Character Creation Q&A

[Steel Warrior]

Ah ok thanks. Still trying to decide how I want to finish up the build. Lots of talents, or lots I want to choose, few talents to go around 😛

One thing I noticed he added Quick Recovery (2 points). It heals non-lethal damage by the round.

Given I have barbarian levels, if I get near death, then the rage ability Guarded Life, Greater (Ex), that means if I hit 0 hp, then 12 damage becomes non lethal at that point. With DR 3/- that's an extra 6 nonlethal damage ignored. So at least I will be hard to kill.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Steel Warrior (see edit history)

[PigLickJF]

Pax has stated, though, that when we're manning a tank position, we are able to use the Crew's abilities as if they were our own. (And yah, I hear you on the few talents to go around. No matter how many I have, I always want MOAR! lol).

 

Here's the quote from Pax found earlier in this thread:
 

Quote

 

The Tank is a creature, technically, so yes can be affected and can count in certain ways as an ally. For the most part it doesn't make its own rolls though, the PCs make their rolls to act through the tank. It would get certain enhancements to damage, ability scores, and I suppose it will make save rolls sometimes. You could technically affect saves with an Aid Another action, so in that instance you could Aid Another the tank (if it also made sense narratively). The Warleader tactic is a good example, I would allow it to affect the tank. I might have to double check, but I'm not sure constructs can benefit from Morale bonuses, which is a chunk of Warleader.

 

On the Crew side, the Crew does not have its own actions. The PCs use all their own actions. However yes, you are considered to posses the Crews talents, feats, and class features when operating the tank. In your example, the member of the party would use their own move action to activate the tactic, and their own actions to maintain it. I'm sure some odd instanced will come up that I need to make a specific ruling on the spot where this stuff is concerned. Another distinction on this would be the Sniper sphere. While firing the main gun or a relevant weapon connected to the tank, you could use the Crew's sniper talents. If you hop up atop the tank and use your own personal firearm, you are no longer operating the tank, and could not use the sniper sphere for your shot unless your character also possesses it.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by PigLickJF (see edit history)

[Paxon]

On 5/28/2022 at 10:40 AM, PigLickJF said:

On the Firearms weapon tables, only one damage rating is listed. Does firearm damage scale up/down with size as normal weapons?

Okay, so in a way I didn't expect to deal with this (silly me, as if I've never dealt with enterprising players before), since this world doesn't have whole races of small-sized creatures running around, I wasn't really going to consider small sized firearms scaling differently, and even if they did in many cases damage output would remain similar. I also didn't really think PCs would end up being large, but I left a window open for that, so of course I need to account for that. Or at least using large size weapons. I think scaling up a gun to large actually would have an appreciable difference in damage output. So we'll go ahead and say yet, firearm damage scales up normally as it goes up in size, as does cost. Also, you need large ammunition to fit large firearms, and you also need to pay 2x the cost of of that. It should be noted that large humanoids are extremely rare, even given mutations. As such, large weapons are very rare as is large ammo. You can make a case a large LMG is actually another type of machine gun meant to be mounted on a vehicle your character simply holds, and there is higher caliber ammo available somewhere for said weapon. But in most cases a large firearm will be a completely custom job, and large ammo will need to be hand crafted. You won't be looting a lot of it, nor will tinkers and traders be making a lot of it.

On 5/29/2022 at 12:05 AM, Arklytte said:

Firearm question: Would it be possible to add Bean Bag rounds for shotguns to the list of available ammo?  They're considered 'less lethal', just like Rubber Bullets, but they tend to do less direct trauma, and are designed to 'cause muscle spasms which render the target momentarily immobile'.

 

My thinking is that they would look something like this:

 

Beanbag Rounds (aka Flexible Baton rounds): Beanbag rounds consists of a small fabric "pillow" filled with #9 lead shot weighing about 40 grams.  They are intended to be a non-lethal or more specifically a less lethal alternative to metal projectiles, similar to rubber bullets.  Beanbags, however, are specifically intended to stun their target by causing intense and painful muscle spasms at the point of impact, that render the target momentarily immobile.  Targets hit by a beanbag round are Stunned for 1d3-1 rounds.  On a successful FORT save, they are instead Staggered.

