Continuing to look at the various Mecha abilities, we finish up with some of the more crucial and distinctive ones. Plus Modules, I guess.
Archetypes
Probably the most important ones of the bunch. Archetypes are some of, if not the, strongest abilities available and you can only have two of them. They're all pretty effective, in terms of both representing types of giant robots and improving PC performance.
As a designer, my favorite is Limiter Release, because it plays differently depending on the Chassis type that you use.The Eagle class has plenty of Accuracy but is lacking in Penetration, so it benefits from the occasional activation. Destroyers have a good enough buffer of Threshold to maximize their already high Penetration to devastating results, aiming for quick victories. The Shield chassis, meanwhile, is the only that can afford to burn through their own health with every hit.
Custom Blueprints and Integrated Weapons are the main reason there's an
opportunity cost attached to Archetypes now. The former moreso than the
latter, because it is just oh so very efficient and would be an instant
pick for nearly everyone.
I already compared between Regenerative and Tactical UI for supportive purposes last time, while talking about Aid Another and Support Upgrades, so the only one that remains worth calling out now is Berserker. The 10 UP Weapon gained from Berserker is, perhaps unintuitively, at its most useful as a Melee weapon in the hands of a sniper that has been pushed to the limit. I'm not sure how to feel about that, but it is what it is, and the extra 5 points can make any kind of finisher rather fearsome, specially with Technique or One-Shot on top
Features
Features are one of those things it took me way too long to come up with, yet they sound so obvious in retrospect. They're all pretty open-and-shut in that you either want them, or you don't, and odds are you will only want them as part of Frames or Transformations.
Base Units benefit a lot from the streamlining of Base Terrain, making them an asset rather than a liability that maybe you will use sometimes. Though only now do I notice that nothing stops you from using your Base Unit as a mobile platform (from which you can attack and stuff) after you have Docked into it.
This isn't bad, because it makes sense from a flavor standpoint and has its own downsides mechanically (such as not being able to cover your mothership) but I should make it explicit. And maybe streamline it further by removing the Docking Action entirely and just having the effect take place as long as you are sharing a Zone with your carrier.
I like Power Suit the most, though, even if it is a tad... Wordy. Riders and their ilk are perfectly playable using the regular Maiming rules, but this is a nice option to have around if you would like something that makes more sense or hate losing use of your Upgrades and Weapons.
Attribute Modules
Very, very useful and cost-efficient. Great with Hidden Power or an Expansion Pack, making it impossible for foes to disable them. If you've ever wondered why there aren't Threshold or Energy Modules, the answer is that they don't exist because Maiming them makes a complete and utter mess of things. Not so much for recalculating your Energy (which is fiddly an inelegant even then) but in that figuring out your new maximum and current Threshold values post losing a limb would have been hilarious. And by hilarious I mean terrible.
Alternate Forms
And so we hit the first of the Really Wordy Upgrade Categories. They play out fine (if you don't mind a really busy character sheet, or using more than one) but I hate that they need all these words written in semi-legalese so that they work properly without being super exploitable or entirely useless.
The one thing worth pointing out that the book doesn't address is that you can, if you build properly, use Transformation to net yourself a free 5 UP. This is kind of an exploit, but not really. Since you can only transform during your Turn, you can't really take advantage of that with Upgrades and must keep it to Weapons. Most of the Weapons you would want to do this with (the big finishers) are One-Shots or Techniques, which you cannot take more than one of anyway. And when it comes down to energy-free, standard use Weapons you shouldn't need more than one of those - perhaps two.
These free '5 UP' are kind of really conditional in how they can be used, so while I do recognize that I could fix that up, the ability text is already bloated enough and the 'exploit' limits your character to spending 15 UP on utility weapons anyway, so it isn't a big deal.
Other than that, Frames are a personal favorite of mine for really cheap ways to make versatile characters that play differently from time to time.
Sub Units
And now we come to The Upgrade Line That Might As Well Have Been Archetypes. Nearly every type of Mecha could use any of these after they've been upgraded a bit to round them out. I am okay with this, because it makes sense in flavor terms: How often do main characters get those after, or as part of, their mid-season upgrades after all? Plus, making them Archetypes would make it impossible to combine them into a single super Sidekick, and it would also lock you out of... Well, every other Archetype.
It is tempting to do so, though. Maybe if I also increase the limit of 2 Archetypes to 3.Sidekicks would need a small buff too.
Sidekick is potentially the best of the bunch, but they're easy to blow up and impossible to repair mid-combat so they can be countered without too much trouble. Expansion Pack is essentially a fifth Layer of Threshold with its own Area, keeping your toys safe and sound and purging itself to make instances of massive Damage more manageable.
And Assistant is the one that stands out over the rest here. Slow and unreliable, but ever-present and persistent to the point that the luck-based element of its utility should make it worth its UP cost in gold. It has come a long way from the days when it was a bonus couple of Genre Powers with the potential to sometimes let you use one of them for free.
Now the extra versatility in Genre Powers is more of an afterthought when compared to its main use. But it is a dangerous afterthought. Most Packages only have one or two Powers that you really want to have. Assistant removes the strategic value of carefully choosing your two Packages by letting you make up for it later, and gives you an awesome bonus ability to boot!
Yeah, that free Power has got to go. It kind of hurts the fact that the ability is supposed to represent a whole extra pilot, but Assistant is already so good that I think its users will manage.
Combinations
Three Upgrades, two columns, and a whole page of text. We've hit peak rules density here folks. I wish there was an easier way to format this without spreading the rules between several pages and through the use of keywords. It is not pretty to look at, but I'd rather have function over form and keeping it all together is less annoying in the long term. Still bugs me, but oh well.
So! Combinations are powerful stuff. They need some forethought to implement, for obvious reasons, and there's already a paragraph in the book handling that. I really don't have much else to say, other than I really dig how Unison Combiners play very differently than God Combiners, and nearly everything else in the game really. It gets the feeling of "Our hearts together are as one" across pretty well, I think.
Conclusions
Originally 1 UP was more or less the equivalent of what is now 10 UP, you would only earn one UP per Arc, and everything would cost 1 UP as well. The need to have small bits of mechanical growth here and there made me add weaker abilities here and there, and change the 'per Arc' recommended XP gains from 1 UP to 10 to 15 (the last one was after taking Enhancements into question).
I bring this up because every time I look at some of these, mostly Alternate Forms, I think "Man, this would be so much more readable if it just said that you can switch between one Upgrade and another" and the non-Unison Combinations likewise could just share maybe one or two Upgrades/Weapons after docking, instead of the rules text puzzle we've got.
On the other hand, I think I can count on one hand how many games make shapeshifting simpler than GGG does (without making it ridiculously broken or terribly sucky) and I've got a few fingers to spare. Let alone combining PC Mecha together. As of this writing, I'm convinced that does not even exist yet, though FATE Core will likely prove me wrong soon.
I might experiment with boiling things down to reduce the base 30 UP to 3 or perhaps 5/6 in the future, but it would change the dynamics of character growth considerably (Dragging down the usefulness of Mid-Scene Upgrade with it) and would essentially require a full rewrite of the rules so it is not likely to happen, but maybe I can do a quick conversion (sacrificing some of the cost 3 and 7 stuff or modifying it slightly) for an alternate streamlined ruleset.
May 5, 2013
April 28, 2013
Mechanical Make-Up III
As of this writing we have 34 Upgrades available to PCs, not counting Archetypes and Features which bring up the total to 49. That is a lot of abilities to pick and choose from, and making them all useful while distinctive is kind of tough. It also means I'm not going to look over all of them in one sitting, so for today I will stick to the first half of the Upgrade lines.
Active Defenses
Evasive Systems and Defensive Barriers get a quick look over because they get a sidebar explaining their functionality and limitations already. The only other thing worth mentioning is that the cheaper, type-specific Defenses can easily go from conditionally useful to very frustrating in the hands of Grunts adapted to counter PCs. That is kind of mean, though, so it should be kept for special occasions.
Aid Another and Support
Also known as the 'team player' line of Upgrades. There's enough of them that you could take all of these and be a full support unit who never does any actual fighting but rather keeps everyone in top condition all the time instead.
All-Stars are Reload for its utility in both reloading One-Shots and repairing Remotes for only 3 UP, Resupply for giving you you back 5 whole Energy all at once, and Support Fire for granting 'free' Advantages to your allies and making duels a lot less risky.
Battlefield Commander is better than Jury Rig at keeping you healed through a prolonged conflict. JR's big benefit is that it guarantees healing, and does so at no Action Cost with Regenerative, where an Assistant-fueled Micromanage fails to do anything at all 40% of the time. They both work fine, though, so I don't think I want to change how either works for now.
Guardian Maneuver and Sacrifice take a bit of teamplay to do anything meaningful at all, but only specific Weapons can get around their solid and hard to pierce defenses once you've got that covered. Last is the Overcharger, deceptively powerful and terrific if you've got a free Gravagne Field effect on top of your Sacrifice tank. Even if you're just using it on yourself through Regenerative, three turns of 20 Evasion or so is going to make anyone who doesn't have the luxury of being able to ignore you cry.
Overall they work as intended but the three-use limitation on pretty much all of these abilities mean they're better off used in concert and with some planning beforehand. A cool thing is that, through them, Grunt forces can make a formidable show for the three Rounds of life expectancy they've got, likely extending them to 5-6 until finally being crushed.
