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Naaman
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 2:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I once suggested here that the SpecForce troops as published were comically underpowered and that their main skills should be at least 6D.

The counter augument offered was that stats like that put them on par with PCs, to which I rebutted that they are "PCs," just someone else's PCs, asserting tjat SpecForce troops (in real life) represent 1% of 1% of the population. The following retort was that PCs represent an anomolous fraction of the population so small that not even SpecForce troops should compare.

My initial response was general agreement. However, after perusing the books and comparing the published stats of various troop types, I have resumed my previous position that the SpecForce troops stats are just plain silly and grossly under powered.

However, the point I want to make is this: if PCs are supposed to be uniquely qualified to save the galaxy or a star system or whatever at a particular point in history, then they MUST have the ability (that is, the story REQUIRES them to have the ability) to pull off spectacularly heroic feats.

Ultimately, I've landed on the notion that each group needs to decide what kind of dice rolls represent sufficiently cinematic heroics.

For us, we ended up in the 12D and up range EVERY campaign (a typical campaign would last a whole summer or a whole school year when we were kids). Eventually, we started making "advanced" PCs at character creation instead of starting "from scratch" per RAW.

This allowed the GM to really use some cool bad guys and really play around with stuff that he otherwise would not get to. Typically, I would lose a character ebery other campaign (about half of campaigns saw my original PC(s) from start to finish).

Awesome fun for us beating the snot out of entire squads of royal guardsmen. Taking down the entire security detail of a Moff and then gunning him down when he draws his weapon as a last ditch effort is quite satisfying. Beating a powerful dark Jedi (about a notch below Vader) in single combat really sends home the message that the PCs are heroes, not mere supporting characters in someone else's SWU.
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 8:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think part of the issue is the cp reward system and the game scoping.

If we look at the NPCS, like mace Windu, Darklighter and others we see this

thousends upon thousends of CPs
they have a mimimum of 18D PLUS force skills.

Outside Stprmtroopers that are written up as mere mooks, a PC in stat wars regardless of template can on with 200 or even 700 CP even begin to match the heroic levels.

Add about 2500CP to a kid template and then maybe you can have 14yr old Ezra, and this the Ezra we see "starting" his story.

I find that being blind to the 9D being "one in the galaxy" level is way wrong.

Goint through the books I see 12s, 15s and even 18s and 20s and this not on ONLY paply ot the stooges, but all over.

If we to follow the RAW and replay ANH, using a Brash Pilot template for Luke, or any other template for that matter.

Let him through what can be devided into module chapters, and then award him 15cp at the start......it makes no sense as you can not do what the star wars heroes do.

Dor a one shot or a two shot play, yes the 5-6 CP reward is great, not much to keep track of, and not much book kee.

But if you are goinf to play a campaign I would agruge raising the CP rewards to matbe X5 or even X10

I tried by raw to reasonably make a royal guard, and to get it to match and be at par with the starblock writeups.

Lets just say I was a few hounderd CPS short and then some.

raising a DEX ¤D to 5D is alone 120 CP or about 60-70 Mission in RAW.....
Funny the students of the guard academy have time for that.

And there goes the list......

So I think the best way is to ONE ignore the level ratingg, where at 12D you are so and so good, it scares GMs into thinking Ooooooooooo overpower, while it is actually the "normal" power level.

Now allowing for a x5 or a x10 cp rewards would make a lot more sense, this helps you get up to "par" with the TV and Cartoon heroes and you can do this in "theur" speed, you can travel from One planet, speak to a guy, train some, watch the guy fight, then land on another planet and you should now be a jedi......with 2-5cp tuis is hard
with 20-50 cp this is doable.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 10:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You would have loved our game group.

We even did "arena battles" where after the session we would pit the PCs against each other in various scenarios just for bragging rights. The arena battles never counted toward anything in the actual campaign , of course. It was basically just the RPG version of the age old discussion on "who would win in a fight?"
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
You would have loved our game group.

We even did "arena battles" where after the session we would pit the PCs against each other in various scenarios just for bragging rights. The arena battles never counted toward anything in the actual campaign , of course. It was basically just the RPG version of the age old discussion on "who would win in a fight?"



NICE!!!

I am also on the is this logical place when looking through the rules.
Now if we step away from SW D& for a moment and look at another very played and popular system. d20 pathfinder, or any other similar systems.

Here we see what I hate in RPGs, lreally really loath to be honest.

Look to the Fighter class, the class description and flawor, the fluff and the logics within it.

you start out in the late teens and early twenties as your character for the most part.
your class is descrived as having more or less being trained from childhood, the figher is even described as being beynd the mere basic training, he is a fully skilled warrior, a soldier and is often described as being somehwhat experienced.

Then you say Awesome I can be a heroic warrior fighting evil monsters......but no.

What you can be is a late teen to early twenties character with the knowlede level and skill level of a 10 yr old, he is not close to a decade of training of experience better than the average never picked up a sword farmer......he is a +1 or 5% (better), this is only du to the fixed Attack bonus though.

So what we see in too many of the RPGs where you are to play a hero and be above and beyond the norm, you have 30yr old with the skills and knowledge of child.

