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Bendigeidfran posted:So do it like Macross! Put your giant robot into your fighter plane: two great tastes that go great together. Everything you list here is in Jovian Chronicles as a justification for exo-frames though, is the thing. The thing about changing orientation through limb movement is specifically the whole reason linear frame controls exist. More room for maneuvering thrusters? Yep. Fighters in space aren't dogfighting with each other either, JC's fighters are almost entirely used in lightning strikes where they function more like manned cruise missiles with guns, accelerating to breakneck speeds, dumping all their ordnance into a target in one massive alpha strike, then burning the rest of their fuel to come to a stop for later retrieval. So everything that's in Gundam to justify the existence of giant dogfighting space robots is in JC too, save for the magic space particle that forces everyone to engage targets at visual range only.
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Feb 24, 2015 01:28
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Kai Tave posted:Everything you list here is in Jovian Chronicles as a justification for exo-frames though, is the thing. The thing about changing orientation through limb movement is specifically the whole reason linear frame controls exist. More room for maneuvering thrusters? Yep. Fighters in space aren't dogfighting with each other either, JC's fighters are almost entirely used in lightning strikes where they function more like manned cruise missiles with guns, accelerating to breakneck speeds, dumping all their ordnance into a target in one massive alpha strike, then burning the rest of their fuel to come to a stop for later retrieval. Right, so in that case the mecha and the fighters have different tactical roles and it's reasonable that they're together in the setting. I mean the existence of fighter-bombers in real life hasn't obsoleted infantry and armor; each force helps the others do their job. Mecha in JC could, say, win engagements outside a space station base and then occupy it in a way that fighters or normal infantry couldn't. My contention was that a big humanoid war-machine doesn't have to strain suspension of disbelief in a science fiction setting. This isn't like the DnD problem where medieval society and warfare is somehow unchanged by ridiculous reality-breaking magic. Space-based warfare is something we have no real reference on. It could be a new battleship age where heavy armor resists everything short of 50m-tall guns. It could be dominated by drones that fire guided missiles at each other from light-minutes way. Maybe it'll be like Starship Troopers and we'll have a bunch of lightly-armored astronauts jetting around shooting nukes at each other. Human-shaped mecha are not uniquely unbelievable compared to those situations. I feel like the disbelief that people hold towards sci-fi mecha is due more to expectations than some serious evaluation of physics and military tactics. It doesn't look like something that would work, so it shouldn't for some reason. But it's not really less impossible than mile-long starships somehow floating in atmosphere. As a genre conceit I find it orders of magnitude less silly than, say, FTL travel.
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Feb 24, 2015 02:28
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Dulkor posted:The other important thing to remember about Gundam as a setting, is that in the original setting BVR engagement and long range guided munitions are things that no longer exist as a side effect of their fusion reactors releasing sub-atomic particles that eat electro-magnetic signals. They have a huge colony laser that fills that role but it's usually a Death Star level plot point.
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Feb 24, 2015 03:49
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:They have a huge colony laser that fills that role but it's usually a Death Star level plot point. Yup, though at that point it's more doomsday weapon of mass destruction than anything relevant to a dogfight. You aren't exactly factoring in the one ace pilot flying over the horizon when you fire a weapon that can take out half the fleet in that general direction.
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Feb 24, 2015 03:51
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It should be noted as well that it gets worse than Minovsky Particles when newtypes come in, they start riding the rainbow, and everyone's weapons explode. That's a plot point in Gundam Unicorn, newtypes are space wizards, and psychoframes can cause everyone's weapons to blow up.
RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 04:00
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It should be noted as well that it gets worse than Minovsky Particles when newtypes come in and they start riding the rainbow or whatever and everyone's weapons explode. That's a plot point in Gundam Unicorn, newtypes are space wizards, and psychoframes can cause everyone's weapons to blow up. Gundam Unicorn was enormously disappointing. So many actually interesting characters, and then...Banagher and Audrey and Space Wizardry Screaming To Make Everything Okay.