Special Modes
Speaking of three-use limitations, I once considered giving these a three-round duration instead of a drawback, but having a downside is more interesting to play with... though said downside is 'uses up your Energy' half the time. Which is a little disappointing, but there just aren't that many downsides which both hurt and make sense.
This block's cool kids are Beast Mode and Anti-Gravity. One turns you into a whirlwind of death and destruction until you don't need to be one, while A-G has little to no downside most of the time. Chances are that once you activate them, and should you actually need to turn them off, you won't need them again.
Over-Booster is much more attractive after the bigger emphasis on area effects and the Cost reduction, though the loss of energy hurts. It gets the job done and there really isn't much to say about that, and while it is super useful for its cheap UP Cost, the energy drain keeps it from being right next to the others.
Artillery Mode can be pretty nasty if you spend UP on extra Range, the big drawback on a specialized sniper is that by the time they catch up to you, Tension will have gone up and boy you better have a backup close range Weapon because it is going to hurt. Also that sometimes you don't have large enough battlefields to make use of it. The thing that makes it unattractive is that Ballistics are trading an Advantage for that extended Range, and if you are making use of said Range, then your Missiles are also likely not gaining one either. Very usable, though, specially since it only costs 3 UP.
This brings us to the big, expensive ones with the big, expensive drawbacks. Stealth Field can be a free defensive buff. It can also drain your whole supply of Energy after a single bad round, since it tracks each instance separately. It works much better in a duel than it does against a group of enemies, which makes sense from a flavor standpoint, so I'm happy with that.
Three Times Faster is strange for a 10 UP ability in that it does a little bit of everything and costs considerable Energy, which isn't too good when you would rather be doing fewer things but better. On the other hand, doing a little bit of everything is often pretty sweet: Just look at Custom Blueprints. It might want an Energy cost reduction, because the free movement is rarely going to be a deciding factor as much as the other two effects, but when it does it is a pretty major one. We'll see.
I'll wait until I'm done with the UP section in general to bring up potential additions and rule customizations.
Active Defenses
Evasive Systems and Defensive Barriers get a quick look over because they get a sidebar explaining their functionality and limitations already. The only other thing worth mentioning is that the cheaper, type-specific Defenses can easily go from conditionally useful to very frustrating in the hands of Grunts adapted to counter PCs. That is kind of mean, though, so it should be kept for special occasions.
Aid Another and Support
Also known as the 'team player' line of Upgrades. There's enough of them that you could take all of these and be a full support unit who never does any actual fighting but rather keeps everyone in top condition all the time instead.
All-Stars are Reload for its utility in both reloading One-Shots and repairing Remotes for only 3 UP, Resupply for giving you you back 5 whole Energy all at once, and Support Fire for granting 'free' Advantages to your allies and making duels a lot less risky.
Battlefield Commander is better than Jury Rig at keeping you healed through a prolonged conflict. JR's big benefit is that it guarantees healing, and does so at no Action Cost with Regenerative, where an Assistant-fueled Micromanage fails to do anything at all 40% of the time. They both work fine, though, so I don't think I want to change how either works for now.
Guardian Maneuver and Sacrifice take a bit of teamplay to do anything meaningful at all, but only specific Weapons can get around their solid and hard to pierce defenses once you've got that covered. Last is the Overcharger, deceptively powerful and terrific if you've got a free Gravagne Field effect on top of your Sacrifice tank. Even if you're just using it on yourself through Regenerative, three turns of 20 Evasion or so is going to make anyone who doesn't have the luxury of being able to ignore you cry.
Overall they work as intended but the three-use limitation on pretty much all of these abilities mean they're better off used in concert and with some planning beforehand. A cool thing is that, through them, Grunt forces can make a formidable show for the three Rounds of life expectancy they've got, likely extending them to 5-6 until finally being crushed.
Special Modes
Speaking of three-use limitations, I once considered giving these a three-round duration instead of a drawback, but having a downside is more interesting to play with... though said downside is 'uses up your Energy' half the time. Which is a little disappointing, but there just aren't that many downsides which both hurt and make sense.
This block's cool kids are Beast Mode and Anti-Gravity. One turns you into a whirlwind of death and destruction until you don't need to be one, while A-G has little to no downside most of the time. Chances are that once you activate them, and should you actually need to turn them off, you won't need them again.
Over-Booster is much more attractive after the bigger emphasis on area effects and the Cost reduction, though the loss of energy hurts. It gets the job done and there really isn't much to say about that, and while it is super useful for its cheap UP Cost, the energy drain keeps it from being right next to the others.
Artillery Mode can be pretty nasty if you spend UP on extra Range, the big drawback on a specialized sniper is that by the time they catch up to you, Tension will have gone up and boy you better have a backup close range Weapon because it is going to hurt. Also that sometimes you don't have large enough battlefields to make use of it. The thing that makes it unattractive is that Ballistics are trading an Advantage for that extended Range, and if you are making use of said Range, then your Missiles are also likely not gaining one either. Very usable, though, specially since it only costs 3 UP.
This brings us to the big, expensive ones with the big, expensive drawbacks. Stealth Field can be a free defensive buff. It can also drain your whole supply of Energy after a single bad round, since it tracks each instance separately. It works much better in a duel than it does against a group of enemies, which makes sense from a flavor standpoint, so I'm happy with that.
Three Times Faster is strange for a 10 UP ability in that it does a little bit of everything and costs considerable Energy, which isn't too good when you would rather be doing fewer things but better. On the other hand, doing a little bit of everything is often pretty sweet: Just look at Custom Blueprints. It might want an Energy cost reduction, because the free movement is rarely going to be a deciding factor as much as the other two effects, but when it does it is a pretty major one. We'll see.
I'll wait until I'm done with the UP section in general to bring up potential additions and rule customizations.
April 21, 2013
Mechanical Make-Up II
I like Weapons. As in, GGG's Weapons.
I like that there's just enough variety in their typing to add depth without getting too specific over sword alloys or firearm calibers. I like that you can have enough of them with you at all times to avoid repeating the same trick over and over. I like that specializing in a specific type or mixing and maxing types are both viable strategies. I overall like where they stand right now.
Sometimes I focus a lot on things that could stand to be better, but every once in a while it is a good idea to look back at the bigger picture and realize just how neat some things really are. Mostly so I don't wreck them apart when I'm doing major changes.
What kind of changes? Well, for starters I don't like that Bullets and Missiles have been difficult to distinguish mechanically from day one. I don't like that when it comes down to it Weapon types are "Beam" on one side and "Everything Else" on the other. I also don't like the half-rollover mechanic in general, but that's more of a general rules issue.
All three of those things could stand to be streamlined further. But doing so would take away a lot of the depth inherent to combat, and the less options you've got out there to choose from, the more likely that a single PC can take all of them. Kind of ruins the point to be able to actually choose anything.
I would like to experiment a little on that end, but that's a topic for when I have a better idea of how to do it, and just what to sacrifice. Now let's go over the current Weapons a bit, see if they can be improved, and if they're doing their job properly.
Melee
The premade Melee Weapons tend to be big finishers or desperation attacks in some way, though they all have very distinct functions. Gallant Kick and Radiant Fist were both made to counter Evasion and Armor tanks respectively, while All-Out Attack is a more general finisher and has the most abusiveness potential of the bunch. It makes for a very nasty combination with tricks like Limiter Release or Righteous Fury.
Divine Wind is similarly brutal, though a lot less abusable for obvious reasons. It could stand to be improved, thinking about it, because man, you're taking a lot of damage for what is one big hit that can still be weakened through barriers or nullified with evasive systems.
The really interesting guy here is Finger Net, which is an extremely effective tool to harass groups of enemies with in a teamwork scenario, or put pressure on a single ultradodgy enemy. Yes, it is repeatable to the point of annoyance, but each turn you're doing this is a turn you're not likely doing anything else of value. And ultimately, the choice of whether the effect sticks or not is not yours, but of the guy on the other side, not to mention they can engage you or an ally in a duel to make launching it at them a very bad idea.
Ballistic
Much like with Melee, a number of the Weapons here are made to counter specific types of tanks. Armor Breaker and the Long Rifle are the most obvious, but the Sentry Turret and Resonance Cannon are also quite effective counters too. The Long Rifle and Sentry Turret can also do other things, though, not being quite 'hard' counters in that regard.
We can extend that to the Superheavy Machinegun and the Riot Weapon too though, while they're both good at handling groups of enemies, the former fares much better with dodgy types and the latter with armored ones.
Special Ballistic Weapons end up being, in general, really good against single targets, specially those with a focus on Evasion. They tend to have more trouble with armored targets, and swarms of grunts are hell. Custom Weapons can mitigate this, and so can Use More Gun, but you might as well branch off into other types. Overall, fairly solid.
Beam
Beams are almost universally good, but their usual low stats make them kind of really bad against evasive enemies. There's not much left to punch through Armor after a high Evasion has soaked most of your Accuracy, after all. This is easily solved by simply having high Accuracy and Penetration Attributes as a base, and since their other weakness is that they need to consume energy, their faults are the easiest to mitigate.
