LethalDose said:
I don't want to "vigilante moderate" but:
Anyone who ends a sentence with the word "but" isn't really sincere about the rest of the sentence…
As DM said - please don't. These topics are all related to the week 4 update, so are appropriate to be discussed here. If FFG don't want to see this sort of feedback here, then let them moderate it.
Donovan Morningfire said:
gribble said:
As DM said - please don't. These topics are all related to the week 4 update, so are appropriate to be discussed here. If FFG don't want to see this sort of feedback here, then let them moderate it.
An argument about how to define "engaged", or a debate about whether or not a distance of 15" or 30" should be considered engaged is totally immaterial to the week 4 update.
C'mon guys. Please behave? There no need for pre-adolescent silliness and hostilities. Take whatever beef you got with each other outside, like normal kids and manly men do.
Inksplat said:
But here's the thing. In the book, Engaged also a spacial measurement. Its within the distance to touch someone.
"To reflect two or more targets close enough to interact directly with each other, there is a special range status called Engaged"
So, if they're really 2 and a half feet from each other, then they are within the Engaged Range band, even if they didn't actively move into it--because they both chose to Engage with the particular tables they are gambling at, that are established as that close together.
Now, in a situation where the player's haven't actively put themselves into that sort of position (within arms reach of each other), then no, the 2nd PC gets the "leap out of the way cinematically, completely unscathed". But in a situation where they put themselves that close to one another? Then they are absolutely Engaged.
Not a big deal but in my example they are 5 feet apart. Probably as close to each other as the card players they are engaged with (one of whom could be hit with blast even though the other PC could not). The 2.5 feet comment was to emphasize that RAW I can't throw a stun grenade between them, which is the ideal.
I'm really struggling with engaged. Interact could mean to talk just out of touch range.
Blast and auto-fire require the targets to be engaged to activate them. If engaged is close enough to touch that seems restrictive. For example, using autofire from close up would require a lot of "walking"/larger arc to hit targets 10 feet apart. But as you increase range the two targets 10 feet apart appear very close and "walking" for autofire is very reasonable becasue you only need to move the weapon a little to have both in the arc. And these are long rounds (up to a minute) so a lot of arcing is not unreasonable anyway.
The basic move power is "The user may spend Π to move one object of silhouette 0
that he is engaged with up to his power's maximum range.
The object must be unsecured and unrestrained."
That seems very restrictive. You can move something you are close enough to pick up and throw farther anyway? Luke's use of Move in Empire to get his saber in the Wampa cave appears to be the most fledgling use of Move there is and it was out of his reach. That should just happen especially with concentration. If my Force-sensitive PC with Move wants to pull some cell keys to him that are 5 feet away, bam it should happen. But I think the Move powers are written for pure combat consideration.
I can make the calls about what engaged is, but I'd rather it be clear to the players. Right now it seems a hybrid between a "state" and a "range" and for me that slows things down more. Short range is easy.
Maybe a change is necessary but I've sure appreciated all the replies to help me understand this.
I think this is an ok forum to talk engaged because they did specifically mention engaged in the week 4 update with further clarification.
For my 2 creds, it a GM's call and the naration should take care of how close something is. Thats why there are no X number of feet per range catagories. No need to complete things.
Gamerunner said:
For my 2 creds, it a GM's call and the naration should take care of how close something is. Thats why there are no X number of feet per range catagories. No need to complete things.
Out of curiosity was Luke engaged with his saber in the Wampa cave? I'll bet the replies would be 50/50.
usgrandprix said:
Gamerunner said:
For my 2 creds, it a GM's call and the naration should take care of how close something is. Thats why there are no X number of feet per range catagories. No need to complete things.
Out of curiosity was Luke engaged with his saber in the Wampa cave? I'll bet the replies would be 50/50.
Depends on how strict you read the definition of Engaged.
It seems the leading interpretation is "person or object that is within arm's reach of you." In that interpretation, Luke's lightsaber in the Wampa cave was well out of reach (around a meter or so from his outstretched hand, at least from the angles were shot), so that'd put it at Close, and thus out of range for Move's basic power by itself, which may very well be what was intended with the Week 2 update, given the rather extreme reactions to how potentially broken the Move power was initially (particularly the first Control Upgrade). Personally, I've come to think they went a bit too far in nerfing Move's basic power to the point it's just a glorified parlor trick, and have voiced those thoughts in the Week 2 updated thread and the Force Feedback thread.
Melee seems to be a bit of an odd-duck, as there appears to be a small amount of leeway, figuring a pair of fighters are generally at arm's length but are also bobbing in and out of arm's length as they attack/parry/counter/thrust/dodge/etc one another.
GM: OK you're about to be eaten by a wampa. Your lightsaber is just out of reach. What do you do?
Luke: I use the Force to bring my lightsaber to my hand. Aw yeah, I'm about to fight a wampa with this lightsaber!
