Power Core Combiner RPG outline

[Dominic]

Hey, I was wondering if there was still any interest in this. One of my plans for this year was to start writing again. Is this something that I should move up my priority list?


Dom

[Dominic]

If anybody wants to get working on this, out best bet is to start play testing with basic scenarios. A very rough draft of a character sheet is below. For the moment, I want to stick with tech spec numbers as much as possible. But, Hasbro's often non-sensical stat lines (usually making characters far more powerful than one might reasonably expect) make this difficult enough, even discounting that problems with converting techspec numbers in to game state.

For the moment, ignore questions of point costs and size modifiers. (We can sort those out once we start playing.)



Character sheet (and general notes) for the Vehicon:

Deception
Vehicon
(robot/car)
Function: infantry
Specific classes: (mkI)

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 4
Endurance: 4
Rank: 3
Courage: 7
Firepower: 5
Skill: 4

Alternate mode stat changes:
Speed: +1
Endurance: +2

An older variant that is still commonly used.


---------------------------
Deception
Vehicon
(robot/car)
Function: infantry
mkII:

Strength: 5
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 5
Endurance: 4
Rank: 3
Courage: 7
Firepower: 5
Skill: 4

Alternate mode stat changes:
Speed: +1
Endurance: +2

Generally, these are the most commonly deployed and manufactured Vehicons. They are
slightly weaker than their predecessors, but have a slight adavantage in speed.


mkIIa (Takara)

Strength: 5
Intelligence: 5
Speed: 5
Endurance: 4
Rank: 3
Courage: 7
Firepower: 4
Skill: 4

Alternate mode stat changes:
Speed: +2
Endurance: -2
Skill: -1

Faster in Vehicle mode, but at a greater cost in energy and dexterity. Also more
likely to be significantly damaged by collisions and other damage while in vehicle
mode.


mkIIb (tank)

Strength: 6
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 4
Endurance: 4
Rank: 4
Courage: 8
Firepower: 7
Skill: 3

Alternate mode stat changes:
Speed: -1
Endurance: +1
Firepower: +1
Skill: +1

Significantly larger. Advantages in strength and firepower, but at cost in speed.


-----------------------
mkIII (jet car)

Strength: 4
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 5
Endurance: 4
Rank: 3
Courage: 6
Firepower: 5
Skill: 4

Alternate mode stat changes:
Speed: +3
Endurance: -2
Firepower: -2
Skill: -1

Able to fly in vehicle mode only. Similar to mkII in robot mode, though not as
strong, which generally makes them slightly less courageous about facing danger.


mkIIIa (copter)

Strength: 5
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 5
Endurance: 5
Rank: 3
Courage: 6
Firepower: 5
Skill: 4

Alternate mode stat changes:
Speed: +1
Endurance: -1
Firepower: -2

Able to hover and change altitude more easily than the jet car Vehicons, but much
slower. They also suffer less of a penalty for ranged attacks.


--------------------------
mk-X (modular)

Strength: 3
Intelligence: 4
Speed: 3
Endurance: 4
Rank: 3
Courage: 7
Firepower: 0
Skill: 4

Alternate mode stat changes:
n/a

Able to change classification based on modular parts. Must take at least one suite
of equipment before a battle. Stats will vary depending on equipment.


General Profile:
Vehicons are Decepticon soldiers. Some are built for the purpose of being soldiers,
others join after being built. Generally, Vehicons are uniform in terms of size and
abilities. But, there are enough common variations to break Vehicons down in to
several types. Vehicons are individually sentient, but many accept the anonymity of
their rank as a way to escape the specific notice of their enemies and superiors.
While visually similar, Vehicons may have individual designations/names, and
individualscan be identified by transponders or other factors. Generally, Vehicons
are stationed at Decepticon facilities and are used as troops in military
campaigns. While they are versatile personell, they are rarely notably skilled in
any particular tasks.



Real notes:
I figure that starting with canonical troop builders is a quick and easy way to make
characters, especially for play testing. Similarly, Vehicons and similar character
types will be commonly used enemy characters.

The stat numbers have been tweaked, (generally downward), from the numbers on the US
released Deluxe figure.

The variation numbers are all based on toys or proposed toys. The mk-X Vehicons are
based on the Kre-O mini-figure and will be more "expensive" in game, but will be
able to change between types for a lesser cost in points, (.5 the difference between
classes).

Officers and commanders are assumed to have +1 rank.

[Dominic]

Being snowed in meant that I had a significant amount of time to piss away over the weekend. So, I play-tested the game.

I was lose with rolling dice and using the same type of dice consistently. But, I got a good feel for the game.