Kind of an issue, but it doesn't ruin the game or anything. So how do the premade beams fare? Well, the ones that aren't superweapons of pure, unmitigated destruction are fairly useful, so I would say they're all pretty good which is a success in my book. Most of them need a bit of setup, because they sweep huge areas and are likely to hurt your friend in the process, or at least annoy them.
Missiles
Missiles have come a long way since they were 'like Ballistics, but worse', and while the similarities still bug me - as pointed out a few paragraphs ago- they're much more distinct and useful now. For one, they're the only Weapon type you can potentially 'kite' with through hit and run tactics, and they're the best at charging into the fray with a moderate mix of Accuracy and Penetration. Plus, they get cheap Blasts.
Like with nearly every other Weapon type, some of them are clearly engineered to be able to counter tanks. Bombardment, in particular, is good enough that if you can manage to constantly keep it reloaded it might earn you a victory on its own. Micromissiles are a neat primary weapon if you're the type that hates relying on luck, you'd just need something to use in the off-turns... Like say, a Genius Missile.
Nega-G Rounds are utilitarian, but their one problem is that their utility is trumped by Exhaustion, which is a much more reliable Power. Of course, taking Exhaustion means you're locked into the Controller Package of Powers, but once you have a team member with it... Well, Nega-G Rounds are more of an afterthought. I would like to make it more useful, perhaps by giving it another, different function too. But I'm not quite sure how, and the effect is fairly powerful by itself, so maybe it is fine.
Enhancing Customizations
The anime-themed pacing of the rules letting you grab Upgrades and Weapons after Arcs or during a Mid-Scene Upgrade keeps your mid-Season UP spending strictly on Enhancements, which right now, are flat statistical boosts. That's okay, but we can improve on that a little.
A thing I want to add to the next version is a small improvement to the Custom Weapon rules, expanding the Enhancement rules while at it. Currently Weapons with a cost lower than 5 UP are good filler and nothing else, most of their utility comes at character creation when you just have 2-3 points to spare and coooould use another Weapon rather than an Enhancement.
Enter the Enhancing of Custom Weapons, now you can bump up your lowly 1 UP starting dinky pistol to a much more satisfying 5 UP hand cannon of death. Or buy-off drawbacks such as Overheating with UP, increasing the Cost of the Weapon to 5. The UP Cost can never go over 5, so if you want to buy a 3 UP Beam's Overheating ability off, you're going to have to give it three more UP in drawbacks to keep it from exceeding 5.
It is not a particularly big change or anything, but it does improve what you can do in between arcs a little, and because it is just a nice little patch it can be incorporated more or less seamlessly into the rules.
I like that there's just enough variety in their typing to add depth without getting too specific over sword alloys or firearm calibers. I like that you can have enough of them with you at all times to avoid repeating the same trick over and over. I like that specializing in a specific type or mixing and maxing types are both viable strategies. I overall like where they stand right now.
Sometimes I focus a lot on things that could stand to be better, but every once in a while it is a good idea to look back at the bigger picture and realize just how neat some things really are. Mostly so I don't wreck them apart when I'm doing major changes.
What kind of changes? Well, for starters I don't like that Bullets and Missiles have been difficult to distinguish mechanically from day one. I don't like that when it comes down to it Weapon types are "Beam" on one side and "Everything Else" on the other. I also don't like the half-rollover mechanic in general, but that's more of a general rules issue.
All three of those things could stand to be streamlined further. But doing so would take away a lot of the depth inherent to combat, and the less options you've got out there to choose from, the more likely that a single PC can take all of them. Kind of ruins the point to be able to actually choose anything.
I would like to experiment a little on that end, but that's a topic for when I have a better idea of how to do it, and just what to sacrifice. Now let's go over the current Weapons a bit, see if they can be improved, and if they're doing their job properly.
Melee
The premade Melee Weapons tend to be big finishers or desperation attacks in some way, though they all have very distinct functions. Gallant Kick and Radiant Fist were both made to counter Evasion and Armor tanks respectively, while All-Out Attack is a more general finisher and has the most abusiveness potential of the bunch. It makes for a very nasty combination with tricks like Limiter Release or Righteous Fury.
Divine Wind is similarly brutal, though a lot less abusable for obvious reasons. It could stand to be improved, thinking about it, because man, you're taking a lot of damage for what is one big hit that can still be weakened through barriers or nullified with evasive systems.
The really interesting guy here is Finger Net, which is an extremely effective tool to harass groups of enemies with in a teamwork scenario, or put pressure on a single ultradodgy enemy. Yes, it is repeatable to the point of annoyance, but each turn you're doing this is a turn you're not likely doing anything else of value. And ultimately, the choice of whether the effect sticks or not is not yours, but of the guy on the other side, not to mention they can engage you or an ally in a duel to make launching it at them a very bad idea.
Ballistic
Much like with Melee, a number of the Weapons here are made to counter specific types of tanks. Armor Breaker and the Long Rifle are the most obvious, but the Sentry Turret and Resonance Cannon are also quite effective counters too. The Long Rifle and Sentry Turret can also do other things, though, not being quite 'hard' counters in that regard.
We can extend that to the Superheavy Machinegun and the Riot Weapon too though, while they're both good at handling groups of enemies, the former fares much better with dodgy types and the latter with armored ones.
Special Ballistic Weapons end up being, in general, really good against single targets, specially those with a focus on Evasion. They tend to have more trouble with armored targets, and swarms of grunts are hell. Custom Weapons can mitigate this, and so can Use More Gun, but you might as well branch off into other types. Overall, fairly solid.
Beam
Beams are almost universally good, but their usual low stats make them kind of really bad against evasive enemies. There's not much left to punch through Armor after a high Evasion has soaked most of your Accuracy, after all. This is easily solved by simply having high Accuracy and Penetration Attributes as a base, and since their other weakness is that they need to consume energy, their faults are the easiest to mitigate.
Kind of an issue, but it doesn't ruin the game or anything. So how do the premade beams fare? Well, the ones that aren't superweapons of pure, unmitigated destruction are fairly useful, so I would say they're all pretty good which is a success in my book. Most of them need a bit of setup, because they sweep huge areas and are likely to hurt your friend in the process, or at least annoy them.
Missiles
Missiles have come a long way since they were 'like Ballistics, but worse', and while the similarities still bug me - as pointed out a few paragraphs ago- they're much more distinct and useful now. For one, they're the only Weapon type you can potentially 'kite' with through hit and run tactics, and they're the best at charging into the fray with a moderate mix of Accuracy and Penetration. Plus, they get cheap Blasts.
Like with nearly every other Weapon type, some of them are clearly engineered to be able to counter tanks. Bombardment, in particular, is good enough that if you can manage to constantly keep it reloaded it might earn you a victory on its own. Micromissiles are a neat primary weapon if you're the type that hates relying on luck, you'd just need something to use in the off-turns... Like say, a Genius Missile.
Nega-G Rounds are utilitarian, but their one problem is that their utility is trumped by Exhaustion, which is a much more reliable Power. Of course, taking Exhaustion means you're locked into the Controller Package of Powers, but once you have a team member with it... Well, Nega-G Rounds are more of an afterthought. I would like to make it more useful, perhaps by giving it another, different function too. But I'm not quite sure how, and the effect is fairly powerful by itself, so maybe it is fine.
Enhancing Customizations
The anime-themed pacing of the rules letting you grab Upgrades and Weapons after Arcs or during a Mid-Scene Upgrade keeps your mid-Season UP spending strictly on Enhancements, which right now, are flat statistical boosts. That's okay, but we can improve on that a little.
A thing I want to add to the next version is a small improvement to the Custom Weapon rules, expanding the Enhancement rules while at it. Currently Weapons with a cost lower than 5 UP are good filler and nothing else, most of their utility comes at character creation when you just have 2-3 points to spare and coooould use another Weapon rather than an Enhancement.
Enter the Enhancing of Custom Weapons, now you can bump up your lowly 1 UP starting dinky pistol to a much more satisfying 5 UP hand cannon of death. Or buy-off drawbacks such as Overheating with UP, increasing the Cost of the Weapon to 5. The UP Cost can never go over 5, so if you want to buy a 3 UP Beam's Overheating ability off, you're going to have to give it three more UP in drawbacks to keep it from exceeding 5.
It is not a particularly big change or anything, but it does improve what you can do in between arcs a little, and because it is just a nice little patch it can be incorporated more or less seamlessly into the rules.
April 14, 2013
Mechanical Make-Up I
I am more or less rereading everything for the umpteenth time over, doing editorial fixups on the way, because those never stop popping up for some reason. So while I'm putting everything under the microscope, I might as well drop some insight on the things I'm inspecting here.
I went over the ground level rules in general in a three-part series right before starting the 1.7 previews. And while they do deserve a more detailed look, I figure I should begin with the Mecha Construction chapter.
It is the more interesting one anyway. And it is not like I can't go back to examine the first, anyway.
Attributes
Let's start from the basics, which in this case would be Mecha Attributes. One of the first few things I knew I wanted from the game was to have two angles from which you could approach your PC's defense - and by extension, your offense. I knew I wanted to make the fast and accurate robots different from the slow and powerful ones, too. Having four separate stats to track those things, so that you could mix and match them as you please, seemed like a good plan.
