Combat and Feat Points (Insider July 31)

[AJ the Ronin]

http://privateerpress.com/community/...ider-7-31-2012

Enjoy!

[leo_neil316]

Woohoo! Lots of cool information and more book scans! Go DC!

Although..

Why do they keep talking about example characters that use careers (mercenary in NQ and now pistoleer) that, according to Simon, don't exist?

[AJ the Ronin]

Mercenary I can understand since when that article was written the book was a work in progress. Pistoleer beats me, considering that there may be printed copies of the book at PP HQ already.

[PPS_Dougseacat]

It looks as though Pistoleer was accidentally omitted from the initial chart listing required race and required archetype, but it is a viable career for the RPG. (It has no prerequisites and does not need to be a starting career.) The page detailing the career is intact, it was just unfortunately not included on the reference chart shown in the preview.

[mad monkey1]

D'oh!


Still good to see some working parts for the game system

[PsychoLaughs]

also no ranger on the chart. is that also a viable career?

i kind of want to make a gun mage/ranger gun mage/riffleman.

[AJ the Ronin]

It looks as though Pistoleer was accidentally omitted from the initial chart listing required race and required archetype, but it is a viable career for the RPG. (It has no prerequisites and does not need to be a starting career.) The page detailing the career is intact, it was just unfortunately not included on the reference chart shown in the preview.

Neat. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Blarmb]

I'm starting to get just a little bit worried about the level of CTRL+C/CTRL+V from Warmachine in this ruleset. I really hope i'm just being pointlessly worrisome and nitpicky.

[PPS_Simon]

It appears that Ranger was also erroneously left off the Career chart but is still given a full page in the book. Sorry!

[stormwell]

It appears that Ranger was also erroneously left off the Career chart but is still given a full page in the book. Sorry!

Just curious, is there any other careers that got missed off the list?

I can understand that a Bodger is a Field Mechanik, I'm curious about stuff like War Bards and how to recreate the Malefactor of Thamar.

[profparm]

If it would make things easier, you can post a full photocopy of the book and we'll start proofreading it for you.

[leo_neil316]

It appears that Ranger was also erroneously left off the Career chart but is still given a full page in the book. Sorry!

Is that "ranger" dual wielding panther familiar having woodsy semi-magical archer LotR inspired ranger.

Or are we talking CRS with swift sgts and mark target ranger?

[PPS_Simon]

Is that "ranger" dual wielding panther familiar having woodsy semi-magical archer LotR inspired ranger.Or are we talking CRS with swift sgts and mark target ranger?

Definitely the latter.

[PPS_Dougseacat]

Those were the only two omissions. There are 30 careers detailed in the book, and 28 on the prerequisite chart. Gremlins appear to have snuck off with the pistoleer and ranger.

[profparm]

Greedy gremlins wanna keep the ranged expertise classes to themselves....

[J. Beatnik]

Cool, cool. I'm super pumped for this book, as I plan on running a campaign or two in it. I'm really excited that the mechanics closely follow the miniatures game. Seems like I can resolve combat with mini-miniatures games. My plan is to make some templates of buildings, hills, etc. that you can just plop down, put some minis out in their proper spacing and use tape measures. Mats are cool and all, but with the WM bases being in mm, its just easier to set it up without. Medium and Large bases don't quite fit into squares as well as small bases.

[jdripley]

I'm very happy that in all cases so far, distance is given in both feet and inches (30 feet = 5 inches). One of the more annoying aspects of DnD 3.5 is having to count out boxes in increments of 5 feet to see if you're close enough. It will be much easier to use a tape measure. No counting necessary, just a simple measurement. And no wonky rules for diagonals either.


I'm not too concerned about the copy/paste from Warmachine. Warmachine is a very solid rule set. It handles combat in an efficient, but no overly-simple way. For example I'd call DnD oversimplified - AC reflects both difficulty to hit and difficulty to wound, meaning your dextrous rogue may be just as hard to hit as your tin can fighter. But, once hit, they both bleed and cry the same way. I like that in Warmachine you can have characters that are hard to hit, but go down hard when hit - and ones that are easy to hit, but difficult to wound due to high armor. I'm very excited to have that carry over to the RPG.

I am interested in seeing a preview of the social rules, if there are any. I see some skills that would fit into the social realm, and I see some abilities (i.e. "contacts") that are social. How do those work? I have no problem winging social things, but I'd like to see what rules there are to frame my winging

[vagabondaeon]

Those were the only two omissions. There are 30 careers detailed in the book, and 28 on the prerequisite chart. Gremlins appear to have snuck off with the pistoleer and ranger.

Is this the case in the final book as well?

