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My issues with 6th edition: "suspension of disbelief" vs. "the uncanny valley"

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Moonshine Fox

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« Reply #60 on: <07-14-19/1733:17> »
Or, to flip it around, it places more emphasis on being skilled with the weapon rather then just happening to be the most roided rager in the room, since unless you know what you're doing you're likely to hit someone with the flat of the blade or misjudge the position needed for a good slice leaving only painful, but otherwise superficial bruises and lacerations.

And professional baseball players have never had steroid scandals because the power (damage) behind swinging a bat has nothing to do with strength....

Gimme a break.

As anyone who has any true understanding of physical combat will tell you, strength, speed, coordination, and skill all play a part in how much damage can be brought to bear.  With simplification being a main goal of 6e, we can't expect anything to come close to accurately incorporate all of those things, the least that can be done is if Agility and Skill are being used to attack, Strength should play a part in damage.

Yeah, hi, near a decade of hand-to-hand training here thank you involving several styles of unarmed and weapons combat. That is why only strength adding to weapon damage (and in fact strength mattering that much at all) pushes it into the uncanny valley beyond suspension of disbelief for me, I've dealt with that difference personally.

And for the other point, steroids greatly boost your bodies ability to build muscle yes, it's why athletes use them. The work-out regime you use is what determines how and what type of muscles are built. A baseball player taking steroids and a power lifter taking them are going to end up with different musculature. They also tend to make one more aggressive, a boon in a large number of different sporting events.
« Last Edit: <07-14-19/1737:10> by Moonshine Fox »

dezmont

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« Reply #61 on: <07-14-19/1834:33> »
Regardless of what you think is realistic (I want to note, again, for the record, that it is trivial for a healthy person to cut through bone with a medium weight blade and that strength matters more for overpowering people, breaking their guard, basically punishing your opponent for their low physical limit with knockdowns and throws rather than hitting with insane DVs, it isn't like samurai were bodybuilders and longbowmen were probably more jacked than knights, and don't get me started on how bows were not more deadly than swords, longbowmen were more like weird battlefield bullies who harassed others from an protected position hard to assault and if you tried they would beat you to death with hammers which is the REAL reason they were spooky, jacked peasant assholes were able to beat professional soldiers to death mostly with good tactics and a V formation that was hard to get in on) I think at the end of the day most people can agree that

A: 5e and 4e 'ticklefights' were dumb, because even an average or weak human stabbing you with a knife when you are unarmored should like... mess you up really bad.

and

B: Strength so far not having any effect on close combat is weird too because being strong in a fight IS a big advantage, even if it isn't actually super relevant to raw damage.

5e's martial arts system incorporating str vs physical limit was a SUPER realistic way to make str relevant without requiring everyone to be a troll bodybuilder: High str made it harder to knock you around and render helpless past your armor and soak, allowing you to toss people, trip them, or disarm them, which is a thing strength is important in, even in combat styles that utilize a lot of physics like Judo to make it way easier to ragdoll other people.

Moonshine Fox

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« Reply #62 on: <07-14-19/1849:13> »
On to the topic of 'str to damage.' There is an... element of strength to damage in 'real life's mechanics' but in reality most weapons are designed to maximize harm while minimizing effort. Like it is 'in theme' for a crazy deadly cyborg to throw a knife or slash with one so hard they can rip through steel and bone, but when talking about the normal human STR range almost all of the damage being done with most edged weapons is the knife's work, not yours. And that knife is going to really mess you up as long as you aren't so weak you literally can't cut through flesh. Same with most blades. Clubs is a bit different but, again, most maces or hammers or clubs really are just trying to get to the speed where they break bones and once you get past that you aren't going to notice much more effect because you already mangled and broke the person you hit. Sure, maybe a crazy killer cyborg should be able to swing a hammer so hard it looks like their target was chopped in half by a meter thick axe, and you need some strength to get that mass moving, but even though blunt weapons ARE doing damage with the college level collision physics of 'speed x mass' or whatever the body does not care past a certain point that most humans already can hit pretty easily. Put another way, a katana can already be fatal wielded by an average joe on a body hit and on a good day literally bisect you. I know that katanas are sorta overhyped blades in real life but it is important to remember that getting slashed with a sword will already kill you super dead even without super strength, like the average person swinging one can sever someone's spine.

That's a pretty good breakdown of my problems with melee in 5th (and 3rd really).