GM: OK, roll.
Luke: What? Do you know how much XP I spent to be able to move small objects?
GM: The rules say you gotta roll.
Luke: OK, what are my chances?
GM: 33%, but even then you might need to rely on the Dark Side.
Luke: If only Unlce Owen let me go get those power converters…
[Rolls 1 dark side point]
Luke: OK what happens?
GM: You are eaten by a wampa.
Party's Bounty hunter: Guys is that pizza ready? The Force whatever guy died again.
Guys: He was worthless anyway. Can't even move a lightsaber 1 meter away? Why don't you make a pilot this time. We could use a good pilot.
GM: OK Bounty Hunter you walk up to the wampa cave opening and see a wampa eating Luke.
Bounty Hunter: I toss in a thermal detonator and then take his lightsaber. Guys we're gonna get paid!
Maybe blast should work more like auto fire. Affect more targets in the engaged and short range bands for advantage and unintened targets for disadvantage. .
Hell let big **** bombs go to medium.
There isn't much point to people moving to engaged with the abstract nature of things. Just like players will rarely be engaged as a group unless giving medical attention enemies will be unlikely to bunch up as well. As it stands area weapons are limited in use. Narration works to some extent but to much back and forth on who can hit what will just lead to maps and squares. Keeping it loose keeps things moving better.
Autofire still needs toning down. Disappointed it wasn't addressed yet. And now wounds go negative so stims are useless. Their healing should probably get bumped up if wounds are still going to take forever to heal.
But happy with the defense changes of talents. Defense talents need to be In more classes but at least now people can pick them up with less hassle if not less cost.
Unclear of why cover needed to be clarified as defense. Defense just adds the same number setback dice anyway, does it interact with something else that the clarification is helpful to note?
Agree specialties cost should be arranged in such a way that it isn't more cost effective to take out of career specialties first. Keep one multiplier but add a surcharge to out of career. Or track them separate with the same multipliers I have 2 career specialties and 3 non career specialties and go from there. Second options works well if more specialties become available to the careers in later source books. The cheaper cost would keep drawing you back to your career.
usgrandprix said:
*metagaming description of ESB scene*
I'd call that a case of the GM being a flaggrant *******, and would applaud Luke's player for giving said GM a swift kick in the nards with a steel-toed boot.
As for the scene in question, it took a couple of minutes, giving Luke at least two tries even if one presumes that the GM was using "1 round = 1 minute" guideline from the Structured Gameplay mode. Combat didn't really start until the Wampa showed up, which was a few seconds after Luke's second attempt to retrieve his lightsaber via the Force (again, he's barely trained at this point in the Saga), which he accomplished either by rolling a Light Side point (hey, some gamers are really lucky with their dice rolls) on that second attempt, or the player simply shrugged his shoulders and flipped a LS Destiny Point to be able to activate Move and save his bacon.
Donovan Morningfire said:
usgrandprix said:
*metagaming description of ESB scene*
I'd call that a case of the GM being a flaggrant *******, and would applaud Luke's player for giving said GM a swift kick in the nards with a steel-toed boot.
As for the scene in question, it took a couple of minutes, giving Luke at least two tries even if one presumes that the GM was using "1 round = 1 minute" guideline from the Structured Gameplay mode. Combat didn't really start until the Wampa showed up, which was a few seconds after Luke's second attempt to retrieve his lightsaber via the Force (again, he's barely trained at this point in the Saga), which he accomplished either by rolling a Light Side point (hey, some gamers are really lucky with their dice rolls) on that second attempt, or the player simply shrugged his shoulders and flipped a LS Destiny Point to be able to activate Move and save his bacon.
I'm just funnin'. I'm not sure there were any sympathetic players in there really.
Anyway the point is that he's only being an a$%&0!@ because he didn't actually break the rules requiring 2 Light Side points and a level of the Range talent to call the saber.
So serious questions I've asked a few times.
Can you roll your Force die again and again if you have the time or do you have to take the first result? If so, if you have the time can you use Influence over and over until you like the result?
Do you think Engaged range is clearly defined so all the players are working under similar assumptions and your milage (or feetage in this case) won't vary too much from GM to GM? I'd allow 2 targets 10 feet apart to be affected by autofire coming from the medium range band but they are not Engaged by any stretch of the RAW. Would your GM?
usgrandprix said:
'm just funnin'. I'm not sure there were any sympathetic players in there really.
Fair enough. If you don't mind, I'll reply with my thoughts on the questions you asked below, which I agree do should be at least be considered.
Can you roll your Force die again and again if you have the time or do you have to take the first result? If so, if you have the time can you use Influence over and over until you like the result?