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Feb 24, 2015 04:02
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Night10194 posted:Gundam Unicorn was enormously disappointing. So many actually interesting characters, and then...Banagher and Audrey and Space Wizardry Screaming To Make Everything Okay. Here's the thing about that, though: what Laplace's Box contains is actually the greatest thing. Especially after how reverently, almost spiritually everyone talks about it.
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Feb 24, 2015 04:11
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Can we go back to discussing obscure/bad tabletop games rather than anime?
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Feb 24, 2015 04:11
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Gundam Unicorn dissapointed me because all of the Unicorn series suit designs are amazing. You can't throw out something like that and say "lol nope newtype space wizardry", which is why I like the gundam series that either ignore newtypes entirely or takes them off of their pedestals. Even though Gundam X had loving Newtype Dolphins it still ended with "Newtypes aren't anything special, stop fighting wars over them you assholes." LornMarkus posted:Here's the thing about that, though: what Laplace's Box contains is actually the greatest thing. Especially after how reverently, almost spiritually everyone talks about it. "The greatest" in the sense that no rational living being would have actually written the 7th chapter of the space constitution?
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Feb 24, 2015 04:18
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Cythereal posted:Can we go back to discussing obscure/bad tabletop games rather than anime? Let's talk about Bliss Stage...
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Feb 24, 2015 04:18
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Pussy Cartel posted:Funnily enough, Chaos Principle (the only Jovian Chronicles adventure published besides the old Mekton books they made) actually covers the whole Cold War gone hot angle, and shows exactly what happens when two mostly-planetbound powers with spacebound allies get into a real fight. Was Chaos Principle really the only one? Not doubting you - I remember seeing a fair number of Jovian Chronicle books in game stores but I guess most of them were faction books, then?
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Feb 24, 2015 04:19
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Kurieg posted:"The greatest" in the sense that no rational living being would have actually written the 7th chapter of the space constitution? And more importantly, no-one would care anywhere near as much as everyone did, even if they did.
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Feb 24, 2015 04:23
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It should be noted as well that it gets worse than Minovsky Particles when newtypes come in, they start riding the rainbow, and everyone's weapons explode. That's a plot point in Gundam Unicorn, newtypes are space wizards, and psychoframes can cause everyone's weapons to blow up. So they're literally just newmen from Phantasy Star at that point? I wonder if there are any atrociously entertaining Phantasy Star fan rulebooks?
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Feb 24, 2015 05:51
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bathroomrage posted:So they're literally just newmen from Phantasy Star at that point? There's Train of Consecuences, which is basically just d20 Modern with homebrew unbalanced stuff and not-so-great post-PSIV setting. (And this is coming from somebody who insists Phantasy Star Online is also post-PSIV.) Fun fact: This game made me want to make a Phantasy Star RPG of my own. (I based it on Star Wars: Saga Edition. That should tell you about how well it went, for good or for ill.)
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Feb 24, 2015 06:18
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bathroomrage posted:So they're literally just newmen from Phantasy Star at that point? Kind of, they're pretty much a natural evolution of the human race and if I had to give them stats in an RPG it would be akin to force users without the telekinetic abilities. The series have never really been exact on what they are or their abilities but they're the new master race according to Char's father, Zeon Zum Deikun, and that's why Zeon are pretty much Nazis. This is all thrown out the window though because he claimed they had to be born in space and one of the original characters was an Earth born newtype. General Revil I've tried to adapt Gundam to an RPG and it doesn't really work out for a number of reasons. I think one of the main reasons is that Gundam was a series created to sell toys. I'm not saying that to be dismissive either, half the RX-79's arsenal was put in just to sell model kits and accessories. The Gundam movies and Gundam: The Origin try to retell the story from a more serious standpoint but it still suffers from the Gundam being Superman because it's a children's cartoon from the 70's.
