Ashs Adventures – Page 7

On Custom Content

September 19, 2015 by Ashgar

Not too long ago, Tam wrote about not being entirely beholden to the rules as written, in the context of progression speed. He was speaking mostly from a GM perspective, but as a player, it’s not unreasonable to come to the same sort of conclusions. One of the time-honored ways of doing this is via conversion. As systems come and go, things are printed that for some reason or another, don’t make the new version. Sometimes there’s a good reason for this (See: D&D 4e’s Warlord), but other times they’re just left behind (5e doesn’t have an Eberron book yet, so it doesn’t have rules for Shifters, Changelings, or Warforged, even though Warforged were in one of the playtests). If these things really interest you, it’s reasonable to make changes that make sense for whatever system you’re playing in, and run it by your GM to see if the result is reasonable. (Note: this is not a standing excuse to min-max a thing you don’t like. Expect your GM to recognize it if you make it such, and react appropriately.)

On Custom Content — Related: Since Cathar are supposed to be rarer in the Old Republic era than other times, why is it that that’s the only era that has them in the games?

…which brings me to the actual topic of this post. A while back, we were in a Star Wars campaign based on the Saga Edition ruleset. We’re looking into playing in a new campaign based on the new Fantasy Flight rules, and I want to play a character similar to (but not identical to) the one I played previously. The first problem there is that I played a Cathar, and Cathar have not yet been printed for the new edition. (If I were a betting man, I’d bet that they’ll be in the Force and Destiny sourcebook focusing on the Seeker class, when that gets printed.) But given a base to work from (the Saga Edition Cathar), and given how races are structured, I think I can come up with a reasonable approximation.

The Easy Stuff

Races in FF Star Wars have 6 stats, which do not correspond cleanly to the familiar d20 stats: Brawn is a sort of mix between CON and STR, and CHA is split out into Cunning and Presence. Humans have 2 in each stat, but most other races have a stat at 3 and a stat at 1, with the rest staying at 2. Saga Edition Cathar had racial bonuses of +2 DEX, -2 INT, which corresponds neatly to starting Agility and Intelligence values of 3 and 1, respectively
Cathar in Saga Edition also get climb and stealth as automatic career skills, but skills are (usually) handled a bit differently now. Skill bonuses are granted as a free rank, and usually only in one skill. Some races get a choice of skills, and I think that approach fits here. This would mean Cathar get a free rank in Athletics or Stealth, but still cannot train either above rank 2 during character creation.
It’s possible to represent the Natural Weapon: Claws as a +1 damage on Brawl attacks, with a critical rating of 3. This is taken directly from Trandoshans.

The Hard Stuff

From there things get a bit complicated. Most races in SWRPG stop at 2 bonuses, and get 100 starting XP, a Strain Threshold of 10 + Willpower, and a Wound threshold of 10 + Brawn. These numbers appear to be used mostly as a balancing mechanism for other things that the race got. Humans didn’t get much else, so they get 110 starting XP. Hutts have extra stats and threshold values, so they get 70 starting XP. A Cathar with the above abilities, and the baseline XP, strain, and wound values is fine, but it does leave out the more interesting aspects of Cathar in Saga Edition.

Saga Edition had action economy that strongly resembles D&D 4e, with Move, Swift, and Standard actions. Cathar had the ability to make a claw attack as a swift action when targeting an enemy with a melee attack once per encounter. SWRPG doesn’t really represent the concept of 1/encounter well, and also doesn’t really treat its actions the same way. Instead, it breaks things up into “Actions” and “Maneuvers”, where Maneuvers are mostly “things that don’t require rolls”. There are two ways I could see representing this. The one that most resembles the old rule would be to allow Cathar to make a claw attack as a maneuver once per session, during a turn in which they target an enemy with a melee attack. That’s a bit clunky, so it might be better to let them treat their claws as having the “Linked 2” property once/session. This is potentially stronger, but also forces you to make the initial attack with the claws, when you may be carrying something better. (If you’re a force user, possibly something significantly better.)

