Goodman Games

Well, I finally got to run a game this weekend. It took about an hour to explain the game and get set up to play (we used the pre-gen characters in the sample adventure). It went pretty well, I think. Well enough that we will continue where we left off next week! There were a few questions that came up that I didn't have a good answer for, so I am asking them here:

1. For maintaining a spell, do you round up or down to determine spell points? And just to make sure I am calculating this right, I will give an example. Kristiana cast Mantle, and rolled d12 + d12 (the player wanted to conserve spell points, so the d10 was not rolled). A 3 + 3 was rolled. This resulted in 6 points added to her Deflect Defense Pool, at a cost of 3 SP (drop the lowest die roll). Then to maintain, it costs half of 3 (1 or 2?) SP to maintain the 6 points in Deflect. Right?

2. Firing a ranged weapon into melee. Any penalties/considerations? I wasn't sure if/how to use cover...

3. What Ability should be used for "Intimidate"? Using coercion (a trained ability) seems too restrictive. In this case, it was the cleric Kristiana calling out to a bandit to surrender. She tried to be intimidating, using her religious fervor... I went with Willpower, but I don't think that was very good. Maybe Skullduggery > Intimidate? It seems like anyone can TRY to be intimidating, so the Ability should be an untrained one.

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In the adventure, I used 1 Troll against the party of 5 characters. Although a slow battle (lots of HP for the Troll!), the troll didn't stand a chance--no Toughness loss by any character. Even though it had a lot of HP, it couldn't dish out enough Harm to penetrate any of the Defense pools, let alone any armor or Toughness. I'll be meaner next time!

I am also going to give the players some more spells to use next week, as magic didn't get much use.

Yep, round down. 1 Point to maintain.



Cover penalizes Po-Harm, but which level to use is a matter of individual circumstance. Firing a ranged weapon into melee could endanger your friends. I'd so this:

If your target is full-fledged and uses "dodge" or "evade" to sidestep the arrow, decide whether an ally was too close for comfort. The game doesn't use a battlemat by default, so you may want to roll a random die for combatants within 5' or just come to a consensus about who might be in danger of "friendly fire". If the target has only a single hitpoint score (fodder up through exceptional creatures), then you might want to invoke the optional rule on page 32 and actually require a "to-hit" roll, with a miss indicating somebody might else takes the Po-Harm, if nearby.

Just some suggestions:

Moderate 2D4: firing into battle with two adjacent combatants.
Difficult 2D6: firing into battle with three adjacent combatants
Demanding 2D8: firing into battle with four adjacent combatants
Formidable 2D10: firing into battle with five adjacent combatants
Extreme 2D12: firing into battle with six adjacent combatants
note: (if there are six adjacent combatants, I'd bet their fairly small creatures...)

Missile Weapon Ranges...


Short 20 50 100
Long 30 75 150
Compound 50 100 300
Crossbow 55 115 200
Light Crossbow Small 75 150 300
Sling 50 150 300



Put it this way, if a shuriken can go 50 yards, so should a throwing knife. Or, really, even a decent rock.

Specialized weapons like shuriken and throwing knives, axes and spikes should be the same, about 50 to 60 yards.
Knives, non throwing, and rocks and most common but not specialized stuff, maybe 40 yards.

Swords and non-javelin polearms are not made to throw. Give them a MAX of 8 yards.

Remember we assume a heroic status, and that a person with the skill has at least the power to employ it. i.e. it doesn't matter if you are a skinny guy, you can still wield a sword at 3d6 harm if that is what your skill dictates. The same is true for thrown weapons.

If someone wants to chuck a sword farther, make THAT a FoS roll. Increasing the distance by 50% may be an easy roll, but may "cost" some po-harm maybe 2 points, or perhaps 1 point per die thrown, I dunno. A 100% increase in distance may be a med roll and cost a bit more po-harm. etc.



I agree, make Coercion untrained.



Yeah, the troll with a CS of 77 was facing a party that probably has a combined rating of 300. Still, though the battle was slow (how many rounds), did it seem to devolve into "I hit I miss", or was the use of narrative Defense Pools enough to keep the players "in the action"?

Yeah, I guess, although I was keeping away from the "called shots". Plus, this seems like a hassle to roll twice for the common (in my experience, at least) occurrence of firing into melee. Maybe just a simple reduction in Po-harm, as with cover?

ex:
firing into battle with 1 friendly target: -2
firing into battle with 2 friendly targets: -4
ffiring into battle with 3 friendly targets: -6
etc. (of course this should be modified by circumstances)




So what would be the range increments for specialized weapons like shuriken and throwing knives, axes and spikes? 10 30 50?


easy enough!


