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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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 Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 5:31 am Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | And as Lostboy said, character to capital scale is a 12D bonus to the capital scale vessel. |
So a great roll with a modified E-web could bring down an un-shielded Nebulon-B frigate? That would be an example of something that couldn't happen in 2E rules. The character to capital scale cap is zero.
| Bren wrote: |
As an unrelated side note, in part due to the shooting down TIEs with a blaster carbine examples, I'm actually tempted to try a stronger scaling modification suggested on the forum of treating a scale cap of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 under 2E as a respective -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 penalty to the die roll with any roll of 0 or less counted as a 1. This is actually a stronger "die cap" since under 2E a die cap of 4 makes the die roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4 which has an average or expected value of 3.0 whereas the modified scale cap results in a die roll of 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 which has an average or expected value of 2.0. |
Seems plausible. After lots of experience, the 2E cap system seems well balanced to me, though, so I'm not liable to adopt anything else. It is, after all technically possible to bring down modern combat aircraft with handheld firearms, just rare due to the altitude they have to fly at and the difficulty of hitting a sensitive spot on a target that's that fast. And TIE fighters are so fragile, it's not like one of them going down under small arms fire from time to time is unreasonable...
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:47 am Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | And as Lostboy said, character to capital scale is a 12D bonus to the capital scale vessel. |
So a great roll with a modified E-web could bring down an un-shielded Nebulon-B frigate? That would be an example of something that couldn't happen in 2E rules. The character to capital scale cap is zero. |
Yes, in 2E and 2RE it is mathematically possible, but statistically highly unlikely. Without some sort of house rule to cap maximum damage, with enough sixes on the wild die you could do it with a blaster pistol.
As a GM would I allow it? No.
Not unless the players first went through a lot of drama and effort first. Maybe something along the lines of
(A) recover detailed plans to a Nebulon-B frigate.
(B) have the technical genius analyze the plans and declare that there is a way to overload the engines, generators, shield buffers, turbolaser capacitors, or some such techie thing. This would be using a house rule system based on Spirit of the Century so it would mean the tech would also need to spend a FP when declaring his "find."
(C) sneak aboard the Nebulon-B to rewire the safeties to avoid the bypass, automatic shutdown, monitoring system, or some other techie thing.
(D) go outside the ship in a space suit and jet around to where they can see the thermal access port, inspection station, vent, bypass hatch, or other techie name for an opening in the ship's armor.
(E) make a great/good shot.
OK, now maybe you can blow up the Nebulon-B with a character scale weapon. |
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14034
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2011 6:31 pm Post subject: |
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Yup. Heck by the 2eR rules, a wookie can rend the limb of an AT-AT on a force point.. 5d Strx2 = 10d. AT At 5d hull +4d scale...
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 1:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Fallon Kell wrote: |
So a great roll with a modified E-web could bring down an un-shielded Nebulon-B frigate? That would be an example of something that couldn't happen in 2E rules. The character to capital scale cap is zero. |
Yes, in 2E and 2RE it is mathematically possible, but statistically highly unlikely. Without some sort of house rule to cap maximum damage, with enough sixes on the wild die you could do it with a blaster pistol.
As a GM would I allow it? No.
Not unless the players first went through a lot of drama and effort first. Maybe something along the lines of
(A) recover detailed plans to a Nebulon-B frigate.
(B) have the technical genius analyze the plans and declare that there is a way to overload the engines, generators, shield buffers, turbolaser capacitors, or some such techie thing. This would be using a house rule system based on Spirit of the Century so it would mean the tech would also need to spend a FP when declaring his "find."
(C) sneak aboard the Nebulon-B to rewire the safeties to avoid the bypass, automatic shutdown, monitoring system, or some other techie thing.
(D) go outside the ship in a space suit and jet around to where they can see the thermal access port, inspection station, vent, bypass hatch, or other techie name for an opening in the ship's armor.
(E) make a great/good shot.
