tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post2895655294659762502..comments2024-03-07T16:20:50.007+00:00Comments on Librarians & Leviathans: Numenera, part 2Shimmin Beghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-10228528050665944622013-10-25T16:04:11.725+01:002013-10-25T16:04:11.725+01:00Ah yes, armour makes it even more marginal, becaus...Ah yes, armour makes it even more marginal, because of course armour reduction is linear. Add two points of armour and "light weapon +1" goes from "half as good as a heavy weapon" to "one fifth as good as a heavy weapon."<br /><br />And of course you can argue that penetrating armour is what heavy weapons *should* be good at, but you can also argue that a light, precise weapon can target chinks in armour better than a heavy, unwieldy one. And armour that doesn't enclose your entire body should certainly not render you 100% immune to light weapons.<br /><br />Critical hits are a bit tricky, because they aren't really well articulated. I'm not sure if "20 always hits" is actually a rule or not (I suspect it might not be, because it would make pool spends completely useless).Dan Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05711867728179306264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-31432591419835517852013-10-25T13:51:27.071+01:002013-10-25T13:51:27.071+01:00Also, it occurs to me that Numenera has critical h...Also, it occurs to me that <i>Numenera</i> has critical hit rules. What are the chances that you wouldn't succeed on a 19 or on a 20 regardless of what weapon you used..?Shimmin Beghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-91572654682759270522013-10-25T13:34:38.011+01:002013-10-25T13:34:38.011+01:00That's very probably true (I think we spotted ...That's very probably true (I think we spotted some rare possibilities of +1 or +2 modifiers, which could edge things over), and in any case the niche is so very niche that it doesn't make much odds. Light Weapons are just kinda pants. Especially since as far as I can tell, you can entirely negate their damage by having 2 armour.Shimmin Beghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-74070568479344220932013-10-25T10:48:06.207+01:002013-10-25T10:48:06.207+01:00Whoops. You are, of course, completely correct.
W...Whoops. You are, of course, completely correct.<br /><br />Which, I think, highlights how confusing and unintuitive the whole "roll over Difficulty x 3" thing is. It still basically makes light weapons only marginally useful.<br /><br />Oh, and thinking about it, "Difficulty x 3" makes light weapons worse, not better, because while light weapons are better than heavy weapons if you need a 19 or 20 to hit, you *can't* need a 19 or 20 to hit in Numenera. You can need an 18 (in which case Heavy weapons are better) or a 21 (in which case light weapons are the only way to hit).<br /><br />So Light Weapons are only better than Heavy Weapons when Heavy Weapons *literally can not hit*.Dan Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05711867728179306264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-52067632015533970272013-10-24T15:24:27.546+01:002013-10-24T15:24:27.546+01:00You're the one with the rulebook, but as far a...You're the one with the rulebook, but as far as I can make out, light weapons <i>don't</i> provide a +1 to hit, they <i>reduce Difficulty by 1</i>, which is the same as providing +3 to hit. A light weapon therefore hits four times as often as a heavy one at 20, for an average of 0.6 damage.<br /><br />Dammit, now you've got me wanting to write something about weapons... you see why I never finish anything?Shimmin Beghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-86941666910719716752013-10-24T10:19:14.736+01:002013-10-24T10:19:14.736+01:00I think your numbers might be a bit off (although ...I think your numbers might be a bit off (although it depends on what specifically you're trying to maximise). A heavy weapon with +1 damage soes 7 damage, while a light weapon with +1 does 3, so even if you need a 20 to hit - meaning a light weapon would hit twice as often - you still do more damage on average with a heavy weapon (7/20 = 0.35, 3/10 = 0.3). So the only time light weapons are strictly better is when you need to do three damage or less, which is very, very marginal.<br /><br />Ironically, I think the problem here isn't so much that the advantages of big weapons are easier to model so much as years of RPG convention insisting that big weapons must be strictly more effective than small ones, which I actually think is entirely untrue. There is, after all, a reason that the Zweihender was rarely actually used, and was replaced with more compact weapons. Small sharp weapons can kill just as effectively as big heavy ones.<br /><br />Indeed arguably it's big weapons that have advantages IRL that most RPGs don't model - things like reach and initial stopping power, as distinct from "capacity to kill an unarmoured human being".