|
Post by GuardianTempest on Oct 20, 2021 4:46:15 GMT -6
Huh, the consensus I remembered years back in a Roll20 campaign was that Homing just prevented targets from dodging...I can see why alternatives were sought.
|
|
telok
New Member
Posts: 30
|
Post by telok on Oct 20, 2021 9:35:48 GMT -6
Yup, my homing is nasty. It's also only available on weapons with 500m base range and the "no short range" property. They're pure long range antivehicle missiles.
They are intended to replicate modern guided missle & countermeasure interplay.
Edit: interrupted
See, part of what I did was some vehicle vs vehicle tests. Vehicles are tough! Two size 15 fighter jets couldn't hardly do more than scratch each other, much less a size 25 civilian jumbo jet. You'll also notice that the two systems called out as able to damage starships are both accurate. The weapons simply need to do that much damage to kill other vehicles.
Yeah, getting tagged in the head by an anti-aircraft missile or 155mm howitzer shell hurts. It takes 16 damage to get a nobody npc to zero hp. The old low end autocannon did what? 2k1+5 or something? It was shooting pistol rounds that bounced off compact cars half the time.
Stealth defeats homing. Literally just trying to hide from the attack helicopter shooting anti-tank guided missiles is going to save normal people most of the time unless the pilot specifically uses actions to find and target them.
Having it do no-dodge doesn't actually make them better at hitting stuff like the weapon blurb said. Being full auto did, but also made them candidates for suppressing fire and stuff like Steel Rain & Storm of Iron. Auto-accurate gave them the bonus to hit and enough damage to take out other large vehicles.
|
|
chippo
Full Member
<Insert dead meme>
Posts: 211
|
Post by chippo on Oct 20, 2021 11:26:40 GMT -6
Having it do no-dodge doesn't actually make them better at hitting stuff like the weapon blurb said. Being full auto did, but also made them candidates for suppressing fire and stuff like Steel Rain & Storm of Iron. Except they wouldn’t? Vehicle weapons, which use the Fire Mounted Weapon action, don't interact with feats. Neither do they interact with other bonuses you'd normally apply to attacks, such as static bonuses from class completion. It's also the same reason that vehicle weapons don't get proficiency, aside from there being no options for it. Having full auto wouldn't make the LRM or SRM eligible to use those feats, because they can't benefit from those feats at all.
|
|
telok
New Member
Posts: 30
|
Post by telok on Oct 20, 2021 17:13:16 GMT -6
Except they wouldn’t? Vehicle weapons, which use the Fire Mounted Weapon action, don't interact with feats. Neither do they interact with other bonuses you'd normally apply to attacks, such as static bonuses from class completion. It's also the same reason that vehicle weapons don't get proficiency, aside from there being no options for it. Having full auto wouldn't make the LRM or SRM eligible to use those feats, because they can't benefit from those feats at all. How odd. I managed to miss that sentence for years. Well there goes about a third of the reasons. That means all vehicle weapons fire is purely on ballistics/melee skill and... would that affect jams? Maybe vehicle weapons can't jam, some certainly shouldn't but others should... Oh, wait... can't do suppressing fire with the punisher mgs. Dang thats an interesting can of worms.
|
|
|
Post by GuardianTempest on Oct 20, 2021 19:49:49 GMT -6
And your team of proofreaders didn't catch that either? Couldn't be helped, I imagine someone dreams about making a gun cart without reading the fine print. Going purely by skill dots kinda makes sense since most vehicles rarely have high SD unless you're playing Ace Combat so a lower threshold on vehicle attacks makes sense.
Now that the issue is raised, what are you gonna do now? Change more of the core rules to fit the errata?
|
|
telok
New Member
Posts: 30
|
Post by telok on Oct 21, 2021 16:21:41 GMT -6
Ok, fascinating stuff. On average there's no effective difference.
But... important assumptions here, "average" is just checking the 40%-50%-60% spread and using the 50% because it's not that big a spread at the 3k2 to 8k4 ranges (12-13-14 & 32-34-37). In addition the 'pilot' is assumed to the berserker bot with it's 6k3 as an "average pilot" representation.
First I ran the original veritech and the new veritech against themselves. Then I ran the original version car, jet, scorpion tank, atlas mecha, and cargo van along side the new versions of those (biggest & only meaningful diff is that original size rules for atlas puts it at 23 size = 35m as opposed to the new rules 30 size).