OK, now maybe you can blow up the Nebulon-B with a character scale weapon. |
It always bothered me when my old GM took a roll as a suggestion, rather than an indicator of what has happened. If a thing can't be done, it should be clear in the rules beforehand. The rules are the lenses through which the player views the character's world, and if that view isn't accurate, all the fun goes away.
This is why I use die caps.
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | It always bothered me when my old GM took a roll as a suggestion, rather than an indicator of what has happened. If a thing can't be done, it should be clear in the rules beforehand. The rules are the lenses through which the player views the character's world, and if that view isn't accurate, all the fun goes away. |
I suppose that's why some players prefer a very hard rules interpretation and you are certainly not alone in that point of view.
Personally I think the desire for rules that don't require any GM interpretation only leads to a futile quest for "perfect" system or set of rules. Over 35 years of gaming experience as well as a belief in Godel's incompleteness proof, leads me to conclude that a perfect system is not possible and at one ends up creating an intricate and detailed system that requires 3 hours to resolve a single small firefight. And sadly even that system won't be perfect. For me, choosing one system over another and implementing house rules are about trying to get right the 80% of the system that matters most to me (and possibly my players). But as a result, some things that are important to others may not be included.
| Quote: | | This is why I use die caps. |
What do you cap and how is it different than the 2E die cap method. |
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vanir
Jedi
Joined: 11 May 2011
Posts: 793
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 9:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Fallon Kell wrote: | | He was referring to the target audience. He's saying that 2R&E is targeted at the same demographic as The Clone Wars, not targeted at people who have already seen and enjoyed The Clone Wars. |
In which case that it is merely a spurious ad hominem attack for which he has provided no support or foundation. It is fine for Vanir or anyone to like whatever version of the rules they like. It is annoying and needlessly insulting to others for Vanir to characterize those who disagree with his likes as immature or childish. There are elements of 2RE that I prefer to 2E and I take exception to his remarks.
The mature response when having his remarks questioned would be for Vanir to apologize for his insulting comment. Instead he is waving it off as being merely his point of view that anyone who prefers 2RE to 2E or the 2RE scaling rules to the 2E scaling rules is childish or cartoonish. |
Nah kiddo, the mature response is to cut people in this world a little slack if you can manage to figure out what they're trying to say and know full well they're not making any personal attacks. You gonna go around being the world police you're gonna find nobody else is the real problem.
I said what I said. You worry about you, I'll me thanks pal. |
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vanir
Jedi
Joined: 11 May 2011
Posts: 793
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| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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Anyways on the die cap thing the 2E rules definitely work practically in game to reflect structural scales who do exist in engineering.
Ships and aircraft both suffer damage in a very similar way to a fairly consistent result in our campaigning using 2E. When we try 2RE it's unrealistic and cartoonish. |
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Fallon Kell wrote: | | It always bothered me when my old GM took a roll as a suggestion, rather than an indicator of what has happened. If a thing can't be done, it should be clear in the rules beforehand. The rules are the lenses through which the player views the character's world, and if that view isn't accurate, all the fun goes away. |
I suppose that's why some players prefer a very hard rules interpretation and you are certainly not alone in that point of view.
Personally I think the desire for rules that don't require any GM interpretation only leads to a futile quest for "perfect" system or set of rules. Over 35 years of gaming experience as well as a belief in Godel's incompleteness proof, leads me to conclude that a perfect system is not possible and at one ends up creating an intricate and detailed system that requires 3 hours to resolve a single small firefight. And sadly even that system won't be perfect. For me, choosing one system over another and implementing house rules are about trying to get right the 80% of the system that matters most to me (and possibly my players). But as a result, some things that are important to others may not be included.
| Quote: | | This is why I use die caps. |
What do you cap and how is it different than the 2E die cap method. |
I use 2E die caps. No changes. I find them fast, elegant, and reliable. They aren't perfect, but they're almost as fast and easy to use as 2R&E scale dice and they have less room for "What the [dirtywords]? How in the [expletives] 'verse did that happen!?" moments.
