So here’s the Mecha quote from last week:
'Let's make a secondary [conflict] system that is about half as intricate as the main one, that you cannot possibly even hold your ground for a millisecond against someone trained in it.'
This describes a common mistake in game design. Designing a secondary system is easier than incorporating new ideas into the core system. However, that just passes on to gamemasters and players the puzzle of how to make them work together. There are a variety of ways to avoid this problem: sit out some fights, pick up abilities to cancel the system, become an expert yourself, or introduce wholesale immunities to the system. Most of these approaches either force everyone to deal with the system or minimize its impact (nerf') it. In either case, the objective is increasing variety fails. Sitting out is a simpler option, but it comes at the cost of fun and should be avoided whenever possible.
The real problem here is defensive and not offensive. For abilities not emphasizing conflict, lacking expertise isn’t a problem because non-experts will stay away from those abilities. Similarly on the offensive, a sword fighter need not worry if they are inept with an axe. The problem is defensive because a characters weaknesses will intentionally be targeted. Teamwork abilities can help with these problems, but should not be so demanding that the weak character is effectively sitting out the conflict or that the defender' doesn’t have a role other than protecting the weak character.
Thus I suggest the solution is that defensive systems should all overlap. Each characters should have strong points and weak points, but there should be a minimum standard for non-extraordinary weak points. This applies to combat but also any other situation where characters face consequences for failure and cannot necessarily rely on their strong points.
Happily, both DnD 4e and Besm 3e make real strides over their predecessors on these issues. I’ll discuss Besm 3e after the cut.
The core Besm 3e combat mechanic is attack modifiers +2d6 versus defense modifiers +2d6. Attacker wins in an a draw. Having both sides roll slows the game down a bit, I’d prefer using a static number on the defense side, but on the whole, this works. The basis of the attack roll is consistent across normal attacks and odd ones like mind control, metamorphosis, nullify, or using special attributes defensively. I’m not going to deal with grapples and disarms and such in this session because they get to a different problem. Exceptions: exorcism, healing (metamorphosis reversal), telepathy, block power, offensive use of non-weapon attributes, sphere of control Exorcism and healing (metamorphosis reversal) are both used to reverse the effect of prior successful attack. Thus they don’t fall into the unified defensive system category. In the other cases, instead of attack roll versus defense roll, competing stat rolls are used. Telepathy can only be used to get information. It works like mind control but doesn’t require an attack. I’ll play around with the social rules later. As for the other rules, found on pages 156 and 159 of the book, they are a direct holdover from Tristat DX. In my view, they are a legacy mistake and should be updated to work in the same way that the now specifically defined attributes work. My reasoning is that attributes like teleport are just as dangerous as any of the better defined alternatives. Transmute does have defined rules for attack other’s items, although the –1 penalty per item point cost might work but probably bares closer examination. As a side note, weapon variables that give touch attacks: contact (2) and aura give far more bang for the buck providing a +3 bonus at a cheaper rather than the 1/1 boost/cost of accuracy. Also auto-fire seems to think that spreading gives an attack penalty. If the attack beats the defense and the attack is a fairly ordinary one, then damage is dealt the game proceeds. However, for some attributes and weapon custom variables the defender can make a roll to resist the effects. This roll is against a set target number (TN), although the level of the attribute or custom variable will often increase the difficulty. Similarly, several attributes give guidance to the GM for making the resist roll easier if the effects are particularly nasty. Autofire can be used to make the following checks more difficult. Categories: Quite the hodgepodge. First off, with maximum levels and a static base number, most of these do not scale well. They’ll typically be quite useful against low point cost characters but no matter how much is invested in them will be worthless against high point cost characters. Also, stealing a page from DnD 4e I’d prefer to avoid having the defense rolls based on a single stat. On the one hand, with only three stats it’s easier to cover the spread, on the implementing a lesser penalty from having one low stat allows for a more interesting variety of characters. Here’s how I’d consolidate these rolls (if an ability shows up twice, than the defender chooses which method to defend with): One mechanical note, I think melee attack and ranged attack should be able to specify attributes as specialties. This allows the option for players to be really good at a weaker form of an attribute. With the consolidation done and oddball rules dropped, there’s now three main defenses: defense rolls, physical saves, and mental saves. To ensure balance, a minimum should probably be specified for all three values based on how many character points are available. However, the minimums only make sense if there are also maximums. In some systems, maximums are effectively set by a combination of exponential costs and stacking rules that mitigate getting around exponential costs by getting abilities from multiple sources. However, Besm does not have exponential costs, let alone stacking rules. The alternative I’d suggest is hard maximum value caps on bonuses to dice rolls. I prefer capping the bonuses over capping the attributes because there’s no real consistency regarding what a level 1 power means versus a level 3 power. Similarly, attribute caps would mean higher caps for attacks with more inputs, such as grapple which benefits both from unarmed attack and from multiple arms. Figuring out what those caps should be is a project for another weekend. I don’t trust the values that Besm 3e suggests. The caps will actually be low enough to let characters hit them in two focus areas. I’m also thinking of introducing a mechanic to raise a cap for one stat, combat value, or skill by a maximum of 1. Buying such a cap buster would cost twice the normal point price. Ideally cap busting should be hitting the point of diminishing returns and would be limited to characters who really wanted to excel in a specific area. That will actually be a little bit easier in Besm which involves rolling two six sided dice rather than DnD’s single twenty sided die. Two dice means normal distribution which means that once you’re past needing to roll the average value, each additional bonus to the roll has a smaller effect. If done properly, the caps should be low enough to allow for characters to buy some less optimized and more flavorful abilities as they hit the higher end of their point strata. One other new mechanic I’m thinking of would be a ‘competence’ ability that provides +1 to everything. This could be used to help players meet minimums and move to higher point stratas without having to spend as much time assigning points. A side benefit would be that stats for higher point value characters would not be as far through the roof and thus could be roll played with greater ease.Attack versus defense
Resistance
Numbers
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