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Fenhorn
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Tue 03 Dec 2019, 15:45

Whether or not you holding the weapon or not, is not "house ruling" it is GM discretion. How a person falls and what he still holds in hands to can differ from one situation to the next and especially with what critical injury the broken character got.
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Alucard89
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Tue 03 Dec 2019, 15:51

Whether or not you holding the weapon or not, is not "house ruling" it is GM discretion. How a person falls and what he still holds in hands to can differ from one situation to the next and especially with what critical injury the broken character got.
With all due respect, anything that is not mentioned in RAW is house ruling. If Rule is not in the book- it's house ruled. Handbook says nothing about dropping your weapon/shield or needing any action to get up etc. Therefore if you add additional rulings to being broken- that is house rulling. 
since the talents doesn't give you any free actions or making you all of a sudden stand up 
Actually Unbreakable says "immediately get back on your feet" so yes, you do suddenly stand up. Also nowhere in RAW is written that if you recover points while being broken (be it talent, Minstrel Path of Hymn, Hunter or Raider path recovery or Druid healing spell) you need to spend action on getting up, grabbing your things etc. By RAW you just get up. Call it strange, but it's those part of "game" that just works that way so gameplay can be nice and smooth and so combat can continue for everyone. Being broken is already bad, no need to complicate it further.

Otherwise you would create Death Loop, where player broken -> recovers points -> spend 2 fast action to grab weapon and get up -> loses turn -> gets attack -> broken -> recover points -> spend 2 actions to get up and grab his gear -> lose turn -> gets attack -> broken. It would be impossible to act from being broken which would result in frustrating experience and there would be really no reason to get up till fight is over which makes 1/3 of paths/talents useless in combat. Such loops are not fun for anyone.

It's mechanic, not real world scenario. RPGs needs to be game'y because if you would like to rule everything according to real life physics and logic - most stuff in said RPG wouldn't even be possible to happen.
Last edited by Alucard89 on Tue 03 Dec 2019, 16:18, edited 1 time in total.
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Tue 03 Dec 2019, 16:16

This is Tomas translation how it was meant to work (my translation of Tomas post in the Swedish section)

"The idea with the talent is that you both recover attribute and attack on your next normal turn. Enemies doesn't have any reason to hit you before your next turn"
(SWE "Tanken med talangen är att man både återfår GE och angriper på sin nästa normala turordning. Fienden har alltså ingen anledning att slå på dig innan det är din tur nästa gång.")

Someone then asked "I interpret it so it is possible to do a coup de grace before the berserker rises again"

Tomas answered "Yes" to this question.

The Berserker talent was changed because of this discussion (or its wording was changed). The Unbreakable talent wasn't changed in the 2nd printing, although It do think it should be changed as well. FL might have just forgotten that unbreakable worked the same way (regarding when the talent user acts) as berserker since in the discussion about this, we only mentioned berserker.

A lot of rules is written with the concept of "GM discretion" in mind. You just can't write rules for every single situation in the game. How a character falls is not mentioned anywhere (what I know of) s I have to use GM and/or Player discretion what that looks like. This is not a houserule, it is usually called GMing.
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Alucard89
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Tue 03 Dec 2019, 16:24

This is Tomas translation how it was meant to work (my translation of Tomas post in the Swedish section)

"The idea with the talent is that you both recover attribute and attack on your next normal turn. Enemies doesn't have any reason to hit you before your next turn"
(SWE "Tanken med talangen är att man både återfår GE och angriper på sin nästa normala turordning. Fienden har alltså ingen anledning att slå på dig innan det är din tur nästa gång.")

Someone then asked "I interpret it so it is possible to do a coup de grace before the berserker rises again"

Tomas answered "Yes" to this question.

The Berserker talent was changed because of this discussion (or its wording was changed). The Unbreakable talent wasn't changed in the 2nd printing, although It do think it should be changed as well. FL might have just forgotten that unbreakable worked the same way (regarding when the talent user acts) as berserker since in the discussion about this, we only mentioned berserker.

