cranewings's page

Metric may be great for everyday use in the modern age, but I'd never want to use it when writing or playing fantasy — it's got no SOUL! Besides, I'd rather drive 5-10 mph over the speed limit instead of 5-10 kmph over the limit. ;)

Now if only I had an F/LGS to write about...

Driving is more fun in Canada. Everyone does about 25 kph over the limit, but you can get a $10,000 fine for 30 over.

I do like your plan to give fighters grit.

I really hate the gun slinger. Half of their powers are things I would have let them do for free anyway, like shooting locks or scooting an object. The other half are terrible, like rolling 10 attacks for 1 gunshot or stunning people by shooting them in the face, further crapping on the idea that hp are abstract.

I think you should take this farther and write up better things to use grit on.

I'm not your bro, friend.

I know it is intuitive to think that removing armor training but armor training is what lets them jog in chain. Take it away and they really slow down.

Tirq wrote:

Also, the problem with the site I showed you is that you can't really get a good look at the actual size of the minis. The Vassal of Menoth is on a 30cm base while the Avatar of Menoth is on a 50cm base.

Those are some huge miniatures. O_O

(I assume you meant millimeters, rather than centimeters.)

30cm might be right. What's that in English, about a foot?

We have a store here that does 10 v 10 games of 40k with up around 20,000 points per side. If one side is willing to commit to it, they can pool points and get these two to three foot tall "minis" that sit on the table and wreck everything.

IS the punch itself supposed to be slow, or is the kata you are using to learn the punch slow?

Neither. They think the punch is fast.

I used to work in one back in the late 90s. I do miss it.

It was right in the middle of the bar district downtown. Most of our normal and respectable customers came in at night, after they got off work. People that showed up before 4 were often strange. We tended to call them, "the day people." Here are some examples:

1) 400 pound woman playing Illuminati or L5R CCG in the middle of the afternoon. She starts bleeding onto the felt chair through her sweat pants, dabs it up with some bathroom brown paper towels, and sits back down in it to keep playing (I wasn't there for that one).

2) A girl comes into the store looking for tarot cards (we sold them for some reason). Feeling comfortable, she starts telling me about astral projection and how she spends each night traveling the world with Loki.

3) Strange dumb kid comes into the store. I'm telling another customer about the new World of Darkness products and the new metaplot elements. He stands there (easily 18 years old) staring at us while I finish up. I look to him and say, "can I help you?" to which he replies, "are you talking about a game or real life?" A week later, I saw him at the metaphysics shop down the street asking the clerk while holding a second ed. monster manual, "could you tell me which ones of these monsters are real?"

4) A regular broke into the lockers with a crowbar and stole everyone's magic cards that they kept at the shop. He shows up the next week playing stolen decks, obviously. There was a crap storm over it.

5) I, personally, was told by 3 different larp groups that someone played me in their games. I was killed twice and turned into a thrall once. Very weird, but I was flattered.

I could keep going, but you get the idea.

In RPG's, and to a lesser extent, in bad science fiction that I love, the characters can generally do whatever it is that they feel like they need to do.

It is hard to come up with believable anarchy in science fiction, what with technology and all. So what are all they ways it can be done?

Mad Max / Post Apocalypse: There is no society around to enforce order.

Epic Points of Light: Each planet is its own jurisdiction. If you commit a crime on one planet, you can just leave. "I have the death penalty on 12 worlds." You can still deal with bounty hunters, but the governments of the different planets don't assist each other, even with lists of wanted people.

Fatal Flaw in Security: If it were mirrors edge, you can always just run away on the roof tops and the police lose track of you.

Too Respected: The PCs can use their Picard / Kirk powers to just ignore command and do what they want. As long as they are always successful, there is no penalty for ignoring the chain of command.

What else? This is important because I'm trying to formulate how the PCs can get away with murder in my next science fiction game. Right now, I'm thinking it is #2, where the worlds are enemies, privateers are an issue, and no world prosecutes criminals for crimes they commit on other planets.

There is still the technology issue: so stealth will be key and in Battlestar Galactica style, once a ship jumps it is nearly impossible to track.

