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Atgxtg

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Everything posted by Atgxtg

  1. Just a suggestion, but what if you allowed POW points to be used for other things? Sounds like the Ood.
  2. Yeah, but Greg did mention it previously. He often tinkered with and changed things here and there. I think tinkering with events is a good thing, probably essential for those who are going to play the campaign more than once. It really helps to keep things fresh. As to Arthur's sons, introducing any son would open up a whole new can of worms. So would a daughter. A daughter would lead to all sorts of new problems as every major king and duke would view her as a path to the throne. Hmm, imagine if Mordred was unaware of his true parentage and tried to marry Arthur's daughter instead of Guinevere.
  3. That would seem to make INT value only to those with PSI powers. Now if everybody has some level of PSI in your setting INT has a lot of value, but if it is rare, then INT seems mediocre. Somewhat useful, but still not twice the value of other stats. In game terms, it doesn't ususally matter how fast you are, only that you are faster than the opponent(s). SO if the average person has a DEX of 10-111 something like a 12 DEX will be as good as an 18. Assuming you are using the BRP damage table, the +1d4 at STR+SIZ 25 is the real value here. Probably the most universal and consist of the stats, since more CON points equals more HP. That is a biggie, since it has a long term, cumulative effect. The thing is not every stat will impact every character equally, not every point of stat. For instance 2 points of STR mean a lot more to someone whose STR_+SIZ is on the cusp of the next damage bonus. That will certainly make a difference, and will probably reduce the value of DEX unless at the extremes. For instance if the average DEX is 10, a PC has more incentive to bump a 15 DEX to a 16, than to bump a 14 to a 15. On the plus side this means you could fine tune the importance of DEX by adjusting the die size. The bigger the die the less important DEX will be and vice versa. BTW, if you wanted to include things like combat experience/coolness under fire, you could have characters initiative die increase as they get more experienced. I'm just mentioning that to bring it to your attention, not to endorse such an idea. STR could be useful to lift stuff, obviously. Oh, and you could use INT to help figure out tech by pitting it against the tech level. What is POW used for, PSI points. What if you treated them more like hero points that could be spent to bump the results of social contests (and possible science/tech type contests)? For instance a character with a 15 APP could have 15 points to spend when making social rolls during a game session. These could either be spent one for one after the fact, or bump success levels or whatever. The idea being that the pretty (APP 15) girl behind the wheel of an aircar, who gets pulled over for doing 1000 kph in a 700 KPH zone will have a better chance of talking her way out of a speeding ticket. Again, just putting stuff out there for you to pick through -I've no sacred cows here.
  4. THE PV game was designed to emulate the style of the comics and even ported over some elements of those stories (including the aforementioned croc-dragon). If anything the comics port over to the PV RPG than to Pendragon, as the comics and the PV game share a sort of "Golden Age of Hollywood" feel. That is the look and tone of the stories fits that of films of that era. Pendragon, on the other hand, has an older, more archatic tone, and some PV stories won't adapt as easily. For instance Val does quite a bit of sneaky stuff that fits with the morality of the 1940s-50s -namely that's it's fairplay to cheat a cheater. With Pendragon however, a lot of his actions would be considered decieftul in not dishonorable.
  5. I think that depends on how useful those stats end up being in your ruleset. In generic BRP there isn't much difference between INT 13 and INT 15. In BRP with category modifiers, there might be a bit more of a difference. But it's hard to evaluate them out of context.
  6. I think I like that better. It's easier to implement and understand. My biggest concerns are that not all attributes are equal and 1 or 2 points of STR or DEX might not make much of a difference, but that depends on what version of the rules you go with.
  7. Yes, but going down that route could result in some serious changes to the campaign. Like Hzark10 brought up, it leads to lots of questions. For instance, most sources have Arthur in love with Gwen and the lack of a heir possible leading to a rift between them. I think if Gwen produced an heir, Arthur probably wouldn't have had the illegitimate sons with other women, nor would he have fallen prey to the "False" Guinevere. There are so many possibilities, especially as there are already so many different versions of the story. In fact I think there are some legitimate sons mention in some of the older texts. Adding just one son could alter things considerably. And what happened to him? If he died or something then the circumstances could affect other things. What if he was killed in one of the various wars? Would it affect how the rest of the war played out? Would Arthur bear a grudge against those responsible? Ultimately you could change things as little, or as much as you want.
  8. Yeah that makes sense. If damage is tracked in some way, the % of damage could be the % that you need spares, and the amount of spare parts on hand (times something) could be the % chance that you have what you need.