TLDR: Both veritechs do 1 hp to another veritech 99%+, 2 hp ~40%, and 3 hp ~4% of the time using 6k3 gunnery. Weirdly the LMG on the original veritech has higher damage potential then the missiles because of the higher RoF, but it 30%-70% range averages the same as the Vulcan Mega-Bolter on the new veritech. Moving gunnery from 3k3 to 6k3 added 1 hp of damage to the SRM against the size 8 car because going from 2 hits to 4 hits was literally +3 average damage, ergo no effect. Going from old rules to new rules was no change or +1 hp done except the accurate LRMs against the compact car & scorpion tank did +2 hp damage. I used a SAW in the scorpion p-weapon mount and it had no (averages) change at all under any version of the rules.
Now, that's all average damage. Going from 3k3 to 6k3 is +7/+8 in the 40%-50%-60% result range, a single raise almost all the time. Old style RoF -/5 LRMs tagged stuff with 3 or 4 raises under 3k3 gunnery and maxxed at 5 raises with the 6k3, a difference of (at most) 4 points of damage. Under original rules the multi-las averages +2 to +3 damage over the missiles. Also, the atlas mecha melee weapon has zero chance at damaging another atlas under old rules, but is only ~3 damage under inflicting 1 hp damage under the new rules.
The only maximum damages I looked at were for the car and the van. Old rules: The AC/20 has a 2% chance to total the car and the SRMs have about a 1% chance to total it if all 5 missiles hit. The average AC/20 shot to the car does 5 hp, the van takes 4 hp. New rules: Not as easy to calculate for LRMs due to the uncapped nature of accurate weapons but they run around a 4% chance to one shot the car and 1% to total the van. The new AC/20 has a 1% chance to take out the van and a ~25% chance at taking out the compact car in one shot.
Summary: The average difference is bupkis. Going from 3k3 & old vehicles to 6k3 & new vehicles does about +2 hp damage to size 8-10, +1 hp damage to size 11-20s, and about half a hp that at higher sizes.
Jamming: I dug out my old math and checked it a bit more. 1st level 2k2: 1s > level = 1%, 1s > skill = nope 4k4: 1s > level = 5.3%, 1s > skill = nope 3k2: 1s > level = 2.7%, 1s > skill = 0.01% 5k4: 1s > level = 8%, 1s > skill = 0.0001% 4th level 2k2: nope 4k4: nope 6k2: 1s > level = 0.005%, 1s > skill = 1.5% 8k4: 1s > level = 0.04%, 1s > skill = 0.04%
Honestly I'm not a fan of either way. There's a comment, there's an entry in the pre-game question list, and that's about all I want to do with jams. There just isn't a great way to handle it attached to the attack roll. Either you make them more common as people level up, or more common as people gain skill. For shooting you're incentivized to get weapon proficiency as the last possible feat before going to your 2nd level class. If you're looking for a specific number on the die more dice (aiming, short range, weapon focus) always equal higher chances.
Hmmm.... What if half the dice or more show 1s? 2: 20% .. 1/5, 3: 2.8% .. 1/35ish, 4: 5% .. 1/20, 5: ~1% .. 1/100, 6: 1.6% .. 1/60ish, 7: 0.27% .. 1/370, 8: 0.5% .. 1/200, 9: 0.1% .. 1/1000, 10: 0.16% .. 1/600ish
Well... it's jankey with the odd numbers of dice. Short range, full auto, and aiming decrease your chance of jams and full auto is the most likely thing to jam a real weapon. But at least increasing proficiency, skill, and level decrease the chance of jamming. I think the house rule at my table will be half or more 1s on the shooting test. I'll live with the jank. Oh, wait, the unreliable keyword... what if exploded dice also count? That's double the... no, don't assume anything with statistics. Do a test...
Test = 2: 34.5% .. 1/3ish, 3: 9.5% .. 1/10ish, 4: 16.5% .. 1/6, 5: 5% .. 1/20, 6: 8.5% .. 1/12, 7: 2.8% .. 1/35, 8: 4.7% .. 1/21, 9: 1.5% .. 1/60, 2.5% .. 1/40
Sill have the odd number and full auto jank, but that is pretty unreliable.
|
|
chippo
Full Member
<Insert dead meme>
Posts: 211
|
Post by chippo on Oct 21, 2021 19:29:00 GMT -6
I’m looking at some of your vehicles, and I’m not sure how you’re getting the SDs that are listed.