Honestly I'm not too happy with the math involved in attacking, but it succeeds at solving the question of whether you hit or not with a single roll and gives characters distinct ways to approach offense and defense, making them more unique. More importantly, the divide between 'mobility' and 'power' makes it difficult to be an offensive god of destruction or an invincible defensive powerhouse. And having a system that works towards balance makes games fun in the long term even if they seem a bit complicated in the short term.
I wanted the HP equivalent to be separate from your armor, so Threshold was the fifth stat that got made, and Energy seemed like an obvious sixth to give all characters an in-built way to do cool things even without any Genre Points.
Then there's Systems! Systems is cool because it serves two purposes depending on the group's playstyle. First, it is a variable stat that can be used for miscellaneous tests involving general piloting skill that are always difficult because the Systems stat is usually lowish, and it gets lower as combat goes on, even if you do gain more points as you get damaged. Second, if you hate variable stats and/or want pilot abilities to have more of an impact on the battlefield, you can use it as a fixed Attribute drawing from the Pilot's own.
Chassis
The thing with point-buy systems that let you distribute your stats freely as you wish is that, the grand majority of the time, they're inherently and irreparably broken. Even when they're not, they're easily exploitable and encourage powergaming by nature. I wasn't going to run that risk, so I figured I would have prebuilt templates that you could customize further.
That's how the original five Chassis types were born, and why I'm not in any rush to throw them out anytime soon. After rules changes pretty much made one of them useless, they became four. I've said it before, though, while the current four get the job done I'm not perfectly happy with them. That said I am keeping them as is because they all tend towards a specific role without said role being the only thing they can do.
To be perfectly frank for a minute here, replicating the mechanics of Super Robot Wars is not always a good idea. Specially when it comes to Super Robots. If you look at the stats for each unit in the games, those are usually one of two types: Better than the dodgy ones in nearly every way, or they're extremely fragile and get by thanks to having multiple pilots.
Now I can see where an argument for more SRW-like supers is coming from, but those have lower Evasion and better everything else. Sometimes they're huge and size difference makes them slightly less accurate, but that's still two stats next to four! If we want a game that is balanced at least one of those four is going to give, and in GGG, your choices are between defense and offense.
Plus you can always drop Enhancements and Modules on top of your Mecha to better fit a concept, so it is trivial to make a Dynamic into the closest thing to a videogame Super Robot by giving them more Armor and Threshold. That said, I know that it is a thing some of you really wish would change, so while I think of how and when to implement more Chassis types you can play around with this makeshift Custom Chassis Constructor.
C3: or Custom Chassis Constructor
Choose one of the four Chassis types available to customize, you can mix up their Attributes by increasing one and decreasing another as follows:
Rule 1: Armor, Energy and Accuracy are worth the double of Evasion, Threshold and Penetration.
Rule 2: You cannot take out more than 3 points from any single Attribute.
Rule 3: You cannot exceed the existing maximums for each Attribute, and no Attributes may go under 0.
So let's say you want to customize the Destroyer and make it tankier. You can trade a point of Energy for two more Evasion, or for another point of Armor. You cannot, however, trade more than 3 points of Energy this way, so it cannot go under 5. You also cannot increase Armor by 3, because that would go over the starting maximum that the Shield Chassis gets, but you can get 2 Evasion or 2 Threshold to go with your 2 Armor.
And that's a wrap for now. Next time I'll go over Weapons, examining the premade ones and going over a few ideas for modifying your Custom Weapons over time.
I went over the ground level rules in general in a three-part series right before starting the 1.7 previews. And while they do deserve a more detailed look, I figure I should begin with the Mecha Construction chapter.
It is the more interesting one anyway. And it is not like I can't go back to examine the first, anyway.
Attributes
Let's start from the basics, which in this case would be Mecha Attributes. One of the first few things I knew I wanted from the game was to have two angles from which you could approach your PC's defense - and by extension, your offense. I knew I wanted to make the fast and accurate robots different from the slow and powerful ones, too. Having four separate stats to track those things, so that you could mix and match them as you please, seemed like a good plan.
Honestly I'm not too happy with the math involved in attacking, but it succeeds at solving the question of whether you hit or not with a single roll and gives characters distinct ways to approach offense and defense, making them more unique. More importantly, the divide between 'mobility' and 'power' makes it difficult to be an offensive god of destruction or an invincible defensive powerhouse. And having a system that works towards balance makes games fun in the long term even if they seem a bit complicated in the short term.
I wanted the HP equivalent to be separate from your armor, so Threshold was the fifth stat that got made, and Energy seemed like an obvious sixth to give all characters an in-built way to do cool things even without any Genre Points.
Then there's Systems! Systems is cool because it serves two purposes depending on the group's playstyle. First, it is a variable stat that can be used for miscellaneous tests involving general piloting skill that are always difficult because the Systems stat is usually lowish, and it gets lower as combat goes on, even if you do gain more points as you get damaged. Second, if you hate variable stats and/or want pilot abilities to have more of an impact on the battlefield, you can use it as a fixed Attribute drawing from the Pilot's own.
Chassis
The thing with point-buy systems that let you distribute your stats freely as you wish is that, the grand majority of the time, they're inherently and irreparably broken. Even when they're not, they're easily exploitable and encourage powergaming by nature. I wasn't going to run that risk, so I figured I would have prebuilt templates that you could customize further.
That's how the original five Chassis types were born, and why I'm not in any rush to throw them out anytime soon. After rules changes pretty much made one of them useless, they became four. I've said it before, though, while the current four get the job done I'm not perfectly happy with them. That said I am keeping them as is because they all tend towards a specific role without said role being the only thing they can do.
To be perfectly frank for a minute here, replicating the mechanics of Super Robot Wars is not always a good idea. Specially when it comes to Super Robots. If you look at the stats for each unit in the games, those are usually one of two types: Better than the dodgy ones in nearly every way, or they're extremely fragile and get by thanks to having multiple pilots.
Now I can see where an argument for more SRW-like supers is coming from, but those have lower Evasion and better everything else. Sometimes they're huge and size difference makes them slightly less accurate, but that's still two stats next to four! If we want a game that is balanced at least one of those four is going to give, and in GGG, your choices are between defense and offense.
Plus you can always drop Enhancements and Modules on top of your Mecha to better fit a concept, so it is trivial to make a Dynamic into the closest thing to a videogame Super Robot by giving them more Armor and Threshold. That said, I know that it is a thing some of you really wish would change, so while I think of how and when to implement more Chassis types you can play around with this makeshift Custom Chassis Constructor.
C3: or Custom Chassis Constructor
Choose one of the four Chassis types available to customize, you can mix up their Attributes by increasing one and decreasing another as follows:
Rule 1: Armor, Energy and Accuracy are worth the double of Evasion, Threshold and Penetration.
Rule 2: You cannot take out more than 3 points from any single Attribute.
Rule 3: You cannot exceed the existing maximums for each Attribute, and no Attributes may go under 0.
So let's say you want to customize the Destroyer and make it tankier. You can trade a point of Energy for two more Evasion, or for another point of Armor. You cannot, however, trade more than 3 points of Energy this way, so it cannot go under 5. You also cannot increase Armor by 3, because that would go over the starting maximum that the Shield Chassis gets, but you can get 2 Evasion or 2 Threshold to go with your 2 Armor.
And that's a wrap for now. Next time I'll go over Weapons, examining the premade ones and going over a few ideas for modifying your Custom Weapons over time.
March 31, 2013
Climax! GGG's Final Form!?
So this one is huge, and that's because I've had more time than usual to devote to the game over the course of two months and change. I've examined nearly every ability in the game and adjusted, tweaked, or rewritten all that needed a touch up, optimizing them their intended role, and even added some new ones. There might be another update a few months from now on to tinker with some numbers here and there - because no one is perfect. But I'm confident I've found the sweet spot for most of the mechanics added from 1.4 until now, and I've got just enough of them that I can finally call these core rules complete.
Of course, I will probably end up making a supplement with things like variant chassis types, support for different settings, systems for madness and insanity, and so on. But it'll be, you know, in the future. And supplementary.
Enough talk! Here's 1.7 On to the changelog, which is going to come in abridged version today because there's just been waaaay too many small changes everywhere to list everything. Honestly you should doublecheck all the rules that matter to you, or take your time looking at all the changes from the start. On the plus side, there's not going to be any more changes for a loooong time.
General Changes:
-Added a Table of Contents and Index.
-Some more layout improvements.
-More sidebars with advice and optional rules, plus expanding many of the existing ones.
-I think I'm finally done fixing technical errors like typos and cropped images and whatnot. No, I can't believe it either.
Character Creation:
-Added New Traits, some old Traits adjusted in terms of price or power level.
-New category of traits: Anomalies.
-Tweaked the Equipment rules, added more Equipment to the list, powered up most existing equipment as well.
-Powers that require you to make a choice can now be taken multiple times. Rebalanced several Powers and renamed some of them as well.
Mecha Construction:
-Made small adjustments to the starting Attributes of some Chassis types. Renamed Personal and Titanic Chassis classes to Eagle and Shield, the former for readability issues and the latter because the sheer irony of their name has long overstayed its welcome.
-You can now only have a total of 2 Archetypes, so the one you start with plus buying one if you want. Added two new Archetypes, tweaked others, and rewrote Superior Alloy to Invincible Frame.
-Rewrote or buffed all Evasive Systems and Defensive Barriers.
-Slightly nerfed Reload, rewrote Overcharger.
