Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker

[sabs]

Why exactly should Mike Hammer be able to compete in a game with T1 and Dr Strange in it?

[Stahlseele]

Yup that's what i was thinking . .
And because: "It's Hammer-Time!" is cool does not count.

[Username17]

Why exactly should Mike Hammer be able to compete in a game with T1 and Dr Strange in it?

Because the genre has more support for people being Mike Hammer than it does for people being T1 or Dr. Strange. Even in Terminator, the main characters are unaugmented humans.

Now the cyberpunk elements are in there. The magic elements are in there. Obviously you have to let people play Gally or Harry Potter in addition to letting people play Deckard, Hiro Protagonist, or Bella. But the mundane point of view is still the default. Every augmentation option you take is exactly that: an option. And every one of them should come with a genuine tradeoff that makes you ponder whether each new augmentation is "worth it".

So while yes, characters should in general trend towards specialization and towards getting augmentations that improve the specializations that they have, and yes characters on the cyber and magic track should eventually become heavily augmented in the extreme; there is no reason to believe that starting characters should look like that. Even if Doctor Strange was a playable character, why would he be the equivalent of a first level character? I am seriously confused on that point.

The assumed projection is that a starting 4-man team might include a killer cyborg like Molly Millions (and not like Gally or T1), a wizard like Hermoine Granger (and not like Dr. Strange or Mordenkainen), a computer hacker like Hiro Protagonist (and not like Wintermute or Neo), and a mundane face like James Bond (and not like Shark-Jumping Fonze or Super Man). As characters advance, the cyborg can if they want become more awesomely cybernetic, the wizard can get more wizardly powers, and the hacker can get more crazy super-user exploits. Or, since this is a skill based system, the wizard can become an iron lich or a hacker-mage, the hacker can start dabbling in the occult or get himself a set of weapon targeters, and the cyborg could take up wand blasting or machine interface.

The only question is whether the face character is allowed to simply grow as a face, or whether he is told at the outset that social skills at chargen are at or near their limits and that such a character has to advance into augmentations one way or the other. But people suggesting that the power level should be set so high for starting characters that being an unaugmented face is not viable are simply not making sense. You could make the game so that the face character transitions smoothly into a more and more powerful face until he's a shark jumping Foze. Or you could mandate that the face character proceed to go into other fields of inquiry and start augmenting to keep up with the other character in other fields of endeavor like Captain America (who is a face who is nonetheless decked out in augmentations that let him kick ass in combat).

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Well, less stress could allow you to raise skills quicker/higher . .
Because you don't need to deal with your stress. You are content, you are relaxed, you are having fun in your life and with your interests . .
learning just comes more easy to you . .

[Username17]

Well, less stress could allow you to raise skills quicker/higher . .
Because you don't need to deal with your stress. You are content, you are relaxed, you are having fun in your life and with your interests . .
learning just comes more easy to you . .

No. Power now for power later is in all cases a bad plan. It makes people plan their character based on how long they think the campaign is going to last, which is a bad setup.

-Username17

[sabs]

I have no problem with a unaugmented face doing well.

Here's my question:
Magically Augmented Street Sam
Cyber augmented Street Sam
Unaugmented Street Sam.

Should the Unaugmented Street Sam be able to compete in straight up combat?

[Stahlseele]

Well, less stress could allow you to raise skills quicker/higher . .
Because you don't need to deal with your stress. You are content, you are relaxed, you are having fun in your life and with your interests . .
learning just comes more easy to you . .

No. Power now for power later is in all cases a bad plan. It makes people plan their character based on how long they think the campaign is going to last, which is a bad setup.

-Username17

Then how to balance augmented/magic/addicted characters against perfectly normal joe shmoe everyman?

[Username17]

Then how to balance augmented/magic/addicted characters against perfectly normal joe shmoe everyman?