[Cannotcope]

Cue Doom and Gloom:


My biggest complaint with the IKRPG (other than it not being in my greedy little hands already) is the following:

? Shake Continuous Effect ? A character can spend a feat
point at the start of his turn to shake a continuous effect.
When the character shakes the continuous effect, it
immediately expires.

Great, now those people who make up rules on the fly in Warmachine/Hordes will attempt to pull this BS in game and try to point to the RPG rules as back up. Hooray...

Seriously though, if that's the biggest of my complaints, I'm pretty happy.

Also, a moderately silly note:
You get feat points for killing enemies.
You can spend a feat point to sprint after killing an enemy.

Effectively all PCs have Sprint, if they so choose, as they should almost always have a feat point after a kill (unless the kill was determined unworthy by the GM).

[lifelesspoet]

Gremlins appear to have snuck off with the pistoleer and ranger.

Will this adventure be included in the book?

[Tarvald]

Cue Doom and Gloom:


My biggest complaint with the IKRPG (other than it not being in my greedy little hands already) is the following:




Great, now those people who make up rules on the fly in Warmachine/Hordes will attempt to pull this BS in game and try to point to the RPG rules as back up. Hooray...

Seriously though, if that's the biggest of my complaints, I'm pretty happy.

Also, a moderately silly note:
You get feat points for killing enemies.
You can spend a feat point to sprint after killing an enemy.

Effectively all PCs have Sprint, if they so choose, as they should almost always have a feat point after a kill (unless the kill was determined unworthy by the GM).

Awarded at the end of the Encounter, perhaps, to keep it from being Ridiculous? "Boost damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, Kill." Might as well play Call of Duty.

[PPS_Dougseacat]

Feat points really make the game hum and feel properly heroic, across a wide variety of career choices and archetypes. They also help (partially) mitigate some of the inherent brutality of the combat, since it can become deadly in a hurry. Players who don't learn how to use feat points and to take advantage of what they offer are likely to get killed quickly. They are an extremely fun part of the game system. That said, as with everything else, the GM can control and regulate how they are managed if he desires a different sort of play experience than the one we envisioned.

[dayminkaynin]

half the stuff from that insider is gone. lame.

[PG_Duckboy]

half the stuff from that insider is gone. lame.

I quickly jumped on the insider page to *not* find what you guys were talking about. But then Doug posted about the mechanic being brutal, which could lead to quick deaths, and I am all better now.

[leo_neil316]

Awarded at the end of the Encounter, perhaps, to keep it from being Ridiculous? "Boost damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, Kill." Might as well play Call of Duty.

If your character can make multiple attacks per turn and reliably one shot the things you're fighting against then that sounds totally reasonable.

Because you'd be fighting a horde of crappy enemies.

Having the mechanics in place to (for example) let the sword-knight quickly pick up the spares (i.e, winterguard) because they're all crappy conscripts so the stormsmith can fry the greylord unhindered while the ogrun bokur and stormblade charge the juggernaut...

Is cool.

[profparm]

Awarded at the end of the Encounter, perhaps, to keep it from being Ridiculous? "Boost damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, Kill." Might as well play Call of Duty.

Also, boosting damage roll is not one of the listed automatic uses of feat points. The only thing you can boost without spending the resources on another ability/archetype is non-attack skill rolls. Same goes for additional attacks, which you don't get either. Unless the list there is incomplete, for some odd reason.

Feat points =/= Focus points. Well, they do at times, kinda, from the looks of things, and definitely with certain abilities you can pick up. But not automatically.

[hyperatomic]

Awarded at the end of the Encounter, perhaps, to keep it from being Ridiculous? "Boost damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, kill. Move, Boost Damage, Kill." Might as well play Call of Duty.

That would be pretty ridiculous, and it's a good thing that can't happen in the rules either. If you read sprint closely, the bonus move happens at the end of your turn just like in Warmachine, so no attacks or actions afterward.

[Weaselcreature]

Not only is sprint at the end of the turn, but the rules also say that you shouldn't get a feat point if the enemy is too easy; so if you're one-shotting your enemies, you shouldn't be getting feat points. Sure, I suppose you could have 3 enemies lined up who took multiple hits and are down to 1 or 2 health each, and THEN you try that move, but it still wouldn't work (and the GM still may not give you feat points if all you did was vulture and take the kill when someone else did all the other damage).

[J. Beatnik]

If your character can make multiple attacks per turn and reliably one shot the things you're fighting against then that sounds totally reasonable.

Because you'd be fighting a horde of crappy enemies.

Having the mechanics in place to (for example) let the sword-knight quickly pick up the spares (i.e, winterguard) because they're all crappy conscripts so the stormsmith can fry the greylord unhindered while the ogrun bokur and stormblade charge the juggernaut...

Is cool.

Oh man. That sounds awesome. I want to totally play a stormsmith now in the IKRPG!