Okay.

Sometimes limiting magic has the opposite effect. Limiting anything can tend to do the opposite of what you would naturally think.

For example, I run a low level world with the vast majority of NPCs being under 4th level. You would think that this makes the game less crazy, but truth is, once the PCs hit 6th, nothing can mess with them easily.

When you limit magic to sorcerers and oracles, ban magic item creation, and limit what NPCs have magic - you would think it would make the game less magical, but it doesn't. What you end up with is the PC's sorcerer being the only guy around who can scry and teleport, and no NPC has a reasonable counter for it, so it gets used constantly.

Yeah, I agree with you on the sparring part and as far as the boxer training goes, I don’t know, I have no formal training in martial arts so personal experience is all I have to draw on, which is obviously extremely subjective, so you are probably right.

And oh yeah, I love MMA guys, playing around with them is soooo much fun, I have learned a lot from them in the last year and a half, although I must say, I do have a soft spot in my heart for my less seriously minded ninja monkey, parkour obsessed friends.

lol well, if they are doing ninjitsu and parkor because they are trying to look sweet and have a good time running around, and their self defense is saying screw it and daring the fat body trying to fight them to jump the fence, they might be on to something (;

cranewings wrote:

Maccabee wrote:

If you're FIRST class in ninjitsu is already rolling out punches, I'd question the school itself. If the school and technique is actually called NINJITSU, thats an even bigger clue. I took Taijutsu for 4 years as a teenager and the entirety of the first year was learning to fall, roll, stretch correctly, and blocking.

If no one can punch, what do you practice blocking?

There isn't much point in practicing defense if there isn't a credible attack to test it on.

Yes, thank you tactical master, I'm aware of that. My point was that traditional Taijutsu is structured THAT way and not like a Karate dojo with 100 paying customers practising chambered punches. The senior students and instructors typically act as the aggressors during the initial training.

For a whole year? I just don't get the point. People I know who are serious usually can get blocking and striking, with hardened wrists and fists, and be able to move around balanced within 3 months.

As far as questioning the school itself, I'd question it if there were students finishing their first year who couldn't hit back.

What's the issue you are trying to fix?

For me, the game world changes into something I do not like with 4th level spells, with the ability to transmute gold into magic items, or with reliable access to spells for typical NPCs. For me, your fix isn't enough.

I want castle walls that stand, and that don't need to be lined with lead.

The problems with high level spells basically come from wondering why the game world looks like it does. Why are their castles when every king has a wizard that can blow them up? Why do we have armies when it would be cheaper just to make my best knights carry rings of invisibility and wands of fireball?

Normally people who have an issue with high level spells have issue with some specific thing that is being done with them, like making a bunch of wishes or something - that, or the GM is refusing to give his NPCs access to the stuff and wondering why the PCs are walking all over them.

@cranewings

I guess the one thing I should point out(that you already know I am just vocalizing it) is that in a fight every last little advantage you squeeze out really is more opportunity based than anything else, so in the case of what I am talking about you aren’t going to try and catch every punch and when you do try you are not going to necessarily succeed but the threat the counter presents in terms of being able to shut down someone completely means most of the guys I know only punch when it is the “correct” choice rather than trying to rain down blow after blow with their hands on someone.

As to why I know a decent amount of people that can do this and you have never met anyone that can I’m not sure, maybe it is a symptom of what the people we know primarily focus on?

It could be. With the exception of one TKD school that mixes Yudo, TKD and Hapkido, I've had zero luck with finding traditional martial artists that can spar for crap (and those guys never actually use the hapkido). I get all of my sparing in with MMA people (who are always game to fight anyone) and I've not seen any kung fu or ninjas who can stand up with them.

Personally, I do use some wing chung, kali and silat in my sparing, but it wasn't until after I learned kick boxing / tkd and boxing well enough to spar, and then sparred for a long time, that my reflexes improved enough to use what I spent 4 years fretting over. I do not believe that anyone from a school that fails to spar with strangers will develop the reflexes it takes to do these moves, and without learning some boxing or kick boxing, you will never survive long enough to try anything.

