-bring chinese dragon to siberian base
and so on.
whoaaa wait a minute, hold up there.
The question of the chinese dragon is always a question of "who gets to fire it" because there aint no such thing as ducking back in the ship while the rocket is in flight. So who's going to be doing the dying in that equation.
I guess I could have a lokknar do it or a slave soldier, but did you know there's this thing called Baby Nukes and they can get the job done without anyone having to die? Heck there are plen-T of weapons you can use there that will work if you give a few shots with em.
(I manage siberia even though its tough and involves alot of dancing, fact is I like collecting their loot. As for examples of stuff that works how about Lots of hellerium grenades, pre-primed of course. How about putting someone on a mortar and launching Plasma Mortars. Ive heard of the Tornado Rocket Mortar working wonders. Also Plasma Rockets are a thing and 160 damage aint nothing to sniff at. Even the hellerium grenades can flatline tanks after about 2-3 of them)
Also where are your Lazers, they have the nuclear lasers but that doesnt mean you cant bring your own heavy or ES lasers to the ballgame. I frequently have the Plasma Pistol unlocked by then too.
(my face when, one little mention sparks a whole post)Also starting weapons in vanilla are all trash Except... Grenades, the Rocket Launcher, and the Heavy Cannon
(with HE ammo of course). And when I rush Alien Grenades I have a decent advantage.
The RL and HC are useful up until you get the Small Launcher because they do something the laser and plasma weapons cant... they hit stuff even when you miss it, even when you cant see it. And the HC even has multiple shots, you have to reload the SL every time you shoot it.
...a bunch of stuff...
The danger level on my ttrpg is in a rare niche of "medium". The gurps system is straight up lethal, shadowrun is straight up lethal (and players are expected to take damage in it too), call of cthulhu is pretty lethal and the spells and creatures are scary (but you're not supposed to be fighting).
I left out a whole lot, also things like the scaling involved are subject to change because im still tinkering with it. Few weeks ago the damage roll was 1d20+damage bonus and armor applied a flat DR value, I changed that because I felt that armor piercing modifiers were just trading damage and I wanted it more dynamic.
(a few years ago it was d10s based instead of d8s, armor worked the same, consolidated damage worked the same)Basic idea is fighting smarter not harder, and an ideal warrior is one with a heck of alot of agility to dodge hits (with high initiative to deliver them first). And ideally, like some of these other games your best bet as a PC group is to come up with plans and ways of solving stuff that probably dont even involve a fight but still screws the enemy, or you get a series of easy divide-and-conquer kills. However, it is still passable as a fighting system when the players have to have a battle because they arent just gonna get wasted.
(I guess the danger level is kinda, sorta similar to L5R, since I remember similar consequences for fighting in that one. In games like this there's a gamble/risk that can be fun but things can go south pretty bad when some rolls turn up bad).
As for one-shotting, thats a GM vs. Players issue. If the GM sets down a kaiju, mecha, or great wurm dragon and the players have fun storming the castle of course they're going to get killed. That fits in the category of doing obviously stupid stuff. GM shouldnt have to prescribe specifically to this outdated "challenge rating" formula like d&d has - there's things you're not supposed to fight, maybe the smart thing is to run away from it for the time being, at least thats what common sense says.
Also everybody is good at something, there arent really character classes but with the points available its possible to get very good at a tactic or two by level 6-9 (out of 20 levels). Thing is, becoming more dynamic and harder to affect with things as you get veterancy. Yeah level 20 warriors can be one-shotted in their sleep, thats life, though in their case its easy to screw that up and then you're done for. You ain't going to be able to do it to a wizard, but he can be done in other ways. Etc Etc.
And point of fact the NPCs clearly take more wounds from damage than the PCs do (wound delivery of 1, 2, 4, 8... pcs only take MaybeNone, 2, 3, 5).
Fate test has mechanics I dont want to get into but if you succeed you take 5, if you fail you get 8+1d4 (crit just means you get knocked out and maybe 2 wounds). The death save is as fate test to avoid taking the 16 that the npcs take, and if it succeeds you're left in critical but stabilized unless you were in critical before that. Overall nicer to the PCs whereas NPCs are allowed to get squished more readily and routinely.
It went like this
Agree about the muskets but not the musket pistols. Up close those things pack a whallop, and like a real pirate you want to carry multiple pistols not the ammo for them - drop the pistol when it runs out and draw another one.
Muskets are like the Skorpion in that there are definitely items that are meant to be dangerous to you that NPCs use, but which arent really all that great for yourself. The ASMG is a good example, has some armor piercing, good ammo capacity, but its a 1x3 weapon that cant range well - its just enough to screw you, whereas its more efficient to be using an RCF carbine or even the UAC carbine over that. If you wanted full auto you'd be using a Spiked SMG probably.
Sawed offs are rather broken for where they show up at. They're even useful mid game as backups against zombies.
Also agree about the usefulness of K.Handcannons, though I just keep the tech blades in the transport in case I have a need for them (ahem, Bodyguards).
