Hoooo, boy. I stop reading ER for a day, and so much stuff comes up.
Okay. From where I left off-ish. Quotes are spoilered because people already read them, and this post is too damn long.
One thing we could do to make dynamic bonuses make more sense is force players to explain them. To give some context as to exactly what the fuck they're doing that gives them bonuses. AND how about this: The dynamic bonuses are only available to people with +0 or lower in the stat they're trying to use. We'll assume that if you're at +1, you've already got the knowledge and skill and that any amount of prep won't significantly increase that.
This would let +0 newbies get the benifit of prep without causing every turn to be high end players punctuating a turn with "And charge a bonus".
The first part of this, making people specify what they're doing, I like. That's a good system that would work cleanly and without hassle, but it's also the original system we had. If it's actually held to, it's good, but I don't see any reason we wouldn't fall to the same old pitfall of "Ehh, close enough".
I
really dislike the second part. It means that in some some cases, an untrained and unskilled guy is a better choice to do something, because he can't fuck it up really bad if he's allowed to prepare.
Hell, maybe you should use that as incentive for people to keep flesh bodies: they can get unlimited physical upgrades. Robo-bodies can get a set amount of physical upgrades (like maybe a total of +5 across the physical stats, so you can customize your robo-body) since they have the benefit of being harder to kill and such. Synthflesh get pretty good physical bonuses (maybe +3 across the board?) but can't upgrade at all, so they're good for people like Jim or Pancaek who need all their points for their mental stats and are willing to part with their tokens to cover their weaknesses, but there's the possibility someone could be stronger/faster/more durable by training and infinite potential of the human body and so forth and so on. 
This is a bad idea. For one, it makes no sense. Robobodies, and especially synthflesh, should to some extent be better than human flesh simply because they were designed to be. Robobodies are actually under-designed to match a human body, so they have some excuse, but synthflesh is basically
supposed to just be "Better in every way". That's practically the entire point of the stuff, aside from allowing mecha to work.
For two, it is extremely abusable. You can stick a zero in every physical stat, and immediately get a robobody, and then you're superior to most other newbies. It also means that any player sticking points in STR or END (already fairly devalued stats) is taking a massive risk, because they will outright lose those points if they ever get botted. It would probably result in more OP robots.
Maybe we could introduce the concept of defaulting on a skill check?
I.e., if you want to, you can call your roll to be an automatic 3. Only action rolls apply, of course - dodging would be hard to call in advance.
This represents a character just using whatever training or natural talent he has to carry him through a task. A medic at +1 skill attempting to do something basic like applying a bandage to a wound, could theoretically just toss random chance out the window and dress the wound properly - with the new system of outcome based on difficulty, a roll of 3 will still result in a successfully dressed wound. It won't be fancy, but it'll do the job. Similarly, a soldier with +2 Conventional can just say he fires at the enemy - it will be a decent shot on center mass, that the enemy can dodge or its armor can deflect, but it won't be the kind of spectacular catastrophe that can result from an overshot if he were to try and push his luck.
Dynamic bonuses may or may not apply. Probably shouldn't. Maybe also a special case for space magic, as it's generally poorly understood and inherently somewhat unpredictable.
In D&D, it used to be known as "taking a 10". There it's usually assumed that a character will take the needed time to be careful and do what's needed properly. If using it in combat is deemed unbalancing, perhaps it could be used instead of the dynamic bonus? Call taking a mediocre roll in advance, and get it on the next turn.
I dislike this as well. It means that everyone can always just take three safely, which would prevent anything bad from happening if everyone is suitably cautious. The only times people wouldn't take three are when there's something important going down, and they need a four or five... which is still probably foolish, because you'd have a 50% chance of messing up worse, and only a 33% chance of doing better.
I also easily see it devolving into people getting mad at each other for
not taking three in some situation, and therefore risking a one or some other catastrophe.
