You still get the progressive penalty with the Lite rules, they just put a cap to the number of extra actions. Also, note that Tom does half as much damage as the harpies: an extra action puts him on par with one harpy, leaving the other harpy free to fight Zoey and Jack.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:11, Fri 12 Dec 2014.

Sorry for the delay. I hate pausing this long in the middle of a combat but, as I said, it was a busy few days.



I know some GMs limit the max number of multiple actions to the same as a character's Dex, however that means characters with a Dex of 6 or 7 can take 6 or 7 actions - which seems extreme to me. It still takes time to complete each action, even for a fast character. The progressive penalty regulates that a bit. Eventually the penalty adds up to where another successful action can not be taken, however spending drama points can compensate for the penalty. I think a max of 5 actions per combat turn seems reasonable. More than that and your character would have to be the Flash.



You seem terribly worried about a harpy that hasn't managed to even hit you yet, while you have done a significant amount of damage to her.

Jack and Zoey aren't going to be as strong in combat as Tom, and Tom shouldn't be as good as them at other things. But Jack and Zoey are not white hats. They are equals to Tom with different strengths and weaknesses. They aren't Xander to Tom's Buffy, and if that's how things are shaking out in the game, then I didn't get things as balanced between the characters as I had hoped. They should still be useful in a combat, and not just stand around and watch Tom save them - just as I suspect Tom isn't going to sit in the corner and twiddle his thumbs while Jack and Zoey investigate things.

Taking the current combat as an example - the harpy has not succeeded in hitting Tom but he has done a lot of damage to her. I fear that if I make the bad guys tough enough to provide a challenge for Tom, they are going to be way too tough for Jack and Zoey. That's my main goal here - to provide a challenge. I'm not trying to beat the crap out of your characters.

Tom, you said they nerfed the multiple actions when they created the cinematic rules. Did they do that because people thought the rule gave some characters too much advantage? And does that mean you preferred it the way it was before they nerfed it?

For now, let's go with the Classic rule:

Characters may perform one attack and one defense Task or Test each Turn at no penalty. Any actions beyond that attack and defense will be at a cumulative -2.

It isn't based on any attribute or skill, so it can be done by any character. Those with high attributes or skills will have a better chance of succeeding at multiple actions because their higher scores compensate for the penalty. Some characters may only be able to pull off multiple actions when they spend a drama point. I'm ok with a non-combat character spending a drama point, digging down deep, and pulling off a multiple action in a rare burst of adrenalin. I'm going to cap multiple actions at 5 in a turn.

I'll try to get an in-game post up later today so we can move forward.

Um... Remember, this is Tom the Bast we are talking about: dying is a minor inconvenience for him.

He will spend the remainder of the episode as a spirit, in which form he still gets all his magical abilities, then, at the end of the episode, he will reincarnate, and some two months later he will be back to being a normal PC - with a new character portrait. The only thing I'm worried about is finding a new character portrait: finding a cat working on a laptop is not as easy as it sounds :P

I am just simply trying to address the misconception that Tom is an unstoppable killing machine: statistically, he is only about 10% better than a harpy.

Remember, I invested a DP on the first Turn, and that is where quite a bit of that "significant amount of damage" came from; also, IIRC, I only parried the harpy's attack by the barest of margins, meaning the harpy could actually still hit Tom if you decided to spend his Bad Luck point on this round.

And if the harpy really does do 20 point of base damage, slashing... One hit will take Tom down to 1 Life Point.



Gut feeling? It made White Hats too unbalanced.

If you had DPs to spend, which White Hats got by the dozen, it usually made a lot of sense to attack as much as possible each round, especially if you had managed to win initiative with a lucky roll or a surprise attack.

Each of your opponent's parries would then also penalize any extra attacks they would attempt.

So combat would suddenly be packed with characters attacking 10 times per round, with a DP to back them up.

All White Hats were suddenly Jackie Chan - taking out three opponents before they can retaliate with a flurry of blows.

To avoid this, they decided to simply cap the number of actions per Turn.

However, they still wanted to have Jackie Chan types, because few people are more cinematic than Jackie Chan.... They just did not want to have every single White Hat turn into him at will.

In fact, they didn't want every hero to turn into Jackie Chan at will, either.

The solution they found is the one we have now: focusing on your speed by sacrificing something else. This was refined in GoA to add extra mental actions for high INT, so that characters who rely on mental attacks would have the same chances.

I don't think it's ideal, but it does solve all the problems I highlighted above. There may be better ways, but the fact that the adaptations in GoA focused mostly on tweaking the number and type of actions, rather than introducing a completely different solution, suggests that neither the development team nor the playtesters had found them.

Hi. After failure at being a person I'm making effort to fix all the things. No excuses! I'm going to get work.

Welcome back! We're all gonna die!!! ;p
This message was last edited by the player at 11:54, Thu 18 Dec 2014.

LOL!