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Feb 24, 2015 06:27
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Kind of, they're pretty much a natural evolution of the human race and if I had to give them stats in an RPG it would be akin to force users without the telekinetic abilities. The series have never really been exact on what they are or their abilities but they're the new master race according to Char's father, Zeon Zum Deikun, and that's why Zeon are pretty much Nazis. This is all thrown out the window though because he claimed they had to be born in space and one of the original characters was an Earth born newtype. General Revil Uhh.. so was Amuro
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Feb 24, 2015 06:47
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Snorb posted:There's Train of Consecuences, which is basically just d20 Modern with homebrew unbalanced stuff and not-so-great post-PSIV setting. (And this is coming from somebody who insists Phantasy Star Online is also post-PSIV.) I started reading that website and my eyes rolled so hard they fell out of my head. And that's fine, a long time ago I made a d20 supplement for Final Fantasy classes that never left my computer and was never finished. We've all done horrible things.
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Feb 24, 2015 06:49
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Kurieg posted:Uhh.. so was Amuro For some reason I thought he was born on a colony. Apparently he's  . I know he went back and forth and his mom was on Earth. I think it was mostly because of remembering some goon's rant about how Gen Revil was the combo breaker.
RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 07:31
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It's actually pretty difficult to dropkick people in real life, too. So Doresh, I was reading back over your review and it actually got me to flip through the Character Creation chapter of Jovian Chronicles, and...holy loving poo poo. This is the most 90s poo poo ever. You should like point out how utterly loving 90s it was. So, you have 10 Attributes. Ten of them. And these are going to be used to determine secondary attributes, too, because we need those, because *~realism~*. Anyway, being strong and tough is split into Body and Fitness, being smart is split into Creativity, Knowledge, and Perception, being influential is split into Influence and Appearance, and mental health is split into Psyche and Willpower. But there's one Agility attribute which covers almost all combat skills. In the edition I have there's even a sidebar telling you that Agility is overpowered and that Psyche is hard to quantify, so you should punish players who don't buy up Psyche. "Our design breaks if you breathe on it too hard; fix this yourself by being a dick to your players!" So loving 90s.
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Feb 24, 2015 07:46
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It was the same in Heavy Gear, and really all the Silhouette games worked the same way...like you said, 90's as gently caress. Also: Bendigeidfran posted:So is there anything in Jovian Chronicles about how the vehicles/mecha-scaled stuff and the human-scaled stuff interact? From the looks of it the two are just separate and the vehicles get a lot more attention, but that seems like a missed opportunity. Actually the answer to this is yes! The way Silhouette handles the interaction between mecha scale stuff and human scale stuff is, if you squint a bit, like a kinda sorta MDC/SDC system that isn't complete dogshit. Human scale weapons do (and I'm going off memories that are over a decade old at this point so bear with me if I get poo poo wrong) their damage divided by 10 to mecha scale stuff while mecha stuff multiplies the damage it does by 10. At least in Heavy Gear, this meant that you could have things like anti-Gear rifles that did close to the same damage to a Gear as a basic mecha-scale handheld autocannon while smaller arms wouldn't be able to pass the thresholds necessary to cause any real damage, while conversely a mecha scale weapon will generally reduce people to a fine red paste...but vehicle weapons that aren't specifically meant to be employed against dismounted infantry are much harder to hit tiny little people with. This is why all Gears generally come standard with an anti-personnel grenade launcher mounted somewhere on the chassis, and why dedicated anti-infantry Gears employ weapons like flamethrowers and fragmentation cannons. However, while the damage system works the same in Jovian Chronicles the mechs themselves are of a much larger size and, consequently, have much higher damage thresholds. Gears generally range between 10-16 feet or so while exo-armors, while not quite Gundam size, are still much larger than that. This means that in general there aren't as many meaningful interactions between infantry and giant robots because the scale is a different sort of beast. To be fair, Heavy Gear is meant to evoke much more of a "footslogger" sort of feeling to its mecha combat while Jovian Chronicles is going for Top Gun fighter aces dueling in space, so it's not unreasonable to suggest that de-emphasizing the role of regular, unsuited dudes toting small arms is maybe kind of the point.
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Feb 24, 2015 08:18
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Doresh posted:JC exo-armors are sadly not nearly as ridiculous. I think none of them hold a candle to Heavy Gear's Aller main battle tank. What's ridiculous about the Aller? Big slab of armor with a honking great gun strapped to the top. Do not confront directly.
