The Kibble
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Vitality and BodyDo people think vitality and body make the combat system overly complex?
Can you remember what to take on vitality and what to take on body?
Would it be simpler if we had more hits?
Should there be a maximum limit on how much vitality characters have?
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Paul_Howe
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Vitality is a great way of representing the heroic luck and grit of the player characters. In the two events I have attended I have found that gribblies with vitality tend to undermine that heroic feeling. It makes the players less heroic.
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Fenric
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I agree with Paul - and like the way that the system works in general - but perhaps monsters need less vitality.
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comedyofhate
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| Fenric wrote: | | I agree with Paul - and like the way that the system works in general - but perhaps monsters need less vitality. |
Vitality is a mechanic to represent bullets not always hitting which to be fair would happen to anyone, frankly with the current kill ratio of mooks to players, the balance is about right. As players are gaining more vitality as they progress, while mooks such as jafar are not being upstatted ( I do not think this is a real word) to reflect this.
If I recall correctly normal people have between 1-3 vitality, jaffar have around 4 + armour and goaul'd have (I am not saying, but it varies).
Generally speaking the average mook is a jafar wielding a staff, the general starting combat character has an SMG. The game is moving away from staffs having the 3 knockdown, and going to doing just 3, and with the secondary call of global knockdown. Generally speaking a starting character with one feat should knock a Jafar toothless. As combat characters progress their capacity to kill the hordes of jafar progresses
Having spoken to Alex Armstrong, when font and modeski were cut off, they killed between them 20 to 25 jafar before the jafar AND goauld were able to capture them.
Last event very feats were given to the NPC's and this IMO seemed to give the about the right level of challenge. The main issues that seemed to be occuring for the players were
1) Night fighting - always chaotic, it is supposed to be though.
2) Ammunition - The limited amount due to the storyline, meant that Jafar were more difficult to deal with. When players are not limited by ammo, Jafar are generally wheat before the scythe.
3)Player numbers, several times due to crewing the combat teams were light.
IMO, it is a heroic system (starting characters, begining as minor heros), and characters are quite capable of exceptionaly heroic acts as they progress.
I think the main thing that needs to be looked at is how often if at all certain mooks should respawn for certain storylines. I don't think I got it entirely right last event.
I think what may help before every event is a brief rules refresh for players and crew. A half hour demo of what happens to whom. Specifically for new players and new crew. Still if a simpler system can be devised for the morass of ranged combat fights that take place I am all ears. 
Regarding a maximum limit on vitality, this is an interesting question. One to be fair that I have no hard and fast opinion on. As long as new players are able to become fully involved in the game all is well.
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Fenric
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| Quote: | | Having spoken to Alex Armstrong, when font and modeski were cut off, they killed between them 20 to 25 jafar before the jafar AND goauld were able to capture them. |
Modeski was slacking then - Font could have done that number with his legs cut off.
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Woody
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Personally I don;t have a problem remembering what affects body and what is vitality, but I realise some might.
I like the mechanic and don't really think it is broken enough to warrant concern to be honest.
As one of the crew on the "chase Font and Modeski" mission that was two quite powerful PC's in a combat situation one was captured without help from the Gu'ald I do'n't think it helped much with capturing Font either.
It was purely sheer numbers but they played it as smart as they could using ocver and keeping moving helped survive.
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Olivia Chase
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I have no problems and think it's fine as it is.
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Earthbinder
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please remember not every player is a combat player. most of the time a team will have 1-2 combat capable individuals and a couple of "plot" capable individuals
there are a lot of players who have been around since the start of the UKGC events and TBH i feel like getting a chair out and just sitting about applauding when they arrive, because quite frankly there aint much they cant do.
does leave some of us new players standing around with the thoughts of .. why was i hired by the UKGC again?
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Esther
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| Earthbinder wrote: |
does leave some of us new players standing around with the thoughts of .. why was i hired by the UKGC again? |
Cos you are a bloody good medic?
Seriously though even those of us who have been around since the beginning can't do everything and even if we can we can't be everywhere at once.
I know at least one person thinks there is no point them doing language stuff cos I do it better.. yes there is.. most events I haven't been able to find the time to do the translations that need to be done and I can't been every where at once.
