Random Swears Re: LBB6, 7

[jawillroy]

Awright. What's the big idea here? I'm outraged.

I'd been of the mind that Mercenary and High Guard character generation unbalanced the game badly enough as it was. But really, I'd seen nothing yet. Nothing.

I finally clapped eyes on both Scouts and Merchant Prince.

What on earth were they thinking when they allowed automatic skills for promotions? What made them think that the assignment skills were somehow insufficient? Were High Guard and Mercenary characters not getting enough skills?

If there were any chance I'd adopt the advanced CharGen across the board, this settles it. With LBB6&7, the shark was most definitely jumped.

Oh well. I was pretty settled on Proto-Traveller anyhow.

But still! Why they gotta go and break the game like that?

Interesting Dead Giveway: Merchant Prince is the first place where I see the rule appear limiting skills to Int + Edu. None of the earlier LBBs seem to have that. Surest sign ever that even THEY realized characters were going to get too many darn skills.

 

[far-trader]

It's not too bad though since many skills were added and the old ones more diluted for it.

Example: Book 2 Vacc Suit skill applied to Vacc Suit use, Zero-G tasks, and Battle Dress use. In Book 4+ those are three separate skills.

So it kind of balanced out. Most of the time. I generally don't use the expanded career gen only because it takes longer for little added interest. If anything, for me at least, it stifles the imagination and forces me to colour more inside the lines for the character history. Basic gen is more free that way.

 

[jawillroy]

I dunno, I just see a two-term character with Liaison-5 and think, something's wrong.

See, Mercenary, you *could* get more skills, but not a disgusting amount. Once you have a potential for 4 skills a term + promotion skills, you're just going to break things.

It always seemed to me that Other was a throwaway career, and that books 4 and 5 made up for deficiencies in Navy, Army and Marine LBB1 characters as opposed to LBB1 Scout and Merchant characters. Making Scout and Merchant characters more robust seems like an arms race.

As for the rest of books 6 and 7, it takes 10 seconds for book 6's planetary system development to make my eyes glaze over, and about as long for me to look at book 7's trade system and start finding things that should've been fixed that weren't. Feh.

 

[aramis]

I once generated a 2 term Bk7 merchant with Admin 4 and broker 2.

Lucky rolls and wierdnesses can result in some absurd advanced CGen characters.

He gained a gauss pistol and skill for same in muster out.

He died in play of steel poisoning during a barroom shootout.

 

[Supplement Four]

Awright. What's the big idea here? I'm outraged.

If you use the Hard Survival Rule, you won't have characters that unbalance the game.

 

[pendragonman]

If you use the Hard Survival Rule, you won't have characters that unbalance the game.

You are correct, sir. Death during chargen works wonders to stop supers.

 

[jawillroy]

Normally, gentlemen, I'd agree with you about hard survival ruling. But I rolled book 7 merchants using the hard survival rule, as I always do, and came up with ridiculosity: Liaison 5, steward 2, gunnery 3, medic 2, legal 2, jot 1 zero g-1 admin 1? And he'd have more if it weren't for the Int/edu limit. Five terms, never close to failing a survival roll.

LBB1 CharGen has skills associated with promotions because it's a simple system; books 4 and 5 wisely separate skill acquisition from promotions, allowing for skilled NCOs; There's no loss in skills because the yearly assignments made up for it. It worked. I can't understand why they changed this for Books 6 and 7. No sense at all.

 

[Jame]

I see I'm of the opposite camp, which states that LBB skill levels are on average too low...

 

[BigJackBrass]

The problem was recognised even when the expanded systems were quite new: In Space Gamer issue 70 there was an article by Dan Perez on how to beef up the character generation system for Citizens, since there was a trend developing for everyone to ignore the careers offered in Supplement 4 as it used the basic rules.

Because of the way my group plays we quickly gave up on the more detailed systems and returned to fewer skills, with an assumption that people have a broad competence beyond the listed levels.

 

[Border Reiver]

That's why MT chargen trumps CT for me in every way. A bit more balance between basic and advanced chargen.

