Mechanical discussion

[Reader]

Feel free to get started on game mechanics topics.

[Test]

Test question.

[Theomore Tullison]

So I think I'll only throw in my pair of most favored alterations for consideration, at least as a start. There's plenty of tweaks that can be done, but at least if I were narrator, and I wanted to keep house rules to a minimum, this would be my minimum.

First, it's my penchant for using scaled XP costs, now this is basically a rip from some other project of mine that I give a 5% chance of ever being seriously attempted to be brought to life. The age category switch is a relatively new idea of mine, and I am not entirely sure if it's an improvement or not, I have a feeling it will be, but might be prudent to do some "
field testing"
in a smaller environment like myth-weavers before rolling it out in this type of game. The Ability/Specialty XP cost tweak on the other hand, is one that I dare say will vastly improve game balance, at least if NPC's follow suit (very few secondary NPC's would have 5's under these restrictions), and the reduced cost for the first specialty rank allows for diversification.

We will deviate considerably from chapter 3 when it comes to the construction of characters. Firstly, there is no such thing as age categories. Instead, there will be levels of accomplishments, obviously, younger characters would tend towards being apprentices and older ones towards being masters.

Apprentice: 210 Ability XP, 80 Specialty XP, 6 Destiny Points, 0 forced Drawbacks, maximum of 3 benefits, maximum of 5 unspent destiny points.
Journeyman: 270 Ability XP, 120 Specialty XP, 5 Destiny Points, 1 forced Drawback, maximum of 4 benefits, maximum of 2 unspent destiny points.
Master: 330 Ability XP, 180 Specialty XP, 4 Destiny Points, 2 forced Drawbacks, maximum of 5 benefits, maximum of 1 unspent destiny points.

Secondly, the cost for ability and specialty ranks have now been altered as follows:
Raising an ability from 2 to 3 costs 10XP.
Raising an ability from 3 to 4 costs 30XP.
Raising an ability from 4 to 5 costs 50XP.
Raising an ability from 5 to 6 costs 70XP.
Raising an ability from 6 to 7 costs 90XP.

So starting at 5 now costs 90XP (10+30+50), for example. This applies correspondingly for gaining ranks in additional languages, though replace from 2 to 3 with 0 to 1 and so forth.

The cost of specialties are determined as follows:
Raising a specialty from 0 to 1 costs 5XP.
Raising a specialty from 1 to 2 costs 10XP.
Raising a specialty from 2 to 3 costs 15XP.
Raising a specialty from 3 to 4 costs 20XP.
Raising a specialty from 4 to 5 costs 25XP.
Raising a specialty from 5 to 6 costs 30XP.
Raising a specialty from 6 to 7 costs 35XP.

As with abilities, the costs are cumulative, so getting to rank 3 costs 30XP (5+10+15), for example.

Note that these changes in cost also apply to improving abilities and specialties later.

In addition, please note that there will not be any XP grant for lowering an ability to 1, though you are perfectly allowed to do so if it fits your character. Further, no PC may have any ability starting as high as 6 or 7, such a level of accomplishment is reserved for legendary characters, and your legend has yet to be built.

The second part is not my creation, it's Coldwinds, in particular, I really like his drawback section:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19aR ... 6YxzU/edit

My suggestion here is to have this list as a supplement, allow players to ask to use one or more of these qualities and approve on case to case basis. Custom qualities of their own if they feel so inclined.

[Reader]

Thanks for the kind suggestions.

1) Xp - I'll stick with core rules here, as experience (beyond character creation) is going to be goal based and slowly, hopefully keeping a shallower power growth but under my control and dependent on in game events! Expect a post on this soon.
2) anyone can feel free to ask for permission for the customs benefits/drawbacks, handled on a case by case basis!

Thanks for getting the discussion rolling!!

[Theomore Tullison]

Well, I honestly do not see how power growth is a relevant factor as far as this goes. But if that is how it will be, I would ask you to consider imposing restrictions, such as not allowing starting PC's to have 6's, and demand that anyone with a 5 cannot hide it. Someone with fighting 5 would not go unnoticed and their description should mention master swordsman, if long blades is their specialty.

