hi hi
I have created a beginner's module for playing the FO:E RPG 2.1. You can find it here: Foal's Errand
I'm planning on taking a second look at locks and terminal security. I feel that while the current rules are adequate, the various quality levels of locks and lock picking devices are not well fleshed out. If anyone has any suggestions, now would be a good time.
Rating System Rules
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
Because I am bad at math, I messed up the energy regeneration calculations. They are now fixed, providing a full restoration of the character's base energy with 8 hours of sleep (a full night's rest.) I made the appropriate changes to the character sheet document, so you can grab the formula off of that if you want.
Lock revisions are going to go on hold while I try to re-organize the magic document. There may be some small changes to the magic system, but most of what I'm planning on doing is just ordering the information so it is easier to read.
Because I am bad at math, I messed up the energy regeneration calculations. They are now fixed, providing a full restoration of the character's base energy with 8 hours of sleep (a full night's rest.) I made the appropriate changes to the character sheet document, so you can grab the formula off of that if you want.
Lock revisions are going to go on hold while I try to re-organize the magic document. There may be some small changes to the magic system, but most of what I'm planning on doing is just ordering the information so it is easier to read.
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
I have decided to take the plunge and make a significant change to the way base potency is calculated. Instead of being divided up into groups of Casual, Strenuous and Overcasting, base potency is now simply (Racial Special +5) x (Energy Spent +1)
This change will benefit characters who heavily invest in magic, as their maximum potency will increase. If it becomes a gameplay balance problem, I may have to create a potency cap. (not counting circumstantial boosts, like megaspell frameworks.) For now though, I am going to try it out as is, and see how it works.
I have also re-written some of the casting rules to hopefully be more clear, and I have added a section into the healing magic that clearly states what kind of materials are required for instant healing spells. (It was unacceptably vague before.)
Next step is to re-examine how enchanting and alchemy are balanced. If anyone has any concerns about those issues, let me know, as they may get tweaked slightly to be more in-line with the new base potency rules.
I have decided to take the plunge and make a significant change to the way base potency is calculated. Instead of being divided up into groups of Casual, Strenuous and Overcasting, base potency is now simply (Racial Special +5) x (Energy Spent +1)
This change will benefit characters who heavily invest in magic, as their maximum potency will increase. If it becomes a gameplay balance problem, I may have to create a potency cap. (not counting circumstantial boosts, like megaspell frameworks.) For now though, I am going to try it out as is, and see how it works.
I have also re-written some of the casting rules to hopefully be more clear, and I have added a section into the healing magic that clearly states what kind of materials are required for instant healing spells. (It was unacceptably vague before.)
Next step is to re-examine how enchanting and alchemy are balanced. If anyone has any concerns about those issues, let me know, as they may get tweaked slightly to be more in-line with the new base potency rules.
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Spankflank
- Posts: 6
- Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2014 1:57 pm
Re: Rating System Rules
Hey
I really have taken a liking to these rules and I'm thinking of using them in a campaign of a sorts, though I have a question about caps.
Seems caps are pretty wonky compared to other systems or the games themselves. As a suit of Enclave Power Armor is only 600-1200 caps. Though taking things from that extreme end how does this fit in with everything else? As in how much should the average wastelander be making each day to live in a random town. Reason I'm asking this is because I think my PCs will get too rich off of just selling their enemy's loots and then can just buy anything their hearts desire just as long as they have someone with good Intuition in the group. Almost as bad as it was in 3 where I was swimming in every resource possible in 5 hours.
I really have taken a liking to these rules and I'm thinking of using them in a campaign of a sorts, though I have a question about caps.
Seems caps are pretty wonky compared to other systems or the games themselves. As a suit of Enclave Power Armor is only 600-1200 caps. Though taking things from that extreme end how does this fit in with everything else? As in how much should the average wastelander be making each day to live in a random town. Reason I'm asking this is because I think my PCs will get too rich off of just selling their enemy's loots and then can just buy anything their hearts desire just as long as they have someone with good Intuition in the group. Almost as bad as it was in 3 where I was swimming in every resource possible in 5 hours.
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
I'm glad to hear you're interested. I'll see what I can do to answer the question, although I admit that my caps economy may need some work, but I did try to move away from the Fallout 3/NV style where, without putting any skill into barter, I had hundreds of thousands of caps before long.
One thing about the high powered weapons and armor is that they should be relatively scarce. Enclave Power Armor has a scarcity rating of 23, so someone with average luck (5) is going to be rolling 2d10 against a TN of 23 in order to randomly stumble across a set. Obviously, the GM can outfit encounters however they want, but unless the team is inside an Enclave supply base, finding one at random is going to be next to impossible.
