Re: [DL] What do i do wrong? (High Targets and booring long Combat)

[Brett Dixon <balance@tubas.net>]

On Thursday, December 19, 2002, at 09:58  AM, 
<markus.finster@chello.at> wrote:

>> i just have one player in my group that has d10 or even d12 and he is 
>> a
>> huckster that draw incredibele good when creating his caracter all 
>> the other
>> players have d6s in most of there atributes and rarly a d8.
> Let them re-draw their attributes. Seriously. I allow three draws and 
> then a player chooses one set. That gives you a better chance for 
> getting higher attributes.

it sounds like this might make sense. This is one reason I've decided 
to make any new game I run preceded by a one-shot to learn things... 
The first time I ran Deadlands it was with an adventure I made and many 
of the pre-gens had no Fightin' or Guts. First-time characters tend to 
be missing important stats...

Wiping the slate clean might not be bad for the next session. I also 
allow the 'standard draw' (copied from an archetype) to be distributed 
as needed for Posse members. I had a minor problem of players who 
really like making characters (and some of them are great RP'ers, so I 
don't know why they didn't just think up new concepts, instead of 
needing to do the full draw...) and now have the policy that I need to 
'witness' the draws.

>>> Do they ever take time to aim?
>> No normally they dont aim at all: " what does the +1 to hit gives me 
>> when i
>> take 1 or 2 wounds till i can use my second action and are at -1 or 
>> -2 for
>> the wound then?"
> Well, that's the difference: a +1 gives you a higher chance of taking 
> out that bad guy, so he probably won't hit you.
> Also, your players aren't very fond for taking cover, right? ;-)

Both are very good points. In my HoE game, a soldier (Project Damocles, 
armored, BFG, Big'un, etc.) and a gambler got into a fight. The gambler 
took one shot from the half-dozen mook, which could have been bad if he 
hadn't bought it off, but he was stunned and fell behind his cover, 
leaving the soldier to deal with the rest with his rifle and 
mini-grenade launcher. Even though the mooks had some lucky rolls 
(three head shots!) he was doing OK, and really didn't NEED the posse's 
Syker to run over and Arson the mooks into crunchy bits.

BTW, I was concerned that as Arson (and MIRV and similar) were too 
powerful of abilities, but I now apply reasonable damage. The group won 
the fight, but the Syker had immolated the armor, ammo, and other gear 
the group would have liked to get... Which actually trashed a couple of 
useful clues. Dead Men tell no tales, and immolated ones can't even 
make a statement.

>> In averange you roll 9 or 10 damage whit 3D6 wich is 1 wound for an 
>> averange
>> human so normally it takes around 5 hits before he goes down. or do 
>> we do
>> something wrong here?
> Depends. Do not count wounds for gun-fodder, only for the big baddies. 
> Give each nameless adversary 20 to 30 points, as soon as they're up, 
> he's dead. (Or at least knocked out). For every 5 Points, he gets -1 
> on all his actions.
> Just roll hit location, check if it's gizzards or head, add the extra 
> dice and roll damage. If damage totals 30 points and the original hit 
> was only an arm, the guy is gone nonetheless.

Yup. This makes mooks pretty low-powered, but it fits the genre that 
the posse can gun down dozens of bandits.

>> was thinking about that too, till now i allways had to do all the
>> calculations for everyone and tell them "you have to roll 7+ to hit 
>> that
>> guy,.. so you rolled 10points of damage that is one wound..." and so 
>> on.
>> Since i am the only one that has the rule book noone else knows all 
>> the
>> modifiers and things for the combat besides the basics. but i am 
>> thinking of
>> handing each player a copy of the combat rules and tell them "read 
>> that and
>> get used to those rules so you know them when (if) we play again.
> Do that, though judging from my experience, they won't read it ;-)
> It comes with time, but the question is if they give you that.

The GM screens have a lot of useful tables on them. Because of some 
differences, when running HoE I use the Deadlands classic screen inside 
of the HoE screen. I prefer the Weird West screen (more up to date) but 
the HoE screen has the appropriate weapon tables and such... Very 
useful when scavenging.

>> im my group that would look like this: he trows down 4 cards and 
>> tells me "i
>> am shooting 4 times at that walking dead"
> Ah, but that can be intercepted. If he has an Ace, a 10, a 7 and a 4 
> and the Zombie a King, he can only fire once, then wait for the Zombie 
> and fire again.
> But he could throw down the Ace, wait for the Zombie, throw down the 
> 10, the 7 and when you count 4 holding up his card and announcing: I 
> aimed with three cards - shot to the head of that bastard!
> And only -3 at the head of a Walking Dead with 5d6 damage should make 
> you think twice if it wouldn't be better to aim...

As i said earlier, the secret here is keeping things moving. Aiming 
isn't generally a dramatic action, so the player can just say, "I'm 
aiming at the guy on the right" and go to the next action. Then on 
subsequent actions, "Still Aiming..."

>> no normally not they save up all the chips they have to negate wounds 
>> since
>> even a single light wound gives a -1 penalty and they are even less 
>> likely
>> to make any roll afterwards (same reason why they dont aim) this is 
>> why i
>> was also thinking about lowering the penaltys for all wound modifiers 
>> by 1.
> Don't do that. Granted, many players save chips for negating. Use your 
> chips for improving your rolls - they'll learn from your example. If 
> you let them redraw their attributes they will end up with higher 
> skills, so they will hit more.

This really does sound like the best option at this point. Note that I 
also allow re-draws on the various Bad Stuff tables (veteran, Joker 
tables, etc.) if it will mess up the character concept. You still get 
something bad, but your super-sneaky character doesn't get a mutation 
that makes him sound like a brass band when he walks...