Well, it's a skill based system, so obviously it is going to be possible to make a character who is a useless failure. Simply spend all your allotments on a diverse collection of skills that don't let you actually accomplish any complete task. That's going to be possible no matter how finely balanced the different archetypes are against each other. No supported archetype is going to be a "pedestrian", and you wouldn't bother trying to balance the game with one character being "good at stuff" and another character not.

Characters who want to specialize in an activity will take upon themselves specific sets of augmentations. If someone wants to be fast, I don't want to hear them getting butthurt about the fact that a magic charm that turns their skin to stone is a bad deal. If someone wants to be tough, the stone skin charm should be attractive. And so on and so on.

The archetype that wants to be supported is not "guy who sucks", it's "guy who has few or no augmentations". And for that, we just need for the best way to specialize in at least one field of endeavor to be to not take augmentations. As in: for at least one archetype's expected specialization path you are actually better off keeping your Stress low than you are getting any particular augments.

Now as it happens, the way I see Stress working out, it actually supports four characters reasonably well. Those are: Bane (Juicer), King Arthur (Magic Item Wielder), Sangamon Taylor (Political Activist), and James Bond (Face). And once that's in place, having various magical and technological augmentations that support other fields of endeavor is all that is required to make other characters decide that augmenting up is the way to go. It would be trivially easy to decree that cybernetics were the top of the clue finding tree (as they are in Shadowrun) or that thaumaturgical rituals were (as they are in White Wolf). Similarly, it would be very simple to make "sniping" be something that functioned inherently better with cybernetics (targeters) or magic (line of sight spells).

Ultimately, I would like it if such broad roles as "combat"had multiple paths to success. Where for example, it might be that you could make a viable combatant as a Gillette, but you could equally plausibly make a viable combatant as an ogre with burning fists. But the question for augmentations should always be "Do I want to spend Stress on that?" - with some archetypes deciding that they want to keep their Stress low, and other archetypes instead having extremely specific things they want out of their augmentations. So Captain Kirk doesn't get a cyber heart because he wants to keep his Stress low so that he stays good at the persuasion mini-game. Robert Olmstead doesn't get a cyber heart because he wants to get more Second Sight options off the Deep One list. Hsu Hao actually does get a cyber heart, because he is a grappler and wants to utilize super strength on a regular basis.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Yes, well, i thought my little text had made it clear that i think low stress should help with getting higher skills and being able to get them even higher faster . . meaning a magical or augmented character could have a skill cap at generation of 6 and a completely unstressed character could have a skill cap of 12 in char gen . . and ultimate skill cap would be max chargen skill x1.5 so the augmented/magical characters could go to a maximum of pure skill 9 and then add in their bonuses from magic/augmentations and the unstressed pure baseline character could advance his skills in game to 24 . .
so he'd get bang in the beginning if he decides to specialize, because with raw skill he is BETTER than anyone using magic or tech to augment himself . . and in the long run, the others can probably get 10 - 20 points of bonus for a certain skill by using their toys, while the normal guy simply can get his skill that high without needing anything else . .

by the way, power-armour and other such external stuff, how are we going to wing that in terms of stress cost?

[Username17]

Yes, well, i thought my little text had made it clear that i think low stress should help with getting higher skills and being able to get them even higher faster . . meaning a magical or augmented character could have a skill cap at generation of 6 and a completely unstressed character could have a skill cap of 12 in char gen

You did make it clear that you think that. The problem is that this is a stupid thing to think.

In general it is a universally terrible idea to make a cost at chargen that is substantially different from a cost in actual play. Because what it incentivizes is characters on the wrong side of the exchange rate to "start" one way and then convert immediately.

Consider your hare-brained skill cap idea: what it encourages is for characters to begin play with no augmentation and a lot of skills and a pile of gadgets with a good resale value. Then before taking any missions, they sell their generic equipment and take some time off in an Austrian private clinic to get the cyber they wanted to start with in the first place.

