Vanguard

I was doing really well until a patch made everything too tough to solo. One of the things I am starting to realize is that MMOs don't do "larger than life" very well. In Champions Online, I hated the fact that street gangs basically all had superpowers. It was frustrating to think that I had ended up in Syndrome's world. Star Wars follows along those lines with the Jedi Knight being the most ineffective character that I played. The Soldier, by contrast, was much more capable of surviving and laying down some serious damage with his assault cannon. There is a disconnect between the films and the MMO.

 

Presently I've returned to Star Trek Online after a few year hiatus. There are many great things to like about how PWE/Cryptic extended the play life of characters at the level 50 cap. I have had a couple of incredibly annoying bugs along the way, but mostly been having a blast. I can see where the dilithium and "mark" farming will get old, but right now it is the kind of mindless distraction that the doc ordered.

I had that same thought.  In fact, I had that exact same experience. I tried out the Jedi and was sort of impressed with his abilities but he didn't feel very Jedi-ie to me . . not at all.

Then I made a Trooper to play with one of my sons and the difference between the two was like night and day.  My Trooper was kicking arse and not even bothering with names while my Jedi felt like Oliver asking contritely for some more.

I played STO for a while, can't really remember why I stopped playing.  I have been kicking around the idea of trying it out again but I dunno, I'm not really a Star Trek fan.

It also doesn't help that I'm not max level. And, like all MMOs out there, after a point they seem to forget about all the people below level 50 and just concentrate on stuff for the max, or near max, level players to do.  While I can understand that I'd also think they'd want to keep their low to mid level players entertained enough that they stuck around to become the high level characters able to reap the benefits of the countless man hours soaked into that content.

Thsnks. I think I found the articles. But they weren't quite what I remembered.

You're welcome.

They still do apparently. I have a bar on either side of the screen and two bars on the bottom. I'm not sure if that is FtP or Preferred though. As it is, I barely fill up three of the bars right now. Any more than the four would be....tricky.

Ya SW:TOR's FtP system is, if not THE stingiest, one of the most stingiest ones out there.

The action bars you have are a result of Preferred status. I'm not sure what possesed me to spend money on the game but until I did, I only had the 1 action bar under in the middle of the screen.

Still got Cartel Points to spend but I doubt I'll ever go back to that game. Oddly enough, it just doesn't feel star warsy to me.

If you can find out the towing capacity you can go from there.

(I looked but couldn't make heads nor tails of the information . . . Either that or I'm just having a particularly dense day . . . )

The x3 Defenses Cost applies only to Takes No Stun (45 AP or 60 AP), not to Cannot Be Stunned (15 AP) or any of the other Automation powers taken individually. 

It does?

Huh, I thought it applied to all of them, at least the Stun ones. i can see it not applying to Does Not Bleed.

That's good to know. I wasn't aware of that.

 

The Does Not Bleed power might also be good for fast Regen builds. I saw in the rulebooks under Bleeding that Regeneration does not stop Bleeding damage.

Again, really?

I thought Regen automatically stopped bleeding.. ::looks at the rules:: Well, I'll be. That is rather . . . not good. I mean, if Regeneration doesn't stop bleeding then how does it regenerate damage?

Maybe that's why I always thought it did. We housed ruled it to do so.

I have most of the digital heroes, if you had an idea which one it was in I could look and see . . .

Yeah, I did run across that and that may have contributed to my thinking there was a rule somewhere.

I just recall when we were playing Champions a while back and the guy playing the power armor switched the advantage on his flight (which was not only in a multipower but also had the variable advantage on it) to MegaScale flight, the group went "Hey wait!"

But like I said before, I can't seem to find it now so . . .

My bad.

Can you cite a source?

Nope, I can't.

I've looked through 6th Volumes 1 & 2 as well as going through my 5th Revised and can't seem to find it.

I'm wondering now if I'm recalling not that you can't have a mega advantaged power in a framework but instead if they recommend not allowing megascale as part of a variable advantage . . .

I know I remember seeing something about that but it was years ago and the circumstances hasn't repeated again.

I'll look and see if I can find anything regarding the Variable Advantage thingy . . .

Edit: Okay, I've looked and looked and can't find it anywhere so maybe it was a house rule or in the rules faq from the old site or just somewhere that I can't find it.

Looks VERY Wing Commander. Which, provided you ignore the execrable so-called movie, could be a good thing.

I don't know what you're talking about, there was no Wing Commander movie.

@Nolgroth

   From my understanding, all the ships that were handed out during the pre-order/kickstart/crowdfunding can be acquired within the game.  The only thing the "pre-sale" ships have going for them is something called Life Time Insurance.  Which, I think, means you don't have to pay the in-game insurance premiums on the hull/components so that you can never lose your pre-sale ship.

I know that's an extremely over simplification of things but as I didn't participate in the kickstarter, and doubt my system will be powerful enough to run the game, I haven't been following things that closely.

Another thing to note is that, if I recall, it's strongly recommended, if not out-right forbidden, to place mega scaled anything in a framework.

Are you asking if a Martial Art can have Power advantages/limitations or using Powers to mimic martial arts?

If it's the former, I believe HSMA (and all the various Martial Arts supplements) has a section for doing so.  If it's the later, I'm not sure. I've never looked into it.

I've used the "stun resistance" effect in a game. I was playing the Black Knight. His sole superpower was that he healed virtually instantly from even the most destructive attacks. The GM collaborrated on building the character. W gave him a moderate amount of armor, high damage reduction (all of it resistant), and the "takes no stun" automaton power, plus regeneration. The idea was that he had no actual armor, he actually TOOK all that damage, but most of it (what was accounted for by armor and damage reduction) healed instantly; the rest of it healed very fast (i.e., regeneration), and because he healed so insanely fast, he wasn't even slowed down by most attacks (i.e., takes no stun).