But that's only part of the question. The economic situation of a random Wastelander is based off of the price of food and the price of drugs (if they're a junky, which makes it a lot harder to get by.)
A single meal -represented as a can of food, or some equivalent- is usually going to cost between 6 and 10 caps. (Bad food may be an option for the desperate and cost less, and extra fancy food might cost more, but lets stick to the average for now.) An average pony is going to want to eat 3 meals a day, but 2 a day is livable. That gives us 12-30 caps per day, just to meet the first basic living requirement. (Plenty of folks probably want to have more than just the bare necessities, though.)
Drugs cost an average of 20 caps a hit, so depending on how badly they are addicted, they could be looking at another extra 10 to 60 caps per day.
Shelter is a tricky thing in the wasteland. You can camp out in any old abandoned building for free, but if you want to sleep secure in the thought that someone is going to keep horrible monsters from sneaking up on you and eating you, it gets a bit trickier. Costs for secure shelter, can range anywhere from 5 caps a day to 25, if you were living in someplace highly secure like Tenpony Tower. (So, a month in Tenpony Tower could cost 750 caps, which puts it in the ballpark of a suit of power armor. Especially if you subtract repair costs from the value of the item.)
Rainwater in the wasteland is common enough that it probably doesn't need to have a daily cost associated with it. While there could possibly be some situations where someone is desperate enough to pay, we don't have to worry about that right now.
All this, unfortunately, gives us a rather wide range of outcomes. 17 caps per day at the very minimum, up to 115 caps per day for a junky living in Tenpony Tower.
In the services section of the Aid List, there are some prices listed for hired help. (I have tweaked them slightly since taking a closer look at this question.) But the base price for basic hired help is going to run about (10+skill rating of the appropriate skill) caps per day. If you want to pay your hired help more than the bare-bones minimum, you can expect to spend 2 to 4 times that. (In return for good pay, you will enjoy having help that might not be looking to betray your trust to the highest bidder.)
If you are hiring someone to do hazardous work, they might expect more, but from this we can see that a professional (15 skill rating) might make 25 to 100 caps per day, give or take. For comparison, a scavenger who goes out and collects nothing but scrap metal and junk will likely make 90 caps per trip. (Spending at least 1.5 hours scavenging in dangerous places, not counting travel time.)
Unless it is an organized community, many folks won't be getting set pay, so they may have one really profitable day, and then go several days without much luck. This is just the average. Some might be particularly well off in general, and there are likely a much larger number of ponies who are poor and destitute to bring the average back down. (A busy shopkeeper might make many times that in a single day, only to turn around and spend it again to restock their shelves.)
If a team's only goal is to find a nice safe place to live, a particularly good haul might buy them residence in a small settlement for years to come. If they're looking to raise an army and change the world, that same good haul might run out very quickly.
Anyway, that may have been a roundabout way of answering the question, but hopefully it does answer the question.
I'm glad to hear you're interested. I'll see what I can do to answer the question, although I admit that my caps economy may need some work, but I did try to move away from the Fallout 3/NV style where, without putting any skill into barter, I had hundreds of thousands of caps before long.
One thing about the high powered weapons and armor is that they should be relatively scarce. Enclave Power Armor has a scarcity rating of 23, so someone with average luck (5) is going to be rolling 2d10 against a TN of 23 in order to randomly stumble across a set. Obviously, the GM can outfit encounters however they want, but unless the team is inside an Enclave supply base, finding one at random is going to be next to impossible.
But that's only part of the question. The economic situation of a random Wastelander is based off of the price of food and the price of drugs (if they're a junky, which makes it a lot harder to get by.)
A single meal -represented as a can of food, or some equivalent- is usually going to cost between 6 and 10 caps. (Bad food may be an option for the desperate and cost less, and extra fancy food might cost more, but lets stick to the average for now.) An average pony is going to want to eat 3 meals a day, but 2 a day is livable. That gives us 12-30 caps per day, just to meet the first basic living requirement. (Plenty of folks probably want to have more than just the bare necessities, though.)
Drugs cost an average of 20 caps a hit, so depending on how badly they are addicted, they could be looking at another extra 10 to 60 caps per day.
Shelter is a tricky thing in the wasteland. You can camp out in any old abandoned building for free, but if you want to sleep secure in the thought that someone is going to keep horrible monsters from sneaking up on you and eating you, it gets a bit trickier. Costs for secure shelter, can range anywhere from 5 caps a day to 25, if you were living in someplace highly secure like Tenpony Tower. (So, a month in Tenpony Tower could cost 750 caps, which puts it in the ballpark of a suit of power armor. Especially if you subtract repair costs from the value of the item.)