The battle started off with one party member (who was on watch) fighting the troll. Others joined in as they woke up and grabbed weapons. The troll took 14 attacks before it fell. Frankly, I ran out of narrative descriptives after about the 3rd or 4th attack. But I am still in the d20 "hit-point" mindset... Maybe a list of "stock phrases" would be helpful...

That's simple and in line with the spirit of the rules. Nice!



I was thinking not to bother with range increments for thrown weapons, except for short range, but I'm open to suggestions.



Ha! Yeah, I remember video games like Bards Tale and Wasteland with their stock phrases...like "Rabbit is reduced to a thin red paste" and "Thug explodes like a blood sausage"

How about 10/30/50 for a throwing dagger and throwing axe, and 10/20/40 for other daggers, rocks, hand axes?

Also, what about throwing spears (10/30/50?) and hand crossbows (20/50/100?)

Also also, you list slings as 50/150/300. Really?? Maybe 10/20/40?

BTW, I just pulled these numbers out of the air. I am no expert in weapons!

The spell list are not complete for the pregen characters. Dannumara should have 10 spells at her lvl according to the rules as should Kristianna. So giving more spells would definitely not be out of place.

I was afraid of too many choices...but Seth is adding spells to the arcanists for GenCon.

Makes sense.

Well, we had our second session Friday night. We finished up the sample adventure. A couple of questions surfaced:

1. Spell range. It seems so short! The sample characters were 5-6 level, yet the ranges for their spells are just 44 feet (Arcanum D12 > Supernatural D12 > Theurgy D10) and 32 feet (Arcanum D12 > Primordial D10 > Elementalist D6)! They would be very short for low-level characters. I seem to recall a thread about spell range... Was there a suggestion about changing the range? What about including the Basic ability die-rank?

2. The Dominate spell. (One of the players swapped the power source of Kristiana to Psychogenic to see how that source works, and chose Dominate as one of her spells). After the Cadarn the Sorceror's resilience had been depleted, she cast Dominate on him, and commanded him to "Slit his throat." We read the spell description, which said the spell makes the target obey the caster "unconditionally". I ruled this wouldn't work (based on the "no instant-kill spells" sentence, but I think the wording of the spellis too strong. (She ended up having him disrobe!)

3. Saving throws for maintained spells. She maintained the Dominate spell, so Cadern was entitled to a saving throw to break the spell. I assumed Willpower would be the appropriate ability, but what Die-rank to use? (I decided on 2D12, but that was probably too high) If he had been a full-fledged NPC, it would have been fine, but what die-rank to use for other NPCs and creatures? (This relates to the other thread about creature conversion...)

4. Targets for Psychogenic spells. Do they have to have a mind? I ruled that "Mind Bleed" would work against the zombies, as it did PH. But would Dominate work against an animal? against a plant creature?

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Overall, everyone had a great time. In fact, they are "rolling up" new 1st level characters for next week. Yay!

I would classify "slit your throat" effect as "Influence - Incapacitate", which required d12 in Power Source, thus I'd ruled that controlled person wouldn't do it unless the caster has maximum, d12, rank of the psionic skill.

Also, I think that animals have much more mind than zombies, in RL included %)

Good point there EvilCat. The "slit your own throat" command could cause incapacitation if the target were to make such an attempt, and the rules allow for one controlled in such a manner to knock himself out (without necessarily actually killing himself). The D12 requirement to use any spell with the sub-effect of Influence is in the core rules. In fact, any spell written using the Influence Effect must name the sub-effect. I also see nothing wrong with using a lesser grade sub-effect if the caster so chooses, as the SP cost is the same anyway.

Try spell range as ADC x2. There was discussion of that before, so tell me what you think of this solution.



The spell should note that 'incapacition' is the maximum effect, or some lesser effect if the caster lacks a D12 in the power source.



I like your chart (the one based on average die-rank steps), and that could be used. Or, you could use the "static opposition" table (as per core rules) and choose Cadarn's resistance roll based on the strength of his inner will.



I'd say they have to have a mind, but it's possible to rationalize otherwise. I think Dominate would work agains animal and plant creatures, but the range of possible command might be tricky for the caster.

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Overall, everyone had a great time. In fact, they are "rolling up" new 1st level characters for next week. Yay![/quote]

She DID have the D12 in Psychogenic. So you're saying that "Slit your throat" is OK? I don't like it. It's too easy. The target should at least get an extra save if he is asked to do something that would knowingly result in clear harm to himself.

Will do.


I agree. See post above.


Good. Both of these can work.

Third game session last night. A good time was had by all. The PCs are entering the Mouths of Madness underneath Castle Zagyg.

A couple of questions came up:

1. Subdual damage. How does this work? The PCs wanted to capture a goblin for questioning, and wanted to knock it unconscious. But how? We decided to use grappling instead, which did the job, but the question remains.