As the rules currently stand, yes you can, unless the GM puts a hard stop either due to plot-relevant reasons or he's gotten tired of the player trying to spam their Force powers until they actually work. For the emotion-change/mind-whammy portion of Influence and the emotion/thought-readting aspect of Sense, I think a hard limit of "once per scene" would help curtail the occurances of spamming Force powers. I know from the D6 days that Force-users could spam their powers over and over without restriction, and the various d20 games tried to implement a restraint, though said restraint became rather pointless once Jedi and other Force-users hit the early-teens in terms of levels. So a "once per scene" restriction is easy to implement, easy to track, and curbs the worries of power spamming where Influene and Sense are concerned. I'm not quite so sure spamming Move is as big a concern, but that's just me.
Do you think Engaged range is clearly defined so all the players are working under similar assumptions and your milage (or feetage in this case) won't vary too much from GM to GM? I'd allow 2 targets 10 feet apart to be affected by autofire coming from the medium range band but they are not Engaged by any stretch of the RAW. Would your GM?
I won't claim to be any sort of expert on Autofire (mostly as I've not encountered it in the handful of sessions I've run or played), but with FFG having taken the appraoch of letting each individual GM define how much distance constitutes a range band, I don't think we're going to see a consensus. Though given the amount of chatter on the subject, perhaps FFG should give at least some considration to defining Engaged, even if only for situations like this.
Donovan Morningfire said:
usgrandprix said:
'm just funnin'. I'm not sure there were any sympathetic players in there really.
Fair enough. If you don't mind, I'll reply with my thoughts on the questions you asked below, which I agree do should be at least be considered.
Can you roll your Force die again and again if you have the time or do you have to take the first result? If so, if you have the time can you use Influence over and over until you like the result?
As the rules currently stand, yes you can, unless the GM puts a hard stop either due to plot-relevant reasons or he's gotten tired of the player trying to spam their Force powers until they actually work. For the emotion-change/mind-whammy portion of Influence and the emotion/thought-readting aspect of Sense, I think a hard limit of "once per scene" would help curtail the occurances of spamming Force powers. I know from the D6 days that Force-users could spam their powers over and over without restriction, and the various d20 games tried to implement a restraint, though said restraint became rather pointless once Jedi and other Force-users hit the early-teens in terms of levels. So a "once per scene" restriction is easy to implement, easy to track, and curbs the worries of power spamming where Influene and Sense are concerned. I'm not quite so sure spamming Move is as big a concern, but that's just me.
Do you think Engaged range is clearly defined so all the players are working under similar assumptions and your milage (or feetage in this case) won't vary too much from GM to GM? I'd allow 2 targets 10 feet apart to be affected by autofire coming from the medium range band but they are not Engaged by any stretch of the RAW. Would your GM?
I won't claim to be any sort of expert on Autofire (mostly as I've not encountered it in the handful of sessions I've run or played), but with FFG having taken the appraoch of letting each individual GM define how much distance constitutes a range band, I don't think we're going to see a consensus. Though given the amount of chatter on the subject, perhaps FFG should give at least some considration to defining Engaged, even if only for situations like this.
Thanks a lot for the perspective.
I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'm just going to have to make calls that make sense of things even if they bend the rules. I'd rather make calls without bending the rules but I can let that go.
I think I've gotten to the heart of the matter for me. The system is abstract and open in many ways. Time of a round can vary, ranges vary, spending advantage is open and concensus, starship conflict is very abstract, etc. And I really, really dig that about this game. Had my fill of board game RPGs.
But then every once in a while they drop rules that beg strict interpretation like:
Basic Move: "The user may spend 1 LS to move one object of silhouette 0
that he is engaged with up to his power's maximum range.
The object must be unsecured and unrestrained."
For my money there's not much leeway there. It's like they trust us to come up with cool uses for advantage, threat, etc. but when it comes to the Force, which is the arena for judgement calls and rewarding original usage if anything is, they don't trust us with more abstractly defined powers.
I'd rather see
Basic Move: "The user may move one small object that is close to him a short distance."
Now I know that sounds crazy so I don't expect that change, but I think there are degrees here where the crowd wanting strict walls around the Force, and Blast, and Auto-Fire can be satisfied with rules that reflect the overall abstract nature and concesus style of the game.
I guess I need to let go like Luke in a Death Star trench run.
usgrandprix said:
I guess I need to let go like Luke in a Death Star trench run.
Not knowing your specific gaming background, if the majority of what you've played are tactical-based RPGs in the vein of D&D and D20 where things were pretty rigidly defined, moving to an "indie feel" where the GM is generally given a lot more leeway can be a very difficult experience.
As a "for instance," the GM that runs Dresden Files for us had most of her gaming experience prior to that point be almost entirely d20-based games. If you've checked out Spirit of the Century or any other FATE-based game, you'll know that distances are extremely fluid and that quite a few things rely on GM interpretation rather than spelling everything out to the extent that D&D 3rd Edition and Pathfinder have done. It took her a while to get over that hurdle, but she did eventually, and the action sequences of our Dresden Files game are better for it.
