tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post3342651040145300048..comments2024-03-07T16:20:50.007+00:00Comments on Librarians & Leviathans: Manipulating playstyles with modifiers: the case of DeathwatchShimmin Beghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-4163793646471374622014-10-03T02:46:24.615+01:002014-10-03T02:46:24.615+01:00That's some good points about the firearms mod...That's some good points about the firearms modifiers, which I didn't much think about. It's very situational; in theory aiming is suboptimal, but you took aim actions several times during the podcasts. It's particularly useful when you're ambushing or doing overwatch on an entrance, which quite often we were. Because it's lethal combat and often the first round is the last, ramping up your chances for that first shot is very valuable.<br /><br />There's also complicated extras like Lightning Attacks, reflecting the different ways they model combat versus most other stuff.<br /><br />I wasn't really intending to suggest that modifiers alone can drive playstyle, but I do think it's part of a package. That being said, I think you may be overstating the case. I think reliability and credence is a big point here. If your base chance is only 20% or even 40%, then you can expect to fail most of the time. This discourages you from using a skill when you could do something else, or adopting tactics that revolve around that skill; this in turn makes it less worthwhile buying up that skill. If you use a skill regularly then every point is useful. Do you feel like you wasted your points on BS upgrades?<br /><br />On the other hand, even if you can get a +40% bonus from gear and situation, I feel like it's significant whether you're rolling on your skill of 40 or your half skill of 20; the odds are still fairly broad. 60% versus 80% feels substantial to me, and so if I care about a skill it's worth training it to me. This also means I'm more likely to build the skill into my overall approach, and roll it more often, and this makes it less disappointing if I do fail. It also makes the low-chance situations without bonuses more appealing, because I'm in a habit of rolling Wrangling or whatever so I might as well have a go, and I already spent points on the skill so I want to get use out of it. <br /><br />I think one of the important things about the modifiers on offer is that very few of them are automatic, barring full auto/standard attack. You have to pick your ground, choose your targets and gear up for the right kind of enemies. Be in cover. Get close enough to take close shots, but not to get jumped. Most of the sights work only in specific situations, and the almost-always-on Motion Predictor is relatively expensive and require renown for a +10 bonus. It's nice when you can get lots of them, but unusual - and for any weapon but a heavy bolter there's essentially no difference between a 99% and a 180% anyway. The easiest ones to get are essentially inherent difficulty levels rather than modifiers - close range and target size. I'm fine with the game including non-combat skill tests that are inherently easy and these being easy to succeed at, and in fact I think it should do this far more often.<br /><br />Basically I kind of feel like there's a tipping point thing going on. If you know bonuses are available, then you can work towards getting those, which probably involves adopting a particular playstyle, buying the right equipment at mission start (instead of something else) and bumping up the right skills, because once you start investing it feels worth pushing your odds up as much as possible. If there's really no way to get a good chance of success, it's usually better to invest the points elsewhere on something you will use regularly and can bump from "likely" to "very likely", than to turn "deeply improbable" into "quite improbable" but still not bother using it.Shimmin Beghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-32898342799886063812014-10-02T17:58:39.190+01:002014-10-02T17:58:39.190+01:00For what it's worth, shooting is slightly bett...For what it's worth, shooting is slightly better and slightly worse than you make out here. It's slightly better because Spess Marens get Bulging Biceps for free at character creation (honestly it would be kind of weird if they didn't). It's slightly worse because Aiming is an utterly sub-optimal thing to do with basically any weapon worth firing. You're trading a full round of dakka for a +20 bonus. This has a slight bearing on your skills example, because it goes some way towards explaining why there isn't an "aim" equivalent for non-combat actions. If something isn't time-constrained, the option to spend six seconds concentrating in order to get a +20 bonus would basically be the same as getting a +20 bonus always, for free. Of course a lot of combat bonuses are basically a +20 bonus always, for free as well, but that's a different issue.<br /><br />I agree that the way the game hands out bonuses like candy in combat situations, and then hands out penalties like evil poison candy in non-combat situations massively encourages a combat focus in the game, and obviously evening out that imbalance would go a long way towards making skills-based characters more viable.<br /><br />That said, I don't think that it necessarily follows that frequent positive modifiers by themselves make broad skillsets more viable. You could easily wind up with a situation in which modifiers are sufficiently generous that an investment in skills doesn't represent a significant increase in chance of success. I think to make diversification really viable you'd need to combine positive bonuses with harsh penalties for attempting actions unskilled (although to be fair, Deathwatch *does* include that as well). You also might need some greater incentive to buy skills up - if baseline Training allows you to access regular +30 modifiers, what's the point of buying an additional +10 at a greater cost?Dan Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05711867728179306264noreply@blogger.com