Cathar also had a base movement rate of 8 squares, which was nearly unique to them. Humans and most other humanoid races had a base speed of 6 squares, and this difference was a large part of my race choice back then. My character’s ability to be almost anywhere on the battlefield in a single turn eventually became character-defining. Thanks to FF Star Wars using a more abstract movement system, there are limited ways to represent that. One option is allowing Cathar to move between medium/long or long/extreme ranges in a single maneuver, but that actually seems quite strong for a racial ability. A more reasonable alternative might be to grant them the Swift talent for free, which also has some precedent in other racial abilities.

Generally speaking, these are interesting ideas, but they’re beyond the scope of what most races have to offer in FF Star Wars. The only salvagable part from this session is getting Swift for free, and that should probably have a cost. With the Swift talent for free, more appropriate starting stats are probably 90 XP, Wound Threshold 9 + Brawn, Strain Threshold 11 + Willpower. Most races with a starting XP penalty pay for it somehow, and the talent and an extra point of strain seems like a fair tradeoff.

To Recap

Brawn	Agility	Intellect	Cunning	Willpower	Presence
2	3	1	2	2	2

Wound Threshold: 9 + Brawn
Strain Threshold: 11 + Willpower
Starting Experience: 90 XP
Special Abilities: Cathar begin the game with one rank in either Athletics or Stealth. They still may not train Athletics or Stealth above fank 2 during Character Creation. They also begin with the Swift talent.
Claws: When a Cathar makes Brawl checks to deal damage to an opponent, he or she deals +1 Damage and has a Critical Rating of 3.

This hasn’t actually been approved yet, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll play a human and it won’t matter anyway.

On Extremely High-Value Targets

September 14, 2015 by Ashgar

A little while back, I mentioned the trouble our Shadowrun crew was getting into. Here’s how it went:

Erase Police Records

Through sheer blind luck, I managed to roll my way out of getting arrested by the police, and got hired by them instead. (I still got the data I wanted too, but we ended up not using it. Pity.) Turns out that being allowed (even paid) to walk in is a great way to make sure that certain records aren’t there when you leave. This was done largely as a favor to the Prodigies, the NPCs that Tam is writing about.

Protect Shipment

As a side benefit to the above, we managed to get to the docks a little early, arriving in time to set up an ambush. Turns out they weren’t quite prepared to deal with a jet and a ninja. This one went way, way better than expected, as we managed to keep the gangs from running off with the shipment and making enough noise that the police showed up in large numbers, just as we were leaving…

Break Into Mansion

…which meant that there was no police detail at the mansion when we arrived. This is really what we came to Boston for in the first place: our investigations led to us looking for data on Project Alchera, and this was allegedly where it was located. As expected, we ran into quite possibly the most hated shadowrunner team in Boston, as we knew they’d been keeping tabs on us. Turns out the Prodigies had a grudge too, and Alice managed to wreck the place with a rather large fireball (at some cost to her own well-being). We did manage to clean up the entire opposing shadowrunner team, which means we’re leaving the Boston scene a little nicer than we found it. After some additional nonsense involving cutting communications and thinking we were just going to get the data and get out, we ran into Alchera II.

Alchera II turned out to be a very cybered-up woman. She was in a tank and appeared unconscious, so our initial thought was to save her. Then she woke up, and everything went to hell. Lashing out with very odd powers, she blew up electronic devices in her immediate vicinity, while also attacking everything available on the Matrix, which included the technomancer of the Prodigies, Nick. Her downfall was her arrogance: she tried to do too many things at once and ended up taking counterattacks both in the matrix and her physical body. An EMP accompanied her death, so we may not have gotten all of the data, but we got enough to work from. Among other things, we found out that there were 8 more of these things.

Get the Magic Box

Unfortunately, we had to leave the formerly burning, soaking wet building in kind of a hurry, as our jet was being shot at on the way out. We’re currently lying low (or as low as it’s possible to get in a VTOL), so we’ll have to take care of this last job while on the road. There’s also the matter of getting paid for the jobs we did do…

On Making the Jump

September 12, 2015 by Ashgar

As I write this, the Kickstarter for Battle Chasers: Nightwar is just out of the gate, and the one for an RPG based on the Infinity Miniatures game should be launching at some point soon (allegedly Tuesday). I find the timing interesting, because these are both cases of properties branching out to slightly different fields. Cross-media is getting me in trouble, but it’s almost always interesting.