Bottom line, it needs to be streamlined. The first game was 7 rounds played over a bit more than an hour with moderate note taking. The second was 8 rounds played over the course of an hour with no note-taking. (In an actual game, notes are essential.)

-general thoughts:
Combat needs to be resolved more quickly. I am thinking that it would be best to remove the automatic roll to *dodge* an attack, allowing it only as an option in some cases. "Endurance" is playing far too important a roll in the game. (I spotted an obvious exploit in that a character with high endurance could theoretically have an advantage over a character with far greater firepower and strength simply by avoiding a direct fight.) Negative modifiers need to be a bit less punative.

I like how how the rolling for being hit by weapons works. Shots that do no pierce armour or otherwise do direct damage impose reaction/movement penalties on that character's next attack.

Using tech spec stats as a base stat is suprisingly easy. "dice roll + tech spec numbers". It is not perfect. But, few game systems are. Occassionally, adding or dividing a stat is necessary. Some of the specific equations could stand to be be simplified. But, the principle underlying this method of resolving contested actions is sound.

Using different types of dice (D6, D4, D10, whatever) is a good idea.

If somebody wants to use some kind of playable miniature to represent their figure, Legends scale (or the old PVC figures) is about as large as is practical. Deluxes, even Scouts, would only be options for much larger characters. If the old Decoys were were not so ungodly expensive, I would recommend customizing some of those.


-----------------------------------
The games:

Both games assume "roll to hit" against "roll to dodge". If a hit is scored, "roll to damaged" against "roll to resist". Role to resist = (strengh + endurance)/2. Damage is generally taken from endurance. If the rounds exceed endurance, the character will suffer negative modifiers. Too many such modifiers, or too much generally bad stuff happening, can cause a character to flee. (I had a few different rolling schemes, all against courage.) Negative modifiers are applied by rolling a D8 to determine which stat is modified, and then subtracting 1 from that stat.

Rolls to dodge are some mixture of speed and skill, but I have not quite ironed it out.


Game 1: Big Daddy (robot) v/s Fracture (robot) and Crankcase (vehicle).
Round1: Fracture and Crankcase get the drop on Big Daddy. Both land ranged attacks, but fail to break Big Daddy's armour. Big Daddy returns fire, scoring hits on both his attackers. (I had not yet established the "stunned after being hit" rule. On the other hand, Crankcase took far less damage than a later revision would assume, so it all balances out.)

Round 2: Fracture runs forward and fires, scoring damage on Big Daddy. Crankcase, (transforming) attacks and misses. Big Daddy fires both attacks at Crankcase, and misses twice. (Had these attacks hit, the rest of the game could have gone much differently, as Crankcase would have started taking negative modifiers in the next round. I also should have penalized Crankcase for transforming.)

Round 3: Fracture kicks Big Daddy, scoring 2 points of damage. (I wavered on using firepower as the determining variable for Fractur's kick, as she is described as having some kind of seismic attack in her profile.) Crankcase shoots and misses Big Daddy, hitting and damaging fracture Fracture. (One of my peeves about War Hammer is that it is impossible to shoot at a target that is in close combat. I decided to allow players to do this, with the chance of them hitting one of their allies with friendly fire. Big Daddy's dodge managed to put Fracture in the line of fire.)

Round 4: Crankcase swaps in his hammer hand. (I should come up with a formal movement/speed penalty for this sort of thing.) Fracture lands another kick on Big Daddy, costing him more Endurance. As it stands now, he has one more turn before negative modifiers start becoming an issue. Big Daddy managed to bring his guns up (but only firing one shot) and scored a serious hit on Fracture. Crankcase ran with his hammer, but Big Daddy managed to get out of the way.

Round 5: Fracture was pretty well screwed, and stayed down. Crankcase failed a nerve test (with courage as the base stat) after seeing Fracture get so badly damaged at the end of the previous round. Big Daddy scored damage on Crankcase and put a round through (a more or less immobile) Fracture for good measure.

Round 6: Crankcase's poor luck in skirmish fighting continued. Big Daddy took negative modifiers to skill, and missed on his attacks.

Round 7: Negative modifiers to speed and skill more or less doomed Crankcase here. Big Daddy successfully landed two shots, putting Crankcase down and ending the game.

Crankcase's low skill was a major factor in this game. Had he landed even one blow with his hammer weapon, especially early on, Big Daddy would likely have gone down. Fracture may even had had a chance to get up and fight some more. Had Big Daddy managed to hit Crankcase in round 2, it is entirely possible that the game would have been 2 rounds shorter. Big Daddy's stats work out better than either Fracture's or Crankcase's. But, comvined, they far out-stripped him. Howerver, Crankcase's low skill and some bad dice rolls were enough to erode that advantage.


