It strikes me that in games where you collect gear, it seems fitting to have multiple weapon slots. What happens is sometimes the main weapon gets disabled in combat and it's damaged reduced - or, if you have a secondary, that gets used. The secondary would actually have a max level somewhere below yours, so you'd actually use some of the lower level stuff. You might even have a third weapon, and perhaps it needs to be a dagger or such like. Upgrading all of these ensures you are more powerful in combat.
Or maybe I'm just a hanger on to the old Doom days, where your dude carried about ten weapons around with him...I like switching weapons... :)
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Rifts RPG (the pen and paper game, not 'Rift'!): Pondering the SDC/MDC schism
Once again I consider the gordian knot that is the Rifts ruleset. Particularly how to make BOTH SDC and MDC combat occur, not just one or the other. Of course the author (Kevin Sembieda) just forces players out of their armour (cause you can't wear it all the time) then has a bear turn up, coincidentally, just at that time. There, done and dusted in his opinion. Either you probably think what I think about that, or you think that works just dandy and I wont shower you with my dismissals.
Anyway, for the former camp, this is the method I'm thinking of to blend MDC and SDC threats. For one, alot of SDC monsters, together with their SDC attacks also have a psychic slam or psychic blast attack. This attack does 1 Mega Damage (or 2 Mega Damage on a crit) on a hit. During their melee attacks, a natural 18-20 on the dice rolls means instead of doing a normal attack, they do a psychic slam melee attack. Once they have done it, they can't do another such slam or psychic blast for an hour. Psychic blasts take awhile to charge up, generally done on the monsters last attack of the melee and similarly, once used the monster cannot do another psychic slam or blast for an hour.
Second is that the chest/torso plate of body armour can be removed and replaced with a homespun, salvaged armour (made of shards from old bits of armour and/or old pre rifts building fragments) that has 200 SDC and an armour rating from 12 to 15 (generally 15).
The thing is psychic slams and blasts are slow enough that the wearer can see them coming and opt for the armour to take the blow, making it automatically hit the armour even if the attack is above the AR or even if it's a critical hit! So it soaks the hit. But if it's hit even by just 1 point of Mega Damage, all of it is destroyed. If hit by a crit and it's already taken damage, the PC takes the remainding damage.
Eg, if it had been reduced to 190 SDC and a psychic slam hits it with a crit for 2 Mega Damage (200 Standard Damage!), the armour is gone and the PC takes the remaining 10 damage (200-190 = 10 Standard damage taken)
So, if you get the set up, this basically works if you have a low cash campaign - you don't want to wear your normal armour all the time, because even one point of damage costs alot to repair (assuming you can even find a repair place). So instead you want to wear this armour and attack with SDC attacks, soaking the psychic slam/blasts with the homespun armour (which simply costs time and effort to make, rather than money).
Anyway, for the former camp, this is the method I'm thinking of to blend MDC and SDC threats. For one, alot of SDC monsters, together with their SDC attacks also have a psychic slam or psychic blast attack. This attack does 1 Mega Damage (or 2 Mega Damage on a crit) on a hit. During their melee attacks, a natural 18-20 on the dice rolls means instead of doing a normal attack, they do a psychic slam melee attack. Once they have done it, they can't do another such slam or psychic blast for an hour. Psychic blasts take awhile to charge up, generally done on the monsters last attack of the melee and similarly, once used the monster cannot do another psychic slam or blast for an hour.
Second is that the chest/torso plate of body armour can be removed and replaced with a homespun, salvaged armour (made of shards from old bits of armour and/or old pre rifts building fragments) that has 200 SDC and an armour rating from 12 to 15 (generally 15).
The thing is psychic slams and blasts are slow enough that the wearer can see them coming and opt for the armour to take the blow, making it automatically hit the armour even if the attack is above the AR or even if it's a critical hit! So it soaks the hit. But if it's hit even by just 1 point of Mega Damage, all of it is destroyed. If hit by a crit and it's already taken damage, the PC takes the remainding damage.
Eg, if it had been reduced to 190 SDC and a psychic slam hits it with a crit for 2 Mega Damage (200 Standard Damage!), the armour is gone and the PC takes the remaining 10 damage (200-190 = 10 Standard damage taken)
So, if you get the set up, this basically works if you have a low cash campaign - you don't want to wear your normal armour all the time, because even one point of damage costs alot to repair (assuming you can even find a repair place). So instead you want to wear this armour and attack with SDC attacks, soaking the psychic slam/blasts with the homespun armour (which simply costs time and effort to make, rather than money).
Sunday, June 10, 2012
LOTRO: XP for greys? But spread over time?
Yes, XP for killing aliens in Lord of the Rings online...wait, no!
I mean if you happen to be slaying grey monsters for whatever reason. What if you still got 'appreciation' points for it (ie, appreciation from the local peoples), which you can turn in. But you can only turn in so much at a time and there's a long cooldown between turn ins, so you could only gain XP at, say, 5% or 10% the speed you could if you were actually fighting level appropriate monsters?
So you can still gain some XP, but it's preferable to fight things that are your own level.
I mean if you happen to be slaying grey monsters for whatever reason. What if you still got 'appreciation' points for it (ie, appreciation from the local peoples), which you can turn in. But you can only turn in so much at a time and there's a long cooldown between turn ins, so you could only gain XP at, say, 5% or 10% the speed you could if you were actually fighting level appropriate monsters?
So you can still gain some XP, but it's preferable to fight things that are your own level.
Friday, June 1, 2012
LOTRO: What if there was a skirmish campaign?
So I patched up Lord of the Rings Online recently and did a few skirmishes. Still enjoyable.
BUT...it goes nowhere. You've accomplished nothing but a progression on your XP bar.
I think what would be cool is if it randomised up a campaign structure, where you do skirmishes in order to advance down the campaign, maybe with some big bonus at the end of the campaign. So it feels like your working at something that you can complete only via skirmishes. Kind of makes skirmishes their own little world, that way, instead of just one way you could get XP.
BUT...it goes nowhere. You've accomplished nothing but a progression on your XP bar.
I think what would be cool is if it randomised up a campaign structure, where you do skirmishes in order to advance down the campaign, maybe with some big bonus at the end of the campaign. So it feels like your working at something that you can complete only via skirmishes. Kind of makes skirmishes their own little world, that way, instead of just one way you could get XP.
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