It's just not workable as an idea.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Hrm . . i seem to have much to learn in breaking stuff/systems, because that thought never occured to me before now o.O

[fectin]

Even in Terminator, the main characters are unaugmented humans.

Terminator, where the terminator is actually superior to the main characters, in basically every way?

Or more like Snow Crash, where Hiro decides he isn't effective enough and cybers up? Or Diamond Age where the protagonist has her brain rewired to be more awesome?

You're correct: unaugmented humans are often main characters. They are the scrappy underdogs. The only way to justify them being even as good as an uncrippled character is with some Jehovah's Witness-style naturalist fallacies, and I am simply stunned to hear you espousing that philosophy.

[Username17]

Fectin, honestly: shut up. You arguing that non-augmented or less-augmented characters shouldn't be supported is retarded and impractical. You can attempt to make a coherent argument that the Stress idea I am throwing around is bad because it does not support the range of genre-appropriate characters, or because there is a better way to accomplish the same goal. But if your plan is seriously just to crap on the thread to bitch about how playing un-augmented and less-augmented characters is badwrongfun and should not be supported by the game system, I am going to put you on ignore.

-Username17

[TheNotSoEvilNecromancer]

An example of an unaugmented main character would be Garrett of the Thief Series. Sure the series is actually a magical steampunk but changing that steam to cyber is a fairly easily resolvable aesthetic issue. I'll attempt to do this with Garrett below:

Basically Garrett is stealth specialist who uses a wide variety of mundane, technological, and magical equipment to steal valuables from peoples homes, places of work, and burial chambers. Physically he's quite athletic and possessive of above average upper body strength, but is still a normal dude and runs a great of being killed in a straight up fight with even the average security guard.

Before going out for any of his missions he equips himself with a sword (or vibroblade or whatever iconic melee weapon this setting will use) in case he has to defend himself in melee combat and blackjack to knock out people so he doesn't have to use the former. He also brings along his bow (Easily convertible to crossbow to be more thematic to the Heartbreaker setting) along with a wide variety of mundane and magical arrows (bolts) that he uses mainly for avoiding combat but contribute to it.

Moss arrows upon being fired explode into a large sheet of fungus that can silence a thief's footsteps or block the windpipe of your average human(oid). Water arrows can be used to douse flames or disperse spilt blood or other fluids. Fire arrows detonate violently, so that's pretty cool and gas arrows explode into noxious gas, rendering foes unconscious from afar. In the Thief setting Garrett creates these arrows by fabricating the heads from magical crystals that develop naturally where appropriate (water crystals in bodies of water, gas on steampipes, fire in furnaces, etc. He also uses more technological arrows, such as rope arrows that extend into climbable cables and noisemaker arrows that distract folks.

In addition to these Garrett has also been known to use flashbombs to blind foes, explosive mines, and other miscellaneous tools to help him more efficiently rob people blind.

The setting also lends a great deal to cyberpunk. The City, in which the games take place is a sprawling metropolis where the governing council and city watch are largely ineffectual and as a result autonomous ideological enclaves operate whole neighborhoods independently.

On such example is the Hammerites. They are a technocratic, authoritarian religious organization that maintains its own scientific laboratories, prisons, and cathedrals, oftentimes all at once. They view technological progress as inherently holy and revere the hammer as the symbol of the transition from migrant hunter-gatherer society to organized civilization.

This is all well and good but unfortunately they also view humans as the raw material of their god, the Builder, to be worked into a more holy form through prayer and failing that, torture and mutilation.

Below are some excerpts of their scripture as seen in the games:

"The stone cannot know why the chisel cleaves it; the iron cannot know why the fire scorches it. When thy life is cleft and scorched, when death and despair leap at thee, beat not thy breast and curse thy evil fate, but thank the Builder for the trials that shape thee."

"In the beginning we lived as thieves, Stealing fur and fang of beasts for survival. Then came the Builder who brought us the Hammer, And with it we forged a new way of life. To reject the Hammer is to denounce the Builder."

