Monday, July 27, 2020

UVG-Troika! damage conversion - take two (and two important questions)

Hello

I recently posted a damage conversion from UVG to Troika!  Unfortunately, I screwed up.  My players protested even before the play-test, I looked at it again, and I realized something fundamental.  Specifically the damages rolled on an 1 are WAY too high.  If you look at the existing weapon damages in Troika!, on a 1 you do 1-4 points of damage, with the sole exception of dragon fire (which is 6).  If you look at my first attempt, you will note that for several weapons, damage on 1 are WAAY above this.

Sausage indeed...

The value you get on a 1 is pretty important because it represents "grazing" damage and, because of armor, it comes up not that rarely (armor imposes a penalty on the 1d6 roll).  It's also important as a determinant of the effectiveness of a weapon vs heavily armored foes.  So I have to re-do this.

First, I'm tweaking my basic patterns:

AVG 6 (base step is 2) -1 2 3 4 5 6
FLAT (can opener, sword) 4 6 6 6 6 8
Average (spear based) 3 4 6 6 8 9
Wild (ax derived) 2 4 6 6 8 10
superwild 1 3 5 7 9 11
Spike  2 2 4 6 8 14

You'll note that the roll on a 1 or less for the average damage is no longer 4, but 3.

The second thing is that the damage on a 1 must NOT change when the average damage is scaled up.  So if I have an average damage of 7 (not 6) I would go +1 to everything *except* on a 1.  The extra missing damage would go on the 6 instead.  So an average spread, average damage 7 would look like:

3 5 7 7 9 11, instead of 4 5 7 7 9 10 (the old method)

On an average damage of 8, the extra goes on the 4, becoming

3 6 8 9 10 12 , instead of 5 6 8 8 10 11

This may have to be adjusted for individual damage patterns of course - for example on the "flat" pattern that extra is applied to the 6 twice.

Once we reach an average of 9, we create a new set of patterns.  You'll note that the damage on 1 has gone up a wee little bit, but not much.  This means that damage will go wilder as it goes up - a pattern that already happens in Troika!

AVG 9 (base step is 3) -1 2 3 4 5 6
FLAT (can opener, sword) 5 9 9 9 9 13
Average (spear based) 4 7 9 9 11 13
Wild (ax based ) 2 6 9 9 12 16
Superwild 2 5 7 10 13 17
Spike  3 4 6 9 13 19

Again, if you need a higher damage you increase damage but *not* on the 1 d6 value.  And when we reach average 12, a new set of patterns is needed.  Note how the minimum damage has crept up, but again not too much.

AVG 12 (base step is 4) -1 2 3 4 5 6
FLAT (can opener, sword) 6 12 12 12 12 18
Average (spear derived) 5 10 12 12 15 18
Wild (ax derived) 3 8 12 12 16 21
Superwild 2 6 10 14 18 22
Spike 3 5 8 12 16 28

So let's apply this to UVG guns...

UVG PISTOLS -1 2 3 4 5 6 7+
Inquisitor squirt gun 2 2 3 4 5 8 10
Revolver 2 3 4 5 7 9 12
Porcelain Prince Pistol 3 6 8 9 10 12 14
Ultra Blaster 5 10 10 10 10 15 18
Blue God Blaster 5 12 14 15 17 21 25
















UVG RIFFLE -1 2 3 4 5 6 7+
Heavy Crossbow 4 5 7 8 9 9 12
Scavenger bolter 2 5 7 7 9 12 15
Redland District SMG 2 4 7 10 11 14 17
Violent Cat Riffle 4 9 10 10 12 15 20
Vome Slagger 2 6 8 11 14 19 24
black city matter disruptor 2 7 10 10 13 18 22
Satrap gun 2 8 11 12 14 19 22
Voice of Death 3 6 9 13 17 30 35

This isn't perfect, but it should be a lot better.  There are probably slight tweaks here and there that would make that much smoother, but it's a solid step forward. It feels more in line with existing Troika! weapons, although some of them hit *very* hard indeed. I admit that I may have pushed the damage too high - playtest will reveal this.  But now that I have my patterns down, adjusting them should be fairly easy from now on.

Lastly, the important question.  In Troika, you have skills tied with specific weapons - spear, hammer, knife.... but when it comes to ranged weapon, there are only 4 - bow, crossbow, pistolet, fusil.  So I assumed that if  you had pistolet, you were proficient in all pistols, and fusil in all rifles... but now I am not so sure.  With that interpretation, it will push people towards pistols and rifles.  

Another thing I was thinking about is the importance of melee combat in Troika! Whenever someone attacks another, there are no "misses" - either the defender gets hurts *or* the attacker get hurts (baring the occasional ties).  This makes fights go quickly, it's a very cool aspect of the system!  But in a ranged battle, especially if everyone has cover... fights can go long because there is a lot of of missing going on.  I wonder if this needs a fix or not... 

 "this post is an independent production by me and is not affiliated with the Melsonian Arts Council"

4 comments:

  1. "But in a ranged battle, especially if everyone has cover... fights can go long because there is a lot of of missing going on."
    I don't know if it's fun to game, but that seems to be what happens in the real world. Lots of shooting, few casualties.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're absolutely correct! And no one in their right mind will charge a group of people will ranged weapon because that means you've broken cover *and* have just made yourself priority target #1.

      But is that *fun*? It's a game, and I'm a bit miffed to see one of its strengths going away. I'm not sure how to make it realistic/fun.

      In a melee fight, if you roll poorly (no matter if you are the attacker or the defender) and your foe rolls well, you've made a big mistake and you are going to get stabbed. In a ranged fight, if you roll poorly you missed wildly... but it doesn't mean you've just exposed yourself... in fact you might have missed because you are firing blindly from behind cover! So the "opposed roll, loser gets hurt" system, which is *great* in melee, doesn't make a lot of sense here. Hmmmm....

      Delete
  2. Not UVG related but Troika: are you still working on a SW hack? Trying to figure out how to beat run something in that setting given some of Troika’s quirks (but maybe they aren’t problems? Blasters probably should be pretty deadly. Your minimum 5 skill house rule is probably the sorta thing that’s necessary for a galaxy full of competent heroes.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello
      Thank you for the question :)

      I started working on the force, and it was a lot of work (it's always more work than I anticipated), and when I started a UVG campaign ... well I had to focus on that, only so many hours in the day.

      I also need to do backgrounds, weapons.... but you know what, I think I will publish what I have already, I just looked at my draft post and it is in better shape than I thought - it's not a complete system, but it's a foundation?

      Delete