<br /><br />It's even more true in HP based systems - I don't see how a *non-incapacitating* blow from a swordstaff is supposed to be more effective than a non-incapacitating blow from a rapier.<br /><br />This comes back to one of my original complaints about Numenera, which was that it fell into this uncomfortable non-space between rules-heavy and rules-light. My assassin would have felt more assassin-ey if there had simply been no mechanical differentiation between weapons, or if there had been more differentiation, such that a dagger was meaningfully and usefully different from a longsword.Dan Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05711867728179306264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-64780379009300692862013-10-23T22:56:53.583+01:002013-10-23T22:56:53.583+01:00That may well be true. If it had been a more fami...That may well be true. If it had been a more familiar environment we'd maybe have had more ideas for how to approach it. Also to be fair, I suspect in a first play of a fairly structured game you're a bit less inclined to do that kind of thing because you're still getting a feel for everything.<br /><br />It's quite hard to tell for me how I'd feel about the system with a bit more play under my belt. <i>Call of Cthulhu</i> has a pretty simple resolution system and does okay. At the moment I'm not entirely sure what kind of game it's trying to be, mechanicswise, but in that session I was pleasantly able to just get on with things. It didn't feel notably different rolling a d20 vs. Difficulty to rolling a d20 vs. THAC0 in our <i>AD&D</i> game.<br /><br />That's an interesting point. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if it's a feature, because it'd have been easy to provide +50% if they wanted. A simple explanation would be that it's a way to make a light-weapon glaive a more viable build, while not overbuffing heavy-weapon glaives, but without flat-out blocking them from using it. It doesn't make them even, of course. Are there any other abilities later that might synergise with it? I suppose also it could just be a nice general bonus that also makes glaives *less hampered* if they find themselves restricted to light weapons, if you see what I mean.<br /><br />A quick bit of stats (when I really, really should be going to bed) suggests there's two occasions when a light weapon with +1 Damage is better than a heavy weapon with +1 Damage:<br />* when you have a target number of 19 or 20 otherwise<br />* when you only need to inflict 3 damage or less<br /><br />It's better than a medium weapon if you need a 17 or better.<br /><br />Incidentally, it looks like there are shields in <i>Numenera</i>, which might slightly change the value of weapon options? But I don't have the rules, so I can't really offer any suggestions - I suspect you're right and they're just flat out less good most of the time. Shame. To some extent I think there's an issue in that unless you start going into weapon speeds, encumbrance/manoeuvrability and duelling fatigue and so on, it's going to be that way; the advantages of big weapons are much easier to model than those of small ones.<br /><br />Right, bedtime.Shimmin Beghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-87599769383573831272013-10-23T19:15:13.755+01:002013-10-23T19:15:13.755+01:00That being said, the way the adventure consisted o...<em>That being said, the way the adventure consisted of specific one-room locations (effectively) made it feel more linear than I think an equivalent scenario set in a single location might have; essentially you're going from Camp Room to Doctor Room to Dog Room by fast travel, and so there's not much opportunity for creative approaches. Not something to completely slate it for, it's just something I notice in retrospect.</em><br /><br />Interestingly I wonder if this isn't as much a feature of the world design as the scenario design. Because the world seems (or seemed to us at least) very opaque, it's quite hard to work out what kind of approaches you could take to something that aren't "experience it as a set piece". Because you don't know what the world looks like, it isn't remotely clear how you would pursue any goal other than by moving to the next predetermined scene. We have no idea how a garden would fit into a wasteland city in that world, so we have no idea how we would approach the garden other than by walking in and trying to attack the dogs.<br /><br />I think you liked the system a lot more than I did. I agree that it's simple, but to me it felt too simple. It didn't get in my way, but it didn't help me with anything either.<br /><br />Incidentally I notice, belatedly, that the relative utility of my +1 Damage power actually decreases with weapon weight - it's far more useful to get +1 damage with a Light weapon than a Heavy one. I can't tell if this is a clever feature or an annoying bug (since the +1 damage still doesn't make the light weapon *better* than the heavy weapon.Dan Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05711867728179306264noreply@blogger.com