An issue with the system unaltered in a game like this, is that comparing your PC to others is a black box. For example, if I wanted to make a master jouster, and do something like Fighting 6, AH 5, + benefits. And someone else also wanted a master jouster but went Fighting 5, AH 4 + benefits, then there's going to be a problem unless the narrator drops a few hints to the former guy about him going too far out. You as a narrator will need to know where the general power level of players are.

A suggestion would be to for example offer up the (assumed) stats of the one considered to be the best jouster of Westeros, that guy has probably been around for so many jousts that most experienced tourney-goers have a pretty good idea of what he's capable of.

[Reader]

Grand suggestions on power level. I'd started a post on this (link later when off phone, but I just has an average knight for now).

I will expand this to cover more combat characters and a few intrigue narrator characters too. Expect this tonight UK time - I've drafted the major NCs already. Fighting 5, AH4 would make you the best jouster in many households by not top tier in the realm.

[Theomore Tullison]

Your average knight probably should have animal handling 3, but otherwise I approve.

On to more minor tweaks that I believe ought to be considered:
-Cohorts, should they be as strong as regular PC's? I am in the corner of "
I'd say no"

-Full Plate, make it worth to have one?
-Jousting, adjust mechanics so that a couple of two degree successes won't murder you?
-Advanced Combat Rules?
-Fatigue?

And I suppose things that came up in BITW may need a second glance, such as acrobatic defense. And also look at the various re-roll X's, and benefits that bestows -1D or +1D on opponents. Dutiful comes to mind. Make it give you +3 intrigue defense against those techniques rather than bestow -1D on opponent for example. Minor change to the statistical effect, just make it easier to handle in play.

One more thing to mention (for now), a clarification on active vs passive opposition might be needed. Or perhaps bringing attention to this.

Example:
Sneaker rolls stealth.
Spotter opposes with awareness.

Well and good, in general, spotter will use passive awareness if he's just standing on his regular watch duty, but likely active awareness if the alarm has been raised. However when there is a gray area, there is an issue that may arise should the situation be more ambiguous. If for example, lying bitch rolls bluff, it would be countered by empathy, but should it be passive or active? The cleanest way, actually, is for lying bitch to declare that she's rolling bluff, and then wait for those in the room to say whether or not they'll be actively opposing. If she rolls, and beats passive empathy, then there is no risk for the other player to actively roll, if she fails to beat passive, then other player has an incentive to not go active.

[Reader]

- Cohorts: will probably have them made as secondary characters with one benefit.
- Full Plate: Armour penalty is -4 (see house rules thread)
- Jousting: happy with KO from damage ending a joust - people can always take injuries to avoid this or just buy more endurance/full plate.
- Advanced combat rules: good point. They largely seemed to work fine in BITW. Probably just the manuevers/same rules we used in BITW, will avoid critical hits etc for now.
- Fatigue: I think we should we this, worked well in SA.

Acrobatic defence: will be allowed but character probably won't we allowed more than 2B in acrobatics initially to avoid abuse.
Rerolls 1s: I'll make a decision soon.
+1D/-1D: I'll make a decision soon. -1D is easy as it doesn't decrease rolled dice.

Active v passive opposition: I'm leaning toward almost always going with passive. If characters want to spend destiny in this situation they can use it to reduce the bluffer/sneaker's roll as they won't have a roll of their own to adjust. Easier this way.

[Reader]

Grand suggestions on power level. I'd started a post on this (link later when off phone, but I just has an average knight for now).

I will expand this to cover more combat characters and a few intrigue narrator characters too. Expect this tonight UK time - I've drafted the major NCs already. Fighting 5, AH4 would make you the best jouster in many households by not top tier in the realm.

As promised, I've added some more examples of character power level.

viewtopic.php?f=77&
t=107

[Theomore Tullison]

Bonus dice required for shield use = to training level required to attack with shield or loss -1D on all fighting tests while using shield.