The van, for example, has 0, 12, 24, 32 listed. I’m not sure how you got these, since it seems you haven’t changed the formula.
The van has 0 man, 9 size, and speed 10
10 + 0 - (9*2) = -8 -8 + 0 = -8 = 0 (if you don’t wanna use negative SDs) -8 + (10*1) = 2 -8 + (10*2) = 12 -8 + (10*3) = 22
your vehicles have inflated SDs, which might be the reason you’re getting so little damage. Correctly calculatedly, at normal speeds (because you’re unlikely to be going at Mom 10), the missiles and such should be doing more than 1-2 wounds
In fact, I did some fast and loose calculations. Nothing all that intensive, just a rundown of a pretty average scenario.
Using the van again, let’s say a reasonably competent gunner (say, 3 Ballistics dots) fires an LRM at someone driving the aforementioned van. To be generous, their current momentum is enough to have an SD in the third bracket (12). On average, the gunner’s roll of 6k3 will fall around 26.5 and garner 2-3 raises (assuming the driver doesn’t take evasive maneuvers), netting a +1k1 to their LRM’s 3k2+15. Rolling 4k3, the average is 21.9. Round down (for simplicity) and add 15, you have 36. Divided by the van’s 9 resilience, that’s a clean 4 wounds out of 9 hp.
These are just averages centered around a fast and relatively small vehicle. Bigger and/or slower vehicles are likely to get pelted with attacks garnering even more raises, resulting in even more +1k1s. Even with strong armor and high resilience, a good shot from an accurate weapon can cause stupid amounts of damage. At that rate, you may equip it with an ECM to at least nullify Homing. Fair enough. But do you see why I find this concerning?
|
|
telok
New Member
Posts: 30
|
Post by telok on Oct 21, 2021 23:57:01 GMT -6
Its a good point, but I disagree a bit. The van does have the wrong SD tho, should be 10/20/30 by my method.
So, there's a few things going on here. I use 10-12 second rounds, derived in book 1 from modeling olympic sprinters as str4 dex4 normals with the fast asset. That cuts the kph of vehicles about in half from the 6 second rounds, leading to higher speeds to match real kph. Although the listed speeds were rather low to start with. That car in the original book at max 4*4*10= 160m/r*10*60= 96000= 96kph= ~60mph, assuming I'm mathing right in my head since I can't computer right now, so you'd need 4 second rounds to even get to the claimed 120kph, which would put Mr. Couch Potato runner at 2*2*6= 24m/r*15*60= 21600= 21.6kph= ~13mph which is good for trained athletes but 150% to 200% of what the rest of us normals do.
So my speed values seem high (check the scramjet & the vehicle appendix for getting into orbit) but still come in a bit lower than real vehicles, and thats not considering that I took box trucks to 80mph over 20 years ago while still being passed by cheap compact go-kart cars.
I tried the static defense calculation several ways over the duration of the campaign. A needle pistol vs scorpion tank with negative SDs was starting at -21+5/10/15 making a flipping 3k2 ballistics character tag it with 7 raises (slightly above average roll) for 5k5 damage, I recall it being 2 hp & a flipping crash. I shudder to think what an actual gun focused character would do. We discussed if the maneuver penalty from should affect defense, since the book can be read that way, but decided it was too much work. We settled on the 10-2size+maneuver being the base (still 0 def at 0 mom) with speed being a bonus to that base. It's simple and doesn't get stupid results. The atlas mecha with original rules (size 23) starts at -33 SD. If it has zero defense at all speeds nobody ever misses it, and if it has negative defense any accurate weapon starts blowing holes in it.
But the static defense being higher never amounts to more than about 2 raises of difference. That's not the biggest issue. In fact, other than accurate weapons it's practically lost in the noise. The autofire weapons cap damage at RoF. That's the big deal. When I checked numbers the 3k3 gunnery was hitting the car & van with 4/5 rounds on average rolls. The issue is that jumping from 7k2+10 to 8k2+10 is like 2 points of damage on average, and the LRMs can't get any higher than that. Long range guided missiles couldn't take out a compact car. Damage it, yes, but never one hit kill it. It just didn't fit the thematics. A single round from a RPG-7 is comparable in range and effect to a full 5 round SRM burst that's doing more damage than the LRMs. Compare the mp lascannon at 5k5 p10 to 8k2+10 p5, should p-weapon mounts
|
|
chippo
Full Member
<Insert dead meme>
Posts: 211
|
Post by chippo on Oct 22, 2021 13:52:54 GMT -6
My bad, I didn’t know. I can only presume that the little detail about calculating SD is under the exclamation point, which, unfortunately, means I had no way of knowing. I can’t read the annotations, so I’m only able to operate off of what’s on the page.
|
|
telok
New Member
Posts: 30
|
Post by telok on Oct 22, 2021 20:42:46 GMT -6
No worries. The adobe acrobat reader or similar program/app will pop them and enable the dice rollers too (they rely on pdf fillable form bits).
