The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1194820795[/unixtime]]So I just played some Saga, partially in Czech. And while the experience was lots of fun, I have to say that the "crits always happen on a 20" rule is bullshit covered bullshit with bullshit filling.

Seriously, when dealing with mooks it means that the swarms of droids do nothing, nothing, nothing, CRITICAL HIT. It's like giving every mook in the universe a very low percentage SoD usable every round.

Once again I am reminded of why in SAME I had damage work the way it did. Giving Criticals an arbitrary, rather than relative chance simply underline the randomness in the system. If you are down to hitting on a 19 you critical hit half the fucking time. It's boring when they flat out miss and it's frustrating when they hit becase it takes away practically all your hit points each time.

You should either have criticals function like in 3rd edition D&D where you roll to confirm (and thus a 19-20 threat weapon always crits on 10% of its hits) or you should do it like SAME (and thus the degree you beat the to-hit roll needed influences your damage). Doing it like SAGA is craptastic. Twice as many attacks hitting half as often is twice as many criticals!

It's like playing fucking Runequest.

-Username17

Crits merely do double damage in SAGA, so it would not be a SoD when you have boatloads of hit points.

Well. Yes. But no.

2d6+ Str + half level + power attack + whatever bullshitty rapid strike type feat (In Saga its an extra die). At 10th thats very possibly
7 + 5 + 5 + 10 + 3.5 = 30.5 x2 = 61.
And you can take the triple crit feat and make that 91.5 A
Thats if you don't cheese out.
10th level soldier is going to average about 80 hps + Con bonus. Everybody else is going to be worse off.


Guns aren't quite as good, but there are things you can do with them as well. Like full attack all the time, and with the prestige classes, make the penalties go away, and sit on 4 attacks all the time. Push those crit odds way up.

For 4E don't forget to add any buffs or item bonuses that survive the edition change...

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1195005619[/unixtime]]Well. Yes. But no.

2d6+ Str + half level + power attack + whatever bullshitty rapid strike type feat (In Saga its an extra die). At 10th thats very possibly
7 + 5 + 5 + 10 + 3.5 = 30.5 x2 = 61.
And you can take the triple crit feat and make that 91.5 A
Thats if you don't cheese out.

But we're talking about mooks, who are most likely to be Non-heroics.

OK. 1st level
Stormtrooper does 3d8 with a blaster rifle. 3d8-> 13.5 x2 = 27
Anyone who isn't a soldier or a scout with a CON > 15 is dropped.

Bang!
Tidy up with some auto-fire that they can't avoid, and the soldier is done, too.

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1195043483[/unixtime]]OK. 1st level
Stormtrooper does 3d8 with a blaster rifle. 3d8-> 13.5 x2 = 27
Anyone who isn't a soldier or a scout with a CON > 15 is dropped.

Bang!
Tidy up with some auto-fire that they can't avoid, and the soldier is done, too.

Lesson learned: Mooks and critical hits do not mix well.

Captain_Bleach at [unixtime wrote:1195151291[/unixtime]]Lesson learned: Mooks and critical hits do not mix well.

Supplemental: Mooks who rely upon critical hits in order to pose a threat are inherently problematic, including as a particular clouds of mooks whose challenge to a party is supposed to be an aggregate of their fractional chances to shoot you in your eyeball.

Feel free to extend that to systems that rely upon crowds of mooks to be the breathers between coin flip boss battles (as well as expanding upon the latter) and that's probably a good take on the deepest flaws of the Saga system.

The coin flip boss battles are especially annoying though, since they are *extended* coin flip battles. At higher levels, everybody can take 5-6 hits, use Second Wind to heal some of the damage back, and everybody is rolling for 16 or 17+ on the d20.

Its makes for some weird optimization at the high end. The dual pistol wielding gunslinger is actually a good choice, just because he can pump out 4 attacks a round no matter what, and between the extra damage from the class and heroic levels, he's actually a threat. Particularly if he has the triple crit feat, and a 20 comes up- he can actually drop someone in a round.

The other option is a melee guy who goes nuts and dumps his entire BAB into Power Attack. He'll only be down about 15% to hit, and when he does, he one-shots almost everything with the triple crit feat. Make him a flying combat droid and there is almost nothing you can do about it.

Yep, even at high levels, it comes down to crits.

would you guys say the removal of iterative attacks has been a good thing or bad thing overall?

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1195185535[/unixtime]]The coin flip boss battles are especially annoying though, since they are *extended* coin flip battles. At higher levels, everybody can take 5-6 hits, use Second Wind to heal some of the damage back, and everybody is rolling for 16 or 17+ on the d20.

Wait, why does it turn into a battle to roll 16s and 17s? I thought reflex defense was basically 10 + level + dex, and ranged attack is 1d20 + BaB + dex. It seems like it should even out (at least for two fighter BaBs). What am I missing?

Maybe the Czechs were just miscalculating it over and over again, but when I played a sample game with 4th level characters, everyone had Reflex Defense of 19-23.

would you guys say the removal of iterative attacks has been a good thing or bad thing overall?

Complicated. The 3rd edition iterative attack where the secondary and tetiary attacks are basically like carrying a mook around with you is total bullshit. Getting rid of that shit is good. But to make up for it the weapons do just a fuck tonne of damage, adding to the feeling that the occassional hits by enemy mooks are like Gumba attacks in Mario.

But the worst part of it is that characters get like one attack and they miss a lot. On a round by round basis characters spend a lot of time doing nothing. There are no attacks of opportunity so you can pretty much just walk around. The weapons go pretty far so it's not really that important where you are on any particular turn. The net result is that combat has a very detached feeling about it. Sometimes you kill things with your attacks but it never really feels like you did anything to actually accomplish that. Really it feels more like watching a slot machine go round and round until someone on one side or the other catches on fire.

If you're going to put things on a single attack per round system, everyone should be doing something battlefield or battle affecting every round. The thing where people with blasters just spend round after round doing nothing is totally unacceptable. It's even starker when you realize that Jedis are basically incapable of failing to activate their powers even against level appropriate opponents.

---

To bring this back to 4E specifically, the Spine Devil preview fills me with dread. It was designed to demonstrate how simplified the new system is. How streamlined and user friendly it all is and how it fits together into a workable whole.

But really it just shows me that the Spine Devil lacks the depth to actually be used in a role playing game - he's essentially just a D&D miniatures piece. There's no out-of-combat anything in that monster write up. Can you talk to it? What languages does it speak? How easy is it to convince of things? I don't fucking know because the authors of 4th edition seem to think that isn't important.

That is the single most terrifying thing about 4th edition. It seems to be genuinely written with the idea that the world map is filled with green dots that you can trade with and get quests from and red dots which will attack you.

-Username17

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1195202895[/unixtime]]

Wait, why does it turn into a battle to roll 16s and 17s? I thought reflex defense was basically 10 + level + dex, and ranged attack is 1d20 + BaB + dex. It seems like it should even out (at least for two fighter BaBs). What am I missing?

The class defense bonuses, (particularly the prestige classes which are generally +4 to +6 for their good defenses) and various feats, which if you blow 4 of them, can give you another +4 to Reflex.

If you throw in cover, it gets really stupid, as thats a flat +5.

For further fun, check the write ups for Yoda, the Emperor and Vader. A battle between any two of them is going to be actively stupid for a long, long time.


Frank- those do seem a bit high for 4th level characters, unless they're actually wearing armor, since thats roughly the level where that actually matters. An unoptimized 4th level characters should average around 17-19. Level bonus (4) + Dex (2-3, because its a disgustingly important stat in Saga) + class bonus (1-2)

As for the Spined Devil... it *is* the D&D miniatures card. The non-combat stuff isn't going to come up in its primary use. Now, they could be morons and not expand on that in the MM entry, but I suspect they're going to put some information in there, if only by accident.

Also, the numbers along the bottom with the weird bonuses that don't match the scores the upper right of the box? Those are likely their skill bonuses for their non-class skills (which is apparently just Spot). They match Sagas half level (3, in this case) + stat bonus. So you can work out bluff/intimidate and sense motive just from the Charisma and Wisdom numbers there.

A little inelegant, and its going to be an issue if Initiative is working like a skill (even though it has a seperate entry), but for a DDM card reference, it can handle pretty much every question you ask except for the language one.

