Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Trill]

Okay, but then it makes no sense with the cars.
A Westwind has ACCEL 20/60 and SPEED 240
you'll never EVER reach that speed. so why put it in?

[Username17]

The vehicle rules in SR4A make no sense and are written by people who don't know what they are talking about and don't care.

What it means is that the two numbers of acceleration is how much you can change speed up or down if you do and do not taking the handling penalty for "running" and speed is the maximum speed you can accelerate to if you don't want to take the penalties for pushing your vehicle.

I am aware that the literal English reading of what it says is... not that. But that's what it means.

The rules are still garbage though, and you shouldn't try to use them as-is.

-Username17

[Trill]

Any changes?
Cause that was my interpretation as well, and it should work okay

[Username17]

Any changes?
Cause that was my interpretation as well, and it should work okay

I mean, the damage from car crashes is so completely insane that all combat should be replaced by remote controlling cheap used cars and stolen cars and smashing them into things. The numbers are totally bonkers.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

I remember that cheezy Deadliest Warrior show testing the lethality of a Spartan shield and the result was that it was like being hit in the face by a car going 40mph. That sort of puts it into perspective when Captain America hits someone with his shield, increasing his body count over the years to Thug Behram levels or something.

But it also makes me think about the abstraction of combat in most RPGs, and how those old Rolemaster critical hit tables aren't such a joke. And you're right, Frank, there needs to be vastly more RPG combat featuring car crashes. Even in fantasy settings. Enchanted wagons?

[Foxwarrior]

You know, I've made an RPG for that.

[OgreBattle]

I want to build a cyberpunk setting where wifi is civilian stuff, but most military criminal actions are wired with hardened hardware and custom software or something.

So... I don't really know what makes electronics hardened from EMP's and so on though. What does it look like?

[Username17]

I want to build a cyberpunk setting where wifi is civilian stuff, but most military criminal actions are wired with hardened hardware and custom software or something.

So... I don't really know what makes electronics hardened from EMP's and so on though. What does it look like?

The word you want to look up is Faraday Cage.

-Username17

[Blade]

You don't need to harden against EMP to avoid wireless hacking, you just need to have no wireless connection.

Ok, there are some side-channel attacks that can use wireless signals to get access to a machine without any wireless connection, but they aren't that easy to pull off in real life and you can easily state that they don't work in your game without stretching the suspension of disbelief too far.

Hardening against EMP is useful to protect you against someone crashing your device by overloading it with a very powerful magnetic pulse. And for this you can just state that military grade electronics are hardened against most EMP attacks and it'll be fine. In practice it means both shielding (potentially thicker cases or made with materials that offer better shielding than plastic) and constraints on the way the electronics are built. It'll be more expensive, maybe sometimes larger than consumer grade electronics, but other than that there should be little difference.

Faraday cages are a great way to make sure that absolutely no wireless signal can enter or exit the building, but they aren't very convenient to build and use, so you might have them for "that secure room in the middle of the compound that we have no idea what's going on inside" but you can't expect all your military-grade hardware to run inside faraday cages.

[OgreBattle]

Side Channel attacks sound cool and are definitely something that fits my vision of the setting.

reading the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attack

So by "use wireless signal to gain access to a machine", what exactly do you mean? Like you read the other signals that machine is giving out then interpret them, or are you somehow forcibly accessing it with a signal of your own

[Thaluikhain]

Hardening against EMP is useful to protect you against someone crashing your device by overloading it with a very powerful magnetic pulse. And for this you can just state that military grade electronics are hardened against most EMP attacks and it'll be fine. In practice it means both shielding (potentially thicker cases or made with materials that offer better shielding than plastic) and constraints on the way the electronics are built. It'll be more expensive, maybe sometimes larger than consumer grade electronics, but other than that there should be little difference.

I'm led to believe that an EMP tends to last a tiny fraction of a second, and the damaging part is in the middle of that. So a military radar system, say, can recognise the threat, turn itself off and back on again faster than the operator would notice something was going on.

Secondly, apparently a lot of civilian stuff is made by people who make military stuff (which has to be EMP hardened), so some things that don't actually have to be EMP hardened get made that way because that's what that place does.

[DSMatticus]

EMP's don't care if your device is on or off. An EMP induces a current in conductive materials. Electronics are made of conductive materials. If the current is large enough, those conductive materials will melt or explode due to heat. If it isn't, then the EMP was just going to make your system reboot or monitor flicker or whatever anyway.

[Thaluikhain]

From wiki:

Equipment that is running at the time of an EMP is more vulnerable. Even a low-energy pulse has access to the power source, and all parts of the system are illuminated by the pulse.

...