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Anakin
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 27 Feb 2011
Posts: 129
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:35 am Post subject: |
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"At Hiroshima, severe structural damage to buildings extended about 1 mile (1.6 km) in radius from ground zero, making a circle of destruction 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter. The blast sent out a hyper-intensified shock wave which traveled at (slightly above) the speed of sound, turning buildings into shrapnel. There was little or no structural damage outside of this one-mile (1.6 km) radius. At one mile (1.6 km), the force of the blast wave was 5 psi, with enough duration to implode houses and reduce them to kindling."
Note that "Little boy" (the Hiroshima bomb) was a very small warhead of 15 kilotons... The biggest ever detonated was the "Tsar bomba" of -hold on to something- 50 MEGAtons...
I'd say that a medium sized nuke warhead of starwars technology would easily pulverize the death star.
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Lostboy
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 9:54 am Post subject: |
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| We all know that nukes can vaporize matter but how well do you think Star Wars shields would hold up? |
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Bren
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 11:20 am Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | I use 2E die caps. No changes. I find them fast, elegant, and reliable. They aren't perfect, but they're almost as fast and easy to use as 2R&E scale dice and they have less room for "What the [dirtywords]? How in the [expletives] 'verse did that happen!?" moments. |
But 2E die caps don't prevent shooting down TIE fighters with a hand blaster. My character did that in 2E. Nor do die caps prevent a smaller scale weapon actually damaging or destroying the Death Star. They just make it very highly unlikely.
We often use a house rule that,no matter how many sixes you roll on the wild die, the maximum damage you can do is twice the maximum possible natural rolled damage. So for a 4D blaster, the maximum natural rolled damage is 4x6=24 points. So the maximum possible damage even with a wild die or accuracy bonuses is twice that or 2x4x6=48 pips of damage. This decreases the likelihood of lower scale weapons destroying higher scale targets and actually makes it mathematically impossible to destroy the Death Star with a blaster pistol. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Anakin wrote: | | I'd say that a medium sized nuke warhead of starwars technology would easily pulverize the death star. |
I'm not following your reasoning here. Remember that the Death Star I is estimated at 100 miles in diameter, and the Death Star II is even larger. On top of that, it is specifically designed to resist combat damage (such as that inflicted by a nuke). Sure, a good sized nuke detonated in contact with the outer skin of the Death Star would inflict a lot of damage, but pulverizing the whole thing? I don't think so.
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ZzaphodD
Rear Admiral
Joined: 28 Nov 2009
Posts: 2426
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 2:31 pm Post subject: |
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My major gripe about 2ER&D scaling rules is not that you can shoot down spaceships with an E-web. Its the fact that the system makes differences between weapons almost disappear between scales.
If a Capital ship has +6D damage bonus vs a Starfighter, theres not much difference between a 2D laser cannon and a 3D on. With the old scaling rules the relative strength between the weapons were still a real factor.
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Bren
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | My major gripe about 2ER&D scaling rules is not that you can shoot down spaceships with an E-web. Its the fact that the system makes differences between weapons almost disappear between scales.
If a Capital ship has +6D damage bonus vs a Starfighter, theres not much difference between a 2D laser cannon and a 3D on. With the old scaling rules the relative strength between the weapons were still a real factor. |
OK, thanks for clarifying. 2RE has the advantage for me of ease of use (I found it easier to add a few more dice to the total and do simple addition than to fiddle with caps) and a logical mathematical progression that is the same for combined actions affecting damage and for scale (since both just involve adding/subtracting dice).
But it's not by any means a perfect system and I'd like to understand the advantage you see to the old scale rules. It's been a long time since I played using the 2E scaling and I don't have the rules in front of me. I never used nor owned the 1.5E scaling rules. Could you (or anyone else who is motivated) provide one or two examples that illustrates the advantage you see to the old scaling rules vs 2RE? |
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Anakin
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 27 Feb 2011
Posts: 129
Location: Sweden
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| Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Lostboy wrote: | | We all know that nukes can vaporize matter but how well do you think Star Wars shields would hold up? |
I think the shields make quite some difference. A nuke going off on the surface of the shields is more likely to burn out the shielding and not inflicting too much damage on the structure itself... IMO it still comes down to the size of the warhead.
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