Theres also other people in the house who make posting & electronics hard. That post was written over 4 hours in 2-3 minute chunks. It may be less coherent & more pendantic or mis-toned than usual.
|
|
|
Post by ScrapyardDragon on Nov 15, 2021 22:08:57 GMT -6
Not a fan of things like the machinator array or power armor nerfs. Seems like the sort of thing put in because an SM got angry at builds using them more than anything else.
I DO like the change to fearless (gods I hate the way that feat works; everyone turning into a suicidal idiot at level 4 always rubbed me the wrong way), and the temper tantrum power for werewolves is actually pretty interesting, has some WtA flavoring, I like that.
I'll continue to leave my lukewarm takes on your various good and bad takes as I continue reading through.
>can take four hindrances no, just....no. Nobody should have 1000 chargen exp, that is aggressively excessive.
Not a fan of so many of the sword schools being fiddled with, they were fine as is and most of the changes seem for the worse to me. did an sm not like a player getting lucky with foehammer one time? that said, making special attacks not bound to a specific weapon type is something I approve of if only for consistency with gun kata.
actually no i revoke that given that gun kata ALSO got fiddled with unjustly.
get outta here with turning draconic aura into a fear aoe. The whole damn POINT of draconic aura was to be something to prevent you from spamming out a bunch of resource at everything and anything every 5 minutes. because they literally recharge in five minutes. It is SUPPOSED to be limiting in a destructive way, MOST exalts have a power that is more a hindrance than anything, dragonbloods were just able to use theirs offensively if they wanted to, but a focus was put on environmental damage being an issue for a REASON. Of course you went and changed their resource too, which just makes it BLAND. Their whole gimmick was that they could have a wank and a biscuit and be fully reloaded at the cost of a tiny pool but now its just kind of lame and generic.
Why the heck would you switch the claw bonus on water and wood, thats just wrong.
regarding dragon heart; why make the extra 2 points of pen of using the normal flamer statblock locked behind an extra point of breath? if anything the hand flamer is BETTER since you can use it in melee if you're into that, and of course it still suffers the issue of "you spend a breath and a half action, and have a chance of wasting both because flamers jam easily" which was one of the first things about the exalt that got patched on the community revision here. Dragon skin not stacking with worn armor is pretty dissapointing, again, did someone get angry at a dragonblood in power armor?
developed wings actually naming the racial power so that humans can't snatch it with mixed heritage is a good change at least.
The context you gave for the k'vend'l nerf is dumb, and here's why; you have a player specifically locking their race, exalt, and exalt asset just to be able to buy good, and you take that away from them. and its just wealth rolls if that is somehow messing up your plans as an sm then you're not being a competent sm who knows how to limit players buying a ton of stuff by using aquisition time rules. un-nerf it or continue to face ridicule darn ye. Mandibles from thri-kreen actually being brawling now is good though, but they REALLY don't need to have had razor-sharp slapped on.
why would you get rid of the bio titan from the example vehicles? darn thing is an eva, or did you decide no anime allowed?
closing thoughts for now: some of these changes are good. Most of them reek of salty SM. I will be harvesting your rework of fearless though because I detest how it works in core.
|
|
telok
New Member
Posts: 30
|
Post by telok on Nov 20, 2021 19:36:39 GMT -6
figured you should get a real response rather than just something I plonked out on my phone, but it meant you had to wait until I could get time on my computer. It also takes time away from converting WWII battleships and stuff into more spelljammers, but that's just life.
I should stress that I didn't come to the game through these boards. I knew they existed and very lightly scanned through them, but apparently I missed the fixes thread. So our play experience came from just sitting down, reading the books, and playing from them. Very nearly all the changes came from that experience.
