Red_Rob wrote:2: Skills figured from stats doesn't work
This is the major structural issue with the game as I see it. Basically Feng Shui is a 2D6 system, which means in normal circumstances the RNG is 11 points long (Yes, yes, exploding dice. If you are relying on an exploding result you are basically off the RNG anyway). In such a system a +1 or -1 is a big deal, and once you get to +/-3 you have swung the result almost 40% in your favour in most cases. So it follows you need to be very careful to keep players on a tight range of possible numbers (in this case AV). Feng Shui doesn't do this, and in fact exacerbates the problem by having stats start at 5 but final AV's go up to 15.
Your analysis is correct in the abstract, but you are overstating many problems as they showed up in the actual system:
Double checking my 1e book and it looks like only the Everyman Hero, Techie and Transformed Animal start out with primary combat AVs which are not fixed. Now those three are all expected to allocate stats and bonuses in a way that brings them up to their max of 13 for starting combat AV, and you're absolutely right that the book shouldn't allow them the trap option of not doing that.
And of the archetypes with fixed primary combat AVs, only the Big Bruiser (12) and Old Master (16) are outside the 13-15 range, but they try to balance those out with extreme durability and extreme fragility.
You're also narrowing the RNG jut a bit too much. The exploding dice mean that each die averages out to 4.2, not merely 3, but that's minor compared to the bigger point is that a lot of the fighting in the game will be against unnamed opponents. These mooks will be opposing you at a difficulty of 8. Thus if you can bring your primary AV of 13 to 15 to bear it's an exercise in not rolling notably below average, but if for some reason you can't use your primary AV you can still win such a fight with a lower secondary combat AV and even plausibly hold them off until help arrives using one of those stat-based defaults.
It also raises some problems when you try to do something not covered by a skill, as most characters stat values are so low compared to their skills that this is a death knell for the attempt if the GM uses anything like the recommended difficulty ratings. For a game with such a limited skill list this seems like it would cause real problems
Okay, while you raised a valid point about skill defaults being overly harsh, this part of your rant confuses me. In Feng Shui, the list of skills is short, but they are very broad in application --- pretty much whatever it is, there is a skill roll for that. And the more skills you add to the skill list in a game, the
less likely that is to happen, as each individual skill becomes narrower in application. Also, even in cases where such a skill is available, as skill lists get longer, it becomes less and less likely that any of the PCs will have a relevant skill for any narrow task.
Thus in Feng Shui, horse-riding and piloting a hovercraft both use the same Driving skill that you use in car chases -- the penalties for J mods and unfamiliarity may be too harsh for the limited RNG, but the roll is in all cases based on your Driving AV, and at no point will you need to default to your Agility stat to compute a new AV. Also, no matter what kind of crazy new vehicle (starcruisers, teleportation pods), or beast of burden(fury beetles, narwhal jousting) you come across your Driving skill already covers it.
Contrast with say HERO, where you first buy multiple Transport Familiarities and then have to buy Combat Driving, Combat Piloting and Riding. In that case, you are extremely likely to come across a task for which there is not a narrow-application skill defined in the system and extremely likely to come across a task for which none of the PCs have the narrowly defined skill. Thus you are more likely to need to default off of your attribute.
Heck, I don't actually see any rules for rolling attribute checks for "things not covered by a skill". Maybe I'm missing them on my skim-through, but for right now it looks like that part of your complaint is not about the actual rules.
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