 

Beanbag rounds count as Slugs for damage/attack purposes (20/x4 on a crit, Touch AC for the first range increment), but all damage is nonlethal.  They can be used to do lethal damage, at the normal -4 penalty.  Additionally they have a max range of 2 range increments.  Any target struck in the 2nd range increment by a beanbag ONLY takes the nonlethal damage and is not subject to the Stun/Stagger effect.

 

Cost/rarity would probably be commensurate with rubber bullets.

 

I pretty much just took that right off the Wiki page for beanbag rounds.  Their max effective range really is only about 20-ish feet, with them being completely useless beyond about 60, as well as the fact that they specifically render the target "momentarily immobile".  And they can do lethal damage (especially if you aim for the sternum, face, or throat), but anyone trained in their use always goes for the extremities, thus them defaulting to nonlethal and getting the penalty for lethal.

 

So, they're a fairly powerful option (with their stun/stagger effect), but you have to be right on top of your target to use them effectively.  And since guns are a thing in this setting, getting up close and personal is going to be challenging, to say the least.

 

What do you think Pax?

 

PS: If you're amenable to this, what about other specialty shotgun rounds? There are a bunchaton of fun shotty rounds that exist IRL, and many would be pretty reasonable to have in this setting.  I'd be happy to look them up/rulify them.  😄

And yes, my plan is to have Doc specialize in shotguns. The pic I found for him is literally holding a smoking shotgun, so I just had to run with it.  🙂

I'm going to have to think about this one a bit and look at some numbers and options. Stun is a powerful effect to have on an ammunition you can simply buy. Your suggested low range is pretty reasonable, but I might have to add another limiter like it needs to be a called shot to an appropriate extremity or trigger of a crit. Put a pin in this, maybe set aside some equipment funds for specialty shotgun rounds (I like the idea overall), and I'm going to come back to it.

[Paxon]

On 5/29/2022 at 10:19 AM, Demented said:

You know how crossbows can be fired 1-handed at a penalty?  Can we get something similar for longarms?

 

There's a lot of neat rider effects out there for sunder builds, but a lot of them hinge on giving things the broken condition.  Unfortunately, it's looking like I'll be doing enough damage to take most objects from full to 0 in one hit.  Does destroying an object count as giving it the broken condition?  0 is less than half, after all.

One-Handed: Yeah, I'll say you can shoot firearms in a similar manner. The penalty is -2 for light crossbows and -4 for heavy crossbows. Similarly, it will be -2 for SMGs, and -4 for any other 2h firearm. If there are feats that reduce these penalties for crossbows (I don't know of them but they might exist), there can also be a version of them for firearms.

Sunder: I would count destroying an object as given it the broken condition for abilities that are triggered off that, yes.

On 5/29/2022 at 11:38 AM, Niblooey said:

We're using Block Initiative, right? Does that mean effects that boost your Initiative modifier aren't useful here?

Yes on block initiative. However, given that certain concessions need to be made around PbP format, I like to handle things like this:

Players roll initiative and I roll for NPCs. I'll use Fast NPCs (those that beat all players initiative) and Slow NPCs (the rest), which will all end up grouped in the same initiative block after the players turn. If PCs win the initiative, all players act first in whatever order you are able to post real-time. However, I reserve the right to insert an individual NPC's action into the turn order if that NPC's initiative exceeds players remaining who haven't acted yet. So in that sense, it will matter. If you roll poorly on initiative and take a bit to get your combat action post up, you might have a high-initiative NPC act in front of you. If you are willing to risk that, you can be lax with your initiative score. *Yes, this can be gamed by the players if the high initiative PC simply waits until last to post. I'm going honor system with this, and if I see it happening I'll change things up.

 

On 5/29/2022 at 7:01 PM, PlotDevice said:

Hi, just found this game and hoping I can get an app done in time.

 

Paxon, have you given consideration to favored enemies (ranger)?  Obviously a bunch of categories just don't make sense; but how do the new beings fit into that system?

Hope you get an app in too! If I have someone who needs to select for favored enemies, I'll make sure to put a list together that properly accounts for the creatures in this setting. Plenty from the list aren't in this world. Others will be kind of an approximation of a type there already is. A sufficiently mutated mutant would be a monstrous humanoid. And yeah, I have magical beast as a category that would not actually be magical, but that might reflect a mutated animal with extraordinary abilities that kind of matches up with something from the bestiary which is classified a magical beast. Go ahead and pick ranger and for now do your best to pick an appropriate favored enemy. I'll make sure a list is available before we begin that matches up types, and you'd have time and opportunity to tweak your character accordingly. 