Not all of you. The harpies don't even know Zoey's there. She could just leave the menfolk to their fate.  ;-)



Yeah, 10 attacks is a bit ridiculous for anyone. Just because there is no rule that says you can't do something, doesn't mean you should. Those are players that prioritize themselves over the enjoyment of the rest of the group. I am somebody who finds my character's failures just as interesting (and sometimes more interesting) to write about than their successes. I don't want to lose every battle but, I don't want to win them all, either. Both situations make for a boring story.

We don't have white hats (you each started with the same pool of Drama Points), I am limiting the number of multiple attacks to 5, and we don't use Initiative (I find it doesn't work well in play-by-post) - do you think that will address the issues they ran into with multiple actions?

The GoA RPG was written by a guy who loves magic. His favorite characters are witches. He quit watching Buffy when they killed off Tara. The Buffy rules favor physical characters. The GoA rules favor spellcasters, because that was Tim's interest and focus.

Nice to have you back, Krys.

Tom's not a man, so that doesn't necessarily bother him ;p



Under the default rules, Tom is the fastest character in the group, and he gets a grand total of *one* extra action per Turn, or two if they are mental actions.  If he goes full offense, he can Jackie Chan 3 opponents, and then he's defenseless for the rest of the Turn.

So, I wouldn't necessarily mind having more extra actions, but then I am going to use them. And so is everybody, I expect. Zoey is particularly deadly with that combination, since she can go full offense with little fear of retribution, but Tom can get pretty ridiculous as well: his first round would have been DP, defense, 5 attacks, and I think several of them would have connected.

Might I suggest: keep the default rules for the number of offenses and uncap defensive actions? One of the main concerns about capping the number of extra actions was that it effectively made it impossible to defend against attacks by additional opponents, and one of the proposed fixes was uncapping defenses so that not everybody could Jackie Chan, but everybody could defend themselves.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:15, Thu 18 Dec 2014.

There should be a reasonable limit to the number of people/monsters that can surround one opponent. I'm not saying we need to make a hard rule about it. I'd prefer to apply logic to the situation. 6 people trying to crowd around one person are just going to get in each other's way (unless the person they are surrounding is the size of Jabba the Hutt). There aren't going to be too many situations where one of you is swarmed by an angry mob.



We can try it and see how it works. If you feel like it cramps Tom's style too much, we can revisit it. I have run across discussions where people have pointed out that in unisystem several low level baddies are a much bigger threat than one big bad. In some situations, that actually makes sense. It's a battle tactic - keep throwing bodies at the enemy until you wear them down. However, I can see how other times that would feel unbalanced.

I won't be online much for the next few days. I want to wish all of you Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to everyone! Take some time to relax and spend it with loved ones.

Happy holidays everyone, enjoy your time with friends and family.

Happy Holidays!!! I'll try not to be distracted for too long but no pressure on anyone I'm sure everyone will be briefly busy :)

The week between Christmas and New Years is always a busy family time for me, but I will try to keep us moving.

So... Not a single one of us aced their Sense Motive roll? Or rather, their PER + Notice vs INT + Influence + Charisma? Great.

To be fair, that Sense Motive roll for me has a base of 2 but with my drinking issues, that makes it a 0.  Multiply that by my dice roll and, yeah ...  I got duped.

Nice play CTA!

Tom has a base Perception of 1: even with decent Notice to prop it up, he's just average. He's going to match the auras, we'll see what happens then :)

Sorry gang, my laptop quit working a few days ago and is in the shop. Until I get it back, logging in and posting is going to be a bit more inconvenient and sporadic. I'll do the best I can. Also, it had all my notes for the episode as well as my rulebook PDFs so, I'm going to be winging it and going by memory.

24 is 12x2, so the basic damage from each bllet was 12 unless something was missing. That means that, with an AV of 8, Tom is effectively taking only 4x2=8 points of damage. Correct?

Good luck with the laptop, hopefully they won't reformat it as some shops tend to do...
This message was last edited by the player at 12:45, Tue 13 Jan 2015.

Correct, base damage was 12. It wasn't a Big Ass Gun. I will note your current LP on your character sheets. I was surprised that you both opted to take a bullet to save the harpies. Such gentlemen! Don't forget you can use drama points for "I think I'm ok", if you feel the need.



Been down that road a few times in the past. It is a pain.

We're going to let Krystal's scene catch up to you guys, and then the two scenes should converge.

Sorry if this comes across as an info dump.

No worries, I enjoy sitting back and watching the story unfold some times :)

No need to apologize, Krystal, since I'm the one that requested the scene. It suddenly occurred to me that it would be a good way to give the cast insight into Paul and his motives so, I'm thankful you agreed to let Krys be a victim. I'm really happy with the way the scene turned out. The rest of you will be able to join in soon.

Just an update, my computer issues are continuing. It doesn't look good.

I never worry about trusting my characters to any fate you have orchestrated for them. I will say it turned out to be a great opportunity for me to explore her backstory a bit more - if just for me. So Thank you!

Just out of curiosity... Other than Krys and myself, has anybody else been playing with our esteemed Director for a decade or so, if only via rpol? :)

Has it been 10 years? And in the words of River Song. "Spoilers."