BW 2010 feedback

[Tzan]

Link. Please I

See the 9th post in this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5381

Then if you want you can read the rest.

[Gungnir]

Found another error. This time for real.
"The Supernatural d12" is in the chapter twice. Once under the Dice Types table, and again under the Damage section for supernatural dice.

[Arkbrik]

Just played a game with plenty of SuperNatural dice. One mage used 1d8 for range, giving the spell 1 Firing Arc, and then gave all targets inside the Arc +1d12 Armor... covering most of his army. Is this intended? Or should we have remembered the Size Dependent rule and requested that he gave an individual die to every target involved?* You might need to add something about multiple targets to those rules if that's the case.

*He totally could have. That monstrosity had Supernatural 1d6 + 3d8 + 3d10 + 3d12.

[Rev. Sylvanus]

*He totally could have. That monstrosity had Supernatural 1d6 + 3d8 + 3d10 + 3d12.

I've never even come close to that in games! Well...go big or go home, I suppose...

[stubby]

Huh, forgot to write it in, but Lasting Effects only cover as much area as can be bought by the physical dice you leave on them - "virtual" dice don't Last. To give a bunch of guys a Lasting buff, you either need to supply physical dice for each of them, or load d10s on one of them and keep the rest of them within the range afforded by those d10s.

If you just want to give everybody a momentary buff for the turn, then using a d8 for Arc works fine. But the d8 applies to the guy firing the Effect rather than on the targets, so it can't be left with them.

If you wanted to use a d8 for a Lasting Effect, then you'd have to use it to magick up some kind of once-per-turn buff projector or something, and re-roll the range from the projector every turn.

[Arkbrik]

It wasn't a lasting effect, but one turn is long enough when an army of Pwnies is charging at you. So we handled it correctly then?

[IVhorseman]

Sounds like it.

I think the biggest balance game now is figuring out how many dice a "fair" wizard should have in a CP-free battle. One die per armed minifig on the other team is potentially a good guide.

[stubby]

The better thing would be something like the Movement Speed Examples chart in 9.1, where I could list the power levels for different example wizards and superheroes. Probably superheroes, since wizard power levels are kind of vague. How powerful is Gandalf for instance? He never really does anything to let you know.

Ideally it'd be better to use non-copyrighted characters in any case. What kind of non-copyrighted superheroes is everyone still likely to recognize? Like ... Jesus maybe? How many dice to convert water into booze, promote cannibalism, and come back as a zombie?

Now that I'm writing this out, religious examples seem pretty cool.

[RunsWithLegos]

well gandalf does beat the shit out of the balrog, and in the game BAttle for Middle earth he can sweep armies of the map by himself.

[IVhorseman]

Mohammed's got a few fire d4s.

Zeus is pretty damn recognizable and obvious. Wizards can be given arbitrary tiers of "classes" like apprentice, wizard, and grand-mage or something. Dracula's non-copyright, and high-tech commandos can sometimes get away with one or two supernatural dice. Is Supermen copyright?

I've also been using supernatural dice on special "magick" weapons, with the rationale of the fact that since heroic weapons exist, why shouldn't magickal weapons exist too? That way, you can have incindiary round d4s, volt-throwers with electric d8s, and Plasma rifles with a supernatural d12 to damage. It's a lot simpler than having specific ammo types associated with plasma/laser/whatever damage.

[stubby]

Zeus is pretty damn recognizable and obvious.

He's also near-omnipotent, not much use as an example in a battle where dice are finite. Also not likely to offend anyone, so what's the point of including him. I'm thinking of magical hero types: Jesus, Sun Wukong / Hanuman, Moses... Mohammed didn't perform much magick as far as I recall. I don't know, what other religious figures performed witchcraft? Maybe I should try mythological creatures instead, although that seems lame.

Wizards can be given arbitrary tiers of "classes" like apprentice, wizard, and grand-mage or something. Dracula's non-copyright, and high-tech commandos can sometimes get away with one or two supernatural dice. Is Supermen copyright?

Superman is SUPER-copyrighted, trust me on this. What would be good tier levels? One die for magical grunts, three for magical officers, five for magical heroes? Maybe some of you guys who've been trying these out can give your impressions on which die levels seem utilitarian and which seem ridiculous.

I could put them in terms of BrikThulhu kultists. One for kultist grunts, three for kultist priests, five for the kultist high priest, 6d6d6 for BrikThulhumans, 0937 for BrikThulhu.