As has been said, you could start rolling again for people who temp die so they could lose points in certain stats to show this. As for people who willingly move into another type of body... It'd be difficult. Stuff like dex can be explained by saying you don't just need agility, but also need to know how to use it (if I suddenly got a perfect body, I still couldn't do world class gymnastics, cause I have no idea how to place my hands or move my legs and such). But for strength, endurance and charisma and such it's weird, yes.
Also, I again say that I think normal robobodies should cost 5 tokens or so, due to the benefits they grant at virtually no downsides. Not being allowed to advance physical stats is also an option, but honestly, most people use gear to cover that (except maybe dex).
Honestly, speaking from experience, knowing
how to use your strength is easily just as important as actually being strong. It makes just as much sense as with dex. I'd say the same for charisma- knowing how to carry yourself, when and how to smile, laugh, frown, etc. is much more important than just being naturally pretty. You're correct for endurance though, unless somebody here is a monk who can control their vascular system through concentration or something.
Anyway, I agree with the losing stats when you temp die on missions. That makes sense, and gives a good penalty.
As to the cost of robobodies, that makes sense. There'd probably end up people with negative tokens, either because they couldn't sell their starting equipement back for full price, or because it was used up. I'd suggest they just get five tokens deducted from their next mission pay, since that's the baseline cost.
To nerf robobodies, you could have major "organs" be occasionally hit during combat. Generator, brain-computer interface, limb servos, etc...
As they are right now, you could hack away at a robobody and it will keep fighting you right up until you get at the actual brain. Robobodies basically get rid of the temporary death state, when they should have just as many points of failure as fleshy bodies. You could outright lose the ability to make certain movements or such when you take damage; rather than muscling through pain with Willpower or adrenaline, you just completely lose the ability to use sections of your body until you get repaired. The braincase could possibly have a point of failure, as well, bringing back temporary death for non-fleshy characters.
Well, I'm pretty sure robobodies have "organs" in the way you mean. Remember how Stacy got completely paralysed in M15 after he fell?
In any case, it wouldn't solve the problem. Robobodies, after all, are in-universe built to be much tougher than human bodies, and they simply won't have some flaws. If they get their head blown off, it isn't as bad, because their brain is in their torso. If they get their legs chopped off, they aren't going to bleed to death, because they don't have blood (and if they did, it would be stupid not to put in some little valves).
Maybe we could have the current robobodies cost five tokens, and an older model/highly damaged hand-me-down can be given to corpses that can't afford that?
Or maybe some better genemods that only humans can take.
I like this idea. It lets us keep robobodies and synthbodies more or less as they are, but also allows humans and the like to very high-potential upgrades, though I will say there are already some nice ones out there that nobody seems to buy. Though this could be because they're mostly included in synthbodies.
While this does make sense, the genemods aren't going to offset robot bodies. After all, synthflesh is basically "Just better" than humanflesh, plus the fact that it doesn't reject metal "additions" to it's body like humanflesh. The only statistical advantage humanflesh has is that it's (sometimes) cheaper to work with, and that it can regenerate using cheap food.
Humanflesh also has the advantage that it's needed for blops missions, but that's a small minority of people. Plus, I think Charles is working on a fat xanflesh/robobody hybrid that would theoretically allow a robot to join a blops mission.
Short post!
[...five paragraph snip...]
Concerning "taking a 10": It could be okay, but AFAIK it couldn't be applied to any combat actions in D&D (it's been a while though, so feel free to keep me honest). So you could take a 10 to pick a lock or something but not to shoot a bow or roll a saving throw.
You're right, almost. Specifically, you're not allowed to take ten if you're threatened or distracted. So, not in combat, and not if you're in pain, or if the bard can't stop singing that stupid goddamn song about climbing ropes in an effort to
help you. I've also seen it interpreted that you can't take ten if something very dangerous would happen if you fail, like jumping over a deep pit with spikes.
...I should really get back into playing D&D.
