[3:16] Killin' Bugs
Marshall Burns:
The book says to add bonuses to the stat. It's in there somewhere, but it's kindof hidden; don't have the book on me at the moment to give you a page number, though. Which means that chance for success goes up 10%, and your highest possible margin goes up by 1.
Adding to the roll, as you've noted, is nonsense because it makes it harder to roll under. Subtracting from the roll increases chance of success by 10%, but your margin drops.
Glad to be of help!
Gregor Hutton:
Hey Raven
Sorry just got to this as I was getting ready and then at Dragonmeet in London this last weekend. But now that's over I have a little more spare time so I'll get to these soon.
Ta!
Gregor
Gregor Hutton:
At one point we realized we were rolling FA at Far range, and everyone had a "0" for kills at Far. There was a moment of staring dumbly at each other wondering if that meant you couldn't roll FA at long, but we shrugged it off for the moment and continued. That did, however, make me realize I wasn't sure if the aliens could always attack at any of the ranges, or if that was a feature of the narrative design of the aliens. Anyone have advice? Did I miss a sentence in the book about that?
OK, on page 75 in the Example of Play you can see that Jones rolls a 1 but does 0 Kills at Far Range, just like your case.
So why roll? Because in that situation if he'd rolled a success higher than a 5 (a 6 or a 7 in fact as his FA is 7) then he'd have beaten the enemy and been able to move himself to Near Range (or exit the Encounter by moving beyond Far Range). Jones' NFA is only 3, so rolling on that to move will work only 3 out of 10 times. Rolling on FA and laying down "covering fire" and hoping to advance behind it is a tactical move. It just turned out that even though he succeeded, his roll of 1 was too low to beat the aliens, and at Far Range his skill isn't good enough to cause a kill.
0 Kills does mean he injured the aliens if he wishes to bring that in, but no Kills and no Threat Token removal. See the Kills grey box on p. 19. If a weapon does N/A then it's not even effective at that range, so Hand-to-Hand couldn't be used to advance you from Far to Near if you see what I mean.
Also, the game ended with five threat tokens still in play. Sergeant Webster used a Strength to escape from the twisting caverns they had fled into from a horde of pissed-off bugs, and called for E-Vac. I wasn't sure if that could or should happen, mechanically (any of it: counters remaining, Strengths outside encounters, etc.), but I went with it because it worked in the narrative. Again, advice?
OK, so they were between Encounters with 5 Threat Tokens still uncomitted? Or were they in an Encounter with Threat Tokens committed to it, and 5 Threat Tokens outside of it? E-vac is on p. 89. Strength is on p. 24-27.
Fictionally you can call in "drop ships", "the air-cav", whatever, any time you like. They can come in and spirit the PCs away to an new scene. Crucially an E-Vac isn't that. It's an event that "ends Combat".
So, for E-Vac "[to] succeed the PC must be successful on a roll of NFA as part of the combat sequence ... If successful then all Threat Tokens from this encounter are discarded by the GM."
It does not end a Mission, except under one circumstance. The next sentence says: "If it is the final encounter then the planet is considered to be completed as there is no Threat remaining." Final Encounter means that there are no other Threat Tokens left outisde of this Encounter, right?
What was the Sgt using the Strength for? To escape from the twisting caverns? Cool! No need to roll NFA or anything, he used a Strength and that conflict at hand is resolved. They get out of there based on whatever Strength he displayed. But there are still 5 Threat Tokens left. A Strength outside of an Encounter removes 0 Threat Tokens. Zilch.
If it was an Encounter then it ended with the Strength and all the tokens in the encounter get removed. The "E-vac" in this case is colour too. It was the Strength resolving it. By the way I presume you didn't have anyone killed by the collateral damage an E-vac doles out? I think of it as a poor man's Strength when in the hole.
I think his intent was that you would initiate a final Encounter with the last 5 Threat Tokens and then he'd use a Strength to end it, rather then even risk rolling a die. That would have the same effect as what you went with.
Now, you as the GM could go with that -- "OK, I would have started an Encounter in the caverns and you just Strengthed out of it".
Or you could have said "OK, you use your Strength and you get to say what happens, but you don't get any Kills or any Threat Tokens removed -- it was outside of an Encounter". After that gets resolved and I would imagine some role-playing of why he "cried Wolf"", you push 5 Tokens on a final encounter: say on the ship at a de-brief or at the parade on the planet celebrating the final victory (oops, look like we jumped the gun on calling it over!).
Or you could say to the player "You might want to hold off on that Strength, it won't end the Mission, you know that right?" and leave the decision up to the player. I think that's what I would do.
I've seen players use Strengths when utterly prompted in the fiction. They don't care that using it between Encounters doesn't remove Threat or gain kills, the value to them is in winning the conflict in the fiction at that moment. "I was the one who got us out of the caverns!" I've also seen players who revile at the very thought of using one of these resources in a "sub-optimal" way. Both ways are fine and it depends on the player.
Does that make sense?
We also figured that for bonuses and penalties you don't modify the die-roll, you modify the appropriate ability (FA or NFA). Thinking about it, I'm not sure that's necessarily the best way to handle it. Might be easier to reverse them (ie: +1 is a penalty) and add them to the die-roll. What do other folks do?