So, lets see... machinator array and power armor... Um, nope, no changes to power armor. Unless you assume that it counts as a voidsuit. We tried it that way but it made the storm carapace completely pointless, trash armor you give to npcs so the pcs won't get power armor out of a fight. The inclusion of the EVA exoskeleton provides sealed power armor that has an actual trade-off where storm carapace might be worthwhile. Machinator... looks like I dropped the best quality version and folded it into the good version, space and not increasing page count too much was a concern. Maybe you're referring to the 'max 5' on the strength? My experience is that it didn't make a real difference. Strength just doesn't do that much outside of occasional heavy lifting and melee damage, where going over 5 doesn't seem to make much difference. But hey, no hate on the weapon prices, armor quality benefits, or the plastic-man armor?
Thousand xp a character generation? Yeah, I don't care. It's four hindrances and any difference disappears pretty quickly. Consider this, the original rules say 800 start xp and 500 per session while my preference is for 1000 start xp and 200 xp per session. There's a build for the original rules that can run through level 5 druid in about 1700 total xp, but with my version you can't get through level 5 under about 2500 total xp for anything. 200 xp is piddly podunk for just about any measure. I'd honestly expected way more harshing on cutting Mech-Wight from AP(Any) to AP(Light/Medium).
Sword schools and gun kata. Nobody took them in our game except to snag that first dot of Clay Pigeon for unlimited ammo, and two people took that with another planning on taking it soon (then the plague hit and the game ended). Of course two people also took the first rank of Conjuration for Blink with another planning on getting it soon (only one character was going to have both). Everyone warping their character progressions to get those two abilities signaled a problem to me. I pushed Blink to the second rank of Conjuration (nary a peep about that) and rebuilt the sword schools & gun katas into things my group would have wanted to take. Let's see, Foehammer... Oh, ha, Foehammer didn't change except to get a little more expensive and the wording is different for the exact same effect. My players were really confused by some of the original abilities. The original Castigating Blow, now that was a piss poor trash hole.
Draconic aura... Oh yeah, the home wrecker. I don't know how others play the game but ours was pretty heavy one the spelljamming and they spent decent amounts of time in vehicles. The aura was punishment for the character using resource points. The player complained that they basically only had one resource point no matter what because it kept setting off fire suppression systems (spaceship fire suppression being mostly along the lines of seal the area and either vent to vacuum or flood with CO2) or damaging the vehicles they were in. 2k1 doesn't sound like much, and it isn't unless you roll it a lot which is what the aura causes. 10% of results are over 15, 1% are over 20, and the "one in a million" cap is 60. We saw an actual "one in a million", thankfully it was a paragon jumping stunt because 210-ish would have splattered anyone if it had been a damage roll. So after our dragon-blooded almost took down a plane they were riding in just because they used an extra parry twice... well, we changed it to something not "get the party killed/jailed/exiled".
Wood and water claws... oh yeah, toxic is useless crap, never did anything. But water's other ability is very very good, especially in space. I think wood's ability could have potentially come up maybe twice in the whole year of playing.
Dragon heart. The original is two points of breath for a flamer style breath attack. I added a shorter range option for one point of breath. And its not like they're getting a real flamer, they get a breath weapon. Flame weapons jam, breath weapon that use the attack stats of a flamer don't and there's no prohibition of using them in melee anyways.
Dragon skin. The new version is double the armor of the original and the original doesn't say it stacks anyways, so basic armor rules it would never have stacked in the first place.
K'vend'l. I'll face the ridicule of a random poster on the internet. You're going to "lock in" your species and exaltation anyways, doing so just to be "rich" is pretty pointless as you can get rich during play anyways. With the change you just have to find other kobolds to buy stuff from for the second part of the bonus. I'm also rather old school in that I still regard kobolds as little chihuahua-men that bark and smell bad. The transformation into miniature dragons was always weird to me. My squats still list kobolds among the vermin who may be exterminated with impunity.
Mandibles. Buy a custom cestus and quit whining. Razor Sharp makes them actually relevant compared to punching because the 4 pen alone isn't enough to spend another 100 xp on.
Bio-Titan. I saw some of that show and didn't recognize it from the stats. Plus it's surprisingly weak, anything with a vulcan mega-bolter or p-mount las cannons will tear it a new hole. A grav-tank with a railgun (Renegade Legion expy) took one out without being in any danger. Worst of all those stats are boring, it's only defense is it's resilience & hit points and the only offense is a machine gun.