A lot of rules is written with the concept of "GM discretion" in mind. You just can't write rules for every single situation in the game. How a character falls is not mentioned anywhere (what I know of) s I have to use GM and/or Player discretion what that looks like. This is not a houserule, it is usually called GMing.
It was not changed so it works as intended now. Imo Kin talents should always be stronger than universal talents. There is no point making them both the same. But it's apple vs oranges. Rules state how everything works, so officially it works that way- how other table make it is not my business :).

Yes, it's is GMing, but it's also house rulling. Anyone who GMed for some time knows that you need to be careful with house rules- usually they are never play-tested, many times dictated in heat of moment or as a hunch, not actual analysis and many times they create more problems and imbalances in the long way. You can alert any rule in handbook- that is the right of all tables if everyone agree on it. But since that changed rule, it's not RAW anymore. You can call it RAI even, that is fine, but it's still house ruling something.

But we start to argue about semantics :). Every table plays as they see fit. The golden rule is that everyone have fun at table :)
 
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Tue 03 Dec 2019, 17:02

Yes, Unbreakable and Berserker work a little bit different regarding on when they get up with the current printing. I have no problem with that (it is a WP costing talent after all). Above It was just me, having a thought that they might have missed it.
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Kayne
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Thu 05 Dec 2019, 22:18

Thank you all for your replies in this thread. Really it helped a lot.

And to @Alucard89: I know why this character was created this way and I know that player just love to be tank, take everything on his body and armor and then in few simple slashes kill everything around. It's his thing. He loves taking damage and giving it back. He's best at this (and because of Smith belonging to Strength, he is incredibly crafter with no skill in it :D ) and I do not want to overpower his character because I want him dead or because he's annoying. No at all. I love his character, she is incredible in her hateful towards Elves and Dwarfs. No I just want for him to be feeling threaten at some times and do not go to every battle knowing that he has 99% of surivality chance (1% of lose due bad luck on dices). 

For example. On last session they have encountered a squadron on 20 Quards riders scouting area near the coast - and then for the first time I noticed that he hesitated and after diplomatic way of resolving conflict, still in character's role, he admitted that these riders most probably would be too much even for his Orcish female berserker fighter. And that's great. This is exactly what I was aiming for. I just wanted him to be scared, to realise that even biggest warrior on this planet can't always win. I just wainted him to think "wait a second, maybe I can't win this fight? Let this Aslene Hunter or Elvenspring Minstrel talk for a while, and I just stand in the back with my hands on my swords if things would come south after all. Hopefuly not.". And I achieved this and I'm happy with the effect.

To summarize everything. I know how to use Monsters and NPCs to threaten a little bit more this orcish fury of hate and blood if needed. And sometimes it needs to be done. Not everyone is invicible. But I certainly not going to use these tricks against my player on every day basis.

Thanks again :)
 
Alucard89
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Fri 06 Dec 2019, 01:47

Thank you all for your replies in this thread. Really it helped a lot.

And to @Alucard89: I know why this character was created this way and I know that player just love to be tank, take everything on his body and armor and then in few simple slashes kill everything around. It's his thing. He loves taking damage and giving it back. He's best at this (and because of Smith belonging to Strength, he is incredibly crafter with no skill in it :D ) and I do not want to overpower his character because I want him dead or because he's annoying. No at all. I love his character, she is incredible in her hateful towards Elves and Dwarfs. No I just want for him to be feeling threaten at some times and do not go to every battle knowing that he has 99% of surivality chance (1% of lose due bad luck on dices). 

For example. On last session they have encountered a squadron on 20 Quards riders scouting area near the coast - and then for the first time I noticed that he hesitated and after diplomatic way of resolving conflict, still in character's role, he admitted that these riders most probably would be too much even for his Orcish female berserker fighter. And that's great. This is exactly what I was aiming for. I just wanted him to be scared, to realise that even biggest warrior on this planet can't always win. I just wainted him to think "wait a second, maybe I can't win this fight? Let this Aslene Hunter or Elvenspring Minstrel talk for a while, and I just stand in the back with my hands on my swords if things would come south after all. Hopefuly not.". And I achieved this and I'm happy with the effect.