An EMP has a smaller effect the shorter the length of an electrical conductor

The latter part being of relevance when "turn off" means "disconnect from the mains", which I realise I'd not specified before.

[Blade]

There are all kinds of EMP. There are small disturbances that will just cause your phone to lose reception, or you screen to flicker and there are major EMP that will fry your electronics and possibly your body.

Similarly, there are different levels of EMP hardening. Many civilian device will have at least a bit of protection against random electro-magnetic interference. Stuff that is sent in space gets a lot more.

So by "use wireless signal to gain access to a machine", what exactly do you mean? Like you read the other signals that machine is giving out then interpret them, or are you somehow forcibly accessing it with a signal of your own

It could be many things.

It could be using a sound wave that will be received by the device's microphone and, due to a bug in the driver of the microphone (or a backdoor in the device), will lead to executing code on the machine.

It could be sending electro-magnetic signals that will trigger some reaction at the hardware level that will cause stuff to be executed (but that doesn't seem very feasible. Unless the hardware is completely unshielded, you'll have to send a signal powerful enough to reach the hardware and in that case it won't be precise enough to do what you want, it'd be like trying to shoot someone's trigger finger off with a rocket launcher).

It could be reading the electro-magnetic activity of a screen, or its power consumption to detect what it's displaying.

But to be honest, even if these kinds of attacks are fascinating, they're very hard to execute outside of a lab where you have perfect control over the parameters. There are a few cases, though, like TV ads that send a sound on frequencies that humans won't hear but that mobile phones or Alexa/Google/etc assistants will. It's apparently used by some companies to track what TV ads someone watched.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

This might be foolish, but I really want to incorporate hitting a Pokemon (or human, or object) in a weak point for extra damage and effects.

My current setup involves baking it into the creature or object, and (here's where I worry) having some weak spots give additional effects upon being hit. Hitting any weak point would make your attack extra effective, so if you hit something that's normally immune to a type, it only resists it instead. To give an example, a Chimecho is a wind chime Ghost Pokemon with a little suction cup sprouting from its head. You can swing a sword at it all day and it won't do anything unless it's on fire or something. However, if you make a called attack and take a penalty to try and hit the suction cup, it actually will hurt it a bit and make it lose access to its wallclimbing abilities until downtime. Or you can hit the Rhydon's horn with Thunder, or smack a building's load-bearing wall to bring the whole thing down. That sort of shit.

Characters with any amount of investment into General Education can suss these weak spots out with a Full Action and a level-based check, but you can also learn them through reading about it or being told or just fucking trying to hit spots on an Onix until you find out it doesn't like being shot in the eye. Not everything will have weak spots, but I think the majority of things should. I feel like this would be true to the source material, but I worry that it would be a pain to deal with at the table.

So... here I am asking about it. I'm omitting some detail, but this is the general idea and I haven't codified it too much yet. Thoughts?

EDIT: The main thing I'm worried about is combat devolving into everyone shooting each other in the eyes and/or nuts like it's Fallout 2. The only way around that I can think of is to have more specific weak spots for most pokemon under the excuse that they're just plain tougher than regular animals. Shooting a Pidgey in the wing doesn't do anything extra, you've gotta hit it in the armpit to slow it down.

[owlassociate]

I think a simple way to incorporate that would be a basic critical hit mechanic and pokemon that have effects (not necessarily extra damage though) that go off when they're critted. Then, you could have a application of your knowledge skill be, "as an action, make a check and your next attack will be an automatic crit," or whatever the appropriate equivalent for your game would be.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

There's already the basic weakness mechanic, and I've pondered effects that go off when hit in their weak spot, like a Steelix getting enraged when you hit it in the eyes and shit. Perhaps that could just be adjusted to whenever some Pokemon are hit by anything they're weak to, there could be an extra effect? This doesn't sound that different from what you're proposing, but it does sound like it could slow things down at the table.

[deaddmwalking]

If hitting a weak spot does extra generic damage, it's a solvable equation on whether it's worthwhile or not. If a called shot hits half as often but does double damage it's basically preference - if your accuracy increases (hitting 3/4 for instance) and the damage stays double it's always worthwhile. D&D generally avoids this because a critical is effectively random - you can't aim for one. Power Attack does fall.into the same trap - the decision of whether to use it or not can be determined by a formula - not necessarily what you want.

A 'special effect' is harder to quantify the sam way. If hitting a weak spot gives a chance of stunning your opponent, for instance, the math gets much fuzzier - the odds of the creature attacking, hitting, amount of damage, etc, are not usually easily calculated on the fly.

Writing special vulnerabilities that are situationally useful isn't terribly difficult if they're not based on instant kills. For example, a fire breathing dragon could have the following:

Vulnerability: douse. If a called shot is made at the dragon's mouth using a gallon of water or similar flame suppressant, the dragon loses the ability to breathe flame for 2d4+1 rounds.