[Kallas]

so if you're one-shotting your enemies, you shouldn't be getting feat points.

That's a little unfair on the Mighty (aka Weapon Masters)!

And to be fair, many RPG's become a grind, so having something that promotes cool and relatively rapid combats is a good thing. People (ie, humans) can take a huge amount of punishment, but that's because we haven't implemented lightning on our metal/faces/everything.

One shotting should be possible on many enemies (and some enemies, like Warjacks, should be capable of one shotting characters, hence the Heroic Dodge feat)

[PG_Dalthoraz]

I think all the option we have seen so far look awesome. The only one that bother me is the starting career only I know that there is great training involved in these careers but I remember from the NQ article about building the jack marshal office they said you get to pick more career as you level, at least I thought it said that any why. But it does seems that the careers in this book look like some are exclusive in a way. Say I pick trencher and stormblade they are both starting only but say later I want to have my character develop warcaster powers I just that means I can't? From a role playing stand point it would be weird to be a trencher and a stormblade alone. But if I were and I developed warcaster abilities I'm sure someone would help you foster that power if it was to there advantage.

Up until I saw the list I was thinking of a character that was a warcaster/gun mage with end goal of something simliar to Ashlynn sword and pistol in awesome harmony but with gun mage coolness now I see there is stormblade. So now I have to start as a stormblade/warcaster then get gun mage kind of sad but I'll deal I guess. But it dodes suck if you wanted to develop one of the starting only career on your character later in "life"

[Weaselcreature]

I think they did it that way to have PCs starting as already above the norm adventurers, so a Warcaster is at a point where his/her abilities have already shown and they've already received some training. You can, however, just not advance the Warcaster career until later, showing that it is undeveloped. Another option (that I'm pondering) is houserule. I'm debating allowing a player to pick up Warcaster later, but the still MUST start as Gifted, even if it doesn't fit their starting careers (to be able to portray an adventurer who has some latent talent that has been discovered/trained by someone else; I'm still waiting to see what a Warcaster starts with, though).

[Weaselcreature]

And...speaking of Careers that were left off: what happened to Bodger? Will it be a future class, or was it lumped in with Field Mechanic? With the Mechanic starting with a labor 'jack and Marshal abilities, I think that is quite different from Bodger, myself, and I am hoping they will be an actual career.

[stormwell]

And...speaking of Careers that were left off: what happened to Bodger? Will it be a future class, or was it lumped in with Field Mechanic? With the Mechanic starting with a labor 'jack and Marshal abilities, I think that is quite different from Bodger, myself, and I am hoping they will be an actual career.

I believe Bodger became Field Meckanika simply due to having the Bodge ability.

[Weaselcreature]

I believe Bodger became Field Meckanika simply due to having the Bodge ability.

I'm officially campaigning for a separate career (you hear me, Simon and Doug? ;P)
They play completely different roles in my mind; the field mechanic is more knowledgable on the workings of mechanics and has the know-how to properly Marshal a Jack, where a Bodger is less trained, but more adaptable to their surroundings. Field Mechanics start with a 'jack, but I see Bodgers less likely to control one of their own.

Heck, a thread in the old forums or people to post wacky things a Bodger can do got turned into a NQ piece!

Theres my 2 pieces o' brass.

[Whimper]

Those were the only two omissions.

Oh good. Glad to know that the proof-reading has begun, now that the book's back from the printers.

[PG_Dalthoraz]

I imagine the Warcaster would need to start with a steamjack at least that makes sense.

[The Happy Anarchist]

It is a balance thing I imagine. One of the major advantages to the Field Mechanik is starting with a Steamjack. A warcaster has other significant advantages. Moreover, you can be a Field Mechanik Warcaster and start with a really effective steamjack!

[Bladestorm]

I suspect that a warcaster will start with very little in terms of equipment, as the ability to regularly cast spells is likely to mean they can already do significant things without it (not to mention that they have perhaps the greatest long-term potential anyway)

I know it has already been said that the only way to start the game with a 'jack is to have Field Mechanik, because that class starts with a Labor 'Jack (presumably a light one), I'm thinking the only way to start the game with warcaster armour is to start with Arcane Mechanik and use the starting 750gp mechanika item for it.

Which would make Warcaster/Field Mechanik a good place for those looking to focus on jacks and Warcaster/Arcane Mechanik a good place for those wanting more personal combat ability. At the same time it should stop them being the one big overpowered class (since you can't start with a full warcaster load-out and give up a potential combat career if you want even part of it)

All assuming I'm not wildly off-base with my suspicion of course.

[Cromusz]

Hmm, the Ranger career may have just changed up what my starting careers are going to be. I really can't decide between being a gifted sorcerer or a skillful ranger.