gilbo
2019 Group
Posts: 1,446
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Post by gilbo on Aug 20, 2016 16:27:27 GMT
OK these are my thoughts so far on my rules. I am planning to do a few changes before we return to Empyrean for Jarl IV. I would appreciate any comments you have. Sorry to anyone not interested in these sort of things, feel free to ignore.
1. Generally pleased with how it all went. Dice mechanic worked OK although may become abit rubbish at higher levels. For example if you are 5th level you get +5 ish on stuff which means you can't fail normal rolls unless you fumble as most things are DT6. I am ok with this though.
2. Is reflexes a bit good? eg. if you have Ref 5 you may have a DF of 11 or 12 which means you are quite hard to hit. However combined with the consequent increase in enemy attack rolls maybe this is ok.
3. I didn't think the strike system worked too well. Thinking of changing it so you can choose your location if you score a strike. As you get higher combat skills you can boost strikes to the next level ie. causing more injury/perm damage.
4. Psions were slightly OP. I have decided that Telepathy should be a full skill so that Psions will only get max 2 new abilities each level. I am ditching cell control so Psions will no longer be able to heal physical damage. This means they will be more focussed on the mind stuff and you will need medic skills if you want to heal damage.
5. Dave has mentioned that non Psions are vulnerable to psionic attack and should have some defences available. I agree and will put this in. Also thinking of giving non psions a bonus against psionic abilities.
6. There are no influence/diplomacy type skills. Are they needed?
7. Basic stuff like knowing about aliens and planets is covered by science. This means that most people except specialists aren't very good at it. Is this ok?
Thanks for playing!
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Post by Kristian on Aug 22, 2016 14:19:16 GMT
Androids are obviously a bit OP ...since you didn't even kill me once (which has got to be a first).
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Post by pericles on Aug 23, 2016 21:33:23 GMT
One of the biggest lessons I have taken from Empyrean is that it pays to specialise. Choosing a skill and increasing it every level pays dividends. Skill specialisation produces a wide range of archetypes which is a strength of the game which should not be penalised but enshrined within character creation by giving each race a preferred class and a +1 rank in a player chosen skill of the preferred class. This mechanic will emphasise racial differences in a way that stat bonuses are unable to achieve. Soldier has the most focussed skill set and benefits accordingly. The two skills we did not use were Athletics (the base soldier skill) and unarmed combat. Meldarth went for a Melee Brawn (Body development) combination whilst I went for Ranged Evasion (Reflex) combination. Melee is a dual skill to cause and deflect damage via shields and parry. Brawn soaks undeflected damage. Range is a single damage causing skill and Reflex is a single damage avoidance skill. At lower levels the equipped Melee damage avoidance was superior to the unequipped Reflex damage avoidance. At higher levels the unequipped Reflex option may have appeared more powerful but Kryll would not have been able to hold off the boss Krell in the lichen caves as long as Meldath was able to. The only reason Kryll did not take damage was because the Krell he was fighting had low to hit bonuses. Psion has a relatively focussed skill set with two combat forms physical and mental. The first significant point is that Energy & Gravity Control is equivalent to Ranged Evasion and has the advantage of being equipped providing the Psion has power points. Mental combat requires three skills Disruptor (Attack), Telepathy (Mental Defence) and Gravity control (Reflex like evasion) and is effective against targets excluding immune creatures (Androids, Plants) and other Telepaths. Compulsor and Cell Control provide good flavour to the class and a Psion with high Cell control is a must have in a party due to the paucity of technological healing via Medicine or Repair is so slow. The specialist is a catch all class without PC/NPC level offensive or defensive capabilities. Unless in a vehicle equipped with weapons a specialist must borrow from either Soldier or Psion to attack. I suggest at character creation the specialist adopts a secondary class and receive a skill point in that class at odd numbered levels. The changes I would make are - Give each race a free rank in a skill from a racial preferred profession
- Ditch mental health and apply all damage to one hit point total
- Introduce an equipment requirement for Psions.