  9. I'd say possibly. Think of a car. If a mechanic messes something up, he can try again. It will probably require some new parts and cost a bit more but eventually, it can be repaired, if he is competent. Now there might be a point of diminishing returns - for example no one is going to go into a machine shop to fabricate new parts for a broken down truck, when they can buy a newer (and probably better) truck for a tenth of the price. In game terms I suggest: Give each repair task a difficulty (any modifiers tot he repair roll) AND a complexity (number of successes required to complete). Let character make repair rolls and accumulate successes (specials count as two success, crticals could count as 1d6+2 success or some such). Fumbles result in setback and either undo all the successes accumulated so far, or increase the complexity by 3d6 or some such, and/or up the difficulty level. Note that this approach would allow for multiple characters to combine their success on a project and for one character to botch up a project for everyone else ("Hey Phil, where did you put those screws for the intake manifold?"). What if a special success on the Science roll gave a skill check to the Tech/Repair skill as well? Fopr example, a PC discovers some sort of hovercar on a planet, and looks it over. She rolls a special success on her Science roll to figure it out, and gets a check in her tech skill as she now understands something about hover tech. Well, if you use the difficulty/complexity model I posted above, then the science roll could set the difficulty for the tech rolls and/or adjust the complexity. For instance a failed roll might make the tech roll hard, a success might make it normal, a special might make it easy and so on. That would make Science very important. You could just use a Fabricate, skill and make repair, design, prototype, etc.specialties of it. Realistically someone how knows how to design an airplane knows enough to build or repair one.
  10. I just throwing stuff out there. You can tell me what sticks. One of the nice things about doing your own game/setting is that you are free to do practically anything. You are free to run with whatever you can come up with. Once you get the stetting locked down, you're get fenced into a particular sandbox. So it definitely worth thinking carefully about what sandbox you want to end up in. Traveller is a good example of what I mean. The original game had to setting and could be used for just about any SF setting, possible with a few minor tweaks. But as the game developed it established it's own unique setting, which has been the basis for most of the later editions.
  11. Well, that was the plan. Just brainstorming stuff. Yeah, although I'd have to think about POW. Just what are they doing to improve it, if they can? With STR, DEX, CON and INT I can imagine some sort of synthetic upgrade, but POW seems to be psychological and/or spiritual in nature. I'd also be worried about a straight linear cost for attributes, as one 18 is often better than four 12's. You might want the cap to apply to all improvements. The idea being that the only got so much space to work with. Like if you put a $5000 sound system in your car, you don't have any truck space. I could synthetic muscles taking up space needed to run superconductive nerve wires, and so on. And maybe some place makes multi-function upgrades (i.e. conductive muscles), but they are exponentially more expensive, and require ripping out the old hardware. One thing you might do is assume that the better off someone is the harder they are to improve upon, and just give a upper limit to their attribute total. For instance, TECH LVL x10 or some such. So TECH LEVEL 13 could upgrade someone until the sum of their stats totaled 130, but no more. So a PC with high stats would need to go to a very advanced planet to get an attribute increase. This would make the math a lot simpler, as you wouldn't need to keep track the original stats and how much they've been upgraded already. Yeah. I think Improvement slots seems to "game-like" and some sort of formulaic TECH limit with economic factors would be better. I'd probably say that "Heightened Intelligence" might be reserved for those who's INT in above their species max. I mean, a dumb human with with a INT 8 who gets a +6 INT improvement is only going to seem normal, maybe a little more, but certainly not noticeably brighter than most.
  12. I think the simplest approach would be to scap rolling attriubtes and just point buy everything. THen you just give the players a sheet with all the options listed. Heck you could even have a couple fo different Models, each with a list of what comes "Standard" and what optional extra are avialabe. Player could even have to get credit and make payments on their new bodies. No problem. I'm just tossing out ideas. No problem. Just to make sure I was clear., I was think of modifications not as stat enhacements to rolled stats, but as a alternative to rolled stats. So if someone want's an 18 CON it's not problem, provides they have 180,000 credits or whatever. Either a bonus or a cap, depending on how you work attributes. You might even have different limits depending on where the modification is done, or by how much money someone has to spend. Like how today most cars don't go at 200 MPH but such cars are available to those with deep pockets. It the costs increased in some non-linear progression you could have softer caps. Perhaps DEX 30 (or +20 DEX) is possible for a culture but the cost is prohibitive.