Wraith, my point was that if character power is on a scale from one to 10, doubling WBL isn't anymore than a +/- 1 where character build is -/+5. Fretting over WBL to me is like changing the oil in a totaled car. There isn't much of a point.

Is this ment to be more of a class or equipment anyone can buy?

The mix and match component sounds similar to the summoner. Have you considered writing it up in a similar style?

Have you considered making it a supplement apart from the main book? Or doing basic stuff in the main book and making an expanded set of options in a supplement? Consider including the base options and rules in the expanded option. As much as I hate paying for the same material twice, if it is an inexpensive, PDF, it might be nice to have all the material in the same place.

I was really turned on by the concept of it being used in fallout games. I love that universe!

I also really like the idea of being able to customize the suite. That is one of the reasons I love the game front mission 4 and why I also love the summoner/eidolon.

I love love to see any samples of both this work and the book of nine swords stuff you did.

Thanks. I think you might have me confused with someone else - I didn't do any Book of 9 Swords stuff. Wish I could claim I did.

It will only be a couple of weeks until I put a PDF of this up for sale. I'm running a game with this system right now which is covering my play test. The only big hurtle is rewriting the suit design, which I think I just hit the nail on the head of.

I don't want to make a separate supplement for this. In previous games, designing power suits / kill bots with these rules has been the main fun people playing engineers have, sense starship engineering is mostly a glossed over story element - and people who liked the old system, really liked it.

If you're FIRST class in ninjitsu is already rolling out punches, I'd question the school itself. If the school and technique is actually called NINJITSU, thats an even bigger clue. I took Taijutsu for 4 years as a teenager and the entirety of the first year was learning to fall, roll, stretch correctly, and blocking.

If no one can punch, what do you practice blocking?

There isn't much point in practicing defense if there isn't a credible attack to test it on.

cranewings wrote:

LazarX wrote:

What exactly is the point Crane? You have a DM who sticks by WBL and you want more?

WBL is nothing more than a rough guideline. Depending on campaign sometimes more is needed, sometimes less.

My point is that most of the recent conversations on WBL here seem pointless. I don't see how it matters if my sorcerer gets +1 to his saves or +3 from magic when the game allows me, in my ignorance, to pick magic missile and lightning bolt instead of enlarge and haste. WBL is such a small part of this game, it is hardly worth the words spent writing about it.

If you have a fighter with gear and another without gear, all things being equal the one with gear will vastly outperform the other one, all things being equal.

There have been many threads with GM's giving too much wealth out, and it causing trouble. As a GM who did such things, when I first started this is something I can attest to.

If you think it is a small part of the game the make a two handed fighter without only half of the proper amount of WBL between levels 10 and 13, which is level that many of us play at. I will make another one with full WBL, and see how they perform. To keep things even we can even use 2-handed weapons since they don't require as much wealth as TWF'ers, archers, or Sword and Board types.

We can run them through scenarios, just like we did for the monk, and see if there is very noticable difference. If the difference is small enough, that most of us would not care then you may have a point.

I would also suggest that we use the same race to avoid muddying the waters.

20 point buy
APG,UC,UM,CRB
2 traits
You can choose the level between 10 and 13<--levels most comparison are made at.

Sure, under the condition that you not dump a stat under 10 and I get to pick your feats.

Yeah, that’s funny then in that our experiences are very very different. When it comes to punches arm, wrist and finger locks are always a very real possibility from what I’ve seen, and I’m not talking about theoreticals or training but from being in and observing many real fights.

It is interesting that so often martial artists have completely different views of what is a big threat in combat or not, especially because what they have been doing has been (at least in theory) working out for them.

Eh, things still happen that change my world. I'm back in jujitsu right now. Even though I'm not interested in competing, something happened a while back that opened my eyes. Normally, I agree with ninjitsu self defense in that anytime someone tries to grapple you, in a self defense situation, you can still your thumb in their eye. Normally I simulate this sparring by driving my thumb into their cheek or something. It is usually pretty easy since their hands are busy.