I've also been using supernatural dice on special "magick" weapons, with the rationale of the fact that since heroic weapons exist, why shouldn't magickal weapons exist too? That way, you can have incindiary round d4s, volt-throwers with electric d8s, and Plasma rifles with a supernatural d12 to damage. It's a lot simpler than having specific ammo types associated with plasma/laser/whatever damage.

As intended - there's a blurb about giving SD to "machines, animals, and even inanimate objects" in the Supernatural Cliche section.

[Arkbrik]

Maybe some of you guys who've been trying these out can give your impressions on which die levels seem utilitarian and which seem ridiculous.

I've never played with a one-die SuperNatural, but they seem like they could only be used to buff themselves or a buddy standing next to them (IVhorseman's idea about using single dice for special ammo is sweet though).

The "grunt mages" in both my and KittywithLEGO's armies had two dice. This gave them more options; to do something at range, do something more complex, or just do something more powerful.

Killestia is a four-dice mage and can be best described as "reliable". She can toss people around at range and has enough dice to recover from small spell fails.

The ten-dice mage mentioned above was, well, a monstrosity. When a rolling pillar of doom was about to crush his snowboard knight pals, he tried to stop it while about 20" away from it. He got the range, and then critfailed the roll to slow it down. I used the die to speed the pillar up, got a series of critsuccesses, increasing its speed by 15" or so. And he had enough dice left to slow it back down to 0" and still have a couple left over.

[aoffan23]

Mohammed didn't perform much magick as far as I recall.

How about the ability to cause mass rage every time he shows his face?

EDIT: You could also include some sort of joke about his picture, and your inability to show it or something. Seems like a pretty easy way to offend people.

[IVhorseman]

I've never played with a one-die SuperNatural, but they seem like they could only be used to buff themselves or a buddy standing next to them (IVhorseman's idea about using single dice for special ammo is sweet though).

I've also been using single-die specialists to pretty damn great effect. A grunt with just a single magical d4 can use it to either make one shot from his machine pistol incindiary (mike: does the d4 apply to all automatic shots that turn, or just that once?) or just as an armor bonus due to his "body armor" or whatever. It was extremely relaxed, and still pretty effective (although not overpoweringly so at all).

The "grunt mages" in both my and KittywithLEGO's armies had two dice. This gave them more options; to do something at range, do something more complex, or just do something more powerful.

Killestia is a four-dice mage and can be best described as "reliable". She can toss people around at range and has enough dice to recover from small spell fails.

The ten-dice mage mentioned above was, well, a monstrosity. When a rolling pillar of doom was about to crush his snowboard knight pals, he tried to stop it while about 20" away from it. He got the range, and then critfailed the roll to slow it down. I used the die to speed the pillar up, got a series of critsuccesses, increasing its speed by 15" or so. And he had enough dice left to slow it back down to 0" and still have a couple left over.

I've been doing the same with grunt mages, although grunt pyromancers get 3d4 so they can at least attempt to get some range out of their flames. a d8 and a d4 could make a cool cone of flame too, though. Most of the other times I've only played with up to 3 dice.

Ten sounds like overkill from the game you played. If you got that many critical successes, then the funny thing to happen would be for the pillar to just barrel down the field, and not just get effortlessly slowed down by a super-mage thaumaturge.

Mohammed totally did fire magic! Moses was definitely able to turn sticks to snakes (giving an inanimate object a mind, a move-speed, and a venomous bite so that's at least 3 dice) and made the skies rain frogs and shit. Don't ask me how many supernatural dice it'd take to part the red sea.

If you're going to go with religious icons, you ought to include some real-life people who get worshiped for their magic, like Tupac, Michael Jordan, and Chris Angel.

[stubby]

I've also been using single-die specialists to pretty damn great effect. A grunt with just a single magical d4 can use it to either make one shot from his machine pistol incindiary (mike: does the d4 apply to all automatic shots that turn, or just that once?)

You can apply a d4 to a single attack or to the weapon itself, depending on how you imagine the Effect. A flaming sword could be used for multiple CC counterattacks in the same turn, so I don't see why a machine pistol couldn't be turned into a machine pistol +1d4.

a d8 and a d4 could make a cool cone of flame too, though.

This is where example Effects will come in handy. d4=fire damage, d8=breath weapon, d4+d8=fire breath effect.

If you're going to go with religious icons, you ought to include some real-life people who get worshiped for their magic, like Tupac, Michael Jordan, and Chris Angel.

So obvious, how did I not think of it. Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, performing miracles. I can make an example to show how fucking magnets work.