If we deem 4D to be a skill level professional enough to make a living of said skill, like repulsorlift repair 4D = live as a career civilian and average joe mechanic, and the we look to the human norm of 2D flat being the average standard, though the also the racial minimum... we see that millions on each planet should have at least one or more skills in the 4D range and even higher, I can easily see a nameless "mook" mechanic at some backwater planet have 5D 6D maybe even 7D or 8D in the skill, and be in the 5D 6D and meybe higher in related skills, as this makes sense.

Lets not look to the "suggested" description of the 9D being one in billions, when ti si quite easy to start out with 6D in a piloting skill, and with a normal CP progression getting this if specialization and thus 1/2 cp cost into the 9D or 10D or even 12D range is not all a big deal, the specialization would cost only 9CP to raise to 7D in this case, another (if rounded down) 9Cp and you raise it to 8D
18 cp is is 3-4 adventues

How many of the trillion of billions of sentian beings in the galaxy would have to make some form of "roll" and as a result get CP and get better, I would dare say almost everyone...and their mothers.

So to both afollowing the +1 pip advancement and the 3-5 average CP makes little to no sense.

And pitting iconic characters for test combat and the like with player characters is fun fun fun

I had a force user in the 4D ranges in force skills, and a 6d lightsdaber skill, I held my own quite well against most, but the cost of getting these skills made actually no sense as I logically would have time to get a lot better in a lot more areas in the time spent.

One thing I began doing as a GM was to make notes of players doing something "epic" and if this was lets say shooting the pilot of a TIE figher with a blaster, then I would give added (GM AWARDED) free pips or even D to this skill.

We had a group with no dedicated pilot, and one ended up in the role, he then flew a lot, and varied crafts, so he was given a free +2 pip to captial ship piloting after managing to pilot a corvette .

I had a diplomat not having any comabt skills allocated surviva a gunfight with the group, he got pips and even full Dice to his comabt skills.

all this in addition to the +1 pip advancement and the "scrooge" 3-5cps.


So the caracter's reward could be like this

Blaster +2
Dodge +1
Starship Gunnery +2
Stamina +1

5 CP (can only raise one skill with 1 pip at the time)

Here it can vary of the caracter can spend his cp to raise the "free" skills even more, but still only by one pip.

So the player decided that his 5C was enough to raise his starship gunnery to 3D, leaving his 3 CP left to play with.



This is letting the actually adventuring and missions and the active use of the skill help in advancing, above and beyond the normal 3-5 cp.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 3:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
I once suggested here that the SpecForce troops as published were comically underpowered and that their main skills should be at least 6D.


I've argued that too.. Looking at the common 'generic spec forces' characters in Rules of Engagement, they are practically the same as imp army troopers..

But that doesn't mean spec forec troopers should all be upped to 'starting PC level..'
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 3:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Naaman wrote:
I once suggested here that the SpecForce troops as published were comically underpowered and that their main skills should be at least 6D.


I've argued that too.. Looking at the common 'generic spec forces' characters in Rules of Engagement, they are practically the same as imp army troopers..

But that doesn't mean spec forec troopers should all be upped to 'starting PC level..'



But most are. look at storm commandos, Special Navy Forces, Special Missions troopers, by raw these have 50, maybe 60 dice in skills and attributes, and some even as much as 4D and even 5D above base attribute.


so the specila forces as presented in the books while some re under owered compared to a PC with about 3 years of playing they will still have a lot more dice to their sheets.

if we go through some if the NPC write up for special forces we see thise are characters that if player characters would be well beyond 12 maybe even 20 D to skills. and these are not even the true elite.

If we count royal guards as special forces, their description absolutely indcate that they are then we also have the added 120cp alone on getting a 4D dex increased to 5D.

I think even 12D is on the low side for any military/paramilitary trained character, and no less than 18D would even come close to the veritility of special forces, and I would even argue attribute increases as well.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 4:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
I once suggested here that the SpecForce troops as published were comically underpowered and that their main skills should be at least 6D.

The counter augument offered was that stats like that put them on par with PCs, to which I rebutted that they are "PCs," just someone else's PCs, asserting tjat SpecForce troops (in real life) represent 1% of 1% of the population. The following retort was that PCs represent an anomolous fraction of the population so small that not even SpecForce troops should compare.

My initial response was general agreement. However, after perusing the books and comparing the published stats of various troop types, I have resumed my previous position that the SpecForce troops stats are just plain silly and grossly under powered.

However, the point I want to make is this: if PCs are supposed to be uniquely qualified to save the galaxy or a star system or whatever at a particular point in history, then they MUST have the ability (that is, the story REQUIRES them to have the ability) to pull off spectacularly heroic feats.

Ultimately, I've landed on the notion that each group needs to decide what kind of dice rolls represent sufficiently cinematic heroics.

For us, we ended up in the 12D and up range EVERY campaign (a typical campaign would last a whole summer or a whole school year when we were kids). Eventually, we started making "advanced" PCs at character creation instead of starting "from scratch" per RAW.

This allowed the GM to really use some cool bad guys and really play around with stuff that he otherwise would not get to. Typically, I would lose a character ebery other campaign (about half of campaigns saw my original PC(s) from start to finish).