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Feb 24, 2015 08:39
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bathroomrage posted:I started reading that website and my eyes rolled so hard they fell out of my head. Oh, no no, I actually like Saga Edition; I worked at a gaming store for six hours back in 2006 and that was what I got paid with. I'm gonna defend Saga until the day I loving die. And I guess this means I get a book (well, website) to read for potential F&Fing!
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Feb 24, 2015 16:32
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Snorb posted:Oh, no no, I actually like Saga Edition; I worked at a gaming store for six hours back in 2006 and that was what I got paid with. I'm gonna defend Saga until the day I loving die. Everyone should try writing an RPG, it's a great exercise to help get your mind around the strengths and weaknesses that crop up over and over again in the genre.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:13
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Midjack posted:Was Chaos Principle really the only one? Not doubting you - I remember seeing a fair number of Jovian Chronicle books in game stores but I guess most of them were faction books, then? Off the top of my head there were faction books, an equipment book, a couple of vehicle books, and then books full of spaceships from specific factions. There was also the short-lived JC wargame that had a few books of its own. The only adventure besides Chaos Principle were the two "green" books that were basically Mekton Zeta campaign books, originally made back when DP9 just made supplements for R. Talsorian's games. Those two covered the JC setting and included a series of adventures that were later referenced in the actual Jovian Chronicles RPG, but never really talked about in depth.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:29
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:It should be noted as well that it gets worse than Minovsky Particles when newtypes come in, they start riding the rainbow, and everyone's weapons explode. That's a plot point in Gundam Unicorn, newtypes are space wizards, and psychoframes can cause everyone's weapons to blow up. What the gently caress are these sentences. I'm pretty sure they are bad because they are not about elves but they might be.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:33
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Pussy Cartel posted:The only adventure besides Chaos Principle were the two "green" books that were basically Mekton Zeta campaign books, originally made back when DP9 just made supplements for R. Talsorian's games. Those two covered the JC setting and included a series of adventures that were later referenced in the actual Jovian Chronicles RPG, but never really talked about in depth.
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Feb 24, 2015 18:42
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Does Jovian Chronicles have a mechanic for determining whether a name is for a boy or girl?
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Feb 24, 2015 18:44
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It's been a while hasn't it. Whoops. Corruption, rear end in a top hat Gods, and Runes First of all they talk a bit about Arcane Magic, and how it's Corrupting, Addictive, Attracts Demons, and is absolutely 100% necessary because arcane magic is powerful and useful. Did we mention it's corrupting? Because they created a whole system on Arcane Corruption. The concept of arcane corruption is interesting, but it's also really dumb in it's implementation. The idea being that arcane casters have "Hit Points Of The Soul"(Yes, they call it this) which is your Caster Level + Wisdom Score. Every time you perform a corrupting act, you need to make a will save. Sorcerers take a -2 penalty on these checks because they're dirty Sorcerers. Runecasters(We'll get to them later) get a +1 bonus because they're wonderful and pure. If your corruption allowance ever runs out, you become "Tainted" and gain a minor corruption effect, these are usually just flavorful physical blemishes or minor psychological roleplaying things. If a tainted character runs out again they become "Marked" and gain a moderate effect which can cause some issues. A Marked Character becomes "Defiled" and gains a severe effect which may well make you unplayable. If a Defiled character runs out of points they become an NPC because they're an evil demon worshiper. quote:When a character receives a minor Corruption Effect, his personality becomes noticeably colder and more callous. By the time he receives a major Corruption Effect his desire to doo good has been thoroughly eroded; even when he's in control of his actions, he's arrogant and self-centered, and often willful and malicious. The major problem with the corruption system as it stands is that while there are certain things that are "Acts of Hubris", most of the poo poo on the corruption table is completely out of a players control.  