 

On 5/30/2022 at 3:07 AM, Arklytte said:

Can we use Enhanced Armaments/Defenses to add Weapon/Armour/Shield qualities to our equipment?  Or are they limited to Enhancement bonuses to hit/damage only?

You may use the bonus to add qualities that are available in the expanded masterwork section, but not from the broader magic weapons/armor quality list. If there is one not on my list that you feel like really really should make sense for the setting, I'm willing to consider.

 

12 hours ago, Steel Warrior said:

I wanted to clarify the Technician Tank Crew section shows the various talents. Wanted to confirm if they are independent of our character build.
Like a Tristalt in a sense, only when the player is part of the Tank Crew etc?

Yes, independent of your build. When you are operating the tank, they are available to you in a little bit of a tristalt sense. 

So if you are firing the tank main gun, you may use the sniper sphere talents from the crew; when you are diving it, you may use the brute sphere talents listed. If you want to take a shot with your character's personal weapon, you'll need to posses your own instance of the sniper sphere and the talent you wish to use in order to use it. However, you can apply your own character talents to the operation of the tank, if they are appropriate (some certainly won't be). So if you have other talents within the sniper sphere on your character, you can use them for firing the main gun. 

Speaking of all this, I had meant to add a martial sphere drawback wherein you can only use the sphere with the tank, which would enable you to spend some talents on very tank-specific uses. Not sure if a very popular option, but I'll try and add that today. 🙂 

[Arklytte]

2 hours ago, Paxon said:

Okay, so in a way I didn't expect to deal with this (silly me, as if I've never dealt with enterprising players before), since this world doesn't have whole races of small-sized creatures running around, I wasn't really going to consider small sized firearms scaling differently, and even if they did in many cases damage output would remain similar. I also didn't really think PCs would end up being large, but I left a window open for that, so of course I need to account for that. Or at least using large size weapons. I think scaling up a gun to large actually would have an appreciable difference in damage output. So we'll go ahead and say yet, firearm damage scales up normally as it goes up in size, as does cost. Also, you need large ammunition to fit large firearms, and you also need to pay 2x the cost of of that. It should be noted that large humanoids are extremely rare, even given mutations. As such, large weapons are very rare as is large ammo. You can make a case a large LMG is actually another type of machine gun meant to be mounted on a vehicle your character simply holds, and there is higher caliber ammo available somewhere for said weapon. But in most cases a large firearm will be a completely custom job, and large ammo will need to be hand crafted. You won't be looting a lot of it, nor will tinkers and traders be making a lot of it.

I'm going to have to think about this one a bit and look at some numbers and options. Stun is a powerful effect to have on an ammunition you can simply buy. Your suggested low range is pretty reasonable, but I might have to add another limiter like it needs to be a called shot to an appropriate extremity or trigger of a crit. Put a pin in this, maybe set aside some equipment funds for specialty shotgun rounds (I like the idea overall), and I'm going to come back to it.

Sounds good to me.  And thats more than fair.  Stum is a powerful condition for ammo.  Requiring a called shot/Crit for the Stun effect could work, otherwise it just does its normal (nonlethal) damage.  Or reducing the additional effect to Staggered/Shaken could be a reasonable compromise.

 

Given that we're still a ways from finishing, there's no hurry.  I had planned to leave gear buying til last anyway. It's one of my least favorite parts of character creation.  😜 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Arklytte (see edit history)

[PigLickJF]

3 hours ago, Paxon said:

One-Handed: Yeah, I'll say you can shoot firearms in a similar manner. The penalty is -2 for light crossbows and -4 for heavy crossbows. Similarly, it will be -2 for SMGs, and -4 for any other 2h firearm. If there are feats that reduce these penalties for crossbows (I don't know of them but they might exist), there can also be a version of them for firearms.

Unorthodox Firing from Equipment allows you to fire a 2-handed ranged weapon with one hand at a -2 penalty (and also allows you to fire a ranged weapon from prone, which probably doesn't apply to firearms anyway, although I don't recall if the rules actually say you can do this). Not trying to contradict your ruling here, just pointing it out since you mentioned not being aware of anything (though as written the talent doesn't actually reduce the penalty, it just gives a flat -2).

