Author Topic: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase  (Read 3142 times)

FakDendor

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #240 on: February 12, 2019, 06:49:25 am »
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So if there is some pilot in the team (immune to zero-G penalties), he might get an edge against him, which is cool, as pilot characters usually aren´t that good on ground compared to the rest of the characters. Question: was there a way for us to change the gravity, from one of the terminals maybe?

My intent definitely was to throw a hazard in that pilot and scoundrel types would have no trouble dealing with - my RL crew is less "militant" than this one so the penalty actually wouldn't have hurt them as much.

The gravity thing didn't quite work the way I had envisioned it. In my first draft the gravity was an automatic effect while the warmaster was alive, cycling between different gravity strengths. This would let the PCs sort of match the flow of gravity, setting up attacks during zero-G, maneuvering with the bonus speed during low G, and getting the hits in during normal G.

However, in my second draft I had thought that maybe it would have better integration with the rules if it cost a swift action to change the gravity, so that players could force the warmaster to make tough choices by limiting action economy. This was true, but it ended up just letting the warmaster leave it at zero-G which is really the best place for it to be for him! Not what I had intended, because it forced the majority of you to just focus on trying to crit, which is not what I want my PCs to do because it's not very engaging.

I think in my third draft of the gravity I'll either put it back to a cycle, or force the warmaster to use a swift action every turn to maintain an alternate gravity, so he can keep the zero-G buff but it will lock out critical strike and limit recovery actions.

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The monsters from the eggs were a good shakeup - but they went down kind of easily.   Was the larger egg a nastier version?  And did my flaming it prevent it from hatching?

They did go down easy but I suspect a less militant party would have had more trouble with them. Most of their attacks were vs fort and had at most a +10 modifier which meant the lot of you were untouchable with your armor fort bonuses. Most of my RL party goes without armor so it would have been nasty for them. And yes, there was a nastier one in the big egg that hadn't finished "gestating".

StevenO

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #241 on: February 12, 2019, 10:12:17 am »
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Part of the reason that the support crew didn´t get enough action was because we quickly realized that the Shaper must go down before he can get the rest back up, thus denying the YV a healer. If we left her there longer (if she was better protected, perhaps), she could keep the others going.
....

For the Shaper I see the "wakeup call" as being "The warrior heals 60 points of damage."  When there's a character who it seems can easily undo so much work of course she turns into a target.  In some ways that healing 60 damage made her nearly as big a threat as any character who would dish out 60 damage in a round.  As for the whole "if she was better protected" thing that is what the Warrior was SUPPOSED to be doing in the encounter using Harms Way and Ward talents granted I never thought much of Ward.  Of course I hitting her with Force Grip was very much an effort to keep her raising the Warrior back from the dead and if I'd thought she'd live to act again I'd have kept it up with Ghost despite his more immediate threats.

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StevenO

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #242 on: February 12, 2019, 11:10:13 am »
I hope you don't mind Fak but in case anyone is wondering I believe these are the stat blocks that were used for the YV:

Spoiler: YV Stat blocks (hover to show)

Now for those further interested here are my revisionist notes:

Spoiler: Revised YV stats (hover to show)
I'll note the Intendant Revision isn't done and I haven't taking on the Voxyn yet although I think with the alterations already made to the Warmaster, warrior types, and Shaper the risk level of this group goes up substantially.

When played I do think the YV made a couple critical errors that didn't do them any favors.
1.  In the Surprise Round the Warmaster should have just used Grand Leader to give all his allies 13 bonus hit points instead of sharing that talent so others would have to use it.

1.5.  Overall I think the Warmaster's Shared Talents were not used to their fullest.  The first talent he should have shared was Indomitable followed up by Grand Leader.  If they'd had the chance I think both Intendant and Warrior would have benefited for being able to use a Swift action to move back to the top of the CT.  Grand Leader

2.  Also in the Surprise Round and tied to the first the Warrior should have CHARGED Krusseck instead of spending his turn using the Grand Leader given to him by the Warmaster; this would have actually had him attacking, would have prevented Krusseck from charging later, and would have put him in Furbal's much larger than expected "blind spot."  Although tied more to setup if the Warrior and Hunter had traded positions this could be more terrifying.

3.  Warrior should not have used Delay Damage when struck by Furbal's Shot.  Delaying 30 damage and two steps down the CT may have seemed prudent but they weren't lethal.  Now from there the Shaper healing 60 points of damage put him back over 2nd wind numbers while incidentally the first roll would have healed the Warrior but not prevented its own Second Wind (one of THREE) for 35 healing ant +1 CT; this second situation would have had the Warrior at 95 hp and three steps down the CT after a swift action on its turn instead of starting a recover while being at 78 hp and four steps down.  As it was being four steps down is what does in the Warrior as he should have used two swifts to move up the CT (At least I believe he had Shake It Off).  He could have then soaked Torkad's Critical and not fallen unconscious and hopefully made it to his next round with Delay Damage still in his pocket (granted Delaying that much damage when he only needs to suffer 8 to use Second Wind may make sense) and the ability to use Second Wind.