If you want to change the book all you have to do is Adobe Pro to export the fonts and the page(s) you want to edit. Import it all into OpenOffice Draw, edit, export to PDF (remember to turn on image compression if you add pics). And then replace the pages with Adobe Pro again. Using Adobe Pro keeps the dice rollers and generators in the back working. Everything else I tried broke those. On request I'll uplink the extracted fonts, save you some work.
|
|
|
Post by Marr965 on Nov 21, 2021 0:42:07 GMT -6
So, I did a bit of reading, and gave up during the magic section. General observationsOne huge thing is that 4k2 is far from "average". 1 dot in a skill makes it a skill you use on a regular basis, to the point that many people IRL have only 1 dot in the skills they use professionally. 2 dots in a skill is the kind of thing the "resident expert" has, and using that skill is likely what they were hired for. People who roll 4k2 are professional experts, not average Joes. World-class experts - think of someone who's a "household name" in your professional field - might roll 6k3. 8k4 is the kind of legendary roll that wuxia film martial artists throw around when they're doing their physics-defying flying kicks (conveniently enough, DtD could be used to represent a wuxia film-esque setting!).
Another thing: Exalts (which PCs will be in most games) are larger-than-life mythic heroes. They shouldn't be pointlessly nerfed. Let them throw around massive bullshit combos, let them do weird bullshit builds that involve doing strange dips, let their bionics take them over the normal cap. I will point out that "pointlessly" is an extremely important word there: there's a really good reason that the char-gen XP cap is 800, and that's that PCs should really be level 1 at default start.
To go into detail with regards to the 800 XP thing: A concept I came up with, doable entirely within char-gen and from Core 1 and 2, is the Treeminator, a Dragon-Blooded Dryad Peasant/Tactical Officer that has the Adamic Dragon asset (specifying Metal) and the Matron feat. It begins play with Brawling 3 and Ballistics 3, a natural weapon that hits for 7k2 R Pen 4 with Power Field (after factoring in Strength) and some seriously nasty physical capabilities (Speed 6, 16 Hit Points, 2 points of natural armour and Resilience of a whopping 6). That's just off what's available in the Core 1 and 2 that doesn't have your alterations. With your alterations, it swaps the Power Field on the natural weapon for Razor Sharp, loses 3 Pen on the natural weapon (but can end up with more), gains 2 more natural armour and also gains a natural development route (into the Heavy classline at Heavy Weapons Guy). The Treeminator is potentially a massively destabilising force, and if you're genuinely concerned about balance, your changes don't actually make extreme cases that you haven't considered (such as the Treeminator) less extreme. Character creationOh boy. Where to start? While it is definitely possible to leave your starting class during char-gen, it's generally more cost-effective to not do so and instead to focus on getting a broader array of Assets and backgrounds. In addition, while you're in a class, you're locked into its characteristics and skills, rather than being able to buy outside it for twice-cost.
Screw your alternate "damage point" thing. You're making a massively-more-complicated system to "deal with" a problem that doesn't exist. Yes, Resilience is one of the few things in DtD which makes you do mathematics more complicated than dividing by 2, but it's not like we're not living in a society where literally everyone has a small computer in their pocket. In addition, turning Resilience into a Hit Point multiplier lowers the value of high Resilience, heavily dincentivising playing larger characters. Not only are they already easier to hit, but you're now making them take more damage when they do get hit.
A minor quibble: Racial feats can be bought at any time. Assets can only be bought during char-gen (except for the Paragon's Legendary Trait). SkillsWhile I agree that the current inability to dodge without having a dot in Acrobatics is problematic, I (along with many other) feel that, rather than a flat Dexterity test, Dexterity with Acrobatics dots added as rolled dice might work better.
I tend to think of Common Lore as being something that you're not guaranteed to know, comparable to Streetwise or Lore (Criminal or Sprawl Life), etc. It has actual applications: If you say "I want to know about Slaught" and roll against Academic Lore, you'll get stuff like effects of consumption and chemical formulae, whereas if you roll against Common Lore you'll get things like "that guy over there sells it, but it's known as Kill-Juice here".
Effective first aid is absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent an advanced skill. Ineffective first aid can be worse than no first aid - consider the fact that removing a blade from a wound can actually hasten death by blood loss, because the blade acts as a plug in the wound. CPR is also hard work and you have to know how to actually work the lungs and heart, because otherwise you're just beating the body up.
