Re: [DL] RE: Savage Deadlands

[Brett Dixon <balance@tubas.net>]

On Dec 14, 2003, at 3:17 PM, Jac Chadwell wrote:

(Unity Rant snipped) It's an end-of-game adventure, and it does force people through some things. me, I like it. It at least lets the PCs be the heros for most of it,   instead of having the NPC characters do all the imortant suttf (although hellstromme has a big role)

> Back to Savage Worlds. A vigor of?a D12 gives you a toughness of 8(2+ half vigor)?add two for being dead and you get a 10 thats 8+2=10 for you slow ones out there.?Next you come to?tough as nails and imp. tough as nails which give you +3 putting you at 13. Now since the savage worlds rules sucked we do have a shitload 

IIRC, with Edge + Improved Edge you only get the highest in most cases. Just a minor quibble, as it won't make much of a difference overall...

> of house rules?for powers but back to the point. Supernatural vigor adds +2 so theres a fifteen toughness. meanin you have to?roll a?nineteen to give him one 

I believe this is wrong, as it would add to Vigor, thus only one point is added to toughness.

> wound. Next come armor. I believe kevlar adds +2 to armor and is good god 

OK, no arguments... I don't have a book handy so I'll go with this...

> against bullets, so between it and a God roll?on Force field for a syker which everyone is at the end of the unity you can get up to a 21 toughness if they are not 

TWEET! Flag-on-play! I asusme your Syker rules are homebrew, yes? Savage Worlds can't really be held accountable for those, can they? I assume Sykers will get access tot he Armor power among others... Anyone want to drop in here with a better summary of Armor?

Plus, the Syker isn't likely to be very good at it if he's using the freebie from Unity, and certainly can't maintain it for very long...

> using?Ap bullets meaning they would have to roll a 25 to hurt you. Avg. Ass rif! le does 2D8+1 or +3 if firing three round bursts with an avg. ! damage o f 10 or 12?with a 3 rnd. burst. I'm not seeing that hurting any time soon. Now onto the subject of 

It's a bit different if you consider it in a different light.

Anyway, yes, a tough, legendary,  harrowed is going to be hard to kill. I'd be annoyed if it wasn't!

Remember... legendary characters are roughly equivilent to the nigh-invulnerability 20th level d20 characters would feel. 

> actions in combat . Do the characters have their tendons seize up around the damn trigger or something. I can fire an Ass. rifle with a rof of 4 at 4 different targets spinning in a 360 degree arc to hit them while firing a pistol in my other hand then if I'm a doomie I can teleport next to a guy and crack him in the face?with the assault?rifle while ninja kicking him but I cant shoot two zombies standing right next to each other in one action without going full auto. I dont care about the space time continium theory of any of that shit that makes no fucking sense. 

An example:
The<x-tad-smaller> A10 Thunderbolt (or "Warthog") has a  30mm GAU-8/A Gatling gun that can can fire 3,900 rounds a minute.

That would mean that it would be able to fire (3900 / 60) * The number of seconds in a round. See chart:

Secs/round:	1	6	10	15	30		60	
</x-tad-smaller>Shots Fired:	65	390	650	975	1950	3900

I don't remember off the top of my head how long SW rounds are... there may not even be a fixed time, but i'd guess it's one of these options.

Anyway. there's no way to make that GAU-8/A shoot 700 times in one second.

Now, of course a weapon like that would be represented in any sane RPG as bursts... I don't know it can fire single shots anyway...

Let's apply that to hand-held weapons. our pistol takes a certain amount of time for the mechanism to work. it's quick but not instantaneous... So you can only get the specified ROF number of shots from a weapon.

To sum up: Even if the character's fast enough, is the weapon's mechanism?

> Now I'll talk about conversion,which by the way sucks pretty hardcore and should never be tried without a?private counselor?on hand because you will go crazy?because of how much shit you lose. 

Another analogy here. Deadlands Classic is like the IRS 1040 long form, SW is 1040 EZ. Both do basically the same thing, but SW has a lot less detaile ven if it may be (in the results) a bit sloppier. 

Deadlands Classic is a pretty detailed system. Savage Worlds isn't. My opinion is that there's a place for each, even if I personally feel the Deadlands setting isn't best treated by the Savage Worlds ruleset, but others disagree.

> even if you convert your character with 80 exp. making it?legendary it is still really gay! and shouldn't be tried because?you will still lose a lot of your character. The main problem I have with savage worlds is that if you don't want to?die very quickly your character has to combat oriented in?every way and you lose a lot of the flavor of your?character if you convert. My friends character that was a mechanic before the last war only has a D4 in?repair because even after?losing half his stuff he still didn't have enough?levels to buy most of his skills to a decent level. 

I'd like more info on this... Even a starting 0 XP character can b basically proficient in a single weapon and a single 'other' skill with lots of room to spare. Remember that a mechanic in Classic would likely have a good Tinkerin' plus one ore more Profession skills and maybe a science.

One thing i've noticed about SW is that there's a big jump from 'unskilled' to 1d4. Basically, 1d4 is a small but important jump from the competency level of 1d6. Below 1d4, there's a lot of room for skills the character has probably been exposed to, but can't actually do. This shows up in a modern game more heavily than fantasy, however. Something to do with the perceived lack of skill diversity in most pseudo-medieval settings. 


> I guess what?I'm trying to say is I?came into this system very biased against it because th conversion looked like it sucked. But I tried to give it a fair chance and that chance had its intestines ripped out because the system is so fucking gay. You might like savage worlds or in my opinion Advanced D20. But my brain hurts after playing it because the rules are so horrendous.

If you were biased against it...

In my limited experience, it's a good system. One thing you might want to consider is that you didn't try it out slowly, but instead came in with high-rank characters and a lot of home-brew rules.

The philosophy behind it and Deadlands Classic are very different. That's good... Too many game designers end up trying to repeat their successes and end up repeating mistakes.

The success of Savage Deadlands or Deadlands reloaded is, however, unknown at this time.
--
Brett

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? (Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett)