Grek wrote:...if you can spend points to specialize in more than two weapons and being specialized effects combat in a serious way, you are, at any given time, wasting at least 1/3rd of those points you could have used to make your charecter better.
And if you choose to specialize in only one weapon and are in a situation where it's penalized to use it, then you switch to a different weapon, and are wasting 100% of those points.
Now, being able to specialize at too many things kind of hurts the concept of the word 'specialization'. So for that reason, you shouldn't be able to specialize with more weapons than you can fight with.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
Well, if you get to buy three weapons, it doesn't hurt you that you're using A instead of C - you had to buy weapons you weren't using right now, anyhow.
I'm not saying that putting everything into swords should be an option, but the option for "without any penalties to the situation, you do better with style A instead of style B" is a very real desire for some people out there; they want to specialize and to get rewarded for it at some point.
Oh fuck that. People in most cases choose what weapons they use and what attacks they use. People should not be mechanically rewarded for being boring anime characters who spam the same attack over and over again.
Then come up with a reason why using Alternate Attack is worth it.
You use a spear in certain circumstances in fighting with medieval weapons in our world, and someone who isn't prepared to get a spear and use it is someone who is unprepared to deal with it.
Having characters use as many different styles as possible doesn't make things more interesting, it just makes it more complicated.
Trust in the Emperor, but always check your ammunition.
I'd rather sword spec to mean that you know some abilities that only work with swords. Adding a bonus to a roll or an extra die to a pool enforces specialisation. Four sword moves and one bow move vs the guy with two sword moves and three bow moves makes for very different characters without borking the numbers.
If you make different weapons useful in different situations, so that sometimes you want to use a spear even if you specialized in a sword, then you really encourage not overspecializing.
Trust in the Emperor, but always check your ammunition.
Draco_Argentum wrote:I'd rather sword spec to mean that you know some abilities that only work with swords.
Sounds fine to me, since that limits the sources of numbers that could potentially screw up the RNG and it gives more options in the middle of combat (and ideally more interesting).
Frank Trollman wrote:People should not be mechanically rewarded for being boring anime characters who spam the same attack over and over again.
But there does exist a noticeable percentage of roleplayers who would feel put out when their Swordbane the Fierce gets pummeled by Knives Dozen in a swordfight. Granted, I personally know two gamers who dislike Star Wars Saga because a Jedi of the same level as a Scoundrel (or any other class) isn't drastically more powerful.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
Draco_Argentum wrote:I'd rather sword spec to mean that you know some abilities that only work with swords. Adding a bonus to a roll or an extra die to a pool enforces specialisation. Four sword moves and one bow move vs the guy with two sword moves and three bow moves makes for very different characters without borking the numbers.
This is kind of what I was thinking when I posted my idea. I don't know where the actual numbers used to make an attack should come from (I just tossed the ones in the original post in there) but I wanted something where a one-handed weapon guy knows a lot of maneuvers with one handed weapons. I'd like players to be able to personalize their fighting styles to their preferences and also with a minor nod to real world styles and weapon usage.
Elennsar wrote:If you make different weapons useful in different situations, so that sometimes you want to use a spear even if you specialized in a sword, then you really encourage not overspecializing.
This would be my approach. I would also make the situational penalties rare enough that specialization isn't untenable. I actually wouldn't impose numeric penalties but rather have ranks in weapon styles give you maneuvers and then have the high level maneuvers of one style easily and obviously be countered by the low level maneuvers of an opposing style. Two sword style might give you awesome bonuses to disarm at high levels and then sword and shield might give you lots of attacks of opportunity vs disarm. Just my 2 cents.
--edit--
This works well because you can specialize and not be penalized for doing so because you only disadvantaged against people that know your weakness at a high enough level to offer you a challenge. As a specialist you might encounter some one that has specialized in your weakness (at which point you are screwed) but you are equally likely to be in the superior position so that seems balanced to me. The generalist, then, is frequently advantaged vs specialists because the likelihood of knowing their weakness increases as your number of styles increases, however you will never totally dominate vs anyone and if you encounter a specialist whose weakness you don't know you are screwed.
Last edited by Anguirus on Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Anguirus wrote:The generalist, then, is frequently advantaged vs specialists because the likelihood of knowing their weakness increases as your number of styles increases, however you will never totally dominate vs anyone and if you encounter a specialist whose weakness you don't know you are screwed.
"Jake, can you play a shield guy"
"Aww, man. I always play the shield guy"
"Well, we already have a knifer and an archer, and Alice is playing a two-handed sword girl, so you need to play a shield guy or we'll be screwed when the DM throws crossbowmen at us."
