@SolidusVerum First time players? Level 1. The whole point of the quick L1–3 progression is to stage their new abilities so they have time to get the hang of things before having to understand each piece.
The cool stuff you get to choose at level 3 is easier to choose when you've been using the basic pieces they enhance for a while already.
Our target play style for combat encounters would be to use battle boards roughly half the time (when there is enough of interest in play that the tactics are fun to play out), and to skip that with faster "cinematic" combat otherwise.
We have not been 100% successful. The problem is the numbers...
Thank you guys, I appreciate the help. Everybody is coming over in an hour or two to build characters and then hopefully I'll be able to let them into the world.
and on the front the same number, little numbers that are the connections to other areas and maybe some elements like a weapon rack, a fire, a pool, hallway, etc
A while ago ChattyDM and someone else ran a couple contests where people submitted one-line NPCs. The collection of submissions was free to download, but now that I want to use it my google-fu has failed me and I can't find it anymore.
Where is the one-sentence NPC collection?
@AlexMitan I think you may be using "balance" to imply something we aren't getting.
For my part, I'm confused how balance comes into it at all. RFS likes both success and failure, and the dice pool mechanic creates interesting swinginess/curve results. This is neither good nor bad until compared to a gameplay experience goal which it does or does not meet.
@AlexMitan I've read your question, comments, and chat stuff over a few times, and here's what I've got:
You ask if a highest-die mechanic would "work" in RFS. This can be answered trivially with a "Yes."
It's a system that isn't designed to have some kind of overarching balance, so changing the die mechanic doesn't really change the game.
You could change it to a success-based d10 die pool like they have in the White Wolf games, and it wouldn't have a significant impact on play.
You then talk about the way you test that these numbers are good, but you do so in a nonspecific way, and you don't give any precise numbers.
That's fine, by the way. We don't really need precise numbers for this kind of question.
Then, the question is over.
What everyone here has been saying is that you're missing an important part of the question, namely, what your goal is. If you said something like "Would changing the die mechanic to be highest-die flatten the success curve?", we could answer that.
If you asked if a highest-die mechanic would make it so that low-skill and high-skill characters can compete on the same level, we could answer that.
If you asked if there were any hidden problems that you haven't thought of with changing the mechanic to highest-die, we could answer that, though you'd probably want to ask more than just that.
Also: purely mathematical questions about dice mechanics, while on topic, are kinda wasting our citizens' RPG-specific expertise. If "does this work" means evaluating how it impacts the actual experience of play--how it affects choices and feelings amongst players, for example--that's something we can really dig our teeth into as RPG experts.
Basically, tell us what your goal is in changing the die mechanic, and we can help you figure out if changing the die mechanic will achieve that goal.
Oh, and the best question would be "How do I (achieve this specific goal) in RFS?", which you then self-answer saying "You should usea highest-die mechanic, and here's how it solves that problem."
@BESW True, they are all good enough to be favorites.
Wondaland is stand out for me though. It was also one of the first songs I heard of hers and completely won my heart. I bought the album immediately. :v
A while ago ChattyDM and someone else ran a couple contests where people submitted one-line NPCs. The collection of submissions was free to download, but now that I want to use it my google-fu has failed me and I can't find it anymore.
Where is the one-sentence NPC collection?