 

3 hours ago, Paxon said:

Speaking of all this, I had meant to add a martial sphere drawback wherein you can only use the sphere with the tank, which would enable you to spend some talents on very tank-specific uses. Not sure if a very popular option, but I'll try and add that today. 🙂 

That would actually be pretty cool. Could it be applied to any Sphere, and used multiple times (not in the same sphere, mind you)? There are actually a few Warleader talents I've been looking at that don't necessarily make a lot of sense for my character outside the tank, but could definitely make sense for him while in the tank (Frightful Roar, for instance. My character's not especially intimidating on his own, but if he's yelling at you over the loudspeaker from a giant monstrosity of a tank, that's a different story). It would also help make up for several talents that do make sense to have on my character but that the Crew also has, causing some redundancy.

[Djacob91]

 Fire while Prone: Firearms, like crossbows, can be fired while their wielders are prone.

 

It's located near the bottom, in case you wanted the specific rule on that bit.

[PigLickJF]

Thanks for the alley-oop Djacob. Look at that, working as a team already! 😉

[Paxon]

1 hour ago, PigLickJF said:

Unorthodox Firing from Equipment allows you to fire a 2-handed ranged weapon with one hand at a -2 penalty (and also allows you to fire a ranged weapon from prone, which probably doesn't apply to firearms anyway, although I don't recall if the rules actually say you can do this). Not trying to contradict your ruling here, just pointing it out since you mentioned not being aware of anything (though as written the talent doesn't actually reduce the penalty, it just gives a flat -2).

Yeah, this talent seems a little more oriented around allowing you to fire bows while prone, and also fire ranged weapons with a foot. Makes sense with a bow (a little), and not really any sense with a gun 🙂  So it's not about firing one-handed, rather 1 hand + 1 foot, and wouldn't otherwise affect trying to fire a longarm one-handed.

[Arklytte]

Just to throw my two cents into the ring...if you're prone, you're going to be more (like, a lot more) accurate with a gun (especially a rifle).  I don't know what the actual game mechanics have to say about that, its just based on my own (extensive) shooting knowledge.  But if we're going to be making custom rules for 'oddly positioned shooting', its something to keep in mind.

[dalamb]

How long do we have to finish our apps? I got distracted a few days ago with reviving my own 3.5e campaign(s) and have neglected Tanya, but I plan to switch back tomorrow.

[PigLickJF]

I think Pax said the due date for now is June 6 (it's on the calendar/event thing in this forum), though he mentioned possibly giving people a bit more time due tot he SoP wiki being down for several days.

[Paxon]

2 hours ago, dalamb said:

How long do we have to finish our apps? I got distracted a few days ago with reviving my own 3.5e campaign(s) and have neglected Tanya, but I plan to switch back tomorrow.

I'll make a decision on that today. Good chance I'll change June 6 to a new application deadline, and give another week to finish and submit.

[Arklytte]

If I have a class feature that gives me a free MW weapon, would I be able to pay the difference between MW and GM (900GP) to bump it to Grand Master (or even Exquisite, if I can afford it)?  Or would I still have to pay the full price for the upgraded weapon?

 

Also, have you had time to sit down and math out whether or not the Beanbag rounds I proposed were reasonable/feasible?

 

Also also, the Scholar's Knack Trick Arrows - given the setting, could we use that Knack to turn our flashbangs into impromptu pistol/rifle/shotgun grenades and launch them with a gun? Or would that be too OTT?

[Steel Warrior]

Sorry if I missed this question if it was asked earlier. Can we assume Retraining is an option?
If so, would the cost of retraining be different since wealth levels are different for this game?

Unless stated otherwise, retraining costs gp equal to 10 × your level × the number of days required to retrain.
So retraining a feat would be like 10x5x5 = 250 gp (10 x 5th level x 5 days for feats)

I was thinking of retraining some talents for 5th/6th level. Of course as long as I still meet the requirements of the talent.

 

I also did not see a siege weapon talent in the Spheres of Might equipment list.
I am thinking for equipment like larger cannons or even a big flame thrower that fire on the back of the tank. Or trying to escape another vehicle, we open the back hatch and then the barrel of a cannon is suddenly facing the enemy.

Finally, would something like Dragon Ball Capsule Corp gear exist. Drop a capsule and suddenly we got ourselves a small car or bike, cannon or gattling gun.
I am sure something like that would be in the tech sphere lol.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Steel Warrior (see edit history)