Depending on your system, that may or may not require a save, and it may work differently based on recovery method... If a dragon rolls a d6 every round after discharging a breath weapon and recovers on a 4-6 exploiting the vulnerability could reduce recovery to a 6 only...

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

If hitting a weak spot does extra generic damage, it's a solvable equation on whether it's worthwhile or not. If a called shot hits half as often but does double damage it's basically preference - if your accuracy increases (hitting 3/4 for instance) and the damage stays double it's always worthwhile. D&D generally avoids this because a critical is effectively random - you can't aim for one. Power Attack does fall.into the same trap - the decision of whether to use it or not can be determined by a formula - not necessarily what you want.

While the rest of your post is basically what I had in mind already, this is sticking in my brain since I was considering having various ways to modify your attacks, one of which is just fucking power attacking. Is it bad if the decision to use it comes down to a formula if the math works out so that spamming unnecessarily is discouraged? For example, something big and tough normally doesn't take much damage but is easy to hit, so you should probably power attack it, while something small and quick could probably get totally punked by a power attack but is unlikely to hit?

[Foxwarrior]

That depends, do you want to reward players who practice their high school math in combat with extra effectiveness?

[Whatever]

It's fine if there's a "right answer" to a given tactical decision, as long as it's not the same answer every time.

For example, if your two attacks are Fire Bolt and Fire Ball, it's not going to be a huge mystery when to use the area attack and when to use the single target blast. But if Fire Ball deals double the damage then you'd use it even against a single enemy and the decision becomes meaningless.

Similar for Power Attack--as long as there are enemies where you want to use it and ones where you don't, it's a useful and interesting option. If the math says "always use" or "never use" then it's no option at all.

[deaddmwalking]

It's not always bad to have an ability like Power Attack. First off, that's a selectable ability - you don't have to take it so if you did take it, you probably do want it. That's not necessarily true if it applies to a bunch of monsters and players don't usually pick their opponents.

From a design point, you want to make sure that characters have multiple tools to address situations and that generally it doesn't dissolve into the same strategy every fight. An occasional enemy that's so dangerous in melee that you have to use bows could be good - even if you spam the same attack every round in that fight that's not necessarily indicative of a problem. But if you end up in a 3.x position of 'full-attack every round. Every fight, regardless of opposition or terrain' that's a problem. So if Power Attack ends up being something you use sometimes and not others, that's fine. For the character I'm playing primarily at the moment, I have Power Attack/Reckless strike and a weapon that could be used one- or two-handed and a shield. Deciding whether to drop my shield, tank my AC and hit hard or use the shield and maintain a high Defense feels like an interesting tactical puzzle that changes fast enough and between fights enough that it doesn't feel like I could train a monkey could do it without player input.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Alright, I think we might be able to have enough going on to not have to worry much about things being stale.

Due to the way damage works (so far), there is a meaningful difference between simply Power Attacking something and trying to hit it in its weak spot - obviously, you can power attack a Charizard in the throat if you wanted, but that's heinously difficult to hit with. Power attacking increases the amount of damage you dish out, while hitting a weakness is a multiplier applied after defensive stats, which subtract the relevant damage class from the amount of damage dealt.

Let's use Steelix as an example, since it has a hilariously high defense. You can try and hit it with a physical Fire move that's super effective, but unless you inflict enough damage to surpass its defense, you're multiplying 0 damage. Even if you have the correct colored laser to blast something, if you can't deal enough damage to hurt it in the first place, it won't do anything. At this point, you have ways of bypassing it - do you try and deal more damage, debuff the enemy, start combining your attacks, or ignore HP damage altogether and try beating it with status moves or environmental effects?

This brings me back around to weak spots - I'm toying with having a maneuver where you spend an Interrupt action to guard your weak spot, making it even more difficult to hit. This way, if you figure out a boss's weak spot and start yelling out to everyone else about it, they can go on the defensive to make the spots harder to hit at the cost of being able to do attacks of opportunity and delaying its turn and shit. Or it can just ignore that and try and kill you harder once you start hitting its weak spots and you really piss it off.

EDIT:

That depends, do you want to reward players who practice their high school math in combat with extra effectiveness?

Is it bad if my answer is "a little bit"?

[Foxwarrior]

I try to eliminate all unnecessary math from my games... because when I come up with game mechanics they already have plenty of necessary math in them. It's more something to be aware of, adjusts your target audience a bit, not good or bad really.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That's what I'm attempting to do too, but I find it difficult to conceptualize a complex game with a bunch of different effects and numbers that doesn't reward some level of math mastery.