Game 2:
I did not take as many notes here. Cyclonus has slightly better stats that Rodimus.

High-lights: I started with the "Battle in Space" concept, but assumed that Hot Rod left the ship before issuing the challenge.

During the first few rounds, Hot Rod's attacks suffered negative modifiers due to Cyclonus's distance and speed. (Cyclonus spent some time in vehicle mode.) Similarly, Cyclonus suffered negative modifiers to his skill as he was trying to hit a moving target (with cover) while moving himself and trying to dodge shots. Hot Rod was still hit once though.

Cyclonus' relatively high endurance theoretically meant that it would be possible for a player to stay out of the fight for 6 rounds, and then get in 2 rounds of fighting while Rodimus was dealing with negative stat modifiers. I am torn as to how to address this problem in an actual game. (If nothing else, some characters would rationally use that sort of advantage in context.)

Cyclonus took two non-damaging hits. This is when I really decided to toy with the idea of being stunned. I used a skill roll to determing that Cyclonus, (flying downward anyway) would not be able to pull up in time and that he crashed. A second skill roll diminished the impact, but it was still considerable, and more or less eroded Cyclonus' Endurance advantage. By round 5, both were taking negative modifiers.

Despite not taking much damage from Hot Rod directly, Cyclonus' negative modifiers were enough to force a nerve check (using Courage, which happened to be one of the diminished stats), and he retreted, leaving a seriously bashed and battered Hot Rod victorious. Had the nerve check gone differently, it is entirely possible that Cyclonus would have won.


Dom
-wants to focus on coming up with consistent methods for resolving combat before streamlining.

[Onslaught Six]

In the intervening time, I actually started playing D&D via Skype with a few friends, so I have a better handle on the basic mechanics of 3.5e now. And I'll definitely say, from looking at it, it does look like it needs streamlined. I feel like "roll to hit" against "roll to dodge" could be simplified (mostly on the victim's end), if we instead incorporate a constant "dodge" stat in there somewhere. It makes more sense if combat is supposed to be more player-vs-player for each one to have to roll in a specific instance of attacks, because that makes combat more fun for two individual players. However, if we're going with a more traditional player-vs-DM approach, then it doesn't make as much sense--you'd be artificially elongating combat for the sake of...more DM rolls? If I'm making any sense.

Basically, "roll to dodge" needs to be excised in favour of the attacker's "roll to hit" simply playing against a static stat. (This might be conjured up from some degree of Speed and Skill. Did we decide if Speed was literally foot/vehicle mode speed, or if it was combat speed as well?) It does make more sense if this is pvp, but if it's player-vs-DM it just seems like it draws things out.

Similarly, I'd say "roll to damaged" against "roll to resist" also needs quick simplification. The "victim" has already lost his roll. He didn't avoid the attack. Giving him a second chance to avoid damage is artificial and kind of unfair. We already have a consolidated "Endurance" stat that should basically effectively determine a character's resistance.

I missed this--what happens to a character as of 0 hit points? (I am assuming we're using hit points.) Do they instantly die and explode, or do they go unconcious/stasis lock, with "death" happening at something like -5, -10 HP? (And even that "death" could be fixed at a later point, given certain stipulations.)

[Shockwave]

This is what I mean by things being overly complicated. Roll to dodge should only happen if the player actually states that he/she wants to dodge an attack. Then the player would roll to see if it was successful. Hell you could flip a coin for that. Boom. Done. Simplified. That's how it works in D&D and it's what most players are used to. Otherwise, a roll to attack would basically roll for damage. You roll 0, you missed and your attack failed. you roll 20 (because most combat rolls use a d20) and it's a critical hit.

Also, O6, this was something that never really got hammered out. So uh... suggestions are welcome?

[Dominic]

I agree that "roll to dodge" should probably go.

The "roll to damage" and "roll to resist" represent what happens if the attack actually connects. The idea being that it would be possible to hit a target (either with ranged attack or a skirmish weapon) without damaging it. If attacks are too effective, the game could become unplayable because player characters would be getting killed off too easily.

I was using "Endurance" as the hit points. But, this needs to be changed as well. (As I played it this weekend, "Endurance" is far too important a number and ends up dominating the stat line.) Most likely, some kind of traditional hitpoints are the way to go here though.


Windcharger's RTS file card is the best official definition of "Speed" that I know of. Windcharger has a speed of 10, which puts him even with guys like Jetfire. (It actually puts him ahead of RTS Cyclonus.) Windcharger is described as being the Autobot with the fastest acceleration, ("0 to 60 in _____ seconds"), but not the fastest in terms of speed (time spend travelling between two points). I figured that this works well enough for reaction times.