"As the hammer drives nail into wood, taming rough hewn wood, making of nail a useful thing, so shall the Builder use the faithful, molding them into forms desirable, using them to tame wild wood, causing them to join together the foundations of our world in joyous, regimented harmony."

As with Garrett this cult can easily be converted into a cyberpunk setting with minor changes (Name changes, technological update, etc.)

[Ice9]

The only question is whether the face character is allowed to simply grow as a face, or whether he is told at the outset that social skills at chargen are at or near their limits and that such a character has to advance into augmentations one way or the other. But people suggesting that the power level should be set so high for starting characters that being an unaugmented face is not viable are simply not making sense. You could make the game so that the face character transitions smoothly into a more and more powerful face until he's a shark jumping Foze. Or you could mandate that the face character proceed to go into other fields of inquiry and start augmenting to keep up with the other character in other fields of endeavor like Captain America (who is a face who is nonetheless decked out in augmentations that let him kick ass in combat).

For the purpose of supporting unaugmented starting characters, all you really need is the ability to profitably spend all your points on skills. Which you could do even with a "no penalties, just required amount" version of Stress.

Example System:

1) Spending more points on skills also raises your skill cap. So if you want to have the highest starting rank in Bluff, you need to spend [most of your points] on skills, even though Bluff itself only consumes a fraction of those points.
2) You can spend more or less points on Stress capacity at character creation (and later, as well).
3) Cybernetics and Magic both eat up Stress. If you go below 0, you are screwed. Otherwise, no effects.

Results:

A) James Bond needs skills at the highest rank. So he invests absolutely nothing in Stress, and puts it all into skills instead. His Stress capacity is very low, but since he doesn't use magic or cyber it doesn't matter.
B) Bob the Juicer splits his points more evenly, so he has less skills but a pretty good Stress capacity. He doesn't bother with any cyber or magic, so he has a lot of capacity available to use combat drugs (or magic items).
C) Midpoint Man splits his points like Bob, but immediately picks up a cyber-arm and some hearing enhancers, which uses up his Stress capacity. No magic sword for him.
D) Full Metal Maniac puts most of his points in Stress capacity, with minimal skills. Then he uses that capacity to get as much cyberwear as humanly possible.

One thing this doesn't really do is encourage a "pure" unaugmented character over one with a small amount of augments. For that, a mechanic like being hackable / having a traceable aura would work.

OTOH, Stress as it is now might work fine. Consider this an alternate take for those who dislike any "bonuses" for normals.

[A Man In Black]

I think I see fectin's point, or a point similar enough to fectin's comments that it's worth addressing.

Stress capacity has been suggested as something that scales upward with character progression ("The goal is to use it as a balancing mechanic. Indeed, to push it even further to use it as a leveling mechanic, by allowing characters who accumulate more XPs to have "stronger personalities" or "more confidence" or something that allows them to push the limits more.") The problem is that the only ways you use your stress capacity are all magical augmentations/abilities or techy chemical/nanotech/mechanical physiological alterations.

This is fine for people who have a skill schtick with a super schtick. Stress means that to develop one, you trade off the other. Molly Millions gets more stress capacity, and grows up to be Major Kusanagi, once the stress from her mods doesn't fuck up other abilities, or goes full-on freak and becomes the Terminator. Hell, extend the power scale far enough and she can do both and become Wolverine. Dr. Jekyll grows up to be Jason Blood or the Hulk, with Bigby Wolf off in the distance. Hiro Protagonist grows up to be Forge or Mysterio, with Neo lurking far off in the distance. This isn't even including hybrid endgames, like Darth Vader or Cable (which I understand are an intended goal).

All of these (IMO genre-appropriate) characters have an endgame of badass with superpowers or freak monster. They can invest in their superhuman schtick with stress to become more of a freak, or take advantage of the increasing stress capacity to become more of a badass. I like the idea of a power scale that runs from "Burning Chrome short story" to "Days of Future Past."