This update takes the game much further from something I'm willing to play.
At this point, I can only see playing it if I get rid of careers entirely, and just have specializations. Cost of new specs could follow the new rules for new career spec, but cross career spec is just too steep for how narrow the careers are. There are too many characters in my star wars playing groups that can't reasonably be built in this system now.
With all the increased costs, I think they should increase the XP rewards. The previous costs seemed okay to me with the current 10-15 XP per well played session. That way the players were able to get a little something each session in the lower tiered areas, and had to save a for a few sessions to get the the higher skills, or to dabble in other specializations. These new costs make player progression and custimization take far longer with the currently low XP rewards. How many sessions will you have to wait to get that third specialization, just to wait a few more sessions to get the talent you really want from it. Just imagine the delays for someone looking to get access to a fifth or sixth talent tree. The open nature of not limiting players to only three specs is great, but the wait to get what a player wants to help flesh out their PC may be a bit much. I believe that with my group, I would need to scale up the rewards as we move along or risk them getting frustrated and wanting to move on to a different game.
Bren_Waynero said:
How many sessions will you have to wait to get that third specialization, just to wait a few more sessions to get the talent you really want from it. Just imagine the delays for someone looking to get access to a fifth or sixth talent tree.
+1 for Bren_Waynero 's post. I agree that gains, later down the line, should not take months of weekly play to gain one new ability. Especially if your group can't meet weekly.
But more xp, in my view, just re-sets the problem back to square one. I would like to see a lower cost for non-career skills/specs, maybe just a flat +5/+10 on each non-career, not a cumulative + per each previous purchase.
Gamerunner said:
I agree on this completely, and am not sure why the change was made, given as to how the prior method wasn't exactly broken (at least not anywhere as badly as the Force Powers were).
Actually, I'd be really curious to hear the discussion that lead to this decision. Was it due to dropping the three spec max and a fear of having would-be power-gamers simply buy up as many specializations as they can? With the end result being a choice to go extreme and scale back if need be?
I was working on a few characters over the weekend and came across a line of thought:
When taking a non-starting career specialization, would it make the other two specializations career as well or would they be non-career?
(EX: My character took Technician as his Career and selected Outlaw Tech as his specialization. After a few sessions I decide that I need to get some combat skills and went Gadgeteer (a non-career specialization) from the Bounty Hunter career path. Being that I took Gadgeteer, would I be paying non-career specialization costs to go into Survivalist or is it considered to be a career specialization? I'm thinking no, but would like this clarified.)
Sarone said:
When taking a non-starting career specialization, would it make the other two specializations career as well or would they be non-career?
Nope. The only thing that makes a specialisation a "career specialisation" is your career (that sounds like a bit of a mouthful when I read it back…). You never gain a second career in the game, just one at character creation.
I'm not fond of the Spec change either. There are diminishing returns for buying more specializations as the new career skills will dry up almost immediately. I much rather just a flat fee of 20 xp for each non-career specialization and 10 xp each for career specializations. The redunancy will take care going overboard with spec trees just as well as extra XP cost will.
I'm jumping back a few pages, but on Autofire I would be for a change that makes it less deadly but adds fire suppression to the target(s). Full automatic weapons, especially of the larger sized seen in EotE, would often be used to suppress targets while others close and kill the targets assuming the modern world is used as a model. These full auto weapons should have some chance of being harmful (innacurate, but lots of bullets) while forcing the target(s) to keep their head down (removes a Maneuver? Forces them to take only the last initiative in the round?).
My biggest issue with the way specilizations are totalled now is when I am trying to check a characters point total. The way it is now I have to make sure I know the order in which I tooke specializations and I think that's unneeded. It would be just as easy to make it 5 per career and 10 per non-career without needing to know the order.
The specialty change is actually one of the things that I'm disheartened about. I started a thread about just how I feel the game loses something based on this change. To sum up that thread, I feel that FFG was on to something really unique and had great potential when it came to building a character. Having a limited choice when it came to specializations meant that not everyone would end up being great at everything. You had to really choose which to focus on, and thus, made the choices your character made throughout their career more poignant. As it stands, the game feels like "oh just another level" rather than as example, Luke's epic Journey from farmboy to Jedi Knight.
Basically, I see Luke as having to give something up, each time his character entered a new story arc. Farmboy to Soldier and leader of Rogue Squadron, to Jedi Knight. When Luke changed his specialties, he gave up something else really, whether the choice was his or not. Leaving Tattoine to become a fighter pilot. Becoming Rogue Leader and training Rogue Squadron, and when he focused on being a Jedi, he put the Rogue Squad life behind him.
All in all, I feel an opportunity has been lost that brings this game from being, "absolutely phenomenal" to "really good".