racial package with increased char maxima

[Old Man]

Originally posted by PhilFleischmann

So how does a 30 STR halfling ruin your game?

 

It ruins it by going against the campaign background, just as surely as if that same halfling showed up with STR 10 and an AK47. Neither 30 STR nor assault rifles are appropriate for fantasy campaigns, except for very high fantasy campaigns, which are just Champions with a thin fantasy veneer and so do not interest me.

 

I'm sorry that you don't understand why the Halfling of Giant Strength bothers some of us. Those of use who are bothered by it are looking for a mechanism that GMs can use to enforce a certain amount of campaign cohesion. There is no such mechanism at present that works well. "Just say no" is not a solution. Neither is "It doesn't bother me, so there must not be a problem". The former is a handwave, and the latter is sheer narrowmindedness.

 

 

It wouldn't ruin mine. I'd rather have a player have more fun by playing the character he wants to play than impair his fun by not letting him play it, or kick him out of the game completely.

 

I would kick that player out of the game in a heartbeat if his character conception ruins the fun for myself and the other players.

[AnotherSkip]

i think there are a few issues here that are confused by the way people allow characters to be built.

 

One way is: Here are your 7 default races if you want something different tell me the race name/concept and ill build the race for you.

or see if it really is something different.

 

The other way is :here you go build whatever race/class combo you want as long as it fits within medival fantasy campaign concept.

 

Now then I use the fist method, this ties in with my philosophy on how I use NCM. Which is I built these to repersent the standard for the race. Therefor is there any reason why not I should have the races all play by the same limits when they are all different?

 

There are no 30 minimum str Ogres, there are no 300 int brainiacs. All of the races can at max have 3 points of a stat over a human before they pay for NCM unless it is a Magical Spell/Supernatural Ability. If i did have one of those there would be pretty bad problems involved for the character

 

One of the reasons why i keep NCM is because it changes the way people think. People dont think "there is nothing stopping me from having 60 Str" when you have NCM or even "mostly NCM" people think differently.

 

now then I read the FH PDF document so I am going to explain a problem I realized with reading through Steve's work.

 

I looked at steves stuff and was struck by some the suggested stat increases for the fighter classes. having an 18 Str can be seen as deficient or average for the proposals (depending upon whether or not you were basing it upon 8 Str= normal human).

 

Then I thought about _why_ they are that way

 

IMNSHO Weapon Str min's are too high.

 

yes they are WRONG.

 

Look, I have a copy of Imperial Austia presented by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Armies had tons of weapons that we place at 18 Str.

These armies were expected to use thier weapons effectively.

Now then just how uncommmon _is_ an 18 str when 3000 of your buds had it as they trained alongside you? Heck I might be for something as radical as halving the Str Mins. After all you are going to still have lots of armor to slow you down and other sorts of problems. Perhaps this will keep the Str's down _because_ you don't need an 18+ Str to weild all of the common weapons.

[Old Man]

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

IMNSHO Weapon Str min's are too high.

 

yes they are WRONG.

 

This is an artifact of two things: First, Hero is extremely granular at the heroic level. The only values for STR that you are likely to see are 13, 15, 18, 20, and 23. Second, in 4th, FH authors seem to feel that weapon STR Mins need to be derived by the usual Hero math--which does maintain a rough balance, but only at the expense of reinforcing the granularity above, and resulting in relatively high STR Mins.

 

Attempting to define STR Mins purely by "realism" is doomed to fail. It will only wreck game balance in an effort to meet one person's definition of "realistic". Weapon STR Mins must be determined not by "realism", and not by mathematics, but by game balance concerns.

[PhilFleischmann]

Originally posted by Old Man

I'm sorry that you don't understand why the Halfling of Giant Strength bothers some of us. Those of use who are bothered by it are looking for a mechanism that GMs can use to enforce a certain amount of campaign cohesion. There is no such mechanism at present that works well. "Just say no" is not a solution. Neither is "It doesn't bother me, so there must not be a problem". The former is a handwave, and the latter is sheer narrowmindedness.