Now, there is a lifetime of sessions and campaigns in a game where one person plays Batou and one person plays Togusa; normal humans are only typecast in that they are badasses while augmented types are freaks. Batou is a combat freak, Togusa is an investigation badass. The problem is when Batou gets enough points to debate whether he wants to become the Terminator or Major Kusanagi, Togusa has nowhere to go while staying a "normal human". He can't do anything with his stress capacity but give up on being a normal human. If you say that Batou won't ever get enough character resources to obviate Togusa, that's fine. Hell, that's more or less Shadowrun.

But that's not compatible with saying that there's an endgame where the T-100 and the Major team up to kick ass, because someone limited in every way by normal human ability has no place in that endgame that I can see. Stress capacity does do a good job of giving hybrid badass/freaks space alongside superfreaks, but it doesn't address the problem that "normal humans" have a capped power level by definition. It's also fine to say "Well, after a certain point normal humans just fall off the power scale"; fectin offers two examples of characters in fiction deciding exactly that. Just make sure that people understand that, at some point, unaugmented humans are no longer tall enough to ride.

-edit- By the by, I don't see any reason to assume the GITS team is balanced with the Major. If you set her aside, Batou, Ishikawa, Saito, Pazu, and Togusa would be a reasonably balanced team. It's just the hacker/ninja/detective/leader protagonist fouling that balance.

[Chamomile]

If determined to go with totally unaugmented characters through to the endgame while still keeping the Terminator as a playable endgame archetype and not a boss encounter, I'd recommend going the route suggested earlier where face activities benefit from a high unused Stress score.

[Username17]

But that's not compatible with saying that there's an endgame where the T-100 and the Major team up to kick ass, because someone limited in every way by normal human ability has no place in that endgame that I can see. Stress capacity does do a good job of giving hybrid badass/freaks space alongside superfreaks, but it doesn't address the problem that "normal humans" have a capped power level by definition. It's also fine to say "Well, after a certain point normal humans just fall off the power scale," but it's important to say that or you get D&D.

I agree with that. You have to either let the unaugmented face grow up to be shark jumping Fonze or give them an allowance to start branching out into augmentations without jeopardizing their social shtick.

Honestly, I'm leaning towards the second option. Where the social interaction minigame simply doesn't scale up to super human levels and you straight up tell face-style characters that they have to branch out into other activities. In short: Togusa is exactly what you end up being. Eventually you get cyberware anyway and the other characters still rely upon you to talk to victims and get investigations started.

Because yes, you can't keep making the cyborg faster and stronger without making the unaugmented face better at something at the same time without sacrificing game balance. And people get really unhappy with high levels of diplomancy.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

Honestly, I'm leaning towards the second option. Where the social interaction minigame simply doesn't scale up to super human levels and you straight up tell face-style characters that they have to branch out into other activities. In short: Togusa is exactly what you end up being. Eventually you get cyberware anyway and the other characters still rely upon you to talk to victims and get investigations started.

Well, you don't have to cap the normal-human-oriented abilities at normal-human levels to make them attractive to normal humans and unattractive to freaks. If stress penalizes investigating or facing or whatever, then freaks will find it unattractive at first even if augments that can exceed normal human ability. When you have the option of getting +2 Talkin' To People from being a naturally nice guy or +2 Talkin' from casting Suggestion/having a hypertext copy of The Game in your head and the Stress penalty to Talkin' that goes with it, then Talkin' is more or less a protected role for the normal human guy early on.

Once Togusa gets capped Nice Guy bonuses to Talkin' and has enough stress capacity that the hypertext copy of The Game doesn't come with significant penalties, that cyberbrain becomes a lot more attractive. Plus, once a player added "empath" or "cyberbrain" or "hypnotist" to their character concept, they'll be more comfortable exploring new augments in the future. It subtly sends the message to players that their All Original Parts, No Magic, Final Destination character isn't supported after a certain point.