That said STR not adding to DV at all does definitely FEEL weird. Realistic does not mean 'a simulation of reality.' To bust out that overused 20 dollar word, despite str not applying to many melee weapons being a somewhat better simulation of reality than assuming a body builder is significantly more deadly with a knife than a couch potato, it isn't verisimilitudinous, it doesn't feel real. Hopefully stuff like str augs will add to DV in the same way how bone lacing still gives soak dice even though soak mostly went away, because it definitely does feel appropriate for super strength to make these weapons unrealistically traumatic. That or there is some other really major strength related benefit to fighting in close combat outside of DV.

In a sense, augmentation does give more melee damage, mostly via simple STR augmentation, but different from that is bone lacing directly adding to unarmed strikes. Maybe in 6th they'll add directly to melee damage of various forms, and that would lend to that feel of Johnny Public with STR 4 from his warehouse job, being rather different then the Ancient who got STR 4 by adding in vat grown slabs or powering up with magic.

B: Strength so far not having any effect on close combat is weird too because being strong in a fight IS a big advantage, even if it isn't actually super relevant to raw damage.

5e's martial arts system incorporating str vs physical limit was a SUPER realistic way to make str relevant without requiring everyone to be a troll bodybuilder: High str made it harder to knock you around and render helpless past your armor and soak, allowing you to toss people, trip them, or disarm them, which is a thing strength is important in, even in combat styles that utilize a lot of physics like Judo to make it way easier to ragdoll other people.

In all honestly it'll probably be something I'll forgot for a while at first, being so used to the current way. I didn't know about the martial arts system in 5th. None of my players went beyond basic melee outside of a wondrously used mono-whip so I never read up on it. Now I wish I had for my own characters.
« Last Edit: <07-14-19/1850:47> by Moonshine Fox »

dezmont

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« Reply #63 on: <07-14-19/1912:32> »
I gotcha covered if you want to go so in depth with martial arts you become a fictional blackbelt. I wrote this in about half an hour during a finals week because someone asked me to 'explain' martial arts and realized I could never drink coffee again or I would be sucked directly into the speed force.

Moonshine Fox

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« Reply #64 on: <07-14-19/2129:25> »
I gotcha covered if you want to go so in depth with martial arts you become a fictional blackbelt. I wrote this in about half an hour during a finals week because someone asked me to 'explain' martial arts and realized I could never drink coffee again or I would be sucked directly into the speed force.

I somewhat envy you. I can knock back a high-test energy drink and go right to sleep. Caffeine and I are apparently too good of friends.

Singularity

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« Reply #65 on: <07-14-19/2143:44> »
I gotcha covered if you want to go so in depth with martial arts you become a fictional blackbelt. I wrote this in about half an hour during a finals week because someone asked me to 'explain' martial arts and realized I could never drink coffee again or I would be sucked directly into the speed force.

I somewhat envy you. I can knock back a high-test energy drink and go right to sleep. Caffeine and I are apparently too good of friends.

"Hello darkness, my old friend?"  ;D

dezmont

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« Reply #66 on: <07-14-19/2149:21> »
I gotcha covered if you want to go so in depth with martial arts you become a fictional blackbelt. I wrote this in about half an hour during a finals week because someone asked me to 'explain' martial arts and realized I could never drink coffee again or I would be sucked directly into the speed force.

I somewhat envy you. I can knock back a high-test energy drink and go right to sleep. Caffeine and I are apparently too good of friends.

"Hello darkness, my old friend?"  ;D

"Hello Darkroast my old friend."

I have pretty bad insomnia already so coffee and me can't ever meet.

Also canine technically doesn't help (normal people) stay up. It just blocks the 'feel tired' chemical from hitting your brain, so if your already about to zonk out it can actually make you sleep.... better?

Moonshine Fox

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« Reply #67 on: <07-14-19/2207:41> »
I gotcha covered if you want to go so in depth with martial arts you become a fictional blackbelt. I wrote this in about half an hour during a finals week because someone asked me to 'explain' martial arts and realized I could never drink coffee again or I would be sucked directly into the speed force.

I somewhat envy you. I can knock back a high-test energy drink and go right to sleep. Caffeine and I are apparently too good of friends.

"Hello darkness, my old friend?"  ;D

"Hello Darkroast my old friend."

I have pretty bad insomnia already so coffee and me can't ever meet.

Also canine technically doesn't help (normal people) stay up. It just blocks the 'feel tired' chemical from hitting your brain, so if your already about to zonk out it can actually make you sleep.... better?

Yup, blocks the sleepy neurotransmitters from bonding, making them wait in line till the caf leaves before they attack. It’s also a vasoconstrictive and can help reduce the pain of headaches, and increase the pain of cramping. (Hooray chemistry!)