You can avoid pushing(increasing it's DC) or enhancing(Applying a metamagic feat without an increase in level) a spell, or casting a spell that contacts the twisting nether. But you can't really avoid "Learning a spell", or "casting a spell near a demon". God help you if your campaign takes place near a major source of arcane power because at that point you're basically straight hosed. The corruption effects themselves are interesting in theory but in practice anything past minor will usually cause issues. Like "Bob failed his will save so he doesn't get to play with us today" issues.   or "Someone else got injured, let's muzzle the sorcerer so we don't have to kill him when we heal up."   There are ways of healing corruption, Going an entire week without casting a spell will restore 1 point of your "soul points". If you spend that week in natural surroundings meditating on nature (and how much easier your life would be if you were a druid) you can instead restore 2d3 "soul points". The Atonement spell will restore 1d6 points of corruption+1/2 caster levels if you also undertake a quest. And Wish or Miracle will restore your allowance to it's maximum value. Which honestly seems kind of like it's missing the point. You're constantly at risk of losing your soul until you can cast 9th level spells and then you're basically golden. Removing corruption effects themselves require a restoration/greater restoration/touch of life spell and just knock the character down to the next lowest level of corruption. Divine Magic gets it's own little set of rules for divine ordeals and tests of faith. A sample ordeal is to have the Priest go to his home town, have him bound in stocks, and have the entire community mock and torture him for a week, this is so that the priest can "Better bear the worst of humanity's transgressions". The benefit you get out of an ordeal is that you can substitute a will save for any other saving throw. Once. Also undergoing more than one Ordeal a year is considered Gauche and the gods will probably punish you for it. Tests of Faith are basically Ordeals except you didn't know they were going to happen. Any situation where a character has to choose between her safety or that of the party over the tenets of their faith. things like "Heal a villain or let him die" or "drive off refugees that are trying to harvest the forest to build a new home" or "be compelled to offer hospitality to the first visitor who asks and that visitor is a demon cultist". These tests might be illusory, but the book somewhat tounge-in-cheek says that they shouldn't be illusory all the time, and that the DM should sometimes choose whichever option dicks over the character the most unless that option would result in their death. quote:If the divine spellcaster fails the test, she receives a -1 penalty to her caster level for the next month and will be forced to acknowledge publicly her failure and make penance before others of the faith. The GM may add additional consequences (such as a stigma scar to mark the test's failure, the need to perform an atonement quest, or exclusion from the faith's most sacred rituals and benefits) A test of faith is a major event in a character's life and the player should understand this and roleplay the consequences of the character's failure. Anyone who takes such a failure in stride invites more severe penalties (such as a greater penalty to caster level and a -2 luck penalty on all skill checks and saving throws) from whatever empowers her faith "I'm sorry bob, but you haven't wailed and gnashed your teeth enough this gaming session, so now you can't cast spells." It then goes on to say that tests should only occur when a character's faith seems to be flagging. "When they fail to stand up for their beliefs; when their response to the desecration of a sacred ground is half-hearted" make sense "When they associate with friends too much" doesn't. Next they go over Rune Magic, which means it's time to talk about the Runemaster.  The Runemaster is a completely new base class. Whereas the Healer was the cleric with the numbers filed off, the Scout was a less good ranger, and the Tinker...exists... the Runemaster is a strange hybrid of the unarmed attack power of the monk, the buffing ability of a druid, and the arcane flavor of the wizard. Runes are recreations of natural patterns in the world that magic would otherwise naturally flow through. The pattern of hoofmarks around a watering hole might yield a mark of healing. The flow of a river as it cuts through a mountain might yield a mark of strength. By mimicking these patterns and empowering them with arcane energy a runemaster can recreate their effects with less risk to himself or the recipient. Rather than invoking a fireball, a runemaster would instead enchant his fists with flame and take the fight to his foes directly. If you think that this sounds amazing, you'd be right. If you think that they're going to gently caress it up, you have good pattern recognition. First of all, they're a melee range arcane caster. They're subject to arcane spell failure, and while they get a monk's flurry of blows ability they don't get a monk's wisdom bonus to AC, or the