I don’t do play by play because they tend to read like a Phonebook. I do suggest you listen to all 3 of the D&D podcasts with the Penny Arcade, PVP and Wil Wheaton… they are play by play 3 hour sessions.

As for the barbarian, look at Magic Items that increase the Barbarian’s charge attack damage or at-wills.

You remind me that I should write a series about having group mesh together in 4e.

I’ve always wished that (as much as a bore it might be for some) there were a true play-by-play recount of battles — like, how is a (approximately) 4th-level party supposed to kill a young black dragon with its darkness creating abilities? Furthermore, I’m playing a barbarian and while I’m a couple levels shy of your players, I’m jealous because I’m no where close to dealing 25-50 regularly per attack. How’d your player do that?

Stef commented… It’s good to see those casual players bloom isn’t it…

Hehe! Stef on the next game you can pick all the beers you wan’t in my pack…

As far as the game and us spreading out. The summoning of minions right in my PC’s face kind of derailed the plan of me positioning myself to help Rocco get into flanking position.

Took a turn to dispatch them thinking that their case would be solved, but they came back. After that Rocco was mostly halfling kebab…

*bows*

I’m not actually that bad, for the generalizations at least.

But yeah, I think this basically comes down to the following:

Savage Worlds is a decent game, but not one that I care for. It will work for some, but I have some issues with the core mechanics of the system, which, to work out, would require changing systems.

It’s a fine game if it works for you, but it will not work for everyone (nor will D&D, of course) and presenting it as a magic cure-all for all of someone’s RPG problems is disingenuous at best. (Even more so, when his players have said they don’t want to change systems, as Mike did in the first comment in this thread…)

That’s why I hate arguing with engineers.

It didn’t seem snarky. It just didn’t seem like you realised I was talking about more than combat.

Don’t worry, though, I know the statistics of it all. It just feels weird that the higher-skilled guy is less consistent than the lower-skilled guy. Sure, the guy with a d12 in Shooting can do spectacularly, but he can also shoot himself in the foot one time in twelve. He has no baseline competency.

As for the skills and attributes thing, it just seems to me as though linking skills to attributes is mostly for show in SW. My d8 Strength is nice, but mostly it’s just a limiting factor. “Do not get better than this.” Those points I spent in Strength don’t make me any better, they just make me less worse.

I dislike limiting factors in RPGs.

@Graham-

I hope I didn’t make my post seem snarky, because that wasn’t the case, if it is, I apologize.

The one thing I will say on the dice mechanice for SW that works is usually the target number for something is generally 4, then you add the modifiers. A untrained skill is a d4-2 so it is much harder to succeed than trained. With a skill that is a d12, you have a higher chance to succeed, plus the other important thing is “raises”. If you beat the target number by 4, you get a raise which furthers your success. If the T# is a 4 and you roll a 12 on a d12, not only have you already raised twice, but you get to roll the die again and add that number since the rolling the highest number on the die is consideried an “ace.”

As far as the skills the way I look at is is, using your example, is I may be really strong, but I don’t know poo about climbing well (yeah I know it isn’t the greatest justification, but meh..)

Also don’t forget about rolling the wild die (d6) with every roll except damage, so with that, everyone basically has a d6 in ever skill/trait (although still a -2 to the roll if it is an untrained skill).

*We now continue the ChattyDM Awesomeness Show*
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Help With Building a Homebrew World =-.

Despite always being marketed to me as a rules-light, low-crunch, easy-to-run, on-the-fly system, there are too many random, disjointed sub-mechanics. Soak rolls are one of these.

I’m a crunch fiend, and I thought I’d dislike SW because it was crunch-light. I was wrong. I dislike it for the same reason I dislike 1e AD&D. It’s deceptively crunch-heavy, and the hidden heavy crunch is disjointed.

At least in 1e AD&D’s case, that hidden crunch was all optional. In SW, some of it is part of the core system.

But since I never read SW it’s good to see a little discussion of it here.

Please note that I have not yet played a combat in SW. The swingy mechanics I’m referring to are the base mechanic, not combat specifically.

In D&D, for example, at no skill in History, I range from 1-20. As my skill increases, I go from 1-20 to 6-25 to 11-30, etc. If I’m more intelligent, that range will go higher still, but the range itself doesn’t change.

In SW, two things occur.

1) Instead of the range moving upwards, your range increases, from 1d4 up to 1d12. This means that being more skilled actually feels more “swingy” than being unskilled, as 1d4 is more consistent. Consistently bad, true, but consistent nonetheless.

