and don't like it, but it's a matter of preference. Please don't change the weaponry more. uSea has already done such a fine job making the weaponry balanced, that it would be a travesty to have to start from scratch.
Clever Prancer is ENTIRELY fine in my opinion. Against someone who has built a character entirely to get as high a crit percentage as possible is going to be far less scary, but is still going to have the highest crit rate of anyone against the Prancer in question. Conversely, someone who isn't heavily into critting doesn't actually lose much against the Prancer, so it doesn't matter. You can't have all ranks of it and still have tank-like DT and DR from heavy armor, so I don't see the problem with leaving it as it is.

And now for a real world example! In Kkat's Stalliongrad campaign, Red Button has an Endurance of 4. Her DT, from level 3 to level 15, has never been higher than 14. She has no DR, no Rad or Poison resistance (Stable Dweller, ugh), and has been using only the lightest and most 'pew pew' of magical energy weapons up until her acquisition of a Gauss rifle. Not a single one of her perks is devoted to doing more damage or being more defensive. They're all invested in the Speech and Mechanics fields.

And yet, she has survived (not unscathed, but very much alive) the entire game so far. Despite having fewer HP than most characters and enemies, and lower DT than anything but the flimsiest monsters. The game requires you, as it is, to be a bit tactically smarter than you would be in an actual playthrough of Fallout 3. Take cover. Use special combat movement and actions. Cripple enemy limbs. Red Button survives because she doesn't run out into the middle of a firefight, call tons of attention to herself, and then complain about how much damage she's taking.

The game is only super lethal if you run out into the middle of combat, take all the bullets in your face, and then jump on your own grenades. Otherwise, it's just lethal enough to encourage smart planning on the players' part, or cooperation if the GM decides to ambush them. Flying solo in the face of a hail of bullets might get you killed. But that's why you don't do it alone. Friends are there to help you! It works like magic! I'm sure there's a good reason for that... friendship being what it is.

That's really all I have to say about this for now. The first and biggest question is, and always should be, "Is it fun?" Only if no one is having fun, or if the majority of a thing is NOT fun, should there be massive changes. No one likes their character being oneshot by a lucky roll on an enemy's part. But not everyone wants to play with weapons that are only marginally more lethal than having a slap-fight.