To summarize everything. I know how to use Monsters and NPCs to threaten a little bit more this orcish fury of hate and blood if needed. And sometimes it needs to be done. Not everyone is invicible. But I certainly not going to use these tricks against my player on every day basis.

Thanks again :)
@Kayne - No problem! Ok, so it seems that this is some good player, not some murderhobo :D. I knew players like that who loved building super tanky high damage melee characters- they usually just want to feel that party is secured when "things go south" as you said. Judging from your description it's probably someone who min-max every RPG character. But as long as he is roleplaying and work with team- I personally like that type of characters. Especially that usually he can do in battle things that allow me to expand more his impact upon world, as word goes by that there is mighty warrior somewhere (maybe someone will be interested in giving someone like that an impossible mission? Or even a duel?).

For example my dwarf player at one session decapitated 2 Iron Guards in plate armors with just a hatchet in hand (Axe Fighter 2 + Executioner 3 combo) and I immidietly rised his reputation by 1 as this deed went viral in Forbidden Lands (and among Rust Brothers of course). I thought that I will be able to break him and take him into custody (original part of plan) but he just deleted them and I really loved it :D (Now he is called Grimar "The Guillotine") . Naked dwarf with hatched decapitating 2 elite enemies :D. Epic!!

You said he hesitated and let other players resolve this in more diplomatic way- good, that means that he knows that not every fight can be won by combat. Which is also hard for any Orc to realize I bet . So all is good it seems. It may even lead to character development. I think I understand your problem, you want this player to feel danger, which is good. FL is harsh and mystical dark fantasy world (reminds me sometimes of Berserk a little bit). I will admit myself that as GM I once or twice lied about Critical Roll result behind my screen when one of my players was broken (cause otherwise she would die), because I had plans in story for them and I strongly prefer a good story over killing my players :P (or I am too lazy to work with new character maybe?).

Well, still Orc with racial trait and Berserker will be extremely though anyway. Their racial is honestly imo best, together with Humans. Few more sessions and you will probably have the strongest warrior in whole Forbidden Lands at your table. Hope you will get some epic tales out there!

Glad we all helped- have fun with your adventures.
 
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Rymdhamster
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Sat 07 Dec 2019, 22:49

Lucky does wonders for the lethality. 1 level is good for anyone to have. 2 levels makes it very unlikley to die. It can still happen, there's still risk. 

Level 3 might sound a bit overpowered at a first look, and I guess it depens on how much acutal combat you run and how dangerous you want that combat to be. 

In the campaign where I'm a player, I acutally have Lucky lvl 3. And so far we have not fought anyone with executioner. Despite that, I have been in sever risk of dying several times. Because not all cases of death are due to critical injuries. 

There has been several cases of falling to a certain death (blunt damage table is fine for short drops, but if you fall a hundred yards you're probably just dead), couple of cases of risking drowning, at one point there was lava, and a couple of more times that might be a bit to spoilerly to mention. 

And of course, just because you don't have roll on the crit table doesn't mean you are safe in combat either. Even enemies can atempt to deal a killing blow (or what ever it's called in english). The bad guys want to win to, after all. 

So lucky is an excellent way to tweak the risks in combat, without removing danger completly. But if you are a player, maybe check with your GM first. It gets kind of pointless if the GM doesn't like it and throw in executioner on every other enemy because of it (specialy as that would make the game that much more dangerous to other player characters). 
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Sun 08 Dec 2019, 13:31

I would only give NPCs Executioner if it is appropriate for that character, a GM has to be careful to allow players an opportunity to use talents they have spent their hard earned xp on.
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Ebrim
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Re: Dealing w/ Lethality

Sun 08 Dec 2019, 19:38

No better way to “use” luck than to run into people with executioner. ;)

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