other native bonus to AC. (which wouldn't matter because they're an Int based caster, but eh). So they're just as Multiple-Attribute-Dependant as a Monk, except maybe even more because dealing damage is reliant on them actually hitting with their attacks. The second problem is with the Runes themselves. Casting a rune is a full-round action, and all Runes are touch spells. So if the fighter is in need of healing, and you're 10 feet away, you need to spend your turn running over to him, wait, hope he doesn't move, then begin casting your spell, hope he doesn't move again, and then finish casting your spell. To play an effective runemaster you need to know where you need to be 2 rounds from now, and then actually still be needed there. This can be somewhat alleviated at 9th level when the Runemaster gets the Extended Mark ability. Which allows a rune to last 1 minute per level before activation. But outside of combat that's a very small amount of time. At 15th level you can make runes that last indefinitely until activated. But a character can only have one Extended or Lasting mark on them at a time. At 18th level you can Tattoo a mark onto someone, but that can only be activated once per day, and a character can only have one tatoo per 5 hit dice. Also tattoos take standard actions to activate but Lasting Marks only take move actions. I don't know why there's a difference either. The third problem is that the runemaster doesn't get an increased unarmed strike damage progression. They need to be casting runes on themselves to hit harder, which means they're removing spells from their pool to be used in other things. To get up to the base level of a monk at maximum level, a runemaster would need to cast a 4th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spell on himself. And since durations are fixed at weird intervals. they will only stay at that level for an hour. They also don't get any spells to actually increase their armor class. The end result is a class that needs a full minute pre combat to get ready, and then just really really has to hope that no one wants to hit them, because they probably will. I will say that they drastically improve this class in the next edition. To the point where it's not only playable but it's also fun. But that's a while from now. Next up: Feats and Prestige Classes
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Feb 24, 2015 19:28
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Kurieg posted:08th MS team and war in the pocket are probably the best "war is hell" series we're going to get for a while. Cause they tried doing a little bit of that with 00 season one. Then Aeolia Schenberg happened and season 2 went completely off the rails. Don't mention 08th MS team. It irks me to no end that this series isn't distributed her in Germany - despite oldschool Gundam not even being released with a dub (as I think anything before Gundam Wing never aired here in the first place, or anything after Gundam Wing). Kai Tave posted:So everything that's in Gundam to justify the existence of giant dogfighting space robots is in JC too, save for the magic space particle that forces everyone to engage targets at visual range only. That last part is pretty important. Weapons can have ridiculous ranges in space, making those fancy melee weapons a bit useless aside from cutting open a station hull or something. I would also assume that the Linear Frame system works best when the pilot can react to stuff he can actually perceive, not just some blips on a radar. Halloween Jack posted:It's actually pretty difficult to dropkick people in real life, too. 90's it might be, but it is a progressive sort of 90's, as you don't need to translate the stats into bonuses. The Lone Badger posted:What's ridiculous about the Aller? Big slab of armor with a honking great gun strapped to the top. Do not confront directly. It's not the Aller that's ridiculous. It's the exo-armors that are not as ridiculous as Gundams because they don't outclass everything else by a long shot. Young Freud posted:As for effectiveness, I'd think something like a three-dimensional star fort would be an even better idea than mini Death Star. With guns mounted on the ends of the stars, you could concentrate fire of all or almost all your weapons in any direction, while a spherical shape would limit you to at most half your weapons. And Gundam has used that idea before, with the design of Solomon/Konpei Island and later with one of the major space battleships in the finale of Gundam Wing. That could work two, though the Death Star design has the advantage of having one big gun instead of several smaller ones. Young Freud posted:No loving kidding... If you can make headshots with a bazooka and speed up any vehicle by up to 300% through your sheer awesomeness, the sky's the limit. Green Intern posted:Does Jovian Chronicles have a mechanic for determining whether a name is for a boy or girl? Nope, no name lists anywhere to be found here. Then again, the largest concentration of Japanese names is likely to be found on Venus, and Venusians will probably pick the wrong names on purpose.