I was sparing a guy who had me in a single leg up against the cage wall. I hit so hard that my typical down elbow to his neck felt feeble. Then he through me on the ground, onto my side, and got a side mount so complete with my back curled against the cage that I couldn't get my hands to his head and actually had to wrestle, resulting in a complete ass-kicking.

I'm not saying that you are wrong. I mean, two moves I practice more than anything - muay thai leg kicks and body hooks, I never ever use in sparing, but I still show them / train them because they are objectively good. Maybe some of the ninjitsu is good. I've just not seen anyone who can perform it in the prescribed way. In my world, it is still countered accidentally by normal movement.

It is true that western boxing gets a lot of criticism from many well trained martial artists, such as the classic joke:

Question: How do you know when you have won a fight?

Answer: When your opponent adopts a boxing stance.

But I don’t really think that it is all that bad, it just focuses on aspects of fighting that aren’t very productive against most skilled opponents.

The big problem with it is the emphasis on throwing punches and surviving punches, which is fine and helpful when fighting people who don’t know how to fight or other boxers but against others neither of those skills are particularly helpful.

The biggest problem involves something most people don’t realize: That in a fight one of your biggest vulnerable points is actually your hands. Every time you throw a punch you are providing your opponent the opportunity to put you in a wrist or arm lock (something that is pretty easy to do and can screw you royally) and potentially turn that into a finger lock (also pretty easy to do) and if that happens your only two choices are to break the lock, which almost always results in broken fingers, or scream for mercy before the other guy seizes control of you, twists you into a pretzel, and kills you.

I don’t know much about wing chung, so given your experience you are probably right about that, but in the case of those ninjutsu monkeys I feel that they are definitely entitled to their dismissive attitude, seeing as a great deal of their style seems focused on specifically turning those forceful(and honestly rather sloppy and repetitive) attacks boxers favor so much into broken bones and shorn tendons.

I've got a game I play with people who tell me about how straightening your arm for a boxing punch is wrong. I tell them that I am going to throw a straight punch with whichever arm they pick, as many times as they like, and to win, all they have to do is grab my wrist or finger. They don't have to pop my elbow or fight my strength or even turn my hand over. All they have to do is grab my wrist while I'm punching.

I'm 270 pounds and I do not box. I do some boxing style punches as a part of my martial arts, but I spend very little time developing them and I know lots and lots and lots of people who are faster than me. I like to present this challenge to people who are themselves known for their strength and speed.

I have not once, ever, had someone able to grab my wrist. They might get their fingers around it, a little, but they can't hang on. It is all of their effort and skill to not be punched in the face. Once they have a punch coming at them from me, who is not at all interested in helping them perform the technique, they fail.

I agree that their are some problems with boxing. It is still a sport and the gloves make it so that you never have to worry about the shape of your fist. I believe the best punching is boxing style, but trained along with karate style fist hardening, by punching trees / walls, strengthening your wrists, and doing pushups on your fists. Kyokushin Karates is a LOT like this, though I disagree with their tradition of not going to the face. Putting gloves on to protect the other person so that you can train attacking the head is important to be a complete martial artist, in my opinion.

Anyway, all the talk of ninja grabbing your arm and breaking it because you straightened your arm doing a punch is something that they can only do during half speed sticky hands training among people who are trying to let it happen. It isn't real. If it ever did happen, it is just a fluke.

I think the problem with the fighter is a system problem, not a class problem.

1) Wonderous items like flying swords and cloaks of invisibility are too expensive. They need their costs halved or quartered.

2) AoO's for attempting combat maneuvers without the feat should only occur when the attempt fails. Opening up the ability to trip and throw makes combat much more interesting.

3) The movement / action rules are too detailed. They are like a straight jacket made out of non-sense. They could do with a lot less detail and a lot more openness.

cranewings wrote:

Do worlds where a large percentage of the population is as skilled in combat as any 30 of its 18 year old armed men put together, or where they still bother with sailing ships and castle walls when every village has a flying invisible guy who can shoot 60' r blast fireballs?

I've never seen such a world. Even if there is, you obviously don't pit those thirty 18 year olds against the battle hardened vets. :P Any army is going to have a mix of both.