There are plenty of holes that need filling skill wise and many problems need more than one person to solve them.. Even Lucky wouldnt' have got us girls out of the cell we were in on his own Friday night he needed someone else helping him and they both blew feats to do it.. as it happened it was a none techy using what would X do so a newer techie character would have been better at it that the established none techie that helped him..
yes older characters have more feats but personally I haven't come out of this event with any more than i went in to it with cos the shit that gets thrown at me means I need to blow them to stay alive (OK granted some of it i got myself into). I'm not saying there isn't power creep and that needs keeping an eye on especally multiple perm feats and the like BUT there is a place for new characters and you make your place via roleplay, some of the characters Keser has most respect for are newer ones.
As far as combat is concerned.. according to the refs I'm the hardest character in system. According to Calvin I'm a non com who he doesn't want on any mission he leads. That's roleplay for you.
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The Kibble
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| Earthbinder wrote: | please remember not every player is a combat player. most of the time a team will have 1-2 combat capable individuals and a couple of "plot" capable individuals
there are a lot of players who have been around since the start of the UKGC events and TBH i feel like getting a chair out and just sitting about applauding when they arrive, because quite frankly there aint much they cant do.
does leave some of us new players standing around with the thoughts of .. why was i hired by the UKGC again? |
TBH there have always been characters like that. I was sidelined alot early on and had to make my self a place in the game. I can't see that Dr Gordon has that problem but it may be the case.
I do also feel there is the risk of using characters who are known about compared to unknowns as someone in charge which is one reason I have tried to put together the skill database so you can find other people to do things not just the known people.
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Theo
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Also i'd like a ref-facing crew database too for exactly the same skill breakdown to be visible, so that missions could be better written to cater for the wider spectrum of player capabilities. Though then making sure said player is on said mission, that is another story...
Erm, what was the topic again? Oh yes, vitality and body. I can't say it was something i was too fond of to start with, it defs confused me a little as an unfamiliar reader of the rules. But in using it its really not so bad. I kind of came to see vitality as 'hero points' that got burnt through before the hurty stuff kicked in. From that point of view i grasped it quite happily.
I would say therefore that maybe only players should have vitality. All monsters etc should just have a body score, say between 10-15 for jaffa (depending on how many crew there are for the refs to layer them on, or needing quicker respawns etc etc).
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comedyofhate
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By adding additional body to jaffa and removing vitality, the net result is the down powering of covering fire, and spray fire, this in turn makes it more difficult for characters without combat feats to put a mook down quickly.
I understand the reasons for down powering jaffar, and indeed I agree to a certain extent, my main worry would be down powering them to the state that they no longer pose a credible threat or more importantly an interesting threat FOR player characters.
I would also strenuously argue that certain specific creatures, "villains"* and specific npc's. should be given vitality and indeed feats as the story lines warrant, the players are not the only hereos and villians in the universe, and their needs to be mechanics to represent well trained capable protagonists and antagonists.
At the moment, jafar only seem to pose a threat in large numbers, and have the capacity to dodge a number of shots bases on their own vitality and their armour which can be used as normal or to soak one critical hit. To a certain extent I think we need a number of different cookie molds to represent different jafar of different levels of experience which can be used to easily brief crew members.
Also Jafar can and have represented credible talky and roleplaying storylines in the past, with experienced / veteran / heroic jafar having different effects on the player base.
To denigrate the entire race to essentially "mook" status would probably get a little boring for both players to fight as a bad guy "of the line" combat threat, and for crew members who essentially at the end of the day have to have fun playing them in combat situations.
Back on track with vitality, vitality is supposed to represent heroism but also luck, mischance, training and villainy (in harry fonts case.  ) and makes up a simple mechanic for missing your opponent in ranged combat If vitality is removed from npcs need a similar mechanic to represent plauers missed shots, or essentially feats such as crit hit and the different firearms calls are essentially only useful for pvp.
For new players, jaffar certainly have already been down powered and their stats do not compare to a normal player character, last event only a very minimum of jafar were given feats, and the weapons have been slightly down powered also, yes for non combat hereos they are difficult to take down, but not all hereos are specialized in combat and should be able to stand ona pile of jafar bodies with naught but a tea cup. As a player you choose the way your character is created and develops.
Also jafar were originally designed so players , non combat and combat a like have to make use of cover and hopefully use some basic tactics to take them down quickly and efficiently, thus making combat more interesting for players as opposed to three jafar on the bridge demanding money! 
Back on topic, On body and vitality, I like em. I think an upper cap on vitality main need to be put in place, but I see no real problem with it.
*1st and 2nd rate bad guys, not mooks"
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