I tend to treat Arcana as a Lore skill and treat it as being to Forbidden Lore what Common Lore is to Academic Lore. Exaltation-specificChosenThe Chosen is naturally weak, simply because it has an inbuilt XP tax. A campaign that was run over Roll20 included a Chosen and (among other things) tested the option of giving the Chosen a free point of Devotion whenever they increase their Faith. No loss of balance was discovered.
The addition of Perils of the Warp to Trial of Faith is problematic, as anyone in the aforementioned campaign could have told you - Mark of Tzeentch makes the Chosen immune to Perils, and getting Favour back would reward full-pushing more. DaemonhostThe addition of "once per round" to the "how to Eruption" part of Rejected by Creation isn't inherently terrible, but is probably not necessary.
Brawling weapons (like the natural weapon granted by Feeding) automatically inflict a level of Fatigue if they cause at least one wound, so there's no need to change how they work for the purposes of the Daemonhost.
I'll also note that, despite your apparent misgivings about breaking caps elsewhere, you didn't do anything about the single most potent capbreaker in the game, Unnatural Characteristics. PrometheanWhether or not Prometheans are immune to bleeding, toxins and drugs is entirely down to the SM in question. After all, the androids in Nier Automata are undoubtedly Prometheans, and the Japanese horse mackerel is deadly poisonous to them.
Superlative Constitution is 5 total critical damage, not 5 individual critical hits. A sufficiently large single hit should be able to blow a limb straight off a Promethean, just as it would any "normal" person.
The "return to home" clause can always be ignored, as it's only most Prometheans that conform to it - in other words, there's literally nothing stopping your player's robot being one of the anomalous few. They're already special by virtue of being Exalts, why not let them be that bit more special?
I also observe that you've missed a massive part of the point of DtD: the rule of cool. Sure, reality implies that you "shouldn't" be able to fit a grand daiklaive, a lascannon and a missile launcher into an arm, but would it be cooler if you could? Imagine the stunt: seeing the swarm of modron-modified zombies approaching, the Promethean reconfigures its arm - panels open, the pieces of the lascannon disassemble and are whisked away into the inner workings of the arm, only for it to be replaced with a massive blunt spike and a hilt of sorts. Then, the Promethean places its left hand on the hilt and twists - and an eerie wail fills the air as a slightly-bluish-green aura snaps into existence around the weapon and solidifies into what is clearly an extremely sharp edge. Finally, with one swing, the Promethean bisects a group of hapless zombies that got too close and growls out an oath - "None that threaten my friends will be allowed to continue existing." This is the kind of haminess that DtD runs on, and you should be encouraging it, not making reality get in the way (or encouraging SMs to make reality get in the way). VampireRegarding Undead Resilience - stop trying to fix what isn't broken. Removing the Undead trait from the Vampire removes part of what makes them special, and inhuman monsters that literally do not need to sleep and which can ignore major portions of their anatomy being removed strike me as particularly good candidates for possession of a trait which renders them immune to fatigue. Removing the Undead trait also removes their interaction with certain effects that call out Undead but not Vampires specifically, which potentially affects balance (which you seem to be concerned with) in ways that you have clearly not considered.
Another thing of note is that Dread grants magical fear, which blitzes straight through Jaded. Very little guarantees protection from Fear, and people can always roll badly. WerewolfThe alterations to the Werewolf are entirely unnecessary. I've run a campaign with a PC Werewolf, and they are *hugely* dangerous in combat. If your campaign found Werewolves to be weak, then you may not have been permissive enough, or maybe whoever was playing the Werewolf wasn't stunting enough. Stunting isn't something only Paragons can do - they just benefit more from it.
Yes, Werewolf Resource regeneration is slow, but that means that them being in a place where there is no moon shouldn't penalise them. Maybe the local Umbra has a moon. Maybe there's a local sect of druids that carries out a nightly ritual in which the moon symbolically rises. Maybe the Werewolf regains their point of Rage when night falls. Or maybe, if the SM is being particularly adversarial, the player decides that, rather than dealing with this bullshit, they'll just arbitrarilly declare that they regain their daily point of Rage at the start of the session and conveniently before each scene change during which a new day is declared. More insights may or may not be forthcoming. Responses to thoughts about my comments may or may not also be forthcoming. EDIT: Further thoughts! General thoughtsCritical damage shouldn't be tracked separately on different body parts unless you're a Promethean. There's a reason Superlative Constitution calls it out. Feats, Assets and HindrancesThe existing benefit of Fearless is that it permits you to ignore magical fear, making it an upgrade from Jaded. A reduced ability to back down from a fight is a reasonable penalty, considering that it grants immunity to all fear effects.
