As it says in the subject line! While I love the rules as they are, I have wondered what could be changed for a particular group’s needs. For instance, and I can get details, our group is very large plus full of highly competent gamers. Death is exceedingly rare. So one of the GM’s essentially made a house rule that certain types of enemies (usually based on size or skill or such) turn the normal injury chart roll from 3d6 to 4d6 or higher.
I’m debating updating the weapons from the game (whose system is based in Mk2) to stats like Mk3 or Mk4.
Overkill: the damage that exceds the remaning health can be added or subtracted to the injury chart
02)Feat changes: any rule can only generate a single rerol(multiple rules that allow re-rolls still stack as long as they have diferent names), a roll that has a feat point spent on it does not generate new feat points
03)Hull value as sugested in a no qurter
04)Dread: basicaly a special resource the game master has to activate enviryomental effects, special powerfull abilities, counter feat points(as a 2/1 proportion), as feat point for enemys that elite or named
05)Tough changes: for NPCs and enemys i use MKIII tough
06)Jack and beast revisions: basicaly a beast or jack when gets advancement may chose to reduce a weapons penalty or learn a new weapon
Recalculated life spirals for creatures of up to Large base size:
All aspects are calculated as per PHY, AGL and PER (for non-sentient creatures; INT for sentient creatures).
For each base size above small, 2 damage circles are added in each aspect (i.e. one per branch).
(This is mostly for consistency; considering there are medium-based player characters, there is clearly room for toothaches with this house rule).
Terror by Size:
Terror rating is not based on Willpower unless it’s explicitly a supernatural effect. Instead, the Terror rating is equal to the highest of the creature’s ARM or STR+POW of the largest weapon wielded, plus a bonus dependent on the creature in question (e.g. +3 to +5), to reflect that these things are what is apparently threatening.
There are NQ rules for Mk3, mostly about Power Up and the Hull Value rules. Don’t remember which issue though.
Personally I wouldn’t bother porting Mk4. Most of the big changes to speed up gameplay are unnecessary in an RPG where each player is only controlling one or two characters IMO.
If you want to acelerate combate a few seconds to miliseconds per player great, but i myself judge it a bad trade, you loose tatical and simulation feel for a slightly streamlineing
IMHO the Power Up rule is great to keep steamjacks balanced with warbeasts (warlocks get their own version in the form of spirit bonds).
I’ve never really seen a need for the Hull Value rules though; personally, I’ve always got the impression that those rules came about after comparing high-STR characters wielding great weapons with steamjacks, which is the equivalent of saying “everybody has got a bazooka” in a modern setting and scaling everything accordingly.
I’ve seen in the RPG (pun not intended) how even high-STR characters who cannot boost damage rolls at will or otherwise gain additional damage dice struggle against steamjacks - even a low-ARM labourjack (i.e. ARM 14+) poses a lethal challenge, because it will easily tank hits, while one hit from a steamjack-level attack can kill a player character that hasn’t been specced to obscene ARM levels (and doesn’t have feat points to make heroic dodges).
Fair, i’v experienced the oposite that scrapig even wajacks is easy, like crippling it heavely in one turn and destroying it in the following turn without changig tatics, or giving a steamjack the gravita it should have in my opinion, and even i would be reticent in putting hull values in a campaign where characters cant hit that hard
So, there’s a conversation at RPG.net going over metacurrency in different systems, and I saw one thing that was sort of interesting: giving a feat/plot point/benny/etc on a critical failure. It’s partly to take the sting out of things, but also to make sure things keep moving.
I’m wondering if that would work for IKRPG 2012? I know I’ve seen (and run) games with cascading failure which is no fun at all.
Coud work, but never i never tryed it, but thats a way to aliviate a little the sting of o critical failure, but they are rare enough that 1 in 36 instead of 1 in 20 and that might not work with the feat point system, you know the whole you can only have 3, it will feel bad if you fail horribly and you dont gain the consolation prize because you didnt spent a resource, but its worth a try, just dont add a house rule to start just use the game master can award feat points for any action or reason rule first than if it proves sucesfull go on add the house rule
Do your foes also get a feat point/plot point/benny/etc. for your critical successes?
I don’t know. What’s the point of making fluffed rolls less of an issue instead of having to work to roll with what follows? A good GM already makes sure that a single bad roll does not end a campaign, but there should still be stakes that mean getting into sticky situations never feels completely casual.
Guard-rails, perhaps? That said, I learned a long time ago that different people want different things from games. And my main group is a small army so we have to pose challenges differently (ie, win conditions are seldom “defeat all enemies”, we’ve had less than 5 deaths in all our 5 longest campaigns, etc). The group is all 30+ year gaming veterans.
My Pathfinder 2e group? Mostly new players, parents, and more causal. It might encourage more risk taking (admittedly, P2e’s critical fails work on different assumptions/math). For my HERO group i’m debating a house rule that rolling exactly what’s needed will result in crit (or mini-crit) to encourage both risk taking and discourage bloating numbers.