In fairness, Yoda and Palpatine having a hard time hurting each other makes perfect sense. IIRC their duel lasts a reall long time, and even then neither of them dies...

bitnine at [unixtime wrote:1195167465[/unixtime]]
Feel free to extend that to systems that rely upon crowds of mooks to be the breathers between coin flip boss battles (as well as expanding upon the latter) and that's probably a good take on the deepest flaws of the Saga system.

Wow, at first I was worried that the deepest flaws of SAGA would be something stupid like "Planar-Binding Efreet" and "Balor Mining."
At least it's just Mooks, and as is the law of dramatic movies, nobody cares about Mooks.

Captain_Bleach at [unixtime wrote:1195346369[/unixtime]]

bitnine at [unixtime wrote:1195167465[/unixtime]]
Feel free to extend that to systems that rely upon crowds of mooks to be the breathers between coin flip boss battles (as well as expanding upon the latter) and that's probably a good take on the deepest flaws of the Saga system.

Wow, at first I was worried that the deepest flaws of SAGA would be something stupid like "Planar-Binding Efreet" and "Balor Mining."
At least it's just Mooks, and as is the law of dramatic movies, nobody cares about Mooks.

You care when they start blowing holes in you.

The whole "nobody cares about Mooks" was a joke, because in movies, mooks are literally nameless.

And yet, in Star Wars, every 'Mook' had a name.

-Crissa

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1195372742[/unixtime]]And yet, in Star Wars, every 'Mook' had a name.

Literally? All those rows and rows of stormtroopers or rebellion guys had names given to them? (I could believe that)

Or just everyone who ever had a speaking part or interacted with them?

pft, Star wars has the definition of mooks. Large armies of Gungans. Hordes of battle droids. And, of course, the king of the mooks:

CLONE TROOPERS.

That's right, nameless, faceless characters who are all clones of each other with the exact same abilities. At least there were different kinds of droids and different looking gungans.

Why when I say 'Star Wars' do you instantly latch onto the CG addendum, anyhow?

There is only one 'Star Wars'.

-Crissa

Even ignoring all evidence to the contrary...

Uh, pointless rebel guys at the beginning? Sand People? All mooks. Stormtroopers? The very model of faceless extras who run in to chase the heroes and/or die.

Every stormtrooper had a number. As did the four sand people. And all the pointless crew on the ship that died as rebels had names. So did every character in the bar. Every rebel pilot had not only a number and code, but a name and nick name.

-Crissa

Not that you could know only from watching the movie. If you're playing Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, you'll never know their backstory.

If you're actually creating the story, every character that explicitly appears has a unique identifier--even the extras--because they have to be distinct from a production standpoint, even if they're unimportant and/or indistinguishable. But they're still "nameless" from the audience's perspective. Maybe you mean they had in-character identifiers (though I'd be surprised to learn that sand people refer to each other by numbers), but again, the audience doesn't know, and therefore it's not part of the story.

And merely having a name (let alone a number) hardly prevents one from being a mook. TK-421 (one of the few stormtroopers whose identification we do know) serves no function except to be tricked into walking off-camera and getting killed. That's clear mook behavior.

Some updates from ENworld

4E Armor is not going to be DR.

- Personally, I'm fairly pleased. None of the slapdash attempts to implement this concept have done well. Past 3rd level, it isn't even worth the bother of tracking.

The MYSTARY race revealed: Dragonborn.

Meh. Just. can't. care.
Really, someone might be excited about this, but I'm just as likely to ignore them. They are probably going to be revised, too. Likely to be the strength race (since there just isn't one at the moment), rather than the weird-ass template they are in Races of the Dragon.

There is also some stuff on the Races and Classes preview book.
Various stuff, only about 5 classes have a fair amount of detail (base 4 + warlock), others just have a couple paragraphs. A good sign it went to print long before the PH was even in a late draft form.

Book and dragonborn, here:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t ... ][br]Armor not as DR, here:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=212485

I like the Dragonborn being included, actually. By dint of them not being Drow or Warforged. Give me a lizardman over a tin can any day.

Besides, it's a way to play the draconic angle without the whole "Dragons are awesome at everything!" bit.

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1195941166[/unixtime]]The MYSTARY race revealed: Dragonborn.

OK. Now I've lost all interest in 4E.