I think I heard this line of thinking from Zuko, right before his dad shot his face full of fire. Keep that in mind (;

You don't need to have Excel, Google Docs has an option to create charts in their word documents. I'm using it for my Tome of Battle adaptation to Pathfinder rules. I suggest just foing a mockup of some basic stuff, then tweak the table until it covers what you want. After that it just flow along nicely.

Thanks for the tip!

cranewings wrote:

Yes. I do not care if people own explosives.

Unless they target you - then this might change.

See how you feel about it when President Hitler Gerald Stalin throws your kids and their wives on the buss to Mittelbau-Jersey.

Hitdice wrote:

cranewings wrote:

thejeff wrote:

So as I said before, you support private ownership of actual assault rifles, RPGs, mortars, SAMs, land mines and other bombs (IEDs are the substitute)?

Because that's what you use to fight asymetric wars against modern militaries.

Yes. I do not care if people own explosives.

Well, what are we talking about when we say "explosives"? I don't care about fire works and whatnot, but I really don't want to live close to someone who thinks it's fun to get smashed and play with the C-4 he bought down the road at Bomb-Mart{tm}.

Since he's responding to me, I assume he means RPGs, mortars, SAMs, land mines and other bombs, since that's what I asked about.

Yup. I think it would be good for the country if the government / corporate overlords had more to worry about than peaceful protests. Unarmed citizens are basically surfs and as the government gets more and more efficient with better and better chemicals and robots, they will have less to fear by taking away our liberties.

What exactly is the point Crane? You have a DM who sticks by WBL and you want more?

WBL is nothing more than a rough guideline. Depending on campaign sometimes more is needed, sometimes less.

My point is that most of the recent conversations on WBL here seem pointless. I don't see how it matters if my sorcerer gets +1 to his saves or +3 from magic when the game allows me, in my ignorance, to pick magic missile and lightning bolt instead of enlarge and haste. WBL is such a small part of this game, it is hardly worth the words spent writing about it.

cranewings wrote:

I wish that the gun lobby would be more honest about what it thinks guns are for. I wish people purchased guns specifically for the use they are interested.

Hunting
Home Defense
Personal Defense
Killing Government Officials

The government has done a good job of disarming us to a point where it would be hard to fight back against the military if they decided to use them against us. The entire point of gun control in my opinion, is to make it harder and harder for citizens to fight back against if we ever need to.

Just like I believe that the tea party has been tricked into supporting causes that are not in their self interest (libertarian billionaires don't give a crap about you), liberal gun control advocates are being lured by politicians who want to erode our ability to maintain our freedom.

If all you thought guns were for were self defense and hunting, we don't really need very strong weapons. Hell, shotguns and pistols should cover it. Everything else that they want to ban, they want to ban because they are more effective against military personnel.

So as I said before, you support private ownership of actual assault rifles, RPGs, mortars, SAMs, land mines and other bombs (IEDs are the substitute)?

Because that's what you use to fight asymetric wars against modern militaries.

Yes. I do not care if people own explosives.

Turin the Mad wrote:

Lecter dealt with people as mentally chaotic as the Joker for many years. Even the Joker has his patterns of behavior.

If Lex Luthor can account for the Joker, so can Lecter. :)

By definition, there is no mortal in the DC Universe as Chaotic as the Joker. He's the one that Chaotics look sideways to.

And compared to Lex Luthor, Hannibal Lector is pocket change.

I read a five comic series a few years ago where Luther spent a ton of wealth and resources, while he was already down and out, placing nuclear bombs at sacred spots all over the earth - as leverage against Ras Al Ghul - should he happen to ever be reborn. Lex Luther isn't someone who leaves a lot to chance.

I wish that the gun lobby would be more honest about what it thinks guns are for. I wish people purchased guns specifically for the use they are interested.

Hunting
Home Defense
Personal Defense
Killing Government Officials

The government has done a good job of disarming us to a point where it would be hard to fight back against the military if they decided to use them against us. The entire point of gun control in my opinion, is to make it harder and harder for citizens to fight back against if we ever need to.

Just like I believe that the tea party has been tricked into supporting causes that are not in their self interest (libertarian billionaires don't give a crap about you), liberal gun control advocates are being lured by politicians who want to erode our ability to maintain our freedom.