2) If I have a d12 Strength, and 1d4 Climbing, I do consistently worse at climbing than the guy with a d6 Strength/d6 Climbing. Despite the fact that I could easily lift my own weight in a chin-up, probably one-handed, I suck at Climbing things, as your ability score doesn’t affect your skill result. It only affects how easy it is to raise that skill further.

(Yes, I missed a few things here for simplification. The edges that give flat bonuses to skills or Charisma, for instance, and the Wild Die.)

These are my main issues with SW thus far. Both do apply to combat, but neither is specific to it. They are issues I have with the core mechanic.

http://www.grogtard.com/?p=422

@Doomdreamer and Graham-

I agree that SW can be a really BRUTAL system, but there are weapons at your disposal that players aren’t used to, especially when they are normally DnD players.

One is Bennies, bennies, bennies. This will allow you to do a soak roll to absorb/shake off the damage. In all honest, most of the time that is what bennies are used for (although they do other things).

Second is rethinking how movement and holding your action works in SW. In DnD unless you take (3.5) spring attack, you can only move then attack or attack and then move. In SW, you can move some, attack, then move some. This is vital.. Because in SW cover matters. Also getting up from being prone is basically (and I may be wrong on this) a free action. So you can shoot, run, and drop prone for cover in SW. This helps surviving greatly.

Another part on this is holding your action.. My players were having a hell of a time hitting enemies when we started doing play-tests of SW. I would have an enemy pop out, shoot, then go back to cover. My players became frustrated because they couldn’t get shots off. I, still really fresh to the rules, realized that they needed to hold their actions, when doing so you can go WHEN you want, interupting someones action. So how it played out then was; baddies coming out to shoot, getting shot as player who was then holding his action popped out, baddies dies or lives and carries out his action, and then goes back to hiding, stuff moves on..

Also, as you read in the article, which I do recommend, tricks, taunts, intimidation ALL add a whole new level to combat in SW.
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Help With Building a Homebrew World =-.

Actually, that’s a good example. I think my main issue with the system is that it’s too… swingy, I guess. It’s too easy to either fail horridly or succeed by a margin that is hard to comprehend.

This makes for great multi staged fights where a Solo monster will raid Fight#1 and retreat with its rear-guard minions once bloodied.

@Callin: I’m not much of a fan of the basic encounters used in the Monster Manual… You’re right that they are properly balanced, but I like to drive the Encounter Design truck alone. I sometime veer off road on the way but I’m confident I’ll eventually drive straight and keep to the pavement.

@Graham: Good point. The thing in that particular example is that I was working at cross purposes on 2 fronts. First, I fixated on having Soldiers as bodyguards, as you pointed out. Plus, I wanted to have the Boss ‘die’ rapidly so I could move on to phase 2… I mean… WTF?!?

Having a Skirmisher or a Lurker as a guard would have worked better… or as you say, one lower level soldier.

As always, thanks for the insights, here and before I wrote this report.

It made story senses to give the Boss 3 Soldier Bodyguards… it was the damn BOSS! But that made for a poorer fight. I’ll try to other way around. Design an encounter that works and then fitting the story around it.

Don’t you dare!

You’re a story-focused guy, and you shouldn’t fight that. It does make sense for the boss to have 3 Soldier Bodyguards.

What you need to do, though, is adjust the mechanics to match your story AND be good mechanically.

For this fight, your problem wasn’t that you had three soldiers, it’s that the monsters were hard to hit. This is because in addition to being Soldiers, they were higher level than the PCs. So level them down instead. Throw 3 level 12 or 13 Soldiers in, instead of level 15.

Alternately, realise that it makes sense for the boss to have 3 bodyguards, but those bodyguards don’t need to be Soldiers just because they’re soldiers (note the capitalisation). Brutes and Skirmishers make fine soldiers.

..

As for Savage Worlds, I’m currently playing a game on Wave with the system. It’s… less than impressive (the system, not the game). I’d play in another game with it, if asked, but I don’t think I’d ever run one. Too many things about the system just annoy me.

I’m told the Deadlands system might be more to my taste, (it’s similar, but different and less generic) but I haven’t tried it yet.

I have found that using the basic encounter setups to be spot on. I have not had to double guess the encounters. So far, my players have been challenged and there are still alot of close calls; characters out of powers/surges at the end of a fight or alot of attacks come down to missing or hitting by 1 (this is really cool as it makes a characters abilities, such as a Warlord adding +2 to attack, more meaningful when you can see it having an effect).

Also I am lazy and find if I can use, and trust, a basic encounter I need to do alot less work. I would have to say I have alot of trust in the way 4E encounters are set up.

And as for Savage Worlds, play it first. I was impressed by its ease but unimpressed by its leveling process (leveling is a form of character growth, which is important to me as a DM).
.-= callin´s last blog ..Birthright Encounters Three =-.