Sailboat

Story time!

I once joined a tabletop PnP roleplaying campaign that used highly modified AD&D rules. The GM had written a lot of his own rules and changed a lot of the ways the game worked. He claimed his system attempted to rationalize some of the overly-simplified combat mechanics. In particular, the friends that got me into the campaign emphasized that the house rules differentiated between "to hit" and "to penetrate" before rolling damage. There were also hit locations on the body, iirc.

At last, a game where your weak weapon glances off armor even if you're deadly accurate! Intrigued, I made an archer using a longbow.

The first night of play, I found myself drawing a bead on an enemy who was not armored. The arrow made the hit check on the torso of the man wearing a cotton shirt.

"Roll 'to penetrate,'" the GM said.

"What?"

"Roll to see if your longbow arrow penetrates."

"But...he's wearing a cotton shirt. This is a hundred-pound longbow that can throw a shaft over three hundred yards or sink it four inches into an oak door. Why would I roll against a shirt?"

"Look, it's a nominal roll, you have a really good chance against this level of armor."

Disgruntled, I rolled. An 11 on a d20 -- solidly in the middle of the possible range.

"It does not penetrate, sorry."

"What?"

"The arrow bounces off."

"But I rolled an 11. Are you telling me a longbow arrow glances off a cotton shirt 10 times out of 20?"

"Look, the 'to penetrate' chance takes other things into account than just penetrating armor."

"Uh...like what? Wasn't the purpose of this system to isolate penetration of armor from murkier statistics that included various other issues? What else could be happening to the arrow, given that I hit him?"

"Maybe you hit him with the side of the arrow, not the point."

"Do you even know what the feathers are for?"

Somehow I did not manage to get invited back, nor did I miss it. I understand that the GM's rules are final, even his house rules, but to claim better simulation of the physics of combat and then pull off THAT exchange....

If I had to guess, I'd guess that perhaps he was using classic D&D level-based tables to determine penetration chance, just like the level-based to-hit number, and that my problem with the cotton shirt was that I was level one. Still, I envision a world in which a depleted-uranium penetrator ricochets off a newspaper the target picked up at the last second, or a flamethrower splashes off a lucky butterfly, or a poleaxe is deflected by the flick of a maiden's freshly-polished fingernail.

Moral: If you're going to complicate game mechanics for the sake of realism, don't be egregiously unrealistic about it for the sake of matching pre-existing game mechanics.

Was that on Guardian? I was on one that we had to restart due to the door being under FF AE building. Second time it went fine. I was The Last Minoan, the big minotaur guy.

Never did get my planned Numina off the ground to complete the accolade. But I did get from 31-37 and knock off three Task Forces. Got a few very low-level characters some levels, but nothing impressive, just dabbling.

Wasted a lot of the weekend tidying up a few characters that needed enhancements, and doing some real-life chores. Curiously, my wife being out doing stuff didn't leave me much more free time than usual, since I had to see to the welfare and social time of all the animals, make my own food, and so on. I don't consider the time spent making the dogs happy to be wasted.

Ah, build problems and team tactics, as diagnosed above. The Mastermind could take his/her castable mezz protection if it was important enough. If it's not worth taking, why should the game be changed to give it to you? The Corruptor could hit +2s with enough slotting if the Corruptor wants to fight +2s regularly. I admit I don't know anything about Widows, except that I hear they're the uberest things since claw-sliced bread.

Tactically, can't you lay tar patch and corner-pull with a MM pet, never exposing any player to mezz until the baddies are mired in a Tar Patch, getting hammered by Thugs? It's a little tricky, but it's supposed to be tricky to play against +2 Longbows.

Sappers don't hit my soft-capped SR Scrapper any more often than other mobs, so I think you can rest assured they don't have a big to-hit bonus.

Willpower has some energy defense. At least you're not Fiery Aura.

Have you tried queuing up Knockout Blow, turning on your travel power, and hitting follow? I don't know what powers you have, but some make it easier than others. If you use Teleport, for example, you can appear right next to the Sapper and nail him with KBlow while bypassing the "getting shot as you approach" issue.

Intiguingly, real-life combat features enough uncertainty that various can't-lose battles turned into defeats. The idea of certainty in warfare is an illusion, and a dangerous one.

Right. Mezzes affecting you just means you can't completely ignore the enemy and rush around heedlessly like you're used to. Dealing with mezz is a skill one can develop, and it's vastly easier using the new toggle rules.

Errr...Netscape. Your're telling me gently it's time to upgrade?

Why would a set with zero defense get defense debuff protection? If it did, then certainly everyone else should have defense debuff protection, since everyone else has at least zero defense. And if everyone had protection, that would be like removing defense debuff from the game.

It's not like every character in the game has an inherent right to softcap defense...and resist it being debuffed too. It's okay that Fire Tankers survive through other means.

I do, however, wish they didn't have quite so many holes compared to, say, Shields.

Really? Why is it set up that way, I wonder?

The computer I'm working on right now, like every computer I've ever used, knows what day of the month it is due to its internal clock. Actual month, not imaginary 30-day month.

The computer is certainly capable of the math involved in accurate calendars. Pre-literate people who built Stonehenge could handle it.

They might have some reasons to use a strictly-30-day month, but "ease" and "computer limitations" and "makes intuitive sense" would not be among said reasons.

Well, it's a combination of personal ethics, my concern that one of the reasons Shields seems stronger than SR is that you can magically erase one of its main balancing factors with an exploit, and my taking offense that EVERY time the topic comes up, people helpfully rush in to recommend everyone use the exploit.

You make some pretty good points here.

Excellent idea! Be sure to take the Ghost Slaying Axe and Nem Staff when you get Veteran rewards so that you can mix them into your redraw chain.

You could also bind some of the longer-recharge attacks to costume change binds with different customized weapons to further the visual chaos.

The perma-phase concept is also groovy. Maybe add Phase Shift from the Concealment pool and the Ice ancillary for Hibernate so you can make YOURSELF a non-participant as much as possible while you're waiting for your enemy-phasing powers to recharge.