  13. R.I.P. It's been said that human intelligence is a constant. Human imagination, on the other hand, took a dip with the passing of Greg. Days !??. That's not a typo?
  14. Just tossing out an idea, but what if you rolled this into chargen by letting the player go "body shopping"? Give them X amount of "currency" to spend and let them buy everything, including STR, CON, SIZ, Etc, like they would in a point buy system. You could downplay the ultra-tech aspects of it by making it seem mundane to the people in game. The idea would be that everybody is augmented in various ways, but it's so commonplace that people just look at it the what they look at fashion accessories today. "Ohh, Nice eyes. Where did you get them? I'd like to buy a new pair but I haven't seen then in the right shade of blue until now." Most of the options above could be rolled right into the basic stats, simplifying game play, with the rest duplicated through the super power system, but with caps set by the tech level. If you like that approach you could have EMP attack affect the victims DEX and then INT to reflect that everybody has had some sort of upgrade. Again, just tossing out an idea. It's just that such enhancements are supposed to seem "normal" in futuristic settings, but are usually played off as exotic to impress modern day audiences and players. Here the approach would be that BODYTEC would be so common that most people would have no more idea as to what TEC is inside them than they would about what brand of RAM is inside their Smartphone. Tech Geeks would probably custom build and get the latest components, while most people would get something off the rack at Best Buy or Amazon. If you wanted to get really out there you could even have hot-swappable brain enclosures.
  15. Yeah, I sort of glossed over it. I agree, although they might come up with an alternative. RQG went in a different direction that RQ3.
  16. Yes it did. Generally speaking the character with the shorter weapon couldn't strike the one with the longer weapon until he successfully closed. Then the character with the longer weapon couldn't strike until he backed away.
  17. I'm not so sure. Generally when one side hesitates in battle the other side rolls them over, unless they too are also having second thoughts. Overall though, I think this idea is just going to make things tougher on the player characters. Context goes a long way here, too. In some cases someone failing a roll and running away might be a good thing for them, in other cases it could paint a target on their back. It really comes down to what the GM wants, and how the PCs stack up compared to their opponents. If the PCs greatly outclass their opponents than this would be a minor obstacle or annoyance. If the PCs have less of an advantage, it could throw the fight. BTW, I'm not sure if this will help the OP or not, but in one RPG marginal quality success with firearms gave a "Pin" result, with the character being pinned down by bullets unless he made a willpower roll. Characters could even providing covering fire to suppress the enemy.Something like that might prove helpful here, especially is some of the PCs fail their "morale check".
  18. You can dial the complexity to suit your needs, and there are an infinite ways you can go with this. For instance, you could also play around with whatever forces a "stress" roll, or how the stress is resolved. For instance, you could take a page from FATE and give the characters "Stress Points" and could adapt the SAN and spirit combat rules. You could give each threat a value for the resistance table and a damage die, and then treat the PCs allies and other factors as "Stress armor". It all comes down to what end result you have in mind. The game mechanics then get adjusted to suit your needs. BTW, if I were doing this, I'd probably go with some sort of doubling progression for allies. Say +5% or +10% (or +1 Armor) per doubling. That helps to keep things from getting out of hand when the PCs have lots of backup, yet still works out to a nice bonus at normal group sizes.
  19. It should probably make a difference just who is backing you up, too. If you have to face against the unknown, you'd probably be more assured if you were backed up by a SEAL team than by the local PTA. Perhaps the "morale modifier" could be shifted up or down based upon the overall competency of the group? Especially if that competency is in skills that will be useful in a stress situation. Something like: Untrained (0-24%) -20% Amateur/Recruit (25-49%) -10% Professional (50-74%) +0% Expert (75-89%) +10% Master (90-100%) +20%
  20. I don't see how it will "incentivate" group action, if anything it will most likely split the group. What will most likely happen is one or two PCs will fail the roll and a couple more PCs will be sidetracked dealing with them, leaving the remaining PCs to deal with the problem.
  21. What exactly do you want to do with the stress? Do you want PC to break and run from a battle? Drop and cower from a threat? Get fed up and tell off their boss during a bad day at work? Overall, I think POW is probably the best stat to work with. INT can be a bit of a doubled edged sword here, as the high INT characters might have an even better understanding of how dangerous the situation is compared to the lower INT characters.
  22. In one campaign some NPC was recruiting guards to accompany his caravan. Upon hearing the details one of the player characters mused "I'm free for a couple of months..." The Gm replied: "DEAL!"
  23. LOL! That's a wise choice. Graduation levels could drop dramatically otherwise.
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