Yeah I'm with draco too. What should make different weapon training different is what you can do with that weapon not just your bad ass to hit bonus with it. Perhaps weapon schools like 7th sea where you get generic maneuvers usable by other weapons and then some school specific maneuvers that only work when you are in the schools stance.
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"Jake, can you play a shield guy"
"Aww, man. I always play the shield guy"
"Well, we already have a knifer and an archer, and Alice is playing a two-handed sword girl, so you need to play a shield guy or we'll be screwed when the DM throws crossbowmen at us."
Well, wouldn't that be an issue with Draco's plan as well? If you have different moves available with different weapons, and those moves are more than palette-swaps of each-other, then there are going to be situations where one is more useful than another. And a party with only sword moves, for instance, is going to be less equiped to deal with certain situations than a party with a variety of weapons.
I think a set of actions that would adequately cover all melee situations would be in order. These should be things that we want every character in the game to potentially face with a reasonable chance of success. There really shouldn't be anything that says you suck when facing a charging opponent without a spear, just that you will have the opportunity to be extra cool if you do have one (and have undertaken the appropriate training).
While the iconic kensai is kind of cool conceptually, the fact that without their sword they might as well go home isn't.
The internet gave a voice to the world thus gave definitive proof that the world is mostly full of idiots.
Anguirus wrote:The generalist, then, is frequently advantaged vs specialists because the likelihood of knowing their weakness increases as your number of styles increases, however you will never totally dominate vs anyone and if you encounter a specialist whose weakness you don't know you are screwed.
"Jake, can you play a shield guy"
"Aww, man. I always play the shield guy"
"Well, we already have a knifer and an archer, and Alice is playing a two-handed sword girl, so you need to play a shield guy or we'll be screwed when the DM throws crossbowmen at us."
I'm preferring Draco's plan.
My plan and Draco's aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, my plan is just Draco's with the added idea that maneuvers specific to any one weapon style should be intentionally imbalanced against maneuvers from another weapon style. I specifically stated that I didn't want strictly numeric bonuses. For example, a style might let you make disarm attempts at the cost of giving up an attack of opportunity and another style might allow you to make an opponent automatically fail the action that drew an attack of opportunity if the attack is successful. The second maneuver is nice to have all the time but is particularly nice to have if you are fighting some one with the disarm maneuver. In this way, generalization is encouraged but specialization is not untenable.
Sad to say, but I oppose plans that involve having more maneuvers that you can use with a weapon you are using at the "cost" of having less maneuvers available with a weapon you are not using.
FrankTrollman wrote:Sad to say, but I oppose plans that involve having more maneuvers that you can use with a weapon you are using at the "cost" of having less maneuvers available with a weapon you are not using.
-Username17
Perhaps I'm being thick, but I can see variable possible meanings to this statement. Can you clarify the kind of situation you are objecting to?
The internet gave a voice to the world thus gave definitive proof that the world is mostly full of idiots.
FrankTrollman wrote:Sad to say, but I oppose plans that involve having more maneuvers that you can use with a weapon you are using at the "cost" of having less maneuvers available with a weapon you are not using.
-Username17
Perhaps I'm being thick, but I can see variable possible meanings to this statement. Can you clarify the kind of situation you are objecting to?
It's a false cost. Such a method would encourage you to stick with the same weapon all the time, because that way you have access to all those maneuvers you've bought up at the same time.
Let's put it in D&D 4e terms, because that game is especially egregious about it. Imagine for the moment that you are being offered two abilities: one of them is off the Warlock list and the other is off the ranger list. Nominally they are both ranged striker powers, so theoretically they should be balanced. And the "cost" (one power slot) is identical in any case. But on them requires a bow and the other requires a rod. So because at any given moment you can only have one of those weapons in your hand, you're going to end up selecting the power that fits the weapon that is going to be in your hand already.
Which is a long way of saying that if you're going to divide up the weapon maneuvers by what implements you can have in your hand while you use them, that you are defacto going full 4e where you have hard coded character classes defined by the weapons they happen to have in their hands. Because anyone who takes a hammer power and a longsword power instead of two of either is a god damn moron anyway.
So does that mean that you simply cannot have a balanced two weapon using character in a game where you can focus on a single weapon? If so I guess specialization has to be out but that kind of sucks because there are lots of cool things you might want people to be able to do with only one weapon.
The internet gave a voice to the world thus gave definitive proof that the world is mostly full of idiots.