-Most Special Modes were rebalanced and some even renamed to better represent their function.
-Rebalanced or tweaked most Sub Units. Slightly buffed Component Unit.
-Clarified how Alternate Forms, Sub Units, and Combinations work together - which is to say, they don't.
-Tweaked the Custom Weapon Tables to encourage more diversification. Added a new drawback for Melee Weapons. Renamed several abilities to make more sense or be easier to distinguish from each other namewise.
-Rebalanced several premade Weapons. Added four new such Weapons.
Playing the Game:
-Improved the rules for stacking Advantages and Disadvantages. Added guidelines for handling Advantages and Disadvantages against multiple targets.
-Added more ways to use Resources.
-Blasts now interact with more rules, and now get around things like cover.
-Several clarifications concerning Tension and Duels.
-Tweaked the Aim and Delay Actions, buffed Maneuver and Disrupt, renamed Disrupt to Suppress.
-Streamlined and improved Base and Defensive Terrains.
Running the Show:
-Bosses can now have two Boss Archetypes starting at Arc 3 and 3 Boss Archetypes starting at arc 5
-Tweaked several Powers, Archetypes and Weapons.
-Grunts can now use Specific Weapons and get a static bonus to Systems as they progress.
-Nerfed the Squadron feature, and tweaked the Cryptid feature.
The World:
-Added several Example Non-Combatants, Allies, and Enemies.
So let's talk a bit about the big picture. Blasts, movement and positioning are more important than they used to. Apart from ignoring cover, Blasts and other area of effect weapons can now ignore half of the Evasive Systems out there, defensive Aid Another abilities, and certain Boss Archetypes among other things. As a result most abilities with area of effect abilities got their costs increased or were weakened a little, and both the Over-Booster and Telescopic Sights (now Artillery Mode) got a small cost reduction. Ballistics, whose in-built advantage require the decision to forego movement entirely, got a small buff. Missiles, which are all about being on the move constantly, got a small nerf.
Then there's the news on the Evasion/Armor front. Simply put, starting high Evasion is too hard to counter and a lot more frustrating to deal with than high Armor - with high Armor at least you might be dealing Damage in small bits here and there, but Evasion completely nulls way too many attacks, and for far too long given that Accuracy is also more expensive than Penetration. I did not want to have to do this, but a starting Evasion of 13 is too much so just to be safe it is going two points down, but to compensate for it thePersonal Eagle Chassis is getting another point of Armor.
There's also a lot more clarifications on how specific rules interact with each other, and whole paragraphs being rewritten not to change rules but to make them easier to grasp, and ensuring the rules are tighter. Between that and the various new sidebars with advice on how to use various game mechanics play should be a lot smoother.
What next? Probably small things here and there like editable pdf sheets, separate chapters printable in black and white, and whatever other stuff I can come up with that'll come in handy. Concerning bigger projects, I'll say something when I have a clear idea in mind, but this is definitely not the last you'll see of GGG.
Of course, I will probably end up making a supplement with things like variant chassis types, support for different settings, systems for madness and insanity, and so on. But it'll be, you know, in the future. And supplementary.
Enough talk! Here's 1.7 On to the changelog, which is going to come in abridged version today because there's just been waaaay too many small changes everywhere to list everything. Honestly you should doublecheck all the rules that matter to you, or take your time looking at all the changes from the start. On the plus side, there's not going to be any more changes for a loooong time.
General Changes:
-Added a Table of Contents and Index.
-Some more layout improvements.
-More sidebars with advice and optional rules, plus expanding many of the existing ones.
-I think I'm finally done fixing technical errors like typos and cropped images and whatnot. No, I can't believe it either.
Character Creation:
-Added New Traits, some old Traits adjusted in terms of price or power level.
-New category of traits: Anomalies.
-Tweaked the Equipment rules, added more Equipment to the list, powered up most existing equipment as well.
-Powers that require you to make a choice can now be taken multiple times. Rebalanced several Powers and renamed some of them as well.
Mecha Construction:
-Made small adjustments to the starting Attributes of some Chassis types. Renamed Personal and Titanic Chassis classes to Eagle and Shield, the former for readability issues and the latter because the sheer irony of their name has long overstayed its welcome.
-You can now only have a total of 2 Archetypes, so the one you start with plus buying one if you want. Added two new Archetypes, tweaked others, and rewrote Superior Alloy to Invincible Frame.
-Rewrote or buffed all Evasive Systems and Defensive Barriers.
-Slightly nerfed Reload, rewrote Overcharger.
-Most Special Modes were rebalanced and some even renamed to better represent their function.
-Rebalanced or tweaked most Sub Units. Slightly buffed Component Unit.
-Clarified how Alternate Forms, Sub Units, and Combinations work together - which is to say, they don't.
-Tweaked the Custom Weapon Tables to encourage more diversification. Added a new drawback for Melee Weapons. Renamed several abilities to make more sense or be easier to distinguish from each other namewise.
-Rebalanced several premade Weapons. Added four new such Weapons.
Playing the Game:
-Improved the rules for stacking Advantages and Disadvantages. Added guidelines for handling Advantages and Disadvantages against multiple targets.
-Added more ways to use Resources.
-Blasts now interact with more rules, and now get around things like cover.
-Several clarifications concerning Tension and Duels.
-Tweaked the Aim and Delay Actions, buffed Maneuver and Disrupt, renamed Disrupt to Suppress.
-Streamlined and improved Base and Defensive Terrains.
Running the Show:
-Bosses can now have two Boss Archetypes starting at Arc 3 and 3 Boss Archetypes starting at arc 5
-Tweaked several Powers, Archetypes and Weapons.
-Grunts can now use Specific Weapons and get a static bonus to Systems as they progress.
-Nerfed the Squadron feature, and tweaked the Cryptid feature.
The World:
-Added several Example Non-Combatants, Allies, and Enemies.
So let's talk a bit about the big picture. Blasts, movement and positioning are more important than they used to. Apart from ignoring cover, Blasts and other area of effect weapons can now ignore half of the Evasive Systems out there, defensive Aid Another abilities, and certain Boss Archetypes among other things. As a result most abilities with area of effect abilities got their costs increased or were weakened a little, and both the Over-Booster and Telescopic Sights (now Artillery Mode) got a small cost reduction. Ballistics, whose in-built advantage require the decision to forego movement entirely, got a small buff. Missiles, which are all about being on the move constantly, got a small nerf.
Then there's the news on the Evasion/Armor front. Simply put, starting high Evasion is too hard to counter and a lot more frustrating to deal with than high Armor - with high Armor at least you might be dealing Damage in small bits here and there, but Evasion completely nulls way too many attacks, and for far too long given that Accuracy is also more expensive than Penetration. I did not want to have to do this, but a starting Evasion of 13 is too much so just to be safe it is going two points down, but to compensate for it the
There's also a lot more clarifications on how specific rules interact with each other, and whole paragraphs being rewritten not to change rules but to make them easier to grasp, and ensuring the rules are tighter. Between that and the various new sidebars with advice on how to use various game mechanics play should be a lot smoother.
What next? Probably small things here and there like editable pdf sheets, separate chapters printable in black and white, and whatever other stuff I can come up with that'll come in handy. Concerning bigger projects, I'll say something when I have a clear idea in mind, but this is definitely not the last you'll see of GGG.
March 24, 2013
We're Approaching the next Release!
That means it is preview time! Exclamation marks! I'll show some of the modifications and tweaks to the things mentioned in the last post, plus some of the new toys that will be in the next version and I did not mention at all last time. Today I cut the crap and get to the good parts right away. Except for this one paragraph, I guess. Let's not make it two paragraphs and get started right away:
General Traits
Some Traits got sorta-buffed through cost reductions, and some others had new shoes to fill (Modern Ninja became Invisibility Device and moved to the Equipment section) that left space for adding some new expensive and awesome Traits in, and one of those is there to compensate for the "loss" of Modern Ninja.
I was Here all Along
Cost: 10
Effect: Once per Episode you may Test either Stealth or Deception against a DN of 10 to reveal that you were present in a Scene that did not include you, either in hiding or disguised as an unnassuming background character as appropriate to the Test in question.
Description: You are insidious and sneaky, everywhere yet nowhere, and generally in places someone else wishes you rather weren’t there.
Useful, flashy, and badass. The Test is more of a formality than anything, since the kind of character who would take this will likely pass more often than not. And that is good, because you only get to do it more than once per Episode, so you better not fail when you do!
Anomalies
New Trait type! These are a mix of Miracles and Features for the weirder PCs out there, like Cyborgs and Mutants of various types. Anomalies don't have a Cost - much like Mecha Features - but have a downside to go with their upside - again, much like Mecha Features. Here's an example.
Wild
Effect: You gain an Advantage to all Awareness Tests and uses of the Survival Skill. You may speak with Earth animals, translating sounds they make into simple and short sentences in your head - think “Master is angry” or “Timmy fell down the well”. This grants you an Advantage to interactions with them. All Tests using either of Intellect or Resources that don’t fit the previously mentioned criteria are at a Disadvantage.
Description: Ever since the first Cryptid sightings, there have been reports of ‘wild childs’ in some of the lesser populated islands of the Far West with a surprising ability to survive in the wild, in spite of radiation, and communicate with the little wildlife in the area.
