So I've run into a bit of a balance problem in my homebrew game that started out fairly negligible but has become worse and worse as my players have gotten stronger. My players are a band of pirates sailing the globe on their pirate ship in a land of magic and wonder. Because of this the game involves a lot of vehicle combat, and so far it's been really epic and fun. The base Genesys vehicle rules have worked great for keeping the combats fast paced, thrilling, and give each player many different things they can be doing on a ship. The problem that's been getting worse and worse is that as the players face bigger and bigger threats some of the combats have been getting way too one-sided on behalf of the NPC's. This is primarily because the ship's carpenter can only make a single check to repair the ship during any encounter. At first this worked okay because the players were still green around the gills. As they get stronger and better they're not really surviving ship combat any better. So I had a few ideas I wanted to get feedback on as how to tackle this problem.

TLDR; I'm looking for advice and feedback on a way to change the Genesys rule that a mechanics check can only be used to repair a vehicle once per encounter.

I'll list some of the ideas I've come up with below and I'm hoping to get feedback on them and have others contribute their own ideas.

1. Just remove the limit entirely. I don't like this idea at all, because not only does it not make sense but it would REALLY mess up the balance of the game.

2. A consumable for vehicles similar to Painkillers or Repair Patches. This would be a consumable the players can use on the vehicle that restores a large number of hull, and recover less and less with each use. It might even require a mechanics check to properly apply. It could even consume an action as apposed to a maneuver (compared to Painkillers/Repair Patches).

3. A new talent that allows a character to perform the repair check more than once per encounter. I was thinking something along the idea of a ranked talent, and with each rank you get another chance. Perhaps each of these chances requires a story point flip?

4. Spending advantage and/or triumph to gain more chances to repair the vehicle.

5. A house rule that allows anybody to flip a story point to repair the ship again. Or similar to the talent idea above; maybe a Tier 5 talent that allows the player to flip story points (and maybe spend some strain?) to gain additional chances.

The custom talent idea is the most attractive to me, mainly because it allows the players something to work towards and makes them feel like their character is getting better at their job, and Tier 5 is the realm of game breakery, and this could be a way for the player to feel really special. It also allows me to easily curate what kind of adversaries might have this talent as well.

I also like the consumable idea. It ties neatly into the existing Painkiller system so players won't have a hard time adapting it into their play. My biggest concern is how mandatory they start feeling, and I don't want to bog much of the game down with crafting a bunch of these between encounters. But I really like this idea, and think it might even pair well alongside the talent idea.

Any other feedback or suggestions from the community would be great.

Three things come to mind immediately:

1. The Aid manoeuvre. One character can do this twice to add two boost dice to the carpenter’s check. Two assistants means four boost dice! That'll help for sure
2. Create a tier 1 ranked talent based off of Surgeon (CRB74) that increases HTT recovered by your number of ranks
3. Allow your carpenter to spend one, maybe two, Triumphs to make the roll again in the next round. Akin to how the regen potion in Terrinoth works

After talking with my players this is an idea we came up with for a custom talent.

Master Carpenter

Tier: 5

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

Make a Master Carpenter maneuver to gain the ability to repair a vehicle or structure regardless of whether a mechanics check has already been performed. Each time this maneuver has been used upgrade the difficulty of any mechanics checks made to repair the same vehicle or structure in the same encounter a number of times equal to the uses of this maneuver.

On 10/26/2018 at 1:45 PM, Noahjam325 said:

After talking with my players this is an idea we came up with for a custom talent.

Master Carpenter

Tier: 5

Activation: Active (Maneuver)

Ranked: No

Make a Master Carpenter maneuver to gain the ability to repair a vehicle or structure regardless of whether a mechanics check has already been performed. Each time this maneuver has been used upgrade the difficulty of any mechanics checks made to repair the same vehicle or structure in the same encounter a number of times equal to the uses of this maneuver.

I like that. I can see that making its way into other Genesys games too.

One thing I'll add that I do, is that I limit the attempts to one successful roll per encounter. By that I mean if the first attempt fails, there can be a second. That flies in the face of another thread I've commented on, but I found that the specific limit on repairs is a little too harsh.

Good work!

P.S. Coming at this from a Star Wars angle but still applies here as I'm sure it's a similar restriction.