4.  Although small and maybe not as important toward the end when we had the Warmaster "cornered" before he climbed out of it he should have used his standard action to attack Furbal before doing anything else.  Admittedly if the same roll that was made against Krusseck later was directed at Furbal it would have missed as well but Furbal was still a much softer target than Krusseck especially when the Warmaster couldn't apply his STR bonus to the attack against Krusseck.  He'd hit Furbal every time and had a better chance at scoring a critical hit because of it and an extra standard action could have its uses especially since the whole "Second Wind to charge" was already planned.
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FakDendor

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #243 on: February 12, 2019, 01:44:01 pm »
I was very excited to use the intendant's "seize the moment" as it basically allowed my YV to take a second wind whenever they moved someone on the CT, which meant that whenever they got a hit in with the amphistaff a free 2nd wind was on the table. "Distress to discord" is an awesome talent when used in conjunction with a multi-attacker with dastardly strike, because as I see it every attack made against a target hit with "distress to discord" is considered to be made against a FF target. Sadly I never got to pull off either combo!

The shaper had some epic tricks besides her major healing. She can drop strength and adrenaline implants on folks for extra damage and healing. With recurring success, she could potentially put two strength implants on the warmaster, making his triple crit deal an extra 6d8 points of damage!.

Generally what I've seen in the sandboxes and "what if" builds is a way to make a single character as awesome as possible. But I had asked myself "what if it were a whole squad? What sort of crazy synergies could you make?" While I didn't really get to pull off a single combo I was excited to give it a try.

timcrall

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #244 on: February 12, 2019, 03:25:11 pm »
I'm thinking maybe it'd be fun to run something, anyone interested?

FakDendor

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #245 on: February 12, 2019, 03:59:18 pm »
Definitely - what did you have in mind?

timcrall

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #246 on: February 12, 2019, 04:22:39 pm »
Definitely - what did you have in mind?

I'm thinking a Clone Wars-era scenario, maybe level 10 - thinking it may be 2-3 encounters including both a starship and ground-based portion.  I'll probably start a thread in the recruitment area.

sienn_sconn

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #247 on: February 12, 2019, 05:13:18 pm »
Count me in.  I like CloneWars stuff.
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StevenO

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #248 on: February 12, 2019, 09:42:11 pm »
I was very excited to use the intendant's "seize the moment" as it basically allowed my YV to take a second wind whenever they moved someone on the CT, which meant that whenever they got a hit in with the amphistaff a free 2nd wind was on the table. "Distress to discord" is an awesome talent when used in conjunction with a multi-attacker with dastardly strike, because as I see it every attack made against a target hit with "distress to discord" is considered to be made against a FF target. Sadly I never got to pull off either combo!

The shaper had some epic tricks besides her major healing. She can drop strength and adrenaline implants on folks for extra damage and healing. With recurring success, she could potentially put two strength implants on the warmaster, making his triple crit deal an extra 6d8 points of damage!.

Generally what I've seen in the sandboxes and "what if" builds is a way to make a single character as awesome as possible. But I had asked myself "what if it were a whole squad? What sort of crazy synergies could you make?" While I didn't really get to pull off a single combo I was excited to give it a try.

I don't believe, or at least wouldn't allow, two STR implants to stack.  Besides that I don't remember you having Recurring Success for that Implant although I think it would generally be better than two Adrenalin implants.

DtD is certainly a nasty talent especially when many PCs, it seems Krusseck is a big exception to this, take a relatively significant hit to REF when FF.  The Trandoshan may have lost nothing, which almost makes it a shame that he was the only one to suffer that condition after the first round, be all of the other PCs would have lost 3-4 points off their REF Defense.  Seize the Moment would have been especially nasty with all that poison to move targets down the CT and then a few of the YV having multiple Second Winds to boot.

When it comes to zero-G I say it really hurts just about everyone unless you happen to have the Spacehound talent.  The thing is that even most of your pilot types aren't going to bother with that talent as generally it is just looked at for proficiency with starship weapons and the gravity thing is just an added bonus.  Perhaps the "Jedi" were better equipped to handle the difference in gravity by having Acrobatics trained in some fashion but while that's certainly true for the low-G environment in Zero-G it still would take them a swift action to try to reduce the penalty.  I'd considered trying to have Ghost Force Grip the Warmaster but with even a -2 penalty on the UtF check he had zero chance of "hitting" his FORT to cut him down to a swift action on his turn.

Now there may be one thing that sort of worries be with what are essentially "one shots" is that it doesn't do a lot to encourage versatility in characters.  I know some people like single minded characters but I normally want them that can do different things.  I was thinking about Ghost's performance in this sandbox and I might say the closest he came to a repeated round of actions was Standard=Cloak, Move=Movement, but even then the Swift action changed as did the entire reason for the round where once was getting out of trouble and the other getting back into it.

As for something else if you're looking at 10th-level that's normally where I build characters to.  Now Multiple encounters including Space and Ground I think I could make Ghost or Tyro (last sandbox) work well in them although depending on the rest of the group I'd maybe tweak them some.
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Ghondar

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Re: Gamemaster's Sandbox 2: Clash on the Moonbase
« Reply #249 on: February 15, 2019, 08:13:25 am »

I'm thinking a Clone Wars-era scenario, maybe level 10 - thinking it may be 2-3 encounters including both a starship and ground-based portion.  I'll probably start a thread in the recruitment area.

I´d like to go in, too. I´m thinking about a freighter ace character (she´ll be of use on the ground, too)