If all you thought guns were for were self defense and hunting, we don't really need very strong weapons. Hell, shotguns and pistols should cover it. Everything else that they want to ban, they want to ban because they are more effective against military personnel.

Hmm, guess I could add worlds populated with chiefly 0th level people except the PCs to the list of things I'd never run. The very idea is abhorrent to my sense of an internally consistent world. ;)

Do worlds where a large percentage of the population is as skilled in combat as any 30 of its 18 year old armed men put together, or where they still bother with sailing ships and castle walls when every village has a flying invisible guy who can shoot 60' r blast fireballs?

Baal, good stuff.

Kryzben, don't be fooled by wing chung. I think it is good and I do use it a little, but I had to do a lot of sparring to get to a point where I could find a place for it.

They basically tell you, same as ninjutsu likes to, that boxing isn't good. So you will never see a western boxing punch in class and it turns out western boxing naturally counters a lot of wing chung. Worse still, almost everyone you will ever spar or fight, who is dangerous, will box. Wing chung is cool, but it only works if you personally go through great effort to make it work. Otherwise it's just setting you up for a right hook to the chin.

baal, that list is awesome. Good job.

Don't listen to the naysayers - they are just confused that you posted something that doesn't have to do with 4 CR = APL +1 encounters per day with figures on a dry erase map. Clearly you are playing the game wrong (;

- End up with a person or valuable in your possession that is obviously not yours, fragile, and unable to help itself.

- Gain a cursed magic item you can't separate from or put down (find a way to get rid of it)

- Appear to be under the effect of a strange spell or potion.

Digitalelf wrote:

Why aren't you then, up in arms by how easy it is for an unlicensed person to drive despite that person's rights being curtailed??

Because there's no good way to stop it barring imprisoning people, while there are ways to make it more difficult for criminals (or anyone, if that's what you want to do) to get guns. Furthermore, cars are much more necessary than guns, so the consequences of strictly restricting access to them are much greater.

It's almost as if you're comparing things that aren't at all alike!

It would be nothing to make it harder for people without a license to drive. Cellphones are cheep. The government could mandate that all cars have a transmitter built in that works off of the cell phone grid.

If the car is in range of a cell tower, it will not start without holding up your state ID card which includes an RFID chip - a chip they want us saddled with anyway. If the car is out of range of a cellphone tower, then the car starts but the cell phone logs the RFID chip number and transmits it later when the car comes back into range, or when the black sedan drives through with a recorder auditing all your disks.

If a car was driven without a valid RFID chip or the cellphone is tampered with, the owner of the car gets a big fat fine.

Implement this by 2016 - everyone has 4 years to save 100 dollars to get the thing installed in their cars.

Considering how small the bonuses are from magic items, and how little they change by just doubling your wealth, are they even really an issue when compared to the giant problem of character builds?

A sorcerer with enlarge person and sleep is way nicer to have around than one who rides in on tenser's floating disk shooting magic missiles.

A fighter with a long bow and a bunch of shooting feats is way nicer to have around than a swashbuckler with paired dagger and rapier who rides in on a horse.

Does it really matter if my magic items give +2 Strike, +2 Damage, +2 AC, +2 Saves or +4 to everything? It's just 10%. It is nothing compared to the decision to have a decent Charisma on your fighter or choosing to give him mounted archer instead of deadly aim.

Woah, you even have them buying hardpoints? How do you have that set up, per section or for the whole unit?

With the degree of complexity you are going with I am starting to see while there is so much detail. I'm thinking you need some well designed tables to mitigate the complexity of this.

Yeah, I have but don't know how to use Excel.

Cranewings:

You mentioned training in boxing so I would suggest looking up a tape of the Bernard Hopkins vs Kelly Pavlik fight. Hopkins said he noticed that Pavlik pointed his rear foot out at about 90 degrees to his body and this prevented him from using that leg to generate as much power as he could with a straight punches across his own body. He could not turn his waist fully into the punch so he could not throw crosses and straight rights very well. That foot position prevents you from being bending your knee in the correct manner and still keep your balance. It also will hamper your ability to move laterally. I am not sure, but I think it would impede your ability to throw kicks as well.