Pretty self explanatory, really. Great in an outdoorsy game or if you fight aliens that are not actually at all alien. The most important thing about Anomalies is that they open the way for more varied character concepts, and now anyone who wants to homebrew a different type of character into their games can use the existing ones as a template.
Equipment
Equipment got a touchup to the general rules, owning cool things is more permissive to anyone who didn't start with a 6 on Resources, in addition there's also loads of new toys to play with. Are they any good? Well don't just take my word for it, go and have a look.
Ether Drive
Cost: 3
Effect: Choose a Miracle at the Amateur Level when you take this Trait. You may use said Miracle as if you were trained in it, but only with the chosen Specialty with no other possible use, and the Ether Drive will act as a Proxy taking the Damage in your stead. The Proxy cannot be repaired with any kind of Heal Test, and once broken only time will make it function again.
Description: After endless testing, the Clarke Foundation has found a way to weaponize the harvested organs of Cryptids. They will not tell you what exactly the items in question are, but their origin is obvious to anyone who has dealt with the original creature in the past. Its not like the put much effort in trying to disguise alien eyes as ‘experimental lenses’ anyway.
Simple but effective, representing anything from a stockpile of freezing grenades to a telepathic helmet as necessary. Not only is it a very useful tool, but depending on the application, it even allows the games without superpowers to access Miracles in a limited fashion.
(By the way, you can now heal your Proxies with Craftsmanship. Just not this one.)
Genre Powers
A number of Powers were tweaked mechanically, and some even have better names now (for instance All Weapons, Full Power is now called Last Ditch Effort) but the important thing here is not that. The new cool thing is that you can take Powers that require you to make a choice when you grab them multiple times. That means you could have more than one Signature Weapon, yes, but it also means you can get trickier. Case in point...
Hidden Power
Setup Power
Effect: Choose up to 15 UP in Upgrades or Weapons when you take this Power. Activate it to gain the chosen abilities until end of Operation. These abilities are not allocated to any particular Areas, and as such may not be disabled as a result of Maiming. You may not use multiple instances of Hidden Power in the same Operation.
Description: “Give up, you’re out of ammunition and surrounded, be reasonable!” T he enemy shouted. “NO, I REFUSE!” Came the reply from the silver-coloured mech as it flew into the air and began bombarding its enemies with some kind of devastating heat ray. “I TOTALLY HAVE ICE MISSILES TOO!”
It is like having Frames, but entirely on the spot! Megaman would be proud. Because it does not actually use the rules for Alternate Forms, this means you can have multiple One-Shots and the such at your beck and call, as long as you did not take any with your default form and they each use a different Hidden Power.
Archetypes
Yes, there's been tweaks to Archetypes, and there's also two new ones. Both of the new Archetypes are more general-use rather than directing you towards a specific build - I figure there's already 7 of those so it is fine to have three for the all-rounders. Because nearly everyone would want to take them, there's also now a limitation on how many Archetypes you can have to give them an opportunity cost.
Custom Blueprints
Effect: Increase your Chassis’ Evasion, Armor, Accuracy and Penetration by 1 point each. This bonus point does not count as purchasing an Enhancement to those Attributes.
Description: Instead of getting all fancy and gimmicky, your Gear sticks to what works and has an improved structure over its contemporaries.
There you go. It cannot get more general-use and simpler (and boring-er) than that. Note that it is super efficient in that not only is it cheap for what it does but in that it cannot be disabled, so the opportunity cost in limiting how many Archetypes can be taken is really important now.
Active Defenses
Upgrades that improve Evasion or Armor in response to an enemy attack in exchange for energy have gotten some serious buffs. A good number of them were rewritten from the ground up, and most importantly, they have their own unique functions and roles now. Take for instance this new version of Oscillating Armor.
Oscillating Armor
Areas: Any non-Core
Cost: 3
Effect: Choose a Weapon Type when taking this Upgrade. If you would be dealt Damage by a Weapon that is not of the chosen Type, you may spend 1 Energy to increase your Armor against that Offensive Action by 3.
Description: Gygravagnite-powered repulsion fields are not as uncommon as the Gravagne Field is, the key difference is their unstable yet minimal output. Not only do they fail to protect against all sources of incoming damage, but they only strengthen specially-made composite alloys rather than creating a barrier on their own. They sure make even the most dull Gear fabulously colorful though.
That is a lot of coverage for very little UP, and nothing else short of Gravagne Field at the very top of the ladder is going to offer as much general protection. What is it you are saying? 'Face Shift' something or other? I can't hear you oh look it is time for the next category.
Weapons
Numbers on the custom weapon tables were tweaked to encourage more diversity. Of particular importance is that Blasts and other area of effect Weapons have more interactions with other rules (they ignore cover, for instance) and because this led some of the design to make mobility and range more important than it used to be, the power balance between Ballistics and Missiles has shifted noticeably.
Lux Cannon
Range: 0-10
Accuracy: 0
Penetration: 5
Energy: Special
Special: Beam. This Weapon always gets a result of 10 when Testing Accuracy. Using it will drain all the remaining Energy from the user, but granting a bonus Accuracy of 1 for each Energy point lost this way. You may not use Lux Cannon if your Energy is of 0.
Description: A honest to God giant laser cannon. Not only is dodging light rather hard, no matter who you are, but it is obscenely powerful. Unfortunately for users it is extremely prohibitive concerning energy efficiency, leaving Element G reserves completely empty.
Lux Cannon was, as mentioned in the last post, not very good at its job of countering ultradodgy types. The new version can miss, but that's not very likely to happen, and it packs one mean punch too. Because it can, potentially, murder the hell out of the squishier Grunts with a single shot; a single shot is all you're going to get without building around getting repeat shots.
Weapons, Again. Wait, what?
Did I mention there's new weapons? Because there's new Weapons. Also a new drawback for custom melee types. In my quest to ensure that there is no such thing as a perfect defense against anything, I've concocted a little something for Incinerator users who shake their fists at those pesky flying enemies that dare not burn to their deaths.
Anti-Air Missiles
Range: 1-7
Accuracy: +1
Penetration: 1
Energy: 0
Special: Missile. When using this Weapon against targets with Flyer or using Anti-Gravity, you may add all of the surplus from your Accuracy Test to Penetration instead of halving it.
Description: Air dominance is still very much a thing even in this new era of Gears. Everyone in Earth understands this, and provides their troops with necessary countermeasures against their enemies. The RUF has to be careful of those pesky Majesty types, Hiryu has to worry about flying Outsiders taking advantage of how complicated it is to fight giant monsters in the middle of the ocean, and the GAF wants the Wagner destroyed by yesterday.
Bam! Grunts everywhere may now rejoice, this unassuming little baby gets much scarier against those Players who think they're above playing with the rules for terrain and cover like us lowly pedestrians have to do. Too bad that it might well be a One-Shot for how likely it is that someone will stay up in the air after you've hit them once with this. But hey, it keeps them on the ground where they can be Overfreezed by your Boss! Just don't, you know, expect anything but a below average gun the rest of the time.
And that's that for the previews. You can expect the wording to be clarified a little here and there, and for the fluff descriptions to be touched up a bit maybe in between now and the release proper, but the mechanics are pretty final.
To continue from last time's topic on balance, GGG definitely aims for the kind of balance that is asymmetrical in nature. See, symmetrical balance is what happens when a game is fair because the rules are the same for each player. This includes games like chess, most traditional card games, and pretty much every sport recognized as such. Asymmetrical balance on the other hand permeates most nerdy hobbies from Magic to Starcraft to, yes, GGG. Starctaft in particular is one of the so-called better balanced games ever. In Starcraft the three playable factions each have their own completely unique strengths and weaknesses, but players of equal skill levels will have an even match against each other no matter their choice of Terran, Zerg or Protoss.
Note that Starcraft has had two years of constant patches and literal thousands of competitive players providing feedback to balance the three factions. Even then it took Blizzard eight more years to iron out all of the game's unintended advantages in its various exploits. Also Starcraft is a videogame, and thus a lot more limited in what you can do with it. It is common to see people talk about balance in games like it is a hard science, but those are mostly competitive videogames about dudes shooting each other or about managing dudes who shoot each other. It turns out that those have very different needs from RPGs, which tend to be cooperative and much more open ended in the kind of activities you can engage in them.
Achieving this kind of balance in a tabletop RPG is, to put it lightly, kind of hard. So what a designer can do is instead make sure that player options are all usable and good, even if some of them turn out to be slightly better in most situations. Asymmetrical balance has a crucial advantage on symmetrical balance, and it is that it makes everyone distinct and unique. It is a lot more fun to play with if you are a creative, imaginative type. Would you happen to guess what the core features of the RPG hobby are? Three guesses, and the first two don't count!
When everyone can contribute meaningfully to the group effort, yet all characters are the best at their own thing. When everyone has a distinct role that they like because they chose it with its pros and cons. When those things happen, even if the one carrying the team to victory is usually the same player, then you've got something that is fun.
I cannot aim for balance, but I definitely can aim for fun and make balance the secondary goal.
General Traits
Some Traits got sorta-buffed through cost reductions, and some others had new shoes to fill (Modern Ninja became Invisibility Device and moved to the Equipment section) that left space for adding some new expensive and awesome Traits in, and one of those is there to compensate for the "loss" of Modern Ninja.
