If you want to call a mulligan and have Azhanti survive at -1 HP and stable, and everyone's on board with that, I'd be okay with that personally.

I admit that I'm not the most old school of role-players, really :) I mean, death being a risk of the game is fine*, but pure bad dice when we don't have any warning isn't my opinion of fun.

That said, if you think a character's combat power is too much and is unbalancing the game, then I'd hope you'd talk it over with them and come to a workable solution.

*Remember the fight with the hairling? The likelihood of death in that fight was such that Katrina essentially said "I'm not getting paid enough for this shit," and was going to cut and run until she got a critical that turned the tide. That's an interesting dilemma.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:07, Tue 27 Dec 2022.

Ya I was trying to do something more interesting than blast it with damage but then it ended up flying so the whole thing was a bust.

Mystical Connection is broken. No two ways about it. The one fix you did attempt didn't solve the underlying issue and only served to force more somewhat balanced and interesting builds out of circulation.

If you don't put a flat spell level no greater than character level/2 (putting spell availability in line with wizards) then you may least need to put a limit on the number of points you can spend on any one thing. Mutation points no higher than character level leaves vastly OP spells available but not completely BS OP spells open. At it's most abused it forces someone like me to have a variety of 1/day effects which simply makes the fights more interesting and makes us vulnerable to attrition.

With those limitations being more lenient on upgrading your mutations seems called for. Using points to change the spells to direct upgrades (lesser to normal to greater, numbered summons, etc.) And being allowed to increase the uses while staying within the other limits. Both seem reasonably on theme.

@katarina you might not mind people dying but having someone die every fight until one player decides the fight is over isn't really the 'old school' spirit.

Have y'all ever played 2e psionics? It'll take since work, but there are basically power trees that each power in the tree become as players advance. So like Summon Monster would go up 1-9 as the PC got leveled enough to use it and trade the old power out. It would take a little work for the odd spells, but I should be able to work it out.

Or I could put it more in line with like gnome/elven racial spells where you pick 3 0 level spells and a 1st level at character creation to use any of the shells 3x/day and then give extra spell levels as y'all advance.

I did want the PCs to be powerful and unique, but then I just find it difficult to balance encounters without them being really deadly.

Why not add a mutation to the creature we were fighting and it absorbed Azhanti.  Have like an egg (or the heart) start to grow and spit out Azhanti again maybe with some difference of some sort.

On the mystical connection I would almost say it is too expensive in some ways but definitely over powered in others.  Why not use the method in creating races from pathfinder



With modification of offensive spells cost double of triple and put a cap of 3rd or level to start.  Once you reach a level of being able to cast the spell (8th means can pick 4th, 10th means cast 5th)

Fortunately you can do most of the work piecemeal. If no one is using Summon Nature's Ally then there isn't a real reason to put the work into it.

Yes, it's trivial to have our offense go way over our defense.

Monsters on the other hand are "balanced" at a certain level. They actually are also offensively balanced generally which only exacerbates the problem. See many player analyses on the subject for details.

But more over anyone not dumping stats and move and such to get free spells is going to be left way behind.

Shrug. I stayed far away from that mutation, but I also had a theme I was going for so it didn't matter to me. But yeah, I think it may need to be reworked. I'm not great at that sort of thing though.

And I'm fine with Azhanti not being completely dead, or coming back or whatever.

You should be able to be effective without interacting with the system. Since it is an optional system.

Maybe it'll help if I explain what I loved and hated about Gamma World in the first place. I loved that you could create fun characters quickly. It was all random so with about a dozen or so rolls, you'd be ready to go. The down side is that nothing was balanced, as in the mutations were either super powered or you'd come out next to useless and the skill system was next to non-existent. I always had terrible luck with the character creation, but I always figured out how to have fun even though their lives were almost always short lived.

Today's gamer just doesn't want randomness. I've tried running the old school version, but could never get enough players together, so Pathfinder is the way to draw people into a world that I've loved since high school. The d20 modern system tried to recapture the primary fun, but the mutations were more sci-fi than science fantasy. They were more of an obstacle rather than a fun feature.

At that's my goal, to make something that's fun for everyone but gives the freedom to create fun and wacky characters.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:23, Tue 27 Dec 2022.

In reply to Mutant Master (msg # 983):

I will say I used to love rolling random character for Marvel's old d100 FASERIP game. Trying to come up with an explanation for how the character's origin and powers could match up was sometimes frustrating (as could be the sometimes-useless characters rolled up) but also fun. And for me, it's about making a character that will be fun to play, not necessarily due to what class features or powers they have, though I will admit to trying to make that happen as well.

It's not the randomness it's that it's a fairly obscure system. You could probably do just about anything in d20 on here and it would fill.

The real problem with randomness on PbP is that if a player doesn't like what they random they are a lot more likely to gost you. Since they were about 99% likely to do that anyway.

The randomness of gammaworld had issue where if you had a concept and the roll ruined it it was done.

In my table top we do a lot of randomness but give some veto and variety.  Example being you could read the rolls front or back in percentiles and choose.  And each player is given two vetos as well as one roll above and beyond the number required.