BeCareful

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« Reply #68 on: <07-14-19/2329:32> »
Okay, first of all, making TTRPGs more accessible is generally a good thing: new players can grok it without having to worry about gatekeeping, and keeping all the players engaged during it is fine and dandy. So is encouraging interaction with the setting. Considering it sounds, so far, like SR 6 is succeeding in what it set out to do, that sounds good to me.

My main worry about it is, part of the game's always been about careful planning and research. The fun of it, for me, is learning about what you're going to do, everyone forming a plan, and pulling it off in ways that'll let you deal with something that'd be insurmountable if you took it fairly and head-on.

So, with the driving concept being, "Do A Clever Thing = Get An Edge, Use It To Reroll A Failed Die," would this encourage more of a mentality of, "Let's just charge on in, get Edge by shooting at unarmoured salarymen, and use it to help deal with return fire!"?

Though, to be fair, I haven't even seen the QSR, and it isn't like nobody has taken that approach in previous editions.
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Michael Chandra

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« Reply #69 on: <07-14-19/2333:38> »
There is an explicit rule about Edge abuse.
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tenchi2a

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« Reply #70 on: <07-15-19/0334:12> »
There is an explicit rule about Edge abuse.

It's funny you bring this up.
I was thinking that the Edge system reminder me of another game I ran, so I went looking through my game shelves.
I found what I was looking for, "Shatterzone" the little brother of "Torg" from West End Games, now from Precis Intermedia.
What I was remembering was the Master Deck.
Each PC got 2-5 cards from the deck depending on the number of PCs (1 PC:5 cards, 2-5 PCs: 3 cards, 6+ PCs: 2 cards) that they could use to alter the encounter flow or the game session in general.
Similarities:
1. Cards could be played to add +1-3 to the listed action roll.
2. A card could be used to take initiative, or effect the flow of the round in other ways
3. Cards could be used to negatively effect NPCs.
4. Card would refresh due to certain actions in the round. (one of the main issues with the system as players would forgo real actions to refresh cards)
5. If you had more or less cards then the above limits at the end of the encounter you reset back to the limit.

Now unlike SR6 there was no limit on number of cards gained per round and no upper limit on cards you could hold during an encounter.

But other then that it was strikingly similar.

« Last Edit: <07-15-19/0336:22> by tenchi2a »

Finstersang

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« Reply #71 on: <07-15-19/0831:59> »
If Edge really stays limited at 2 points per combat round, the most common abuse of the system will look like this once the players have gotten the hang of it:

"Hmmm, that guy already got his 2 Edge in his own turn. That means that I donīt have to worry about range, cover and armor, and I can use the hardest-hitting Firing mode without any backdraw."
« Last Edit: <07-15-19/0849:17> by Finstersang »

FastJack

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« Reply #72 on: <07-15-19/1029:43> »
If Edge really stays limited at 2 points per combat round, the most common abuse of the system will look like this once the players have gotten the hang of it:

"Hmmm, that guy already got his 2 Edge in his own turn. That means that I donīt have to worry about range, cover and armor, and I can use the hardest-hitting Firing mode without any backdraw."
2 Edge gained per combat round. They don't have to spend it, extra Edge is gone after the encounter.

Michael Chandra

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« Reply #73 on: <07-15-19/1048:18> »
True, but with that restriction you can indeed go 'this guy's already received 2 Edge this turn, let's go wild'. But then again, that also means your party sucks...
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Lormyr

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« Reply #74 on: <07-15-19/1058:54> »
If Edge really stays limited at 2 points per combat round, the most common abuse of the system will look like this once the players have gotten the hang of it:

"Hmmm, that guy already got his 2 Edge in his own turn. That means that I donīt have to worry about range, cover and armor, and I can use the hardest-hitting Firing mode without any backdraw."

Let me preface the following with the knowledge that I am not much of a fan of the new edge system, primarily because I find it a little busy for the overall drab return.

That said, I personally can't think of a reason to ever not use the hardest hitting firing mode. +2 DV for you, +1 edge for them, but I am not convinced giving them an edge is a big deal. From a min/maxer perspective using a 1 point burn against your attack is unlikely to change the result by more than 1 DV, and if they planned to spend a large amount of edge in an attempt to drastically alter the outcome of the shot they were going to do that anyhow, and likely could without the one boost.

Because it it much harder to defend yourself in this edition than 5th, the new edge system really took the teeth out of trying to use it to protect your character. It's far more efficient to spend it making damn sure the thing you need dead dies rather than surviving the thing you need dead.
"TL:DR 6e's reduction of meaningful choices is akin to forcing everyone to wear training wheels. Now it's just becomes a bunch of toddlers riding around on tricycles they can't fall off of." - Adzling