I was Here all Along
Cost: 10
Effect: Once per Episode you may Test either Stealth or Deception against a DN of 10 to reveal that you were present in a Scene that did not include you, either in hiding or disguised as an unnassuming background character as appropriate to the Test in question.
Description: You are insidious and sneaky, everywhere yet nowhere, and generally in places someone else wishes you rather weren’t there.
Useful, flashy, and badass. The Test is more of a formality than anything, since the kind of character who would take this will likely pass more often than not. And that is good, because you only get to do it more than once per Episode, so you better not fail when you do!
Anomalies
New Trait type! These are a mix of Miracles and Features for the weirder PCs out there, like Cyborgs and Mutants of various types. Anomalies don't have a Cost - much like Mecha Features - but have a downside to go with their upside - again, much like Mecha Features. Here's an example.
Wild
Effect: You gain an Advantage to all Awareness Tests and uses of the Survival Skill. You may speak with Earth animals, translating sounds they make into simple and short sentences in your head - think “Master is angry” or “Timmy fell down the well”. This grants you an Advantage to interactions with them. All Tests using either of Intellect or Resources that don’t fit the previously mentioned criteria are at a Disadvantage.
Description: Ever since the first Cryptid sightings, there have been reports of ‘wild childs’ in some of the lesser populated islands of the Far West with a surprising ability to survive in the wild, in spite of radiation, and communicate with the little wildlife in the area.
Pretty self explanatory, really. Great in an outdoorsy game or if you fight aliens that are not actually at all alien. The most important thing about Anomalies is that they open the way for more varied character concepts, and now anyone who wants to homebrew a different type of character into their games can use the existing ones as a template.
Equipment
Equipment got a touchup to the general rules, owning cool things is more permissive to anyone who didn't start with a 6 on Resources, in addition there's also loads of new toys to play with. Are they any good? Well don't just take my word for it, go and have a look.
Ether Drive
Cost: 3
Effect: Choose a Miracle at the Amateur Level when you take this Trait. You may use said Miracle as if you were trained in it, but only with the chosen Specialty with no other possible use, and the Ether Drive will act as a Proxy taking the Damage in your stead. The Proxy cannot be repaired with any kind of Heal Test, and once broken only time will make it function again.
Description: After endless testing, the Clarke Foundation has found a way to weaponize the harvested organs of Cryptids. They will not tell you what exactly the items in question are, but their origin is obvious to anyone who has dealt with the original creature in the past. Its not like the put much effort in trying to disguise alien eyes as ‘experimental lenses’ anyway.
Simple but effective, representing anything from a stockpile of freezing grenades to a telepathic helmet as necessary. Not only is it a very useful tool, but depending on the application, it even allows the games without superpowers to access Miracles in a limited fashion.
(By the way, you can now heal your Proxies with Craftsmanship. Just not this one.)
Genre Powers
A number of Powers were tweaked mechanically, and some even have better names now (for instance All Weapons, Full Power is now called Last Ditch Effort) but the important thing here is not that. The new cool thing is that you can take Powers that require you to make a choice when you grab them multiple times. That means you could have more than one Signature Weapon, yes, but it also means you can get trickier. Case in point...
Hidden Power
Setup Power
Effect: Choose up to 15 UP in Upgrades or Weapons when you take this Power. Activate it to gain the chosen abilities until end of Operation. These abilities are not allocated to any particular Areas, and as such may not be disabled as a result of Maiming. You may not use multiple instances of Hidden Power in the same Operation.
Description: “Give up, you’re out of ammunition and surrounded, be reasonable!” T he enemy shouted. “NO, I REFUSE!” Came the reply from the silver-coloured mech as it flew into the air and began bombarding its enemies with some kind of devastating heat ray. “I TOTALLY HAVE ICE MISSILES TOO!”
It is like having Frames, but entirely on the spot! Megaman would be proud. Because it does not actually use the rules for Alternate Forms, this means you can have multiple One-Shots and the such at your beck and call, as long as you did not take any with your default form and they each use a different Hidden Power.
Archetypes
Yes, there's been tweaks to Archetypes, and there's also two new ones. Both of the new Archetypes are more general-use rather than directing you towards a specific build - I figure there's already 7 of those so it is fine to have three for the all-rounders. Because nearly everyone would want to take them, there's also now a limitation on how many Archetypes you can have to give them an opportunity cost.
Custom Blueprints
Effect: Increase your Chassis’ Evasion, Armor, Accuracy and Penetration by 1 point each. This bonus point does not count as purchasing an Enhancement to those Attributes.
Description: Instead of getting all fancy and gimmicky, your Gear sticks to what works and has an improved structure over its contemporaries.
There you go. It cannot get more general-use and simpler (and boring-er) than that. Note that it is super efficient in that not only is it cheap for what it does but in that it cannot be disabled, so the opportunity cost in limiting how many Archetypes can be taken is really important now.
Active Defenses
Upgrades that improve Evasion or Armor in response to an enemy attack in exchange for energy have gotten some serious buffs. A good number of them were rewritten from the ground up, and most importantly, they have their own unique functions and roles now. Take for instance this new version of Oscillating Armor.
Oscillating Armor
Areas: Any non-Core
Cost: 3
Effect: Choose a Weapon Type when taking this Upgrade. If you would be dealt Damage by a Weapon that is not of the chosen Type, you may spend 1 Energy to increase your Armor against that Offensive Action by 3.
Description: Gygravagnite-powered repulsion fields are not as uncommon as the Gravagne Field is, the key difference is their unstable yet minimal output. Not only do they fail to protect against all sources of incoming damage, but they only strengthen specially-made composite alloys rather than creating a barrier on their own. They sure make even the most dull Gear fabulously colorful though.
That is a lot of coverage for very little UP, and nothing else short of Gravagne Field at the very top of the ladder is going to offer as much general protection. What is it you are saying? 'Face Shift' something or other? I can't hear you oh look it is time for the next category.
Weapons
Numbers on the custom weapon tables were tweaked to encourage more diversity. Of particular importance is that Blasts and other area of effect Weapons have more interactions with other rules (they ignore cover, for instance) and because this led some of the design to make mobility and range more important than it used to be, the power balance between Ballistics and Missiles has shifted noticeably.
Lux Cannon
Range: 0-10
Accuracy: 0
Penetration: 5
Energy: Special
Special: Beam. This Weapon always gets a result of 10 when Testing Accuracy. Using it will drain all the remaining Energy from the user, but granting a bonus Accuracy of 1 for each Energy point lost this way. You may not use Lux Cannon if your Energy is of 0.
Description: A honest to God giant laser cannon. Not only is dodging light rather hard, no matter who you are, but it is obscenely powerful. Unfortunately for users it is extremely prohibitive concerning energy efficiency, leaving Element G reserves completely empty.
Lux Cannon was, as mentioned in the last post, not very good at its job of countering ultradodgy types. The new version can miss, but that's not very likely to happen, and it packs one mean punch too. Because it can, potentially, murder the hell out of the squishier Grunts with a single shot; a single shot is all you're going to get without building around getting repeat shots.
Weapons, Again. Wait, what?
Did I mention there's new weapons? Because there's new Weapons. Also a new drawback for custom melee types. In my quest to ensure that there is no such thing as a perfect defense against anything, I've concocted a little something for Incinerator users who shake their fists at those pesky flying enemies that dare not burn to their deaths.
Anti-Air Missiles
Range: 1-7
Accuracy: +1
Penetration: 1
Energy: 0
Special: Missile. When using this Weapon against targets with Flyer or using Anti-Gravity, you may add all of the surplus from your Accuracy Test to Penetration instead of halving it.
Description: Air dominance is still very much a thing even in this new era of Gears. Everyone in Earth understands this, and provides their troops with necessary countermeasures against their enemies. The RUF has to be careful of those pesky Majesty types, Hiryu has to worry about flying Outsiders taking advantage of how complicated it is to fight giant monsters in the middle of the ocean, and the GAF wants the Wagner destroyed by yesterday.
Bam! Grunts everywhere may now rejoice, this unassuming little baby gets much scarier against those Players who think they're above playing with the rules for terrain and cover like us lowly pedestrians have to do. Too bad that it might well be a One-Shot for how likely it is that someone will stay up in the air after you've hit them once with this. But hey, it keeps them on the ground where they can be Overfreezed by your Boss! Just don't, you know, expect anything but a below average gun the rest of the time.
And that's that for the previews. You can expect the wording to be clarified a little here and there, and for the fluff descriptions to be touched up a bit maybe in between now and the release proper, but the mechanics are pretty final.
To continue from last time's topic on balance, GGG definitely aims for the kind of balance that is asymmetrical in nature. See, symmetrical balance is what happens when a game is fair because the rules are the same for each player. This includes games like chess, most traditional card games, and pretty much every sport recognized as such. Asymmetrical balance on the other hand permeates most nerdy hobbies from Magic to Starcraft to, yes, GGG. Starctaft in particular is one of the so-called better balanced games ever. In Starcraft the three playable factions each have their own completely unique strengths and weaknesses, but players of equal skill levels will have an even match against each other no matter their choice of Terran, Zerg or Protoss.