I have FA of 7, a +1 makes that effectively 8 so that I can roll higher and still succeed.
While writing this, I also realized I'm assuming something about Threat Tokens: if an encounter ends in a standoff, or the troopers withdraw/flee/escape, do you take all the tokens you had played back so you can use them again later? I'm assuming "yes", but not so sure that is definitely the case.
Page 19, point 7 of the Combat Sequence (the final point) says you put them back in the pool unless specifically told not to.
Cheers,
Gregor
Gregor Hutton:
Page 75, Combat Round 1 also has the "0" kills thing and Jones usefully cancelling rather than moving under covering fire.
And, aliens killing which I had forgotten to answer. Page 18, point 4 has it all.
On a success...
(AA) ...you cause a kill to each PC who either failed or rolled equal to or less than you, desctibe the ensuing carnage,
or you can...
cancel your won success... (etc.)
So, the Threat does not care about range, only that you are there..
greyorm:
Many thanks for the replies, Gregor. I can see that some of it is simply things I'm going to have to work on remembering during play, which will come with experience.
To answer the question about the E-Vac situation:
What was meant to be the last encounter ended when the squad fled; I had committed the last 5 threat tokens to that encounter. I returned those tokens to the pool for the planet so I still had 5 left for another encounter(s). They became lost in the caverns and the Sarge then used a Strength to lead them out, calling for e-vac when they got top-side, since the squad had retrieved the ore they had been tasked to and no one wanted to fight bugs any more.
The player understood he wasn't getting kills or removing Tokens or "ending the Mission" by using the Strength. He was not thinking of the E-Vac in the sense of a game mechanic, but just as an escape, as you or I might think of it (we're done, get us the hell out). Those last 5 tokens might as well have not been on the table, as he considered the mission over and completed despite them and did not want to get into another combat at that point, nor saw any reason to. Though on board the carrier, after being praised for getting the ore, they were bitched out by command for failing to clean up the bug problem (ie: "Now we have to send another squad down to check things out and mop up!").
I wasn't sure if I should have pushed things and forced another encounter to use up those last 5 tokens when they surfaced or if it was fine the way it was. (Another consideration was that outside the game fiction it was getting late and time to wrap up for the evening; we didn't have time for another encounter after their trek through the caverns. PL -- who hosts at his house -- stated he was tired and we took the hint and finished up.)
More specific answers to that situation:
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What was the Sgt using the Strength for? To escape from the twisting caverns? Cool! No need to roll NFA or anything, he used a Strength and that conflict at hand is resolved. They get out of there based on whatever Strength he displayed. But there are still 5 Threat Tokens left. A Strength outside of an Encounter removes 0 Threat Tokens. Zilch.
Yep, to escape from the caverns. So that's all understood, and just how we played it. Thus there were still 5 tokens on the planet when they got out and called for pick-up. I wasn't sure how to stretch the mission from that point to again dole out those last 5.
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I think his intent was that you would initiate a final Encounter with the last 5 Threat Tokens and then he'd use a Strength to end it, rather then even risk rolling a die. That would have the same effect as what you went with.
By "his" you mean that player's intent? If so, no, not at all.
I suspect, even if they knew the rules better, from what I've seen in a number of games no matter if PL is a player or GM, he prefers to just roll dice, play with the fiction, and leave knowing what the rules actually do and how they work to others (and often ignoring them for fast-and-loose play). For example, he's become slightly frustrated with me if I point out his spells in D&D 3E can't work the way he describes their effects working, or if he ignores certain rules (like potion-making limits) or wants to double up on effects (the equivalent of multiple Move actions in a turn).
Nothing necessarily wrong with that (he's used to old school freeform D&D), just pointing it out as why it is unlikely that was his thought process.
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Or you could say to the player "You might want to hold off on that Strength, it won't end the Mission, you know that right?" and leave the decision up to the player. I think that's what I would do.
That is actually what I did, but he didn't care. He just wanted to get them out of the caverns, and then figured "we have the ore, now I call in e-vac to get it and us out of here." It all made perfect narrative sense. Though thinking back, and this didn't occur to me at the time, I suppose I could have had the squad swarmed the minute they hit the surface and tossed the last 5 tokens at them again.
That wouldn't have changed when the Strength was used, though. Since the point of using the Strength was getting them out of the caves, not the fighty-bits or Tokens.
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We have played one more session since then -- kamikaze shadow things in an asteroid belt situated around a volcanic planet, the one they were supposed to make the drop to until the shadows started tearing up the carrier -- and will hopefully be playing again soon. I made a number of mistakes in that game, like not using the Alien Ability to its full advantage and going too easy on the characters. But live and learn.
The "OH CRAP! WE DON'T HAVE OUR MANDLEBRITES TO FALL BACK ON!" part was fun, as was the player-aborted attempt to get to the Drop Bay and their armor: "Is the bay clear? No? Well, we are NOT fighting our way through a mess to get there! Let's just circle around to the bridge." I was surprised, I figured they would push hard to reach the armor. The gun-fight in the cryo-bay was noteworthy, too (they racked up kills...a bunch of frozen soldiers. Shooting at shadows among the racks and racks of cryo-tanks = bad idea).
We may be playing again tomorrow night, and they'll finally drop to the planet they were originally briefed on, just prior to the shadow assault.
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