I love that the link is hidden behind the "adults only" LJ option. Keeping the scary math away from the kiddies.
I like the static defence option the best. I remember being hesitant about it when it was first introduced in NWoD playtesting, but it has grown on me. Splitting dice pools, even in the way we're doing it in our custom Adventure game, has always rankled me and it only seems to work well for characters that are larger than life. I don't like making characters that are larger than life, since it seems strange for me to play a character whose sole purpose is getting better at smacking things in order to kick more ass in combat. I know that it's more fun for the combat monkey for them to know how much better they are than the rest of humanity, but every character that doesn't focus on that feels like a waste of space during combat. Static defence gives us something to allow us to not suck that much.
It's not exactly scary math. Well, unless you count adding independent probabilities. I couldn't find a clean explanation of how to do that (and spent an hour thinking that having 50% chance of mook 1 hitting and a 50% chance of mook 2 hitting gives a 50% chance of being hit, before writing it out, realising that it's 75% after all) so ended up begging an astrophysicist for help.
The rest is just light calculus and stats, and since it's on actual data (and that data is punctuated, rather than continuous), it's all sums and averages of real numbers, rather than on curves. So the calculus and stats help in knowing what to do, but I don't actually have to, e.g. find the normal distribution with integral 1 between -inf and inf, peaking at pool / 2, with a deviation d
( ... )
Well, that was why in NWoD they stopped people from doing multiple actions and gave chance dies. You may be skilled, both in attack and defencse, but the mooks still have a 10% chance to ding you, no matter how kickass you are. And your extra skill mainly translates to MAYBE killing or knocking unconscious the dude who's trying to hit you, not doing that to 3 dudes surrounding you.
I agree that halving the defence might be a suitable idea to allow multiple attacks, but if you have a better initiative, you go all out, do multiple actions and whack most of the guys surrounding you. So it just means you push for better initiatives to hopefully beat everyone else.
It's definitely tricky any way it's sliced. I definitely have more opinions than answers.
A lot of this hinges on an attack being one blow as well. Where, in our cases, our primary weapon can, essentially, be considered a fully-automatic spread. But that's a material advantage that helps distinguish us from more primitive peoples.
The other bit is what level of 'cinematic' is wanted. Adventure! appears to be 'slightly-above-normal people with superscience' which means that, in its power level, the Green Hornet and Kato should have a rough fight against 10 thugs.
I see us as being somewhere between pulp heroes and extraordinary humans with our game. So it may make more sense, rather than extensive rules-tweaking, to patch a few holes and make up the difference between player characters and random humans by judicious application of technology and perks.
I think one possible option would be to be able to spend enhancement pool at a 1:1 ratio for attributes. (At character creation, it was 1:2) As well, possibly use
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Well, at this stage I'm thinking that I want damage rating+successes. I still don't want a static defence, *but* I would like to favour defence. (Aside from aesthetics, I'd like to integrate non-combat actions more smoothly in the turn, and static defense cocks that up along with a few more things.) So I am thinking of the following
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Also maneuvers are mechanically neat. It's a -2 penalty that results in a +2 or +3 bonus to an attack (or a pleasant intangible). That makes them a gamble with a clear reward.
With a dice bonus on success, it makes trying cool things zero-sum or better, rather than a penalty, but avoids compressing a multiple-action trick into one roll.
I.e. Aviva is on a balcony when a fight breaks out below. Lacking a clear shot at the thugs threatening Gord, she jumps for the chandelier and swings on it as she shoots. (strength + athletics - 2 to jump, if that succeeds, dexterity + ranged weapons - 1 to attack)
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I like the static defence option the best. I remember being hesitant about it when it was first introduced in NWoD playtesting, but it has grown on me. Splitting dice pools, even in the way we're doing it in our custom Adventure game, has always rankled me and it only seems to work well for characters that are larger than life. I don't like making characters that are larger than life, since it seems strange for me to play a character whose sole purpose is getting better at smacking things in order to kick more ass in combat. I know that it's more fun for the combat monkey for them to know how much better they are than the rest of humanity, but every character that doesn't focus on that feels like a waste of space during combat. Static defence gives us something to allow us to not suck that much.
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The rest is just light calculus and stats, and since it's on actual data (and that data is punctuated, rather than continuous), it's all sums and averages of real numbers, rather than on curves. So the calculus and stats help in knowing what to do, but I don't actually have to, e.g. find the normal distribution with integral 1 between -inf and inf, peaking at pool / 2, with a deviation d ( ... )
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I agree that halving the defence might be a suitable idea to allow multiple attacks, but if you have a better initiative, you go all out, do multiple actions and whack most of the guys surrounding you. So it just means you push for better initiatives to hopefully beat everyone else.
It's tricky.
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It's definitely tricky any way it's sliced. I definitely have more opinions than answers.
A lot of this hinges on an attack being one blow as well. Where, in our cases, our primary weapon can, essentially, be considered a fully-automatic spread. But that's a material advantage that helps distinguish us from more primitive peoples.
The other bit is what level of 'cinematic' is wanted. Adventure! appears to be 'slightly-above-normal people with superscience' which means that, in its power level, the Green Hornet and Kato should have a rough fight against 10 thugs.
I see us as being somewhere between pulp heroes and extraordinary
humans with our game. So it may make more sense, rather than
extensive rules-tweaking, to patch a few holes and make up the
difference between player characters and random humans by judicious
application of technology and perks.
I think one possible option would be to be able to spend enhancement pool at a 1:1 ratio for attributes. (At character creation, it was 1:2) As well, possibly use ( ... )
Reply
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With a dice bonus on success, it makes trying cool things zero-sum or better, rather than a penalty, but avoids compressing a multiple-action trick into one roll.
I.e. Aviva is on a balcony when a fight breaks out below. Lacking a clear shot at the thugs threatening Gord, she jumps for the chandelier and swings on it as she shoots. (strength + athletics - 2 to jump, if that succeeds, dexterity + ranged weapons - 1 to attack)
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