 

I would kick that player out of the game in a heartbeat if his character conception ruins the fun for myself and the other players.

I do understand why it bothers you. It bothers me, too. But I want to play with other people, and their ideas do not always conform to my pre-conceived notions. One wierd halfling does not bring my whole campaign world crashing down. And I don't see how it ruins the fun of the game for you or other players. And you're calling me narrow-minded?!

 

---changing subject---

And I do agree that STR mins on weapons are generally too high and unrealistic. I feel sure there's a balanced way to adjust them. How 'bout: lower them all by 5 - but only for the purpose of avoiding OCV penalties, not for adding additional damage. So a weapon with 15 STR min could be wielded by someone with 10 STR at no penalty, but even with 15 STR, you still don't get to add any extra damage. At 20 STR, you could add 1 DC. Hmmm... I'm not sure that will work, I'll have to think about it some more.

[Markdoc]

Actually, Phil, I don't think iyt was you that ws called narrow-minded, but people who just blew the whole thing off.

 

Personally, while not helpful, I'd describe that as (too) broad-minded rather than narrow-minded, but that's just me.

 

On the issue of NCM, I think we have now officially reached the end of the thread, since both sides seem to be saying the same thing, but drawing different conclusions from it :-)

 

On weapon STR min, here's what I do:

================================

 

STR Min is calculated using Active Pts/2. OCV Mods, whether positive or negative, do NOT figure in. Stretching DOES figure in. HAs are calculated at 5 pts active each, not 3, to make calculation standard at 5 pts per Damage Class. Finally, Two-handed melee weapons get an automatic -5 STR Min; 1.5H weapons have two STR Mins listed (one for one-handed fighting, the other for two-handed). The STR Min for a normal weapon used two-handed is -3 STR Min. Weapons that are +1 Stun or AP use their active points for calculating STR Min; ones that are -1 Stun have their STR Min calculated as if they were -1 DC from their listed damage. STR Min for Autofire throwing of weapons is based upon their active point cost, same as with +1 Stun weapons. However, these weapons have two STR Min listed: one for single shot, and one for autofire use.

================================

 

The details, rationale, etc are posted here:

 

http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/Sengoku/weapons.html

 

as well as a credit to the guy who did most of the work :-)

 

This system works fine: it gives most weapons STR mins in the7-12 range meaning most people can use normal weapons wihout penalties due to STR problems, it's simple, and it has not led to problems (in several years of play) with the ability to add damage to an attack.

 

cheers, Mark

[AnotherSkip]

Having been to busy to post this note eariler, I _like_ the idea of an advantage that enables you to adjust NCM.

 

Okies if we accept that this is what they were trying to do with NCM in 4th edition(applying an advantage) then the real problem is that they were charging too high a price for the changes. Originally (if you view it this way) the price was a +1 advantage. This became a real sore point so let's try adjusting the value of the advantage......

 

unfortunately i'm not too mathmatically inclined to do the math at a dozen breakpoints but let us try the advantage at +1/2 and +1/4 (keeping in mind that a Gm can choose to adjust the values for his campaign.)

 

for one point stats (Int, Str) it wont affect caluclations on cost untill 3 points for +1/4. it starts affecting cost at 2 points for +1/2.

 

now then for a really huge affect ill ake the biggest nubers thrown at the screen +40 STR.

at a +1/4 that means you will be paying 50 points for 40 Str, and 60 points for 40 Str with a +1/2. rather than 40 for no NCM and 70 for with NCM

 

 

essnetially it goes

no =40

+1/4=50

+1/2=60

w = 70

for such large numbers it looks decently grainy

and with a +3/4 or higher it equalls or exceeds the results of with an unmodified NCM.

 

there probably _are- holes somewhere with this like any other Adv, but hey so is every thing else