| From: | Richard M Conroy <Richard_M_Conroy@***.ir.intel.com> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Game Balance, Summary |
| Date: | Thu, 01 Aug 96 15:21:00 PDT |
[Discussion about making PC equivalent NPC's snipped]
:If they don't *like* this level of gaming, tell them to get started
:with character generation. In the mean time, read and re-read some of
:the suggestions by list members.
SIN-less wrote:
-BTW, I agree completely with the post I quoted here. I, too, have been
-in those campaigns as a PC, both as a Decker, and as a Street Samurai,
-and it basically sucks. You just feel so SMALL and USELESS when your
-picking off the stragglers as the mage moves ahead in the the lead,
-zapping everyone and everything!
[stuff about high danger level deleted]
-That'd work great... for an all-mage party... but what about your poor
-little sammi who CAN'T take that kind of opposition. By stepping up the
-opposition to meet the challenge of the mage, you leave the other arch
-types in a very vulnerable position. If you DIDN'T have an all-mage
-party, you very likey will soon after due to the untimely deaths that
-would follow.
Exactly.
The danger level was already high enough... the mundanes came out
wounded & crippled every time, despite the efforts of heavy cover, good
small unit tactics, incredible equipment (Rockets, Milspec Armor). The
mage was well able to take care of herself- she had ass-saving options
that no-one else had. Raising the danger level wouldn't have solved the
problem, it would just have reduced the party to 2 living members (guess
which ones ?).
:Finally, if the players figure out a way to defeat or bypass NPC
:opposition, reward them! Its not a game meant for the "me against them"
:mentallity so if they do a good thing, congratulate them and move on.
I'm a bit more mature than that ;} I just wanted to balance the players,
not hound them.
Thomas Wrote|
|There comes a time when you should just start over. Your players seem
|like good players, you seem to be able to pose good plot twists and
|ways of getting at the characters, but the characters ('specially the
|two magicians) have reached the high point of character development.
|Have the characters saved up some money? Have they been running for a
|long time? Have they thought about why thier characters took to the
|shadows and why they would stop running?
|Perhaps it's time to retire the characters.
That's really what happened. The game ended and we were all moving away
for the summer. I intended to do some big ruff n'ready end of campaign
lark (rescue the mages daughter & kill that SOB Mage Exec in
Aztechnology that had orchestrated all their hurt). restarting the
campaign with new characters just wouldn't have worked, I wouldn't have
been able for it after all the work I put into it advancing the plot,
and it was just starting to get really thick (as their enemies joined
forces) nothing like the PC's finding their own death warrant... I swear
the room temperature actually fell...
|From reading your earlier posts, I got the impression you had four
|players. If this is true, limit the number of magicians or non-physads
|to one.
No, it peaked at 8 near the start, but settled down around 6: 1 mage, 1
shaman, 1 Orc Sam, 1 Merc, 1 Fixer, and a Decker, who was probably a
better driver than either of the stupid riggers (whose stupidity knew no
grounds). I had both mage types in because they were very well made
characters.
|Or none. Just to see how a non-magical group deals with a magical
|threat.
RIP, no survivors. I know how to play my NPC Mages, only for the PC
Mages, the rest of the team would have been quite dead.
SIN-less wrote-
-The only thing I can think of (and I have not had a chance to try it)
-is to take the time to sit down, take all the magic sources, and work
-out some kind of conversion for the system to make it more difficult to
-perform the higher level and higher powered spells.
I tried to do that, but there's a hell of a lot to remember already with
the magic rules, without throwing your own house rules into it, and
besides, my own patches didn't solve the problem.
The only thing that I really came up with was *just* hurting the mage
alone. It actually made sense in the game; she was negotiating deals for
the team, and wes getting noticed by all the powerful mages in Astral
space- even personally hurted the main villain (he had to beat a hasty
retreat, even though the she was already busted up ~ powerball through
focus ~ next blow would have killed either of them, but his bodyguards
had told them that there was a merc around with a missile launcher, and
that he had better beat it before he ran out of vehicles). Although it
was sparking arguments in the game about the very specific backlash that
was being heaped on her.
Not a satisfactory solution, but the closest I could think of.
Richard.
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