On Making the Jump — The date is obviously not still accurate.

Comic->Video Game

On reflection, this isn’t an uncommon transition (although it usually goes Comic->Movie->Game). I was actually directed to this initially without knowledge that Battle Chasers had been a comic. The art (both concept and prototype) is awesome, and I found it a bit familiar. Then I found out that Joe Madureira was the artist and knew why. This one seems to have a few Ex-Vigil staff on board, but it remains to be seen if they can do a turn-based RPG as well as they did Zelda. (I’m not going to listen to any arguments that Darksiders is not Zelda.)

Wargame->Tabletop RPG

On even further reflection, I’ve seen this one before too, from Iron Kingdoms. Iron Kingdoms is in a bit of an odd place here, because it started as a d20 Campaign setting and underwent this process in the opposite direction. The resulting minis game (Warmachine/Hordes) ended up as the more popular product. Infinity is actually somewhat similar, in that it grew out of a home-brew campaign setting. Aware of this, Tam attempted to work the rules into a workable system, but it didn’t go very far. (This was before the customizable spec-ops rules existed). Some of the unique characters in the Nomads faction were the original PCs.

The current Iron Kingdoms rules are a direct conversion of the Warmachine/Hordes rules, with some additions made for things player characters do that minis usually don’t, like talking to people, or actually recovering from injury. The result is that minis from the wargame are perfectly valid enemies once you give them more than a single hit point. (There are exceptions. Named Casters are generally not going to be reasonable opponents, for instance.) The Infinity rules seem to be going a slightly different route. It’s using a system not based on the minis game, but instead just preserves elements of it. Ability resolution is familiar, but not identical; it still uses d20s in a blackjack-like way, but from there the games diverge greatly. I missed the playtests, so I don’t know that much about it, but it’s a custom system that uses 2d20s to generate a number of successes.

While Corvus Belli (The company that produces Infinity) isn’t directly responsible for the RPG, they are producing materials to go with it. I really look forward to seeing what happens with it. The original Bran Do Castro seems to like it, so here’s hoping I do too.

On Mini Giant Robots

September 7, 2015 by Ashgar

LBX is a 3DS game about fighting model robots. It’s a recent release in North America and Europe, but it’s a 3-year-old remake of a remake of a game that came out in 2011 in Japan. It’s kind of cheesy and clearly intended for a younger audience, but I love it anyway. The fighting itself has elements of games like Virtual On, and the structure of the game reminds me of Mega Man Battle Network, both games which I enjoyed a lot. More than that, the entire concept reminds me of one of my favorite games on the Game Boy when I was younger: Power Quest.

Tiny Fighting Robots

Power Quest was one of the early games for the Game Boy Color, and I got it as a Christmas gift when I turned 12. It is also a game about fighting model robots, but the core gameplay is a fighting game.The game itself involved you roaming around town, earning money to upgrade your model (by beating people around town in duels), and occasionally getting interrupted by the plot, which is mostly nonsensical and involves the Bad Hyenas Gang and your best friend. At the end of the game you fight in a tournament and defeat a masked wrestler to end the game. I probably wouldn’t consider it a very good game at this point, but on reflection it’s the first fighting game I got heavily invested in. I’d played Street fighter 2, but I didn’t really know how things worked until later.

While the plot is largely an excuse to fight robots, one thing that stuck with me is that about halfway through the game, your best friend moves away. Thanks to timing, I played this game shortly after I moved halfway across town (which might as well be halfway around the world when you’re 12). Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack, which was incredibly good for a Game Boy game.

Bigger Fighting Robots

LBX turns out to have a surprising amount of surprisingly well-done voice acting, and has an actual plot. It’s a lot like Pokémon in that an organization is using these things for evil (so of course you have to use them to put a stop to it), but there’s also a hint of a Last Starfighter-esque plot where this turns out to be training for actual giant robots down the line. (This is in the opening, so I don’t consider it a spoiler.) It also leans heavily on Defeat Means Friendship, so it’s not uncommon to be fighting alongside bosses after you beat them. Your own robot is quite customizable, so while you start with Achilles, you can eventually use almost anything you want. I’m eager to see where this one’s going, because I really like it so far. There’s also a cross-media element that might be a bit dangerous, but more on that later.