 

End Result: a character who could be machine-gunned at point blank range, producing a spray of blood and viscera on the wall behind him...then punch out the guy who just shot him.

You just described the special effect of my character, Vanguard's, defenses.  The only difference is I didn't have the "take's no stun" power.  I did by extra presence, only when taking body.

'Cause facing down a guy who just took a full burst from an M60 to the chest, and didn't die, is going to be down right scary.

I actually just recently built a power for a PC of mine who, through an extraordinary set of circumstances, can feel no pain or pleasure.

 

So I purchased him the 15 Point "Cannot Be Stunned" to simulate that in addition to selling back his sense of touch.

You do know that by doing so, you now have to pay 3x the points for Defensive powers right?

And speaking of that, would you folks, as GMs, charge the increased cost for power purchased like the OP described?

I'd almost say "no" as they aren't always on, always effective like the full blown Automaton powers but am curious as to what other GMs think.

Or to put it another way, it determines how much the player gets to play.

Well, yeah which is a fairly big deal.

I find that the dynamic at SPD 2-4, at heroic power levels, is really unbalanced, but your experience may be different.

As did our group.  Since, as you mentioned above, Speed dictates how often you can play, having too much of a spread in speeds meant some players were sitting around while others were playing.

We really didn't see such a dramatic different between speeds of 3 and 4.  Which is probably why things worked out for our group.

Honestly the only thing Speed really dictates is how many actions a turn your character gets. That's it.

Oh and how many MPH your character can move.

SPD is one of those mechanics that's really great for superheroic but unfortunately doesn't scale super well down at normal levels.  When everyone's in the 6-8 range it's fine, but the difference between SPD 3 and SPD 4 is really dramatic.

Yeah. I've found that a lot of things that Hero does works extremely well at Super Heroic levels but tends to start breaking down when you downgrade to Heroic levels of play.   Usually our Heroic level characters are all speed 3 (and/or eventually 4) with the bad guys (mooks) at around 2 and the "named" baddies on the level of the PC.

Hmm ::rummages through hero designer files:: 14m  of movement.  Can give you the build for it if you like. It was Parkour.

Have you taken a look at the Long Term Endurance rules?

That could help you figure out how much end you'd need to have and figuring out the STR should be simple.

One of the characters I used to play in a Spec-Ops game had 15 STR and 25 End and I think he could accomplish what you suggested.

And yet, even in a heroic game they fall to a GM Fiat style of rule (beam, real weapon, etc) instead of just having a system that's internally consistent enough not to need sweeping exceptions. That'd be my goal - an attack/defense/damage system that remains consistent across as many variables as possible. 

Those limitations aren't "GM fiat" rules.  At least I don't believe they are.

They're there for the exact reason you're claiming.  If, for example,  you put "real weapon: on a power/attack (IE: gun) then that weapon can only do something the "real world" equivalent could do.

I'm not exactly seeing a problem here.

What Roter brings up is one of reason I don't change the reload speeds.

I figure, unless it's a new wound, you're learned how to compensate for the injury and thus there doesn't need to be any additional time added to things like reloading etc.

I would tend to hand-wave a few things, e.g.:

1. if you stun or lightly ko an agent or mook, they don't get a recovery.

2. If a fight is basically over, sometimes I might hand wave the remainder.

3. If a PC's use of a skill is what I'd consider "routine" for someone of their skill level, I don't see a need to force a roll--it just works.

 

There's probably more than that, but that's illustrative.  I generally only hand-wave when following the RAW would lower the "fun factor" for the group. 

I think 1 and 3 are actually in the rules some where as suggestions on how to handle various things.  (IE: 1 is used as an example of a large scale fight with dozens of mooks and only a few "named" opponents).

Our group tends to use #2 more when the outcome of the current fight is pretty much a given and we've already been at it for 8 hrs and every one is tired.

Other than, we're more of the "Rules as Written" kind of gamers.  After all, Steven went though all the trouble of writing them, shouldn't we use them?

Hyper-man. I think the problem gets resolved when you start looking at Powers, Martial arts maneuvers, and some of the other combat maneuvers. With Owen's +1 damage class, he's treated as effectively STR20 for martial maneuvers, his punch is 6d6 (from his base HTH of 3d6) and If I'm reading the ruled correctly, he can get to 10d6 with a haymaker.

If i recall, you can't haymaker a martial manuever.

The only power/ability that sticks out in my mind (at the moment), is Two-Weapon Fighting.

That power's build/construction never set right with me due to the rulling that it's "just a version of sweep".

Those simple words turns it from a useful ability to something that's pretty much a death sentence (or point sink) for it's users.

Not to mention the absolute pummeling such a structure would receive from stellar debris. However I would think that if you want to run a game that has such a structure, the society that built it has solved any of the supposed difficulties that would be inherent in the structures design. I would never call a SF game or fiction that includes a ringworld or Dyson Sphere "Hard" scifi. (I'm not much for hard scifi anyway. I'm a Space Opera guy. I want to let my imagination run wild. Currently known physics is far too limiting a factor to adhere very closely to for me to be satisfied with the end result)

Some people like some randomness in their damage. As happens in the movies, someone shot (mortally) will die later. Why? They've taken damage enough to put them in the negative Body but not enough to knock them out. Having the possibility of rolling a 1 on the Stun Multiplier allows this possibility to happen.

I still don't like the Stun Lotto but your explanation of why it's not a bad thing makes more sense than any I've heard to date.

Remember Rule #6 in role-playing games: the gamemaster always has the right to say no. He never has to allow you to do anything that is logically impossible.

There are times when, regardless of what is possible by the rules, the GM just needs to say "no".