Competing "preparation bonus" suggestions, in reversed order of posting:
On dynamic bonuses, I'd prefer them to be the same as they are, but the player has to be specific on use. Prepare Con bonus by readying my rifle and looking for any targets on the horizon is fine. Imma charging my Exo bonus isn't. Imma charging my Exo bonus to heat an area/use against the Eater/prepare for incoming enemies from the north is (one of those three, not all). A bit of specifity to explain the action gives both a reason for the bonus, and explains what a character is doing.
Concerning dynamic bonus: I'll agree that they're overused, definitely, and I am of the opinion that they should be required to be more specific than they are now. I also had a thought that maybe with the new system they could modify your "level" up by one instead of the roll. This would make it still helpful, and roll back the power of the bonus a bit (with no modifiers as the new system would have, a currently-implemented Dynamic bonus would give you half fives. That's kinda nuts and crazy powerful). What do you guys think?
One thing we could do to make dynamic bonuses make more sense is force players to explain them. To give some context as to exactly what the fuck they're doing that gives them bonuses. AND how about this: The dynamic bonuses are only available to people with +0 or lower in the stat they're trying to use. We'll assume that if you're at +1, you've already got the knowledge and skill and that any amount of prep won't significantly increase that.
This would let +0 newbies get the benifit of prep without causing every turn to be high end players punctuating a turn with "And charge a bonus".
- Allow preparation, which comes with a straight (non-dynamic) bonus to the skill/attribute (not roll); the size of bonus depends on specifics of the action itself - so creative ways of preparing would be awarded, and boring/not-so-useful restricted.
- Preparation takes in-game time; if there is reasonably enough time on hand, preparation could be done in the same turn as action - and, on the other hand, if there is no fair way to prepare in that amount of time, no preparation bonus for you.
- Preparation is an in-game action, not game mechanics abstraction, so no arbitrary restrictions can be applied - though the size of preparation bonus may decrease (possibly to the point of non-existance) if an unreasonable amount of simultaneous actions are taken.
My point was that in the proposed system, it can be easily replaced by a more active choice that doesn't cause players to waste time just so they can insure themselves against failure. They can choose to shoot the thing, and have that simple action be (relatively) safe. Or they could push it, go for broke, and risk greater penalties for failure. This is a much more interesting choice to make, rather than choosing whether or not to do nothing. Similarly, they could choose to perform an action carefully, as a modifier on the difficulty of the action. This could decrease progress rate and the side effects of a crit fail or overshoot. All of this choice in preparation, without having to spend a turn doing nothing. When your player is voluntarily doing nothing for any reason, there is a problem. Games live and die on action, so giving a bonus for inaction is a very bad idea.
All in all, (my own suggestion aside) I like Hapah's idea, I can certainly live and learn to play according to Kriellya's one.
Piecewise's has merit of restricting preparation bonus (in form of near-OP dynamic bonus) to unskilled users (where it a)cannot do much harm; b)reintroduces the interesting idea that completely untrained people cannot achieve overshots - earlier it was done by straight -1 penalty of 0 skill).
Unfortunately, apart from the lauded specificness of preparation, I cannot fully support Sambojin's idea because it is still the dreaded dynamic bonus at the cost of sacrificed turn.
Your thoughts, people?
((Edit: Fixed a little formatting error.))
Overall, I like Sambo's idea best, as long as it isn't taken to the extreme with all the specific stuff he listed. My priority for a system is something that would actually
work, and not be forgotten/broken like last time.
The problem I have with the other systems is either A:It doesn't allow for adjustment of the roll, meaning you can never ever get around the chance of rolling a one or six regardless of what you do, and B:They have too much complexity which would probably be forgotten and ignored in a month. Take Kriellya's idea for example- PW has to judge what level of risk the person wanted, for each and every action, and write the result based on that. And remember to keep it fair as compared to other risk levels with a similar roll (I.E. not fixing the problem if they went with low-risk, but got a five). For every turn, in every thread, every day.
Honestly, if we weren't even capable of keeping with the "Specify what you're doing to charge a bonus" system, why are we considering something that's way more complicated than that? Sure, it's cool, but it's just gonna crash and burn.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette: OOC and NEW PLAYER INFO (Read 2353772 times)