- Retain initiative dice reductions but ditch power point reductions for Psions
- Give specialists an extra skill point at odd levels to spend in a secondary class chosen at character creation
- Medicine/Healing repairs half Android damage (due to large biological component)
Ditching Cell Control will give the Specialist a bigger role to fill however Kryll did not need frequent healing and in a campaign where people take lots of damage the healing skill will need scaling up.
The combination of ditching mental health and an equipment requirement for Psions will reduce the power of Psions without altering the the range of skills. Currently mental combat is poorly integrated into the system and leads to two anomalies. Shock troops with low mental stats and high physical stats are easily killed by an area mental attack. All big bads need to be immune or highly resistant to psionics i.e Androids or Psychically active. Combining all hits avoids both problems. If you want to maintain a difference between mental and physical damage give characters mental and physical soak values which are subtracted from damage. Negative soak values translate to vulnerability to the damage type. Psionic equipment requirements can be very restrictive where the Psion is simply the power source. It is probably better to introduce discipline based focii. Just as a ranged weapon is a focus for using the ranged skill there is a thingamy to focus Gravity control. Overall I liked the mechanic and we were just getting to the levels where skills got interesting. It would have been good to play at least another two levels at least.
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Post by pericles on Aug 24, 2016 16:31:50 GMT
One way of combining hits and mediating damage by type is
Hits = Sum Physical stats + half sum Mental stats Physical defence = (Sum Physical stats + AGI + PER ) / 4 Mental defence = (Sum Mental stats + INT+ PER ) / 4
The average DF and MD remain at 6 Average starting hit points increase by 8 leading to longer fights. Vulnerability to Mental and Physical damage is mediated by getting hit more or less frequently.
My starting Path would have 29 hits rather than 22 DF (excluding reflex) unchanged at 7 MD 5 rather than 6
MD might work thematically better using bonus stats WIL & CHA to steer Psions into Mental rather than Physical ranged combat
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gilbo
2019 Group
Posts: 1,446
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Post by gilbo on Aug 13, 2017 17:48:31 GMT
Hi everyone, I have been working on my Empyrean rules, updating them and including many of the changes that have been suggested. I would appreciate any comments that you may have. Here is a link to the google document. You should be able to view the file but not edit it. Hope this works. Empyrean v3.0Here is a link to the new character sheet. Character sheet
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Post by pericles on Aug 15, 2017 19:30:00 GMT
Hi everyone, I have been working on my Empyrean rules, updating them and including many of the changes that have been suggested. I would appreciate any comments that you may have. Definitely want to play a Path Psion probably specialising in Energy Control. I like the talisman feature. I never thought mental damage was overpowered. If anything I thought mental damage under powered due to the fact so few people could inflict mental damage. In most combats one person chipped away at MH while the rest of the party were attacking HP. Oponents usually went down to HP damage. The few exceptions were criticals with exploding dice. I would have liked a psychic healing discipline but have to agree it gives a specialist a more robust role within the party. The races look more balanced. The progression on the skills looks more measured and consistent.
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Post by pericles on Aug 15, 2017 20:48:29 GMT
5. Dave has mentioned that non Psions are vulnerable to psionic attack and should have some defences available. I agree and will put this in. Also thinking of giving non psions a bonus against psionic abilities. In the prior system all classes gain physical defenses as they progress. Only Psions gain Physical and Mental defenses. The effect was that mental powers had an almost auto hit at higher levels of play. The compulsor had a much bigger influence on combat than disruptor. Compulsors stopped oponents acting. Disruptors merely reduced a secondary set of hit points (which all classes advance in). The effect was to to polarise combat between physical and mental realms which do not meet. The penalty to affect non-psions in the new system gives non-psions a hefty bonus and separates the two realms of combat even further. On the other hand it could be worse. Instead of Psionic bad guys we could run into an army of androids.