2. The spell "Lethargy" affects Endurance. How does this make you lethargic? The player thought that the spell would do somehting to make the creature less able to fight (slower, perheps not caring as much maybe?), but we didn't know how a reduction in Endurance would do this.

3. Weapons ADP. This seems kind of high to me. One PC (2nd level) has Melee D4 > Sword D4 > Fencing D4. With the 20 point bonus from Mastery, that gives him a 32 Weaponry ADP. They were fighting goblins (D6 PH). This PC could fight for a long time against goblins just using Weaponry without taking any Toughness damage. True, goblins are supposed to be fodder, but I think that they should be SOME threat to a second-level PC... What are other's experiences with this?

1. I would have the characters roll everything normally but divided by half, if the toughness is exceeded tell them it is knocked out. They are choosing to hold back their hits after all. Descriptive choice of hitting w/the flats of the blade or something. Maybe not allow bows unless they specifically say they have blunted arrows.

2. I would have it effect battle phase instead. Other than that I would guess the original spell wouldn't have much of an effect since it should effect the pools, according to the rules (If I remember that part correctly).

3. I can't say much on this because my party has not advanced to 2nd lvl yet but I would suggest that allowing mastery early on is not a great idea unless supported by character background and/or current training facilities. In other words, a character raised at a swordsman training facility would be more likely to have mastery at a low lvl while another would not. Likewise a character that is in a small town will probably not find a swordsman capable of training mastery in their specific weapon.
Also, a character that only has d4s (Basic ability) in both Melee and Swords doesn't sound like one that has the dedication to become a master. Maybe a limit of die ranks should be used before mastery is achieved? Maybe a minimum of d10 melee and d8 specialization or so?
I think I like the second point the best so I changed its color to stick out.

1. The creature they were trying to subdue was fodder--so it didn't have any pools, just hit points. So there weren't any pools to exceed. I really have no clue how to model subdual damage. Maybe some sort of opposed roll?

2. Yes, I suppose it could affect initiative order (we use a modified version of the Simple Initiative method). But that is not really that effective. Maybe there is some other Ability that it can effect? Maybe it could remove the Harm bonus to weapons (the target can't use the weapon as effectively)?

3. Yes, I think some sort of die-rank minimum before Mastery is good. I like the D10 > D8 requirement.

1. Oops forgot about that. I would still follow it just replace Toughness w/HP. Dividing the Po Harm by 2 allows for it to be more difficult to knock someone out than to just kill them. This leaves it up to the player to try or not.

2. Since the magic system is really a snap on kinda system, Just change what it effects to suit the player and /or you and then lock it into that. I would think removing harm bonus would be a similar spell but called clumsy or something but its all really how you and your group see it working. Lethargy just seemed to strike me as a slow type spell so I thought it would hurt battle phase. The spells were just suggestions and I found a couple that I just changed the name to have a clearer reflection on how I would see that spell working.

3. Hope Dan sees this and comments...

I'm not seeing how this would work. Let's say the goblin has 6 hp. How does hitting it with half PH knock it out? The PC that was attacking was rolling Melee D8 > Axe D6. That's an expected value of 8... And even if the PC rolled low, and the goblin was not killed, why is he "subdued"? What criteria would be used?

Bruised I would say. The original 8 would be a 4. 6 minus 4 equals 2 HP left, when he hits again with another 8 (Reduced to 4 because he not trying to kill the creature) he would then exceed the HP of the gob but because he wants to subdue the creature it doesn't die but is knock out or subdued(Not being able to act other than talk). One hit would then kill if wished. This seemed to me to keep with the feel of the game in not having one hit kills from the get go(Not that a gob stands much chance in avoiding one hit kills). Thus this also could be applied to a player character as well...

So if the attack is made at half PH, and if it causes the hit points of the foe to go below zero, then the foe is knocked out? I think this could work.

But what about major NPCs and PCs? Would their Toughness have to be reduced to zero to be knocked out? In the movies, someone who is in perfect health can be knocked out with one (well-placed) blow to the head...

I would say yes it would have to be reduced to zero since the system resists the one hit kill. You do see that in the movies quite a bit but mostly that seems to be against weak fodder types or by Full surprise which would follow the rules of No ADPs and no actions for that round??? Just a thought on my part.

What about allowing full damage but stating that any foe under 0 hitpoints is subdued (unconscious, bleeding, otherwise unable to defend against capture)?

Yeah, I'll have to make a change to that spell. It should affect Reflexes.



The mastery bonuses printed were +5, +10, +15, or +20 to the Weaponry DP depending on the weapon. Lower them to +2, +4, +6, and +8.

My only thought against this is that it has to be harder to knock someone out w/out killing them than just attacking normally and "Hoping" not to kill the creature. The half damage would reflect the care the PC is taking to not kill the creature. That's my thought anyway.