It also lets you steer normal humans to certain skills, even if you want Shark Jumping Fonz levels of those skills to be available in the game. People get irritated at Diplomacizing people into your willing slaves, but Charm Person and mind control rays get a pass. This way, Togusa isn't obviated by the existence of Jedi Mind Tricks, because they're either coming from Togusa after he took a level in Jedi or they're coming from dudes who have such a stress capacity that Togusa isn't even playing their game any more.

[Stahlseele]

see the pornomancer:"i pee on the mafia dons mother and he offers me his daughters hand for marriage"

[Chamomile]

Fectin: Augmented characters are better at things than unaugmented characters, pretty much by definition.

Frank Trollman: Shut up, Fectin. Totally unaugmented characters need to be a supported archetype because of genre conventions!

A Man In Black: There really does reach a point where an unaugmented character just can't keep up with Neo and the Terminator.

Frank Trollman: I agree.

[Lokathor]

Sounds like Fectin took too many mods, and now his Persuasion total sucks.

[tzor]

Augmented characters are better at things than unaugmented characters, pretty much by definition.

Here is the problem in a nutshell. (Well there are two problems; but we can ignore for the moment wether "things' mean "some things" or "all things.") This is game design time; you control the horizontal and the vertical; you can do anything you want; it's your twlight zone. How you define augmentation makes all the difference.

Define it one way with all benefits and no cons and everyone will want one. (Except the idiots.) Just like everyone has cellphones these days.

Define it another way with benefits and costs and the whole game changes; especially when you have a overriding known plot line of "it anythig can go wrong ... it will."

So in that case, the unaugmented character has the advantage because he has no augumentation that can go wrong.

Blaancing X vs not X requires understanding plot super power vs plot kryptonite and the ability to balance the system so that one never dominates over the other.

Then again the unaugmented person needs his own thing; if you can buy X you can buy Y instead. Guy with X cannot have Y simply because he bought X instead. Otherwise you have toy imbalance, or ability inbalance, or power imbalance.

[Ice9]

Fectin: Augmented characters are better at things than unaugmented characters, pretty much by definition.

Frank Trollman: Shut up, Fectin. Totally unaugmented characters need to be a supported archetype because of genre conventions!

A Man In Black: There really does reach a point where an unaugmented character just can't keep up with Neo and the Terminator.

Frank Trollman: I agree.

I don't see any contradiction here. "Non-magic guy with a lance on a horse" is a valuable member of a D&D party at low levels (quite possibly the strongest one), and then eventually becomes obsolete. Just because unaugmented characters eventually becomes obsolete, doesn't mean that should be the case at character creation.

[Username17]

Here is the problem in a nutshell. (Well there are two problems; but we can ignore for the moment wether "things' mean "some things" or "all things.") This is game design time; you control the horizontal and the vertical; you can do anything you want; it's your twlight zone. How you define augmentation makes all the difference.

Exactly. That's why this:

Fectin: Augmented characters are better at things than unaugmented characters, pretty much by definition.

Is false. Whatever costs you assign to getting Class 2 Strength Enhancers through Augmentation, getting something else with the character points could plausibly be as good a deal or even a better deal.

However, there is an entirely different problem:

A Man In Black: There really does reach a point where an unaugmented character just can't keep up with Neo and the Terminator.

Which is roughly that the guy with Strength Enhancement 2 can very plausibly upgrade that to Strength Enhancement 3 or Strength Enhancement 4. While the guy who is unaugmented is still conceptually just as unaugmented as he was before.

This is a distinct problem from the thing that fectin was talking about. If you let the augmented people upgrade enough times, you run out of consolation prizes for not being augmented to give to people. And that means that you either need to let the people in the unaugmented archetypes upgrade to super human levels, or you need to force them to get Strength Enhancement 1 and not lose their relative unaugmented bennies.

-Username17