Note that Starcraft has had two years of constant patches and literal thousands of competitive players providing feedback to balance the three factions. Even then it took Blizzard eight more years to iron out all of the game's unintended advantages in its various exploits. Also Starcraft is a videogame, and thus a lot more limited in what you can do with it. It is common to see people talk about balance in games like it is a hard science, but those are mostly competitive videogames about dudes shooting each other or about managing dudes who shoot each other. It turns out that those have very different needs from RPGs, which tend to be cooperative and much more open ended in the kind of activities you can engage in them.
Achieving this kind of balance in a tabletop RPG is, to put it lightly, kind of hard. So what a designer can do is instead make sure that player options are all usable and good, even if some of them turn out to be slightly better in most situations. Asymmetrical balance has a crucial advantage on symmetrical balance, and it is that it makes everyone distinct and unique. It is a lot more fun to play with if you are a creative, imaginative type. Would you happen to guess what the core features of the RPG hobby are? Three guesses, and the first two don't count!
When everyone can contribute meaningfully to the group effort, yet all characters are the best at their own thing. When everyone has a distinct role that they like because they chose it with its pros and cons. When those things happen, even if the one carrying the team to victory is usually the same player, then you've got something that is fun.
I cannot aim for balance, but I definitely can aim for fun and make balance the secondary goal.
March 10, 2013
A Balancing Act
Making a quick post before a whole month goes by without any word on what's coming up. 1.7 is not going to have any fundamentally big changes, but there's going to be a lot of little ones, because I am taking the trouble to double-check and examine nearly every mechanic in the game.
I could talk about those, but I'd rather wait until I'm pretty sure I got them right to do so. Instead, let's get a little more abstract, I'm going to talk about the philosophy behind balance changes, or at least the ones that I tend to do. Then I will bring up some of the changes I've got in mind.
So what is Balance in Tabletop RPGs? Well, when gamers talk about 'balance' they usually refer to all player options (usually classes, races, or their equivalent) being more or less equal in capability. The thing is, the only way for characters to be truly balanced right next to each other would be to make them identical to each other. And because that is not a very attractive idea, we tend to focus on the balance of the game around its primary method of conflict resolution - usually combat.
But in practical terms balance is different things to different people. Some want to be always able to contribute to all kinds of conflict (combat, social, investigative, or any other type) even if it is only a little, while other Players want to have a single scene every once in a while where they get to save the day entirely on their own. But it gets more complicated than that! To some a balanced character means one able to overcome any challenge through carefully managing the game's subsystems, while others just want to keep things simple and roll some dice then see where luck takes them - yet both of those playstyles need to be equally good choices.
It is a complicated issue.
A lot of games with balance issues can hide those pretty well until characters grow in power level, only then the cracks begin to show, with the gaps getting larger the more time passes until finally the whole thing falls apart. There are a multitude of reasons for this, but one good way around them is by not relying on what I call Vertical Character Growth.
Think of all characters as standing together next to each other in a line, each of them is good at one or two things, and the more they grow in power at those two things the taller they get. If the balance is good, then they will keep the same height, but if the balance is not good then one of them will tower above the rest. Vertical Growth is about pushing you forward on the same path you started during character creation, and assuming all starting options are the same in power level.
Things are easier to balance if you promote Horizontal Growth instead - Characters step into each other's spots and sort of merge together, while still having things that are unique to themselves. Wherever it is possble, I try to promote Horizontal Growth while still making Vertical Growth a viable but difficult option.
Note how in GGG there's Evasion and Armor as two perfectly viable methods to defend your character, as well as Accuracy and Penetration to give you two ways to go on the offense. You can be the hyper-dodgy super-accurate guy, but you also can make the character a better-rounded one instead. In most games not being uber-specialized is a terrible idea, but in GGG being good at only one thing is a risky proposition - you can gimmick your way to victory against unprepared foes, but the moment you walk into a counter it is going to hurt.
Of course. That is all in theory. To get to that point where things are balanced for both Horizontally and Vertically-minded Characters I need to make sure all options are good in the first place, and that means giving some of the game's weaker areas a push. Here's a (very, very brief summary) of what I've got in mind:
-More ways to use Resources. Plus more and better Equipment to go with it too.
-Improving Active Defenses, that means Evasive Systems and Defensive Barriers, but mostly Defensive Barriers. All eight Upgrades are either getting a buff or being rewritten.
-Better counters to highly Evasive Units. Currently some of the answers to annoying turbododgers don't work as well as they should (Lux Cannon can be ECS'd and Ensnaring Wires need you to land a hit with them in the first place, and the Aim Action is just kind of not worth it unless you have a Long Rifle.)
-Toning down a lot of gimmicky weapons that also had high penetration as a bonus just for the hell of it. Bombardment I'm looking at you.
-Adjustments to various Enemy templates. Mostly this means tweaking Grunts a bit and Boss Archetypes a lot.
-The return of Premade Enemies, now with more advice on how to craft them to better challenge PCs.
Plus other stuff that may or may not include the ToC and Index I've been dreading to redo since 1.4's big change. To cap things, ultimately balance is - at least to me and for the purposes of this system - about making everything good and allowing for a better distribution of power so that even the most obscure of niches is satisfying to play with. You do not need all options to be exactly as powerful or generally useful as each other, in fact that is nearly impossible to accomplish without a ridiculous amount of resources. Some things are going to be better than others in a general sense, but those things can be countered, and this creates a metagame. In a vacuum one character might seem much stronger (or weaker) than others, but out there against a wide variety of challenges they are going to have their own unique role in the team.
Expect 1.7 sometime March or April.
I could talk about those, but I'd rather wait until I'm pretty sure I got them right to do so. Instead, let's get a little more abstract, I'm going to talk about the philosophy behind balance changes, or at least the ones that I tend to do. Then I will bring up some of the changes I've got in mind.
So what is Balance in Tabletop RPGs? Well, when gamers talk about 'balance' they usually refer to all player options (usually classes, races, or their equivalent) being more or less equal in capability. The thing is, the only way for characters to be truly balanced right next to each other would be to make them identical to each other. And because that is not a very attractive idea, we tend to focus on the balance of the game around its primary method of conflict resolution - usually combat.
But in practical terms balance is different things to different people. Some want to be always able to contribute to all kinds of conflict (combat, social, investigative, or any other type) even if it is only a little, while other Players want to have a single scene every once in a while where they get to save the day entirely on their own. But it gets more complicated than that! To some a balanced character means one able to overcome any challenge through carefully managing the game's subsystems, while others just want to keep things simple and roll some dice then see where luck takes them - yet both of those playstyles need to be equally good choices.
It is a complicated issue.
A lot of games with balance issues can hide those pretty well until characters grow in power level, only then the cracks begin to show, with the gaps getting larger the more time passes until finally the whole thing falls apart. There are a multitude of reasons for this, but one good way around them is by not relying on what I call Vertical Character Growth.
Think of all characters as standing together next to each other in a line, each of them is good at one or two things, and the more they grow in power at those two things the taller they get. If the balance is good, then they will keep the same height, but if the balance is not good then one of them will tower above the rest. Vertical Growth is about pushing you forward on the same path you started during character creation, and assuming all starting options are the same in power level.
Things are easier to balance if you promote Horizontal Growth instead - Characters step into each other's spots and sort of merge together, while still having things that are unique to themselves. Wherever it is possble, I try to promote Horizontal Growth while still making Vertical Growth a viable but difficult option.
Note how in GGG there's Evasion and Armor as two perfectly viable methods to defend your character, as well as Accuracy and Penetration to give you two ways to go on the offense. You can be the hyper-dodgy super-accurate guy, but you also can make the character a better-rounded one instead. In most games not being uber-specialized is a terrible idea, but in GGG being good at only one thing is a risky proposition - you can gimmick your way to victory against unprepared foes, but the moment you walk into a counter it is going to hurt.
Of course. That is all in theory. To get to that point where things are balanced for both Horizontally and Vertically-minded Characters I need to make sure all options are good in the first place, and that means giving some of the game's weaker areas a push. Here's a (very, very brief summary) of what I've got in mind:
-More ways to use Resources. Plus more and better Equipment to go with it too.
-Improving Active Defenses, that means Evasive Systems and Defensive Barriers, but mostly Defensive Barriers. All eight Upgrades are either getting a buff or being rewritten.
-Better counters to highly Evasive Units. Currently some of the answers to annoying turbododgers don't work as well as they should (Lux Cannon can be ECS'd and Ensnaring Wires need you to land a hit with them in the first place, and the Aim Action is just kind of not worth it unless you have a Long Rifle.)
-Toning down a lot of gimmicky weapons that also had high penetration as a bonus just for the hell of it. Bombardment I'm looking at you.
-Adjustments to various Enemy templates. Mostly this means tweaking Grunts a bit and Boss Archetypes a lot.
-The return of Premade Enemies, now with more advice on how to craft them to better challenge PCs.
Plus other stuff that may or may not include the ToC and Index I've been dreading to redo since 1.4's big change. To cap things, ultimately balance is - at least to me and for the purposes of this system - about making everything good and allowing for a better distribution of power so that even the most obscure of niches is satisfying to play with. You do not need all options to be exactly as powerful or generally useful as each other, in fact that is nearly impossible to accomplish without a ridiculous amount of resources. Some things are going to be better than others in a general sense, but those things can be countered, and this creates a metagame. In a vacuum one character might seem much stronger (or weaker) than others, but out there against a wide variety of challenges they are going to have their own unique role in the team.
Expect 1.7 sometime March or April.
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