I guess that would depend on whether or not each weapon has specific benefits to it. For instance, let's say that hammers do a ton of damage, but they're less likely to hit, and let's say that daggers do little damage but they hit almost all the time. There are scenarios in which each is useful, depending on the AC of the foes encountered. The problem, though, is that games often reward high burst damage (the hammers) over the slow-but-steady damage.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
FrankTrollman wrote:Let's put it in D&D 4e terms, because that game is especially egregious about it. Imagine for the moment that you are being offered two abilities: one of them is off the Warlock list and the other is off the ranger list. Nominally they are both ranged striker powers, so theoretically they should be balanced. And the "cost" (one power slot) is identical in any case. But on them requires a bow and the other requires a rod. So because at any given moment you can only have one of those weapons in your hand, you're going to end up selecting the power that fits the weapon that is going to be in your hand already.
Which is a long way of saying that if you're going to divide up the weapon maneuvers by what implements you can have in your hand while you use them, that you are defacto going full 4e where you have hard coded character classes defined by the weapons they happen to have in their hands. Because anyone who takes a hammer power and a longsword power instead of two of either is a god damn moron anyway.
-Username17
Maybe I'm missing your point or maybe I didn't make mine clear, in any event this problem seems legitimate but not applicable. In the 4e example you provided the powers gained by having a rod and having a bow are roughly the same. The important thing is that there is never a situational benefit to splitting your abilities between bows and rods because a.) the abilities are roughly the same and b.) having one in your hand means you don't have the other in your hand. If, however, the effect of using a bow abilities is qualitatively different from the effect of using a rod then there are situational benefits to splitting your abilities. If you can learn the same maneuvers for a sword as you can for a spear there is no reason to carry both, but if you can only learn to disarm with a sword and trip with a spear then it makes sense to learn both because you might run into something that isn't disarmable that is easily tripable (or vis-versa). Further, if we implemented a system where switching between weapons doesn't cost you actions (everyone has quick draw or something) then there is no reason not to learn both.
FrankTrollman wrote:
Oh fuck that. People in most cases choose what weapons they use and what attacks they use. People should not be mechanically rewarded for being boring anime characters who spam the same attack over and over again.
Yeah, barring the unusual capture scenario, it's very unlikely you're ever going to find yourself armed with a pick instead of a sword.
Most games just reward specialization way too much.
Psychic Robot wrote:I guess that would depend on whether or not each weapon has specific benefits to it. For instance, let's say that hammers do a ton of damage, but they're less likely to hit, and let's say that daggers do little damage but they hit almost all the time. There are scenarios in which each is useful, depending on the AC of the foes encountered. The problem, though, is that games often reward high burst damage (the hammers) over the slow-but-steady damage.
Not always. Assuming the average damage per round is the same, the lower damage is better, simply because you've got a chance of taking weak foes out of the fight entirely.
The high damage suffers from more overflow potential. Where you hit someone and lose some of your damage, meaning that your average damage actually isn't as good as you may think, because some of your average damage isn't useful average damage.
What are thoughts on 'cinematic' use of improvised weapons vs. 'computer RPG' [non]use of improvised weapons?
If you strike the right balance between the likelihood of being disarmed (and re-arming) and the cost of using an 'improvised' (i.e. not your favorite) weapon, you could totally have a system where characters prefer to use their own weapon, but are willing to snatch up the weapon of a fallen foe or even a pick stowed on the backpack or a chair off the ground. Encumbrance must also factor in, as having five broadswords strapped to your body makes other options superfluous.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
CatharzGodfoot wrote:What are thoughts on 'cinematic' use of improvised weapons vs. 'computer RPG' [non]use of improvised weapons?
If you strike the right balance between the likelihood of being disarmed (and re-arming) and the cost of using an 'improvised' (i.e. not your favorite) weapon, you could totally have a system where characters prefer to use their own weapon, but are willing to snatch up the weapon of a fallen foe or even a pick stowed on the backpack or a chair off the ground. Encumbrance must also factor in, as having five broadswords strapped to your body makes other options superfluous.
Yeah, the thing is that most encumbrance systems aren't going to stop you from just carrying a ton of your favored weapons, if there's some bonus to switching weapons.
To get people to use improvised weapons is hard. The improvised weapons actually need to be better than the one you're using, because it takes real actions to pick up the improv weapon and use it. But not only that but the effectiveness only needs to remain for a round or two, because otherwise it just becomes a bunch of people carrying around tables and chairs as weapons instead of swords.
The best you can really do is to make attacks generic, so it doesn't really matter so much what you use, and some poeple use improvised weapons to be cool.