Given that Tested has mechanical effects which are supposed to be analogous to the Sanctioning process from 40k (which involves various things including a literal soul-branding), I'd advise not giving it for free to anyone (barring powers or similar things going on).
Tau Wraiths with the Farsighted feat get an additional 3 Plasm, which is admittedly not a huge bonus, but 3 resource points is 3 resource points.
RAW, Human Perseverance is a highly conditional feat, with very little reason to take it. However, allowing it to automatically apply to attacks and reactions makes it an enormously potent feat.
I'm Da Boss! applies Size as a static bonus. The same as literally every other effect that says "as a bonus" and doesn't specify dice.
Academy is an enormously potent Asset that basically should be taken by everyone. Even if they don't have a Proficiency feat in their class (current or intended).
Do not, repeat DO NOT let people take any feat that doesn't specifically call it out more than once. Magic Resistance is included in that DO NOT.
Veteran o' the Wheel is so ludicrously potent that some SMs have been known to just ban it full-stop. If you aren't min-maxing, it's at least 150 XP of dots for a 100 XP outlay. If you are, it's at least 300 XP of dots and potentially a full 600 XP(depending upon whether you're required to follow the char-gen rules relating to allocation of dots or not). Again, this looks like a case where you didn't actually consider the ramifications of what you left in and what you took out.
The Mark of Cuthbert doesn't change local laws. What I mean by this is: Cuthbert's jurisdiction is everywhere, and the jurisdiction of his daemons is "right where I am now, lawbreaker". The same applies to the Chosen of Cuthbert. If you have to nerf it, make the Chosen have to identify the law their intended target has broken to get the bonus (making this a fairly easy Intelligence test should be fine, though. This is, after all, DtD, and Judge Dredd could very well be a Paragon dedicated to Cuthbert. If he can maintain an encyclopedic memory of the laws of Mega-City One with his peak human condition, it seems reasonable to me that a being empowered by the literal god of law could work out exactly what local law some punk has broken).
The Mark of Pelor permits making attacks by spending Favour. Changing that ability to specify "once per X" would nerf it, unless that X is "round", which would have literally no effect.
Minor alterations to the way you look are heavily implied to be part of why the Mark of Slaanesh gives the Disguise bonus.
3 background dots isn't really worth the 200 effective experience the Greed asset costs, even with the doubled XP costs for Background dots after the third.
Paragon assets can't be taken after char-gen, except Legendary Trait. Legendary Trait is the only one that's specifically called out, which means that it's the only one that can.
The Werewolf asset Rage regains are waaaaaay too powerful. There's a reason a Werewolf without an asset can't regain Rage easily, and that's that Werewolves shouldn't be able to sit in Warform indefinitely.
Why change Wimpy?
|
|
|
Post by GuardianTempest on Nov 21, 2021 8:29:45 GMT -6
To be fair Marr, he kinda addresses (and encourages) the "larger than life" play in the Last Words section of Book 2. If you want to change the book all you have to do is Adobe Pro to export the fonts and the page(s) you want to edit. Import it all into OpenOffice Draw, edit, export to PDF (remember to turn on image compression if you add pics). And then replace the pages with Adobe Pro again. Using Adobe Pro keeps the dice rollers and generators in the back working. Everything else I tried broke those. On request I'll uplink the extracted fonts, save you some work. They used to do that back in the Zetaboard years. The increasingly-maligned Book 3 is proof of it. However homebrew changes often and so minutely that it was more practical to host the brew in the forum for easy reference, rather that upload several versions of the same PDFs that can confuse users under the assumption that it's the "final version". However, even back then no one wanted to reinvent the wheel and overhaul the core rulebook. I personally prefer keeping houserules and homebrew separate from LawfulNice's original files so that newcomers would start from the same foundation. Once they're familiar with the foundation, they would know what to add or change, and have a frame of reference when comparing vanilla material with community-made additions.
|
|
|
Post by Lestat on Nov 21, 2021 14:36:26 GMT -6
Can you upload a word doc version of the exported book? The fonts are available online, but releasing the book would lower the barrier for entry of others wishing to errata smaller things individually like Blast rules or clean up things like Psychic Phenomena being said to occur when keeping doubles, or Arcana having an advanced skill asterisk on the example sheet but being basic in the skill list.
|
|