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Feb 24, 2015 19:28
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MartianAgitator posted:What the gently caress are these sentences. I'm pretty sure they are bad because they are not about elves but they might be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Century_technology#Minovsky_physics
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Feb 24, 2015 21:58
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theironjef posted:Everyone should try writing an RPG, it's a great exercise to help get your mind around the strengths and weaknesses that crop up over and over again in the genre. The first game I wrote had 11 stats and one of them was way harder to raise than others because I thought it was important for the fluff. I had a ridiculously overcomplicated merits and flaws system and separated every single kind of weapon out as a separate skill even though the game was primarily about investigation. I had wound penalties and 'realism' and everything. Really, I sympathize with 90s game designers sometimes, I totally get 'Man, I'm so tired of D&D, let's do something totally different'. We all make mistakes when trying a new thing for the first time.
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Feb 24, 2015 23:27
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Night10194 posted:The first game I wrote had 11 stats and one of them was way harder to raise than others because I thought it was important for the fluff. I had a ridiculously overcomplicated merits and flaws system and separated every single kind of weapon out as a separate skill even though the game was primarily about investigation. I had wound penalties and 'realism' and everything. Really, I sympathize with 90s game designers sometimes, I totally get 'Man, I'm so tired of D&D, let's do something totally different'. We all make mistakes when trying a new thing for the first time. When I was starting out on the System Mastery stuff, we read Ghostbusters right away, and I remember not being angry at the time that the Ghostbusters RPG has maybe 3 rules about stats, is so minimalist that it combines HP and XP, and yet it still has different damage stats for an axe or a sword. It is Ghostbusters. No one has a sword! No one has an axe! I mean there's only five weapon damage categories in it, but why are there any? Why aren't any of them "Proton Pack"!? The answer of course, is "Heartbreaker."
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Feb 24, 2015 23:38
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Kurieg posted:
Has there ever been a good execution of the "arcane caster in melee"-concept? Because it always seems to be hosed in some way, usually because they incredibly lazily just copypaste other arcane casting, rather than acknowledging that a lot of it's useless in the middle of a scrum.
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Feb 25, 2015 00:11
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PurpleXVI posted:Has there ever been a good execution of the "arcane caster in melee"-concept? Because it always seems to be hosed in some way, usually because they incredibly lazily just copypaste other arcane casting, rather than acknowledging that a lot of it's useless in the middle of a scrum. Wasn't the swordmage out of 4e basically great? Like especially if you took the one tree that let you teleport your foes around, Intercepting or something. Ah right, Ensnaring.
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Feb 25, 2015 00:25
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Sword mage was great because you were basically a teleporting Jedi.
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Feb 25, 2015 01:07
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The Swordmage worked because it was built from the ground up rather than halfassedly trying to mash two different classes together into one. Like, that's the secret right there, if you want a fightwizard the best way to do it is make it its own class rather than just stapling spell progression onto a fighter and calling it a day.
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Feb 25, 2015 01:29
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Bladesinger wasn't bad either if you were completely fine with not playing a mage but playing a lightly armored berserker that exploded like a small nuke directly atop the encounter's toughest enemy. I remember effectively soloing the elite at the end of the dungeon while the surviving party members mopped up the rest of the room.
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Feb 25, 2015 01:34
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PurpleXVI posted:Has there ever been a good execution of the "arcane caster in melee"-concept? Because it always seems to be hosed in some way, usually because they incredibly lazily just copypaste other arcane casting, rather than acknowledging that a lot of it's useless in the middle of a scrum. Mageblade from Arcana Evolved is pretty awesome.
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Feb 25, 2015 01:45
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MartianAgitator posted:What the gently caress are these sentences. I'm pretty sure they are bad because they are not about elves but they might be. Gundam has a psychic interface for mobile suits that does whatever the plot intends it to. At one point they even remark that if two of the systems come close together it could bend reality and it does, twice. It's as stupid as those statements seemed and it's why everyone hates the end of Gundam Unicorn.
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Feb 25, 2015 01:45
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 22:34 |
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Quick unrelated question: are there any good systems that have rules for grabbing a sword's blade and smacking people with the pommel? Or like combines grappling rules with dagger fighting? Asking because there's a lot of cool medieval combat stuff that gets overlooked these days.
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Feb 25, 2015 02:23
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