Awesome fun for us beating the snot out of entire squads of royal guardsmen. Taking down the entire security detail of a Moff and then gunning him down when he draws his weapon as a last ditch effort is quite satisfying. Beating a powerful dark Jedi (about a notch below Vader) in single combat really sends home the message that the PCs are heroes, not mere supporting characters in someone else's SWU.
garhkal wrote:
I've argued that too.. Looking at the common 'generic spec forces' characters in Rules of Engagement, they are practically the same as imp army troopers..

But that doesn't mean spec forec troopers should all be upped to 'starting PC level..'

Right. I agree that the standard SpecForce stats in RAW are underpowered, but I would say that starting PC-level stats may represent SpecForce officers or experienced veterans, so the standard SpecForce stats should be somewhere in between. The game system was designed around PC rules. PCs generally have 18D in attributes and average humans have 12D. The PC starting and advancement rules rules can be tweaked somewhat, but the base system is fully functional.

However published NPC stats vary in quality, and many seem too far off or too close to PCs. (Standard SpecForce stats are notably too far off from PCs, while Greedo stats are notably too close to PCs.) Standard SpecForces would have somewhere in between 12D and 18D in total attribute dice. They should not have below human average in any attribute. That is quite ridiculous. A big problem I've noticed with the WEG game line (and no overall stat editor) is that a lot of authors tried to force NPC stats into 12D or 18D molds. There is no such rule in the game system governing NPC stats. NPCs can have 15D+1 attributes if appropriate. There is no formula. NPCs can have less than 12D and they can even exceed 18D, although those characters would be more rare than PC-level stat characters. When RAW NPC stats don't make sense, change them. A WEG author's stats are not inherently superior to a GM making stats for his game.

I think it is great that PCs can do epic feats in this game, but in my game there is a build up to that so they don't need to do that right at the start of a campaign. Yes, the group as a whole should discuss and agree on the general direction and scope of the game before the campaign begins. I think really fast advancement like the level of CPs given out in Mamatried's game threatens my sense of disbelief suspension a bit too much. IMO, PCs don't necessarily need to raise a pip on a skill in between every single adventure. If you end an adventure with 5 CPs but want to improve your 7D blaster skill, you can wait until after the next adventure to do it. Player goals.

However humans and some other species PCs start out a bit too weak for my tastes, so PCs start out better than RAW in my game. Human PCs start out with 12D in skill dice. And some skills have been consolidated, so the skills are generally broader which makes the 12D even more valuable overall. PCs in my game start out better than RAW but advance slower, so there isn't a gigantic gulf between their starting and ending abilities but they can still be big damn heroes.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 6:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not taking away from what you said about build up, to be clear, ours was a build up, too. We just played A LOT. Eventually, we came to the point that 7D skill dice wasn't quite enough, so we also got 50 CP to start instead of 5. The first time we tried this, everyone (including the GM) was surprised at how little difference it made.

Also, I've been secretly working on a revision to the SpecForce templates. I will post eventually. The "standard" SpecForce trooper WILL be better than a starting PC, though, per my personal opinion. Razz
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Mamatried
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 8:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
Not taking away from what you said about build up, to be clear, ours was a build up, too. We just played A LOT. Eventually, we came to the point that 7D skill dice wasn't quite enough, so we also got 50 CP to start instead of 5. The first time we tried this, everyone (including the GM) was surprised at how little difference it made.

Also, I've been secretly working on a revision to the SpecForce templates. I will post eventually. The "standard" SpecForce trooper WILL be better than a starting PC, though, per my personal opinion. Razz


Now how I see it, not that I do mind high dice pools, they at a time simply become a virtual guarantee to make the roll, I tend to give the super heroic flawor to the game by rarely if ever having difficulties above 40.
Now with that a 8D and 9D skilled character will have a chance to ffail, but will make the "extraordinary" enougb to actually feel the hero.
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Raven Redstar
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 1:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
Not taking away from what you said about build up, to be clear, ours was a build up, too. We just played A LOT. Eventually, we came to the point that 7D skill dice wasn't quite enough, so we also got 50 CP to start instead of 5. The first time we tried this, everyone (including the GM) was surprised at how little difference it made.

Also, I've been secretly working on a revision to the SpecForce templates. I will post eventually. The "standard" SpecForce trooper WILL be better than a starting PC, though, per my personal opinion. Razz


I can't wait to see what you come up with. I found the ones from RoE to be rather lackluster.
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Dredwulf60
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 8:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naaman wrote:
Eventually, we came to the point that 7D skill dice wasn't quite enough, so we also got 50 CP to start instead of 5. The first time we tried this, everyone (including the GM) was surprised at how little difference it made.


When my mandalorian game resumed after a 10 year in-game time jump to allow one of the characters to serve out a prison sentence, i gave everyone 80 CP to account for those 10 years.

They soaked it up without much change in the flavour of the game. They tended to become slightly more competent in the things they were already good at and rounded out some skills that they probably should have been competent at, but weren't.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah. Its amazing how "little" several dozen character points actually is in this game.
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