I am going to have to protest on that one. Primarily the same argument from BITW, it's a specialty tax that hurts any fighting type that would like to be decent at something else than fighting.

[Reader]

Bonus dice required for shield use = to training level required to attack with shield or loss -1D on all fighting tests while using shield.

I am going to have to protest on that one. Primarily the same argument from BITW, it's a specialty tax that hurts any fighting type that would like to be decent at something else than fighting.

A fair point raised last time. I've considered your point and will probably drop this.

Edit: house rules adjusted!

[Baelon Drakeson]

Well, I honestly do not see how power growth is a relevant factor as far as this goes. But if that is how it will be, I would ask you to consider imposing restrictions, such as not allowing starting PC's to have 6's, and demand that anyone with a 5 cannot hide it. Someone with fighting 5 would not go unnoticed and their description should mention master swordsman, if long blades is their specialty.

I would not have a problem with this. In fact, I wouldn't mind even tighter starting restrictions - something like no more than one or two 5s, no more than 2 or 3d in a specialty, may not take Flaw more than once other than age penalties, etc. Basically, try to encourage more well-rounded characters, and perhaps even things out a bit between pre-gen and custom characters. It would probably help avoid the situation we had in BitW where so many of the combat characters avoided anything resembling politics or intrigue like the plague.

[Theomore Tullison]

Will there be equipment packages?

- Jousting: happy with KO from damage ending a joust - people can always take injuries to avoid this or just buy more endurance/full plate.

Well, thing is, people might have AR 7-8, maybe 10 depending on how nice gear people gets access to. And 9HP is pretty standard. Add to this that standard tourney lance does 8-10 damage per DoS (before powerful might kick in), and you're looking at a potential injury on every 2 DoS hit.

I'd suggest adding "
Chivalrous aiming"
as a jousting technique that can be combined with any of the others. +1 to the difficulty of opponent to stay in saddle (maybe +1 per DoS), but half damage. As it happens, the parts of the body (chest typically) that is best to aim for if you want to unbalance someone, is also the best protected. Jousting mishaps occur when the lance seeks the head, or the other knight gets a hard landing. This comes with the added benefit of more unhorsings, we didn't see as many of those in BITW because it usually requires Fighting two ranks above opponent's AH to provoke it.

It's more likely to get injured, wounded even, than unhorsed in some cases.

[Reader]

No equipment packages for now. Never got round to it. Just roll for gold and spend it as it says in the (amended) step by step character creation post.

Jousting - keeping as is for now, might make injuries only last for that joust (or lasting injuries = injuries taken -1?). Don't want to have too many house rules, but understand desire to adjust this so open to review.

[Dunstan Tullison]

So we roll for gold or do the 3.5xStatus?
If we roll, should we make a new thread somewhere and post orokos rolls?

[Theomore Tullison]

Well, lasting injuries=injuries-1 doesn't do that much, seeing that you'll already have depleted your HP to get one injury, others are very quick to follow. If you get two hits of 2 DoS in a row, that might well punch you into wound-territory.

Especially without equipment packages, which puts full plates out of reach for most, and people will probably have to settle for Brigandine.

Yes, accidents can happen, and the danger of injuries and worse should be real. But I do think that damage should be reduced compared to normal in *most* jousts. But in *some* jousts, there should be full damage because there's no proper westerosi joust without a good maiming at the least.

[Theomore Tullison]

So we roll for gold or do the 3.5xStatus?
If we roll, should we make a new thread somewhere and post orokos rolls?

Presumably, you'd need to stat out Dunstan first, and get approval as per step by step character creation. The Chronicle Starter Dunstan has been given 60 free XP to bump his status up. Which the book says you can do...with primary NPC's.

Plus, I'd tweak him some if I were you. Actually, I'll be making a thread about character creation help for those who might want it.

[Dunstan Tullison]

I've already settled Dunstan stats with the Narrator. Well, he sent me some, and than i changed bits and pieces and got approved.
If anybody has any problems with character creation, i have a pretty nifty interactive excell sheet, could email it.