P.S.

Ameri Do Te is the only way to fight, everything else is bull&#!^! Look up "enter the dojo" on Youtube.

Oh yeah, good points. I love having more reasons to pile contempt onto a move I already don't think is any good (;

Seriously though, almost every kick you throw wide you can throw better by bringing it straight and narrow. I practice the muay thai outer leg kick while standing a couple inches from a wall. Not much point if your legs are 3 feet apart with one cocked out sideways.

The video was hysterical. The comment, "Its cheaper than a movie and always something weird going on, plus there are girls," seriously reminds me of a place I used to train.

Bitter Thorn wrote:

I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm not sure I follow. If I intentionally harm someone while defending myself I'm exercising a fundamental human right as I see it.

Are we disagreeing or am I just not getting your point?

You do not use self-defense to harm someone, you use self-defense to prevent someone from harming you.

If you can get away from someone without harming them, you do that. If you instead decide to harm them, then you have violated human rights.

People like to claim self-defense after they savaged someone that was assaulting them. That doesn't work if you kicked them in the head multiple times after knocking them down. Excessive force and all that.

That's why you try to make your single hit so good you wouldn't need another one. Full body weight superman punch to the adam's apple every time!

I would say the steps to the process should easily fit on 2-4 pages. Additional pages for options, modifiers, equipment, etc is cool. But the bulk of the work should be done with just a couple pages, mabe more if you have some large tables.

Some exceptions, like say you have to pick a chassis, turning then to the chassis section where each one gets it's own page isn't a big deal.

Thanks, yeah, it would be nice to cram everything besides purchasing options onto the first 2 or 3 pages. Ideally, I want everything including the primary and secondary weapon and have all the points spent. Then, if they have points left because they underpurchased other things, they could then go on to the additional options.

You could always have sized item slots and then use sized options for your items along the lines that weapons usually do. That will give you some degree of control on sizing while still keeping things easy to use.

Powergamers can always be an issue, the problem with doubling down on them is that very often one can end up hurt one's own product simply by either making things to clinical and blah or just too plain complex.

5 minute character creation is pretty fantastic, having to spend half an hour to an hour on your armor puts you into the same category as other systems (or even ahead in many cases).

This is how I am visualizing how you're doing things. Would I be close?

Medium Kodiak Armor. Base Cost: 1st Born Child.
2 Medium Ranged Slots (Shoulder)
2 Small Ranged Slots (Chest)
2 Medium Versatile Slots (Wrists)
1 Medium Back Slot (Back)

Phlebotinum Gun:
Fires magnetically cased Phlebotinum ammunition. Lorem ipsum yadda yadda yadda.

20ft increment out to 10 increments. Deals 2d10 piercing damage and counts as awesome for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction. Can be manufactured for small or large size, dealing 2d8 or 2d12 damage respectively.

Medium/Ranged Slot. Cost: Arm and Leg

Close. The only thing missing is that you buy the slot. Each chassis gets X mounting points. Things you pick with mounting points have a credit cost.

Right now you pick the frame's size, followed by the leg style, purchase armor, engine and booster. Calculate how much energy you have left. Purchase hard points and equipment.

There are other problems and complexities. It is way more work than making a character. Characters take like 5 minutes tops. They take less than a minute if you kind of know what you want.

What I need is a real long hard look at it and narrow this down. It is worse than battletech right now.

A part of the main complexity issue, which doesn't take up a lot of print, but I perceive as conceptually difficult for people to get, is the idea that the size of a weapon and where it is mounted both have to be specified. So a gun a small suit holds and the shoulder gun of a larger suit might be equal in size, but that doesn't make them the same.

You would think that things like this would go without saying but for whatever reason, players really start trying to power game AND carry out the rule of cool at the same time when they see powerarmor construction, so I have to be very clear - and more clarity means more words means more noise means more pages means less is read.

I really feel the Paizo writers. They do a good job.

