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>
DougL <lampert.doug@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Just back from a long trip and catching up.
>
> gleichman wrote:
>
> > Nor am I a fan of Action Points and other similar mechanics, or
> > limited defensive options common to these systems.as they produce very
> > counter-productive play due to their very nature. For example,
> > requiring the spending of an Action for each use of the game's primary
> > defensive options results in the tradition MMORPGs style of combat
> > when each side focuses all their fire upon a single target- something
> > not seen in reality or fiction outside those games when use such
> > mechanics.
>
> My current BESM based game one of my (many) fixes to the combat
> mechanics was to allow the characters to by default to defend at full
> value vs. all attacks. Most attacks are ranged and you don't dodge the
> single blaster shot, you dodge all the time (unless surprised or
> taking deliberate aim or on a disabled vehicle or...).
>
> Dodging all the time is equivalent to rolling full defense vs. every
> single attack, it just seems to work MUCH better.
>
> And this game's combat does often involve the 100+ guys (or star****ps
> or whatever) shoot at you who can only hit if they roll a ~8 or more
> points higher than you do on 2d6. I can have a computer roll the 100+
> guys or just use the statistical expected number of rolls of 10-12 and
> have the PC roll only that number of defenses.
>
> I find that the 100+ guys are mildly dangerous but not nearly so much
> so any heroic types on the other side and that this is pretty much
> what I want.
>
> 200 storm troopers should worry Luke, but 9 shouldn't be able to
> trivially take him down by having the first 8 force out all his
> defensive actions.
In BESM or Feng Shui, I'd tend to agree. But under the Star Wars-based
rules
I'm using, I'd much, much rather only need a squad or two of stormtroopers
to threaten a character. For my setting, 200 is ridiculously many. I want
to
be able to scare the PCs with eight stormtroopers, not be forced to use
800.
I want them to spend more game time scared than you do, evidently :-)
So it does look like 'running characters out of Dodge dice' needs to
remain
a part of my rules. I do find it interesting to see how a single design
decision can make the desired game mechanics diverge so radically.
What seems to work for me is to treat a high Dodge skill not as an
impenetrable 'never get hit' ****eld, but as a 'buys you enough time to get
to cover' skill, and the more skilled you are, the more you can get away
with before it's time to seek cover. However, I'm reliant on several
interacting effects to achieve this:
1) Every action taken (including dodges) gives you 2m of free movement.
2) A bit of back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that there will almost
always be some cover within half-a-dozen meters of a character's position.
And I have now embodied that as a rule of thumb; nearest cover is 1D6
meters
away, second-nearest is another 1D6 meters away from that, and so forth.
In
open areas with very sparse cover, use 2D6 + 2D6 + 2D6 + ... instead. Then
roll a second D6 to grade the toughness of the cover - e.g. 1 or 2 is a
trash can, 5 or 6 is a parked vehicle, a tree, or a nice sturdy wall etc.
So
whenever a fight breaks out at a random location, I can quickly populate
the
area with stuff to hide behind - or blow up - with just a few die rolls.
And
I plan to keep some pre-rolled sets of terrain ready for just this sort of
eventuality. /And/ I can keep adding new bits of suitable terrain as the
fight moves from place to place.
3) Being hit for even the most minor possible injury almost always knocks
you prone.
4) Being prone makes you harder or impossible to hit, and this combines
with
cover; so no matter how many mooks shoot at you, once one hits and knocks
you down, that will usually be all the damage you take for the round,
because then you'll be prone behind whatever cover you'd found and the
mooks
probably can't shoot at you any more.
5) Weapons fire comes in two flavours; snap and aimed. Snap fire is quick,
dirty and inaccurate, but PCs are usually skilled enough to still get hits
while using snap fire. Aimed fire is very, very accurate, but if you dodge
you lose your aim. The result is that stormtroopers who usually outnumber
their opponents almost always aim and take the chance that a couple of
them
will go down to random lucky shots, while PCs usually use snap-fire, but
that means they're free to dodge when they need to.
Now, no way could I shoehorn all of that into just the dodge skill. So my
raw dodge skill does look rather too simplistic.
> "9 stormtroopers shouldn't be able to trivially take him down by having
> the first 8 force out all his defensive actions"
Counterintuitively, for my rules it appears they should - provided Luke
really is too thick to try to get under cover after eight ever-closer
warning shots.
But initiative matters because an ill-considered initiative rule could let
one side take a series of aimed shots, then move under cover where they
are
safe from retaliation. I'd like some way of intermixing actions between
the
two sides, while allowing for members of both sides choosing to take
differing numbers of actions. The old Star Wars rules mostly did this; all
first actions were resolved, then all second actions and so on, but that
can
get rather confusing because you're constantly having to switch from one
character to another, while still keeping everybody's second and third
actions
straight, along with escalating skill penalties for any extra skill uses
(e.g. dodges) which have cropped up during the round. Also, it doesn't
particularly match the films, where characters several times executed
sequences of actions without being interrupted.
Giving each character a concentrated dose of spotlight time so they can
perform all their actions in a round in a single batch is simpler and
quicker, but does not appear to mix well with the snap/aimed fire system,
which is a shame. I'm also not sure whether I want the PCs to always act
in
the same order every combat round. Shuffling the action order round a bit
adds to the gane IMV, even though it adds complexity too.
Hmm. I wonder how a rule like "roll a die code based on the relative
numbers
of the sides; each side then gets some number of consecutive actions
according to the die roll" might play out. Mooks taking one action apiece
could be handled in batches of maybe 3-6 mooks at a time, while a heroic
PC
wanting to try a complex sequence of actions could string them all
together
and resolve them in one go. That's a novel idea, for me at least.
Ultimately I'd rather not use initiative die rolls at all, but I think I
might have a bit of a play with that one anyway, just to see how it
behaves.
> There's still too much concentration of fire. The force-field and HP
> rules both encourage it too much to avoid it. If I ever bother with
> another major revision to the house rules I'll worry about that.
Sounds like a typical example of a rule system working against itself; you
have to combine fire to have a chance of piercing a force wall, therefore
the scaling rules for combined fire adopt a very gentle slope, and hence a
couple of points of difference in the value of a defence code requires a
factor of ten more attackers to counteract. But if the only thing that can
threaten a PC is an equal NPC or 1000 mooks, then your opponents will
either
be an NPC or 1000 mooks, and the PCs won't be too scared even when
confronted with tens of thousands of them. If 10 mooks can threaten a PC,
they'll be a lot more respectful of 100 or 1000 mooks (well, maybe a /bit/
more - I know what some PCs can be like), and as a GM you'll have a wider
variety of credible ways in which you can challenge them. But if you make
mooks too close to the power of PCs, mooks cease to exist as a concept,
and
the game tone changes radically. High-action and space-opera games seem to
/need/ mooks or they just don't work right.
> Back on the subject, BESM uses random roll every round, which works
> for what I'm doing but isn't really needed IMAO, fixed initiative
> values would work about as well and run a bit faster.
>
> DougL
--
Simon Smith
When emailing me, please use my preferred email address, which is on my
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site at http://www.simon-smith.org
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