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gilbo
2019 Group
Posts: 1,446
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Post by gilbo on Aug 15, 2017 21:16:06 GMT
Thanks Dave, I was resistant to the idea of ditching mental health but now I am thinking you might be right. Mental combat is a bit boring really so I might scrap it and adopt the D&D system of psychic damage.
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Post by brumguvnor on Sept 1, 2017 10:17:46 GMT
hmmmm... - looking at the rules I feel like I might play a bounty-hunter... - and if I do he'll definitely have to be named Tannhauser.... - in SPAAAACE!!
So... - I know we get no starting equipment... - does that also include no bionics?
And he would definitely be in prison after being framed by someone he was paid to track down - and so he might also have an arch-enemy... - but I definitely know that this would be giving Steve ammunition to use against me at a future date!
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Post by Kristian on Sept 1, 2017 10:57:07 GMT
Are recodes new ...or did I just miss them before?
Anyway, I'm thinking of using that (i.e. a brob recode) to make a kind of Frankenstein's Monster - and use the 'mutations' to represent the effects of being made up of different 'healthy' parts (not all of which need to be of brob origin). He could then be in prison for the death of his creator (or possibly a whole facility of dodgy scientists/doctors) ...though he need not necessary be guilty of it. Alternatively, he could just be locked up temporarily (not being guilty of anything at all) ...just while they decide what should be done with him (as he might have only recently been discovered in an illegal facility/basement - with his creators being put on trial for creating such monstrosities to work as slave labour in their illegal activities).
Would something like that work?
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mark
Goblin
Posts: 21
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Post by mark on Sept 1, 2017 13:08:35 GMT
this is probably a real noobie question but in the Empyrean handbook on page 16+ what do the numbers in brackets next to the skills relate to? Cheers, Mark T.
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Post by brumguvnor on Sept 1, 2017 14:16:33 GMT
and: wotcher Mark!
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gilbo
2019 Group
Posts: 1,446
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Post by gilbo on Sept 1, 2017 19:25:40 GMT
this is probably a real noobie question but in the Empyrean handbook on page 16+ what do the numbers in brackets next to the skills relate to? Cheers, Mark T. Not a newbie question at all. The numbers are the number of points it costs to 'buy' that feature. Everyone starts with 3 points to buy mods. You can take up to 2 points of detrimental mods (the ones with +1 or +2 after them) and these can take your total of points available to 5. Humans get 6 points plus a possible extra 4. So for example you could decide your character was Ugly for +1 and then buy an additional arm mutation which costs 4. If it has an asterisk that indicates you can choose it after first level, so you can trade a skill point for 3 points of mods, so you could get a rank in Athletics for example (but not suddenly become amphibious).
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Post by pericles on Sept 1, 2017 19:30:50 GMT
If we are starting a campaign without equipment what are the rules for Psions? A Psion can create a focus with very little effort from any item. About the only way of stopping a Psion creating an item is to imprison them in an empty cell without clothing.
If the item is restricted to having value proportional to the rank of the power it is created for you prevent Psions creating a focus from dross e.g. hair clippings from a sapian, stale bread saved from prison grub.
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gilbo
2019 Group
Posts: 1,446
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Post by gilbo on Sept 1, 2017 19:35:54 GMT
hmmmm... - looking at the rules I feel like I might play a bounty-hunter... - and if I do he'll definitely have to be named Tannhauser.... - in SPAAAACE!! So... - I know we get no starting equipment... - does that also include no bionics? And he would definitely be in prison after being framed by someone he was paid to track down - and so he might also have an arch-enemy... - but I definitely know that this would be giving Steve ammunition to use against me at a future date! I like the idea of a bounty hunter, that sounds good, but the name Tannhauser is banned! You are allowed bionics - although it depends what it is really, as when you were put in prison they may have removed/deactivated it. Having an arch enemy sounds good too. Muhahahahahaha!
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