Edit: I just don't want to risk throwing the math out. The suits are roughly balanced between movement and damage, and would hate to have to come up with something new.

Oops. I assumed you meant you had designed a support book for a current system.

30 pages does seem a little much, but I guess it depends how things are setup. If it's only a couple pages of how the designing system works, with maybe a side bar to paraphrase the rules and then the other pages are all suit modifications/types grouped by something like item slot, then it might not be too bad.

That's pretty much how it is. I feel like it is swamped in unnecessary bad ideas. Plus, the steps are too detailed. I think I've got it brain stormed out how I'm going to combine all the various construction steps and I'm probably going to cut out one of the suit sizes, which doesn't make a lot of sense (where does the pilot go in 10' armor? His knees are in the hip joint).

Hitdice wrote:

cranewings wrote:

ciretose wrote:

Or...perhaps we realize that much like my 11 month old daughter probably shouldn't have legos quite yet, perhaps there should be some reasonable criteria about who can and who cannot, purchase, say assault rifles.

A lot of people really hate the idea of the nanny state. If you are not my biological father, your are invited to stay out of my business - and my business is buying guns and having a good time with them.

And you don't think someone's ability to buy guns should depend rather directly on what they mean when they say "have fun with them"?

Edit: Speaking honestly, as someone who was taught how to use guns by my father, wanting to have fun with them rather than knowing how to use them responsibly is what I consider a warning sign, no insult.

Hm; guess I should have said "reply" there. :P

I'm being sarcastic mostly. I've never shot one.

Interesting. What system is it designed to work with?

It's my own home brew. Sort of its own thing.

I've attempted to read the special crafting rules in the Iron Kingdom's Setting Guide. They were just stupid complex. You could totally build magitec armor, it would just cost you several years of work and lots of XP (and in that setting using XP to craft led to potential Con loss).

I kind of want to design some Pathfinder power armor now...

I know what you mean. I couldn't handle even the computer hacking rules in Spycraft. I don't know that I'd play these design rules if I wasn't the one who wrote them.

A part of why they are so complex is because I wanted to include every possibility when I made them, so you can have a 7' tall one with both feet joining to a single wheel or one that looks like a 15' tall man with the pilot totally in the chest. You can design them to fly like a plane or stalk around like a tank. You can give them big guns and small guns or armor or better dodging or blah blah blah...

But story wise, they are basically used for 3 things: police actions against cyborgs, assaulting spaceships and space stations, and defending space ships and space stations. It occurs to me that the system could probably be a lot less involved.

More than that, the new book I'm finishing I hope to sell is sitting at about 190 pages, and I told myself I'd get it under 150. While that looks impossible now, I do have about 30 pages of power armor construction rules tacked in it that I'm not sure I need.

Or...perhaps we realize that much like my 11 month old daughter probably shouldn't have legos quite yet, perhaps there should be some reasonable criteria about who can and who cannot, purchase, say assault rifles.

A lot of people really hate the idea of the nanny state. If you are not my biological father, your are invited to stay out of my business - and my business is buying guns and having a good time with them.

If you were playing an RPG set in something like Fallout, Robotech or Starwars, and you had the option of designing your own Iron Man / Warmonger style suit of armor to wear:

How many pages of material would you be willing to read to do it?

My old gaming system has 30 pages, 8x11 font 8. It is quite a task if you aren't highly motivated to have a new hobby building power suits for RPGs.

Samnell wrote:

I'd wager most psychology training give to future teachers is given by teachers, not psychologists. And they, of course, got it from other teachers a few decades prior.

Probably true. And unfortunate at a college level, since Psych professors are readily available and teach developmental psycholgy classes regularly.

cranewings wrote:

The Seven Types of Intelligence

Psychologist Howard Gardner has identified the following distinct types of intelligence in his Multiple Intelligences Theory ("MI Theory") in the book "Frames of Mind." They are listed here with respect to gifted / talented children.

I'll reiterate: Gardner's theory has no real proof of any sort. It is ignored by competent authorities in the psychological community. It basically just sounds good enough to a layman to sell books. It's snake oil.

Eh, I suppose. I'm not a psychologist. I heard about it from Niel Borts.