Rainwater in the wasteland is common enough that it probably doesn't need to have a daily cost associated with it. While there could possibly be some situations where someone is desperate enough to pay, we don't have to worry about that right now.
All this, unfortunately, gives us a rather wide range of outcomes. 17 caps per day at the very minimum, up to 115 caps per day for a junky living in Tenpony Tower.
In the services section of the Aid List, there are some prices listed for hired help. (I have tweaked them slightly since taking a closer look at this question.) But the base price for basic hired help is going to run about (10+skill rating of the appropriate skill) caps per day. If you want to pay your hired help more than the bare-bones minimum, you can expect to spend 2 to 4 times that. (In return for good pay, you will enjoy having help that might not be looking to betray your trust to the highest bidder.)
If you are hiring someone to do hazardous work, they might expect more, but from this we can see that a professional (15 skill rating) might make 25 to 100 caps per day, give or take. For comparison, a scavenger who goes out and collects nothing but scrap metal and junk will likely make 90 caps per trip. (Spending at least 1.5 hours scavenging in dangerous places, not counting travel time.)
Unless it is an organized community, many folks won't be getting set pay, so they may have one really profitable day, and then go several days without much luck. This is just the average. Some might be particularly well off in general, and there are likely a much larger number of ponies who are poor and destitute to bring the average back down. (A busy shopkeeper might make many times that in a single day, only to turn around and spend it again to restock their shelves.)
If a team's only goal is to find a nice safe place to live, a particularly good haul might buy them residence in a small settlement for years to come. If they're looking to raise an army and change the world, that same good haul might run out very quickly.
Anyway, that may have been a roundabout way of answering the question, but hopefully it does answer the question.
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
I've slightly tweaked the lock picking and hacking rules to be more consistent with everything else, and I changed a few things around in the gear list to mirror those changes.
Also, I have added a new combat helper spreadsheet for GMs, to help make some things easier.
I've slightly tweaked the lock picking and hacking rules to be more consistent with everything else, and I changed a few things around in the gear list to mirror those changes.
Also, I have added a new combat helper spreadsheet for GMs, to help make some things easier.
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
I have filled out some more thorough placeholders for Vehicle Weapons and Diseases/Toxins. Without playtesting, it will be difficult for me to assess whether they are balanced or not, but I hope to further refine the stats as I get a chance to try them out. They were not designed systematically, like personal scale weapons and armor, so for the time being, there are no specific rules for crafting them by hoof using mechanics. If I do manage to get some playtest data on them, I will try to make a build system for them.
Vehicle weapons and toxins can be found in the weapons spreadsheet in tabs near the back. The vehicles in the vehicle spreadsheet don't have weapons assigned by default. Just remember that the sum total of all the weapon's STR requirements can't exceed the vehicle's hardpoint rating.
Edit: See, this is what I mean. I am bad at math, but after trying some test cases out, I discovered that the math on the vehicle maker spreadsheet concerning Damage Threshold, is faulty. (It produces values far in excess of what it should.) I will try to revise and fix that problem.
Edit Edit: I isolated the problem with the Damage Threshold calculation on the spreadsheet. Silly me, I had the field for Damage Threshold and Armor Health switched around by accident. They are now properly switched back. I may still go back and tweak the formula for Heavy and Capital scale vehicles, to make sure DT, health, and weapon damage are balanced, but that will be a different task entirely.
I have filled out some more thorough placeholders for Vehicle Weapons and Diseases/Toxins. Without playtesting, it will be difficult for me to assess whether they are balanced or not, but I hope to further refine the stats as I get a chance to try them out. They were not designed systematically, like personal scale weapons and armor, so for the time being, there are no specific rules for crafting them by hoof using mechanics. If I do manage to get some playtest data on them, I will try to make a build system for them.
Vehicle weapons and toxins can be found in the weapons spreadsheet in tabs near the back. The vehicles in the vehicle spreadsheet don't have weapons assigned by default. Just remember that the sum total of all the weapon's STR requirements can't exceed the vehicle's hardpoint rating.
Edit: See, this is what I mean. I am bad at math, but after trying some test cases out, I discovered that the math on the vehicle maker spreadsheet concerning Damage Threshold, is faulty. (It produces values far in excess of what it should.) I will try to revise and fix that problem.
Edit Edit: I isolated the problem with the Damage Threshold calculation on the spreadsheet. Silly me, I had the field for Damage Threshold and Armor Health switched around by accident. They are now properly switched back. I may still go back and tweak the formula for Heavy and Capital scale vehicles, to make sure DT, health, and weapon damage are balanced, but that will be a different task entirely.
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
After some playtesting I've reached the conclusion that, between the two costly-action mechanics (re-rolling a die and adding a flat target number bonus) the re-rolling mechanic is more interesting and better balanced. As a result, I am swapping them around. The re-rolling mechanic is now the core rule, and the target number bonus mechanic is now the optional rule.
Since they were options both ways, it shouldn't effect anyone's games unless the GM decides it is better to make the switch.
--
At the request of my own players, I have added some additional options for alternative EXP expenditures. These are optional rules, made with the intent of giving players who reach the EXP cap something else to spend EXP on. (In the event that the game runs long enough to hit that cap at all.) But as they are optional, GMs may choose to implement them however and whenever they feel appropriate.
Options include:
• Re-assigning skills and perks. Lowering unused abilities and raising new ones.
• Giving EXP to followers and pets.
• Using EXP to create unique spirits.
• Buying perks for vehicles.
• Raising the Values of NPC characters. There is a new Formal Relationships document with some examples.
--
After doing a rough analysis of vehicle weapons, I think they are generally in the right ballpark, so I will be leaving them as is for the time being. It'll take some time to create a systematic approach to building vehicle weapons, and I'm not sure when I'll have time for it.
After some playtesting I've reached the conclusion that, between the two costly-action mechanics (re-rolling a die and adding a flat target number bonus) the re-rolling mechanic is more interesting and better balanced. As a result, I am swapping them around. The re-rolling mechanic is now the core rule, and the target number bonus mechanic is now the optional rule.
Since they were options both ways, it shouldn't effect anyone's games unless the GM decides it is better to make the switch.
--
At the request of my own players, I have added some additional options for alternative EXP expenditures. These are optional rules, made with the intent of giving players who reach the EXP cap something else to spend EXP on. (In the event that the game runs long enough to hit that cap at all.) But as they are optional, GMs may choose to implement them however and whenever they feel appropriate.
Options include:
• Re-assigning skills and perks. Lowering unused abilities and raising new ones.
• Giving EXP to followers and pets.
• Using EXP to create unique spirits.
• Buying perks for vehicles.
• Raising the Values of NPC characters. There is a new Formal Relationships document with some examples.
--
After doing a rough analysis of vehicle weapons, I think they are generally in the right ballpark, so I will be leaving them as is for the time being. It'll take some time to create a systematic approach to building vehicle weapons, and I'm not sure when I'll have time for it.
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
I have added a new optional rule for simplifying critical hits and failures for those people who feel the existing mechanics are too complex.
Edit: I also added a clarification to the critical hit/fail rules regarding exchanging and re-rolling dice. Critical hits and failures are determined when the dice are rolled. Dice may be exchanged to change the result, but it does not add or remove a critical hit or critical failure.
Critical failures can still result in a successful action, if the modified result still exceeds the Target Number, but in such cases, complications will still happen. (Such as weapons taking condition stress.)
I have added a new optional rule for simplifying critical hits and failures for those people who feel the existing mechanics are too complex.
Using this rule will, on average, make critical hits and failures more common, which may be a bonus for those who think they spice up conflict. The exception is the case of characters that attempt to maximize crit chance, which is no longer possible under the optional rule.Using the simplified method, when a character rolls a 1 on the first die, it is a critical failure and they subtract (15 - luck) from their result, and when they roll a 10 on the first die, it is a critical success and they add (5 + luck) to the result. Any modifiers that alter crit chance modify the result instead. (maximum x2)
When making multiple actions in a single turn, each type of action (attacks, movement, etc.) only gets one critical hit or failure per turn, whichever comes first.
Edit: I also added a clarification to the critical hit/fail rules regarding exchanging and re-rolling dice. Critical hits and failures are determined when the dice are rolled. Dice may be exchanged to change the result, but it does not add or remove a critical hit or critical failure.
Critical failures can still result in a successful action, if the modified result still exceeds the Target Number, but in such cases, complications will still happen. (Such as weapons taking condition stress.)
Re: Rating System Rules
hi hi
A few minor changes. New rules have been added for glowing ghouls, alicorns, and anyone that is radiation reliant. If their rad level exceeds their Endurance, they begin giving off radiation at 1 rating for every step above their Endurance. These rads are pulled out of their own rad pool.
I also made some minor tweaks to some of the optional races. Brahmin and Sphinxes have polished racial bonuses, and Changelings' energy regeneration now changes depending on their linked relationships. (real or faked)
A few minor changes. New rules have been added for glowing ghouls, alicorns, and anyone that is radiation reliant. If their rad level exceeds their Endurance, they begin giving off radiation at 1 rating for every step above their Endurance. These rads are pulled out of their own rad pool.
I also made some minor tweaks to some of the optional races. Brahmin and Sphinxes have polished racial bonuses, and Changelings' energy regeneration now changes depending on their linked relationships. (real or faked)