This allowed for fairly random but not hand picked.

We usually do this with hero games where we use Palladium heroes unlimited and roll randomly and then switch to another system to build.

If you are playing a game with random CC you have to go in without a firm concept. RPOL doesn't work for that since the GM let you into the game based on a character pitch. Which is already too much to play nice with random gen.

Indeed - I know I'm not a fan.

Yeah, I understand all y'alls' points, so we're back to crafted characters. So the question still stands. Do we keep going with mutations as usual, go to a stepped up ability tree that is create on a case by case basis, or model after racial spells?

It doesn't have to be hashed out before we continue with the story, but it will need to be decided soon.

FYI, I won't retcon Azhanti's death. She's dead, but I will either make the party find the way to bring her back I prewrote into the adventure or offer it.

Randomness works far better if everyone is on board for a more narrative-style game, rather than a power-creep style (which is D&D's default). In that case power imbalances can be smoothed out (at least somewhat) by narrative focus. But I am also not really a fan of random character gen, for the reasons Mephis stated above.


I don't think I have any firm ideas on fixing mutations, though -- sorry.

Edit: Also, if there might be a way to bring her back, I'll forego listing her stuff in the "treasure" post for now.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:45, Wed 28 Dec 2022.

Let me just start out by saying that I would prefer that Mutant Master and that group not bend over backwards to save Azhanti.  While I am not the biggest fan of randomness (in character generation - not the case here - or in play - as with character death, which is the case here), as a player I knew what I was getting into when I submitted my RTJ to join.  Mutant Master has been more than accommodating to all of my requests and questions and should not feel poorly for any reason surrounding Azhanti's demise.  I was even admitted to the game after the solicitation window had closed; so, in that sense Azhanti on borrowed time anyways.  I feel bad that I made Mutant Master do so much work to get Azhanti in, only to have her not survive the first full encounter (her introduction wasn't really 'an encounter' from my standpoint; it started, media res where she was surrounded and staked out, virtually naked, to die; so, her chances were fully up to the GM's largess at that point).

And while I am still in a bit of shock as to Azhanti's death, I don't want the game or game play to change or suffer on account of that.  Perhaps Mystical Connection is too powerful in some respects - but as noted, it comes with (or requires taking) enough drawbacks to make balanced (sort of).  In some ways, it made Azhanti a glass cannon, but no more so than being low-level (where any unlucky roll of the dice will make mince meat of a character, which is what happened to her - the Brittle Bones drawback didn't help, but that was my choice).  I don't think that adding a more complex tree-structure to mutation rules would necessarily help with character generation (or resolve this balance issue).  Not sure if the added complexity would really be worth it, but that maybe that is just me.

I have had plenty of first through third level characters die back in the 80's and 90's when I played more DnD and Gamma World.  And like Mutant Master, I was often the victim of poor dice rolling (in chargen and play) leading to early and untimely death in first edition Gamma World and old school AD&D land.  I won't say that I am used/like it, but I am familiar with the circumstance.

Anyways, my original statement was not meant to be an indictment of the play style or the character generation rules as written.  I was simply trying to truthfully answer Alyx's question about whether I could/would continue.  My time is more limited nowadays than it was back in the 80's and 90's where I happily rolled up and daydreamed about extra characters in my off-time.  Which was really, the intent/subtext of my answer; it takes me a while to come up with something that catches my fancy (and is probably more sturdy ... :D).  And I know that games (especially PBP) don't always afford that luxury of that time; so, I don't want to hold up the game either.  It should remain fun and active for everyone involved.

This conversation is literally "Should we nerf Mephis." So imma stay out of it. I feel like I did my due diligence telling MM what I was doing and how it would work. So my conscience is clear.

No, I don't want to nerf you, just delay your power or we continue as is and deal with the consequences. I'm fine with either path, but I just want to be clear that staying with it as it is will make the encounters more deadly and thus everyone needs to know this upfront so that they can plan accordingly.

Since everyone is not set up that way, I personally would prefer not to have to deal with every encounter being above our weight, so to speak, because of one or two characters having abilities more powerful than is normal for our level.

That said, I'm fine with whatever and will roll with it. If Alyx dies, he dies. It happens. =)

I love all y'all's characters. Y'all took what I thought would be interesting and did just that, made it interesting. I just want to make sure everyone is having fun and having encounters that are way more powerful than they need to be can be annoying. As everyone grows in power, this will eventually balance out, but the power creep is front loaded at this time.

I am here.  Christmas is little time off.  But having fun and enjoying the game.

Sorry about the delay; I'll update the treasure thread in the next day or so. Certainly before next year _{^{I think}}...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!  May your 2023 be happy, safe, and productive!  And filled with gaming!

Finally got a second to record stuff in the treasure thread and I had a question for Mutant Master:

Is the wand in the Deep Trunk supposed to Sending, or Whispering Wind? Message has a very limited range to it. I was about to make a post about that point, except I thought I should probably ask first.

Also, this post hits the thread limit for RPoL; you should probably make a new OOC thread.