 

[Supplement Four]

Normally, gentlemen, I'd agree with you about hard survival ruling. But I rolled book 7 merchants using the hard survival rule, as I always do, and came up with ridiculosity: Liaison 5, steward 2, gunnery 3, medic 2, legal 2, jot 1 zero g-1 admin 1? And he'd have more if it weren't for the Int/edu limit. Five terms, never close to failing a survival roll.

I see two things happening here.

First, sounds like you got damn lucky with the dice. If a player were playing that character, and the GM were enforcing the Hard Survival Rule, then attempting another term also means there could be up to four more Survival rolls--any one of which would kill the character, making the player start over.

After Term two, the character has something like: Liaison-2, Steward-1, Gunnery-1, Admin-1. Not a bad character, but certainly not the powerhouse shown above.

Does the player want to risk killing this guy with up to four more Survival checks in Term three? Maybe...maybe not.

When you rolled up your character above, you didn't have this "aspect" of the Hard Survival Rule working against you. You weren't "connected" to the character, so if the character died, you were just going to try again (and push it to the limit again?)

As it turned out, you made your survival throws. Excellent and good for you.

But, remember, a real player, realizing that he's got a pretty good character on his hands, will sometimes voluntarily stop character generation for fear of losing the character in a later term.

When I enforce the Hard Survival Rule, I definitely see this happen sometimes.







Simulating Player Propensity to Risk During Chargen...

Sometimes I've tried to simulate this player "connection" during generation of NPCs. What I've done is this: At the end of each term, I roll 1D6. If the number is equal to or less than the number of terms already served, then the character choses not to continue chargen.

I started doing this when I realized that my NPCs were sometimes "beefed up" when compared to the PCs because I wasn't "connected" to the character and didn't care whether he died or not. I'd just roll up another one. This mechanic does a fine job of gauging a player's decision on this as it becomes a higher probability the longer the character goes into chargen.

So, after the first term, the only way the character isn't trying for Term 2 is if he rolls a 1 on his D6. On term 2, a 1-2 will indicate the character doesn't want to proceed. After term 3, a 1-3 will indicate that the character doesn't want to proceed...etc.

I'll either do this, or I'll "play" the character myself, rolling characters up by hand (because I haven't found a satisfactory computer program yet), using the extra work required to start from scratch as a deterrent.

 

[pendragonman]

Normally, gentlemen, I'd agree with you about hard survival ruling. But I rolled book 7 merchants using the hard survival rule, as I always do, and came up with ridiculosity: Liaison 5, steward 2, gunnery 3, medic 2, legal 2, jot 1 zero g-1 admin 1? And he'd have more if it weren't for the Int/edu limit. Five terms, never close to failing a survival roll.

LBB1 CharGen has skills associated with promotions because it's a simple system; books 4 and 5 wisely separate skill acquisition from promotions, allowing for skilled NCOs; There's no loss in skills because the yearly assignments made up for it. It worked. I can't understand why they changed this for Books 6 and 7. No sense at all.

My big question is:

Did you make the survival role each and every year, or only once a term? That makes a huge difference.

 

[tbeard1999]

But still! Why they gotta go and break the game like that?

The phenomenon of later supplements seriously unbalancing a game is awfully common. I've resisted a buddy's conspiracy theory, but I have to admit it's persuasive -- allowing new supplements to produce far more powerful characters (or armies, in the case of WH40K) is a marketing strategy to encourage sales.

 

[jawillroy]

I might have had a few lucky rolls, but it didn't feel that way at the time, because I wasn't getting the skills I wanted to be able to pass the next officer test... I was bucking for a captaincy. I was doing survival rolls every year - right down the line. For this guy, that was super easy because he was in the Purser's department, and all the survival rolls for that are pretty trivial.

I had a couple characters wash out after a term, and even they had 6-7 skill levels between 4-5 skills.

Sup'four, I like your simulator for limiting NPCs. That's a good one whether you're using Advanced Steroidal CharGen or the basic deal.

 

[Ron Gianti]

Forgive my newbie-ness, but these discussions seem... off imho. Please forgive my ranting, I'm sure its just do to lack of experience so please humor me:

Could someone give an example of how a character with a couple high skills is such an unbalance in the universe?