[Reader]

Moved to 3.5x for starting gold (plus any static bonuses) - see updated step by step post!

Injuries in joust - I'll tweak a little, might be only one injury carries and even then only if you're at max injuries.

Characters can ask their house for full plate - there are advantages to being a house member!

[Baelon Drakeson]

Moved to 3.5x for starting gold (plus any static bonuses) - see updated step by step post!

Dang, that cost me a crown and a half... if I had checked here first I'd have seen the change before I rolled. Oh well.

[Jon Cobb]

- Cohorts: will probably have them made as secondary characters with one benefit.
- Full Plate: Armour penalty is -4 (see house rules thread)
...
Acrobatic defence: will be allowed but character probably won't we allowed more than 2B in acrobatics initially to avoid abuse.

If you're improving plate, I would also advocate reducing AP for half-plate to -4. I see no real reason to bully poor old half-plate by making it the worst possible high-end armor.

And if I were planning on continuing with Damon, I would protest the continued panic over Acrobatic Defense. But since I'm not, I won't.

I do think that allowing Marksmanship to pull double duty as both a melee and ranged ability needs to be seriously looked over, for all the reasons I posted over at [url=BITW][/url].

[Theomore Tullison]

If someone tries to pull melee archery against my character, I'll sunder their bow. Because that's against passive fighting.

[Jon Cobb]

If someone tries to pull melee archery against my character, I'll sunder their bow. Because that's against passive fighting.

If someone is fighting you with a bow there's a good chance they'll have had one or more rounds of shooting before you get close, which will probably lead to you being hit one or more times before you get to swing. Since their Agility will likely be high, there's also a good chance they get to act in melee before you get to try and sunder their weapon. My money would certainly be on the archer to kill or incapacitate you before you get to sunder their weapon.

The only upside is that attacking the bow is a roll vs. CD or the bow's difficulty (whichever is higher), which is at least likely to be easier than hitting passive Fighting.

[Reader]

I'll sort something on melee archery, fear not, although grab/sunder are both good options, a little extra penalty is likely to be house-ruled in.

Half-plate is staying at -5 for now: not everything has to be balanced and it's cheaper than full plate but handy for jousting, and strictly better than brigandine if you're spending fatigue/destiny to avoid armour penalties.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Bonus dice required for shield use = to training level required to attack with shield or loss -1D on all fighting tests while using shield.

I am going to have to protest on that one. Primarily the same argument from BITW, it's a specialty tax that hurts any fighting type that would like to be decent at something else than fighting.

As I've been purchasing gear for my character, I had a thought about this - and I have come to the conclusion that it should work as written.

1) Not all shields have a training penalty. Only large and tower shields do.
2) With this change, the only reason to take a regular shield is to avoid bulk and a few stags, which is really a small trade-off for the extra Combat Defense.
3) This leads to higher CDs, meaning a higher Fighting value is needed.
4) That means that a multi-specialist must devote more XP to Fighting to be even passingly effective.

In short, there SHOULD be a penalty for higher CD shields beyond bulk. Otherwise you are shifting a specialization tax to an attribute tax (or from shield specialization to weapon specialization).
Xk5 Fighting rolls are supposed to be the best most houses have, but it seems to be pretty much necessary to be effective on the battlefield - that indicates that something is out of balance;
I think it is that CDs are too high.

It also skews the balance between one handed and two-handed fighting, and makes an off-hand weapon (other than a large/tower shield) a terrible option.
Losing a single point of CD to gain some flexibility (off-hand shield to buckler or dagger) or two points for a significant damage increase (shield to two handed weapon) seems reasonable.
Losing 3 or 4 points of CD? That is much riskier. Especially when people have been bulking up their fighting/weapon specializations.

IIRC from the BitW melee, all of the finalists except Damon (a special case) had large shields. Isn't that a bit odd? If Large shields were meant to be the standard, shouldn't they be "
shields"
and what the book calls shields be called "
small shields"
?

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