But, it does not provide as much help in sorting out top speeds. It is a safe bet that a guy like Cyclonus is actually going to have a faster top speed that Windcharger. (Even his initial speed would likely be at least equal to Windcharger's top speed.) But, it would take Cyclonus longer to reach his top speed. Similarly, it is hard to see a guy like Bulkhead breaking any land speed records. But, he may well be able to reach his top speed relatively quickly (if only because it is so low.)


Death was part of the damage table that I worked out (but did not use this weekend as I was more concerned with resolving combat scenarios). Death would be by degree, depending on the nature and cause of the injury. In some cases, this would render a character immobile, but relatively easy to repair. In other cases, repairs would be more difficult and expensive. In still other cases, a character would have to outright salvaged and rebuilt, if not replaced in some way.


Dom
-going to try to get another character profile done in the next week or so, and hopefully a basic playable scenario.

[BWprowl]

In terms of 'miniatures' to use when playing the game, like I said in the other thread, I think Kre-Ons would work great. They're the right size, and easy for players to 'customize' a representation of the character they're playing, and can even be quickly 'transformed' if you need to represent that element.

Anyway, on the to-hit/to-dodge argument, I'll bring my Dark Heresy experience to the table on this one: in that game, characters get 'reactions' as a combat element. Every player starts with one reaction, and can use that per round of combat. This reaction allows you to dodge or parry an attack, depending on your skill-set (dodge rolls off of agility, parry off of weapon skill). So basically, the GM can be like "The heretic swings his club at you *rolls* and successfully hits you!" and you can be all "Nuh uh, I'm gonna use my reaction and try to dodge *rolls* and I do!" Now, if another enemy attacks you right after that, and they successfully roll a to-hit roll, you are just gonna get hit since you already used up your reaction for that round (thus you have to wait for the next round of combat to cycle around), but this still gives you somewhat of a chance (as well as leaving it to your own abilities) to avoid damage at some point. It's also possible to add additional reactions to your character's pool by spending experience points.

Damage is rolled after a to-hit roll is confirmed, and then calculated against whatever armor the character is wearing, along with that character's toughness (which in this case would all fall under the 'Endurance' stat, I suppose, though there are examples of TF characters wearing additional armor, so I guess that could be incorporated into the game).

Have we discussed using 'Rank' as almost a Charisma stat of sorts? Like how likely NPCs may be to follow your instructions on the battlefield, or your ability to influence other characters out of battle?

[Dominic]

Damage is rolled after a to-hit roll is confirmed, and then calculated against whatever armor the character is wearing, along with that character's toughness (which in this case would all fall under the 'Endurance' stat, I suppose, though there are examples of TF characters wearing additional armor, so I guess that could be incorporated into the game).

I can see this. The way I had it set up, assuming that every attack that connected inflicted damage on a target would lead to very short and messy games. (I can honestly say that Hot Rod and Cyclonus' fight over the last weekend played like a solid brawl, despite it being drawn out.)
The "roll to resist" was to resist damage. It assumed that a character got hit, but that their armour was able to deflect at least some of the impact. (For example, Hot Rod managed to hit Cyclonus a few times without doing appreciable damage.)


I was seeing Rank as being similar to "Charisma" or "Leadership".

In terms of 'miniatures' to use when playing the game, like I said in the other thread, I think Kre-Ons would work great. They're the right size, and easy for players to 'customize' a representation of the character they're playing, and can even be quickly 'transformed' if you need to represent that element.

Customizing Kreons would stop being easy and cross over in to "horribly difficult" the minute you wanted to change a base colour. Remember, about 90% of the detail on a Kreon is painted, and most of us (myself included) cannot paint well enough to replace it. Having miniatures is not essential to most games, so long as players have markers for scenarios where location is relevant.


Dom
-and if we play this remotely, we would all need some kind of consistent boards/maps.

[Shockwave]

What gaming system were you basing this on? I would recommend looking through a 2nd Ed D&D player's handbook. The system for combat is much easier and much less intense or combersome for the DM running the scenario. Like Prowl said, there is one roll to see if the attack hits and then another to see how much damage is done. Which is further determined by the target's armor rating. It really is a lot simpler and much more streamlined combat system than having to roll for everything.

[Onslaught Six]

3.5e, at least (not sure about 2e) mitigates the idea that combat could be over quickly by having most attack dice be very low numbered. I'm playing a high-powered Barbarian with a two-handed Greataxe that one might expect to tear through enemies--the axe does 1d12 of damage, so the most damage it can do is 12 in a single round. (Occasionally I get bonuses for charging.)