I could see "All Skills - 6" being unbalanced, but there are so many skills and really no way to get any others after Chargen that your stuck with what you got forever so who cares?

Lets say a character is: AAAAAA admin - 4 computer - 3 foil - 3 and hand gun -3 so what? He can't pilot a ship, reprogram a robot, use a turret, navigate a starship, use a medical kit with a plus, use combat armor (no vacc suit skill), fix an electronic problem, lead a team into combat well (no leader skill), or fire most weapons with a bonus (so his best weapon is a pistol, he shoots bad guy #1, does little damage, bad guy #1 shoots back, hits does 12 points of damage, character goes down like a sack of potatoes) .

The universe can still be a very challenging place, but at least the player would feel that he has a small grip on one or two skills, which, at 46 years old, a dedicated person might actually have...

 

[aramis]

Except, Ron, that Computer as a single skill represents just about the whole spectrum of computer programmer, network engineer and computer hardware (design) engineer.

Admin likewise represents knowledge of the systems of administration, skill at paperwork, ability to navigate administrative routines, and ability to evaluate documents for leigitimacy and correct completion across a wide range of worlds.

And level 4 is doctorate or major professional expertise level; roughly 8-16 years of work and/or education

 

[Whipsnade]

Gents,

The phenomena of Skill Inflation in chargen - either via increasing the number of skills, increasing the final levels of single skills, of increasing the number and kind of defaults - is a flaw inherent to all RPGs.

Look at the number/levels of skills in "Three Book" CT and compare that to the number found in MT or TNE. Compare "Three Book" D&D to the plethora of skills, feats, and whatnot in d20. You can even compare Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip to it's descendent GURPS 4e.

Skill inflation is a constant.

IMHO, it has more to do with a desire by players to play the system than to play the game and that has been encouraged by computer games with the oodles of "cheat codes", "health/ammo" icons, multiple "lives", and other system-hacking gimmicks.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Ron Gianti]

Except, Ron, that Computer as a single skill represents just about the whole spectrum of computer programmer, network engineer and computer hardware (design) engineer.

And level 4 is doctorate or major professional expertise level; roughly 8-16 years of work and/or education

So? If I'm 46 and have Computer - 4, so? And I have a couple other skills. I was, say, in the Navy and got some medical skills as well but didn't do much with it so I'm Med -2 and I had to work in a large hospital at the time and was the director for a few years and have Admin - 3 and I can use one weapon with some pretty good skill so I'm Revolver -2.

There are still a great many things I can't do and a handful of other things I have some experience with that might prove useful. On the other hand, I'm also in my 40's and I've been around the block a little more than the average guy. So?

How is it unbalancing is what I mean? If having an above average character makes the player happy, isn't the universe a plenty dangerous and sophisticated place to give him a challenge anyway?

 

[jawillroy]

Ron, I've no problem with someone having Basket Weaving-6 and a couple other skills. It's when you have a character of three or four terms having some twenty skill points thrown around that I think there's a problem. If this happened in every career, again, no big deal, but when you have one or two careers that balloon up like that, it seriously imbalances the game against the other careers. It's not so much a question of the player overbalancing the universe (what GM is unequal to this task?) as a question of one player overbalancing the rest of the players. It's no fun rolling up a PC to find out you're little more than a spear-carrier for another player.

Mercenary and High Guard were a little overgenerous with skills, but not game-breakingly so. Scouts, I haven't played out enough to really say. But with Merchant Prince I'm consistently getting characters with ridiculous skill levels in relation to their terms of service, with no incentive at all not to stay in service: survival rolls are easy, 'specially if you come up in the Purser's department where you don't often even have to roll for it, and there's that carrot of captaincy and ship ownership to keep you in.

The presence of the advanced CharGen professions in CT makes the careers in Supplement 4 less attractive too, which is a shame.

IMTU I'm sticking to LBB1-3, with S4 if people absolutely insist on something else.

 

[Ron Gianti]

it seriously imbalances the game against the other careers. It's not so much a question of the player overbalancing the universe (what GM is unequal to this task?) as a question of one player overbalancing the rest of the players. It's no fun rolling up a